An insightful ethnographic account of the lives of Santeria practitioners in CubaHow do Santeria practitioners in Cuba create and maintain religious communities amidst tensions, disagreements, and competition among them, and in the absence of centralized institutional authority? What serves as the "glue" that holds practitioners of different backgrounds together in the creation of a moral community? Examining the religious lives of santeros in Santiago de Cuba, Wirtz argues that these communities hold together not because members agree on their interpretations of rituals but because they often disagree. Religious life is marked by a series of "telling moments"-not only the moments themselves but their narrated representations as they are retold and mined for religious meanings. Long after they occur, spiritually elevated experiences circulate in narratives that may express skepticism or awe and hold the promise of more such experiences. The author finds that these episodes resonate in gossip and other forms of public commentary about the experiences of their fellow Santeria practitioners. Drawing on ethnographic research about Santeria beliefs and practices, Wirtz observes that practitioners are constantly engaged in reflection about what they and other practitioners are doing, how the orichas (deities) have responded, and what the consequences of their actions were or will be. By focusing their reflective attention on particular events, santeros re-create, moment to moment, what their religion is. Wirtz also argues that Santeria cannot be considered in isolation from the complex religious landscape of contemporary Cuba, in which African-based traditions are viewed with a mix of fascination, folkloric pride, and suspicion. Interactions among the conflicting discourses about these religions-as sacred practices, folklore, or dangerous superstitions, for example-have played a central role in constituting them as social entities. This book will interest scholars of religion, the African diaspora, the Caribbean, and Latin America, as well as linguistic and cultural anthropologists.
Kristina Wirtz is a linguistic and cultural anthropologist and professor of Spanish at Western Michigan University. She is the author of Performing Afro-Cuba: Image, Voice, Spectacle in the Making of Race and History.
"Wirtz's lucid and intimate ethnography of Santeria practice in Santiago de Cuba addresses classic debates in the study of religions and African-derived cultures in the Americas.. . . . A rewarding, tightly structured read."--Caribbean Studies "The reader comes away with a vivid sense of the complexities of the historical emergence of Santeria, of the competing agendas of Santeria's ritual experts at this historical moment, of the distillation of relatively stable religious stances through moment-to-moment activities and discourse, and of the intimate interplay between the divine and the all too human."--Journal of Linguistic Anthropology "A sympathetic and detailed ethnography of a religious community. . . . A fine book for scholars interested in cultural theory and the construction of religious communities."--Nova Religio "Wirtz brings . . . a background in ecology and evolutionary theory that, combined with her expertise in linguistic anthropology, give her descriptions of discursive competition as a path to religious survival a rare prescience and urgency."--Journal of Anthropological Research "Wirtz's attention to the socially constitutive force of reflective discourse and her detailed ethnography suggest new directions for the study of Santeria and religion."--Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology