Zimbabwe. In search of the lost city.
Friday, 1 May 2020 8:00

Category: Culture May 2020
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Tagged under:Africa

Grand Zimbabwe is one of Africa’s largest and most complex archaeological sites. Its origins and decline are mysterious,
and we visited it.

The origins of Grand Zimbabwe – Dzimba-Dzemabwe in the Shona language: The Stone City – date back to 800 AD. That’s when, in the last great Bantu migration, Black African populations descended from what is present-day Zambia to the areas beyond the Zambezi River, settling in the plains at the foot of the eastern highlands, which is now south-eastern Zimbabwe. Previously, only the San ethnic populations (the Bushmen) inhabited the area.A small group of Bantu chose to settle in the ideal conditions along the banks of the Mutirikwe River. And their choice would prove to be accurate.



The water course was navigable. And it was a tributary of the Save river, for hundreds and hundreds of kilometers, served as the only river route that crossed the great Chimanimani mountain range – a natural barrier between the inland and the Indian Ocean coastline. It was along this water highway that Arab merchants based in Sofala reached the hinterland, encountering the Bantu peoples of Grand Zimbabwe and establishing a profitable trade network.
Towards the end of the ninth century, nearly twenty thousand people lived in the city, and hundreds of villages and communities revolved around what became an important centre for trade.

A Granite Heart
Grand Zimbabwe was built using square and locally hewn granite blocks from the surrounding hills and from the Matabeleland. These were cut and laid dry on top of each other. The oldest nucleus is now known as the Acropolis, located on the granite hill overlooking the esplanade. That’s where the the sovereign resided. Centuries later the large enclosure (now known as The Great Enclosure, or ‘Imba Huru’), the most famous complex in the city, was erected.



It consists of an elliptical enclosure of cyclopean walls, in the interior of which stands the famous Conical Tower, built in a shape resembling a truncated cone; it may have been a a symbol of fertility, reminiscent of a phallic form . Or it could have functioned as a granary. Visitors to the site can still notice decorative motifs on the upper parts of the walls, produced using the laying of the blocks and believed to represent the City’s social organization, the power of the sovereign, and an invocation for fertility.The older wives of the sovereign lived in Imba Huru, where religious ceremonies were also officiated.
The priests studied astronomy, as the stelae located within the enclosure, depicting various astral constellations, show.



Moreover, the very shape of the walls, their dimensions and their relations with the Pi, the constant used to calculate the area of a circle symbolized by Greek letter Pi, betray the priests possessed deep mathematical insights. Perhaps, the Arabs, who made regular visits to the settlement, transmitted this knowledge. Beyond the southern gate there is a third complex, known as “The Valley” and it consists of a series of stone houses, probably inhabited by dignitaries and priests.

A Mysterious End
The civilization thrived for more than five hundred years. Then, around 1500, it mysteriously disappeared within less than half a century. Nobody knows exactly why the inhabitants abandoned the site. A prolonged period of drought and famine, an epidemic, or an economic crisis linked to a decline of the gold trade could have been responsible, forcing the inhabitants to move away. Moreover, archaeologists suggest migrations from the north overwhelmed both the Grand Zimbabwe (and the empire it controlled) on several occasions. Today, only the ruins of the majestic civilization that once thrived in the region are visible. They are located just a few kilometers from Masvingo, down the valley, where the ‘Great Enclosure’ and its conical tower stand against the ‘Acropolis’.

Stone Symbols
Without realizing it, as you walk through the alleys and the steps you shift from the granite construction of the Hill to an area of masonry buildings, where terraces, steps, squares and ramparts merge. Here the natural and the artificial coexist in perfect harmony. That which existed before the City (the granite area) was not demolished, or cut, but the city itself was integrated with it. It is a metaphor for African culture, in which the old is a heritage to be preserved and not a burden to be discarded.



In Grand Zimbabwe, in the small museum at the foot of the Acropolis, visitors can observe seven of the eight so-called ‘Zimbabwe birds’ or ‘Zimbabwe hawks’, a series of stele carved in soapstone representing the howling eagle or the juggling hawk. Both are thought to link the world of the living with that of the ancestors. These were probably placed on the top of the Acropolis walls. Each of these commemorates a new ruler, and the image of the last hawk recurs in national iconography from the period when thr country was known as Rhodesia to the present. They appear on flags, banknotes, coats of arms and friezes. And the ruling political Party, Zanu-Pf, has adopted the conical tower, on whose sides two tall trees have grown, as a symbol.

Contested Origins
Adam Render, a German hunter, was the first European to discover the ruins of Grand Zimbabwe. He told his friend Karl Mauch, an explorer and geographer, and they visited the site together. They took credit for the discovery attributing the site’s origins to King Solomon. For a long time, it was believed that Phoenician populations, who managed to reach southern Africa, built Grand Zimbabwe.



Cecil John Rhodes was the first to understand the political significance of the ruins: attruibuting the erection of the City to black African populations would have falsified the notion that Africans were culturally inferior to whites. Thus, the Phoenician origin of the site would remain in vogue until 1905, when the archaeologist David Randall Maclver established, after careful study, that there were no signs of European or Near Eastern influence to be observed at Grand Zimbabwe.
However, the authenticity of the existence of a purely African medieval archaeological site was censored until the late 1970s. When Rhodesian archaeologist Peter Garlake definitively established Grand Zimbabwe’s African origins, he was forced into exile.
Weeks would fail to provide enough time to talk about the mysterious Lost City, whose thousands of corners and millenary walls seem to whisper history while the massive granite boulders appear to guard its secrets. In 1986, UNESCO included the archaeological site of Grand Zimbabwe in its list of World Heritage Sites. (S.T.)

African Military spending up 17% over the last decade.

PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY

Friday, 1 May 2020 

Category: News May 2020
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Tagged under:Africa

Over the last ten years, African military spending grew by 17%, rising to $41.2 billion in 2019, according to new research from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), which reports that last year the world recorded the largest annual growth in military spending since 2010, rising 3.6% from 2018 to $1.917 trillion.

At an estimated $41.2 billion, military expenditure in Africa accounted for 2.1% of the global total in 2019. The marginal growth in spending in 2019 was the first increase in African military expenditure for five years. Despite the annual decreases in 2015–18, increases in other years meant that total African military spending grew by 17% over the decade 2010–19, SIPRI said.



Military spending by countries in North Africa is estimated to have totalled $23.5 billion in 2019, representing 57% of the total for Africa. Amid long-standing tensions between Algeria and Morocco, domestic insurgencies and continuing civil war in Libya, military spending in the sub region was 4.6% higher than in 2018 and 67% higher than in 2010.
Algeria’s military expenditure of $10.3 billion in 2019 was the highest in North Africa (and Africa as a whole) and accounted for 44% of the sub regional total. Algeria’s military spending has risen almost continuously since 2000, and particularly in the period 2004–16, when expenditure grew for 13 consecutive years and reached an all-time high in 2016. At 6.0% of its GDP, Algeria’s military burden was the highest in Africa in 2019.Military spending in sub-Saharan Africa fell by 2.2% in 2019 to reach $17.7 billion, which was 15% lower than in 2010.
At $3.5 billion, South Africa’s military spending was the highest in sub-Saharan Africa in 2019. Its spending fell by 1.5% in 2019 — the fourth consecutive year of decrease. Nigeria was the second largest spender in the sub region in 2019: it allocated $1.9 billion to its military, down by 8.2% compared with 2018.



In recent years spending on the military by sub-Saharan African states has been volatile, SIPRI said. Of the 19 countries that increased military spending in 2019, eight decreased spending in 2018. Similarly, 13 of the 23 countries that lowered spending in 2019 had raised spending in 2018. This means that, overall, the trend in changes by 21 of the 42 countries in the sub region for which relevant data is available reversed in 2019.SIPRI said that armed conflict is a major driver for the volatile nature of military spending in sub-Saharan Africa.



For example, in the Sahel and Lake Chad region, where there are several ongoing armed conflicts, military spending increased in 2019 in Burkina Faso (22%), Cameroon (1.4%) and Mali (3.6%) but fell in Chad (–5.1%), Niger (–20%) and Nigeria (–8.2%). Among the Central African countries that were involved in armed conflict, military spending rose in 2019 in the Central African Republic (8.7%), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (16%) and Uganda (52%) but fell in Burundi (–4.5%). In the Horn of Africa, military spending decreased in 2019 in Ethiopia (–1.6%) and Kenya (–1.7%); however, their spending in 2019 remained well above that in 2010: Ethiopia’s was 12% higher while Kenya’s was 25% higher.

Global trends
SIPRI said the five largest spenders in 2019, which accounted for 62% of expenditure, were the United States, China, India, Russia and Saudi Arabia. This is the first time that two Asian states have featured among the top three military spenders.
Global military spending in 2019 represented 2.2% of the global gross domestic product (GDP), which equates to approximately $249 per person. “Global military expenditure was 7.2% higher in 2019 than it was in 2010, showing a trend that military spending growth has accelerated in recent years,” said Dr Nan Tian, SIPRI Researcher. “This is the highest level of spending since the 2008 global financial crisis and probably represents a peak in expenditure.”



Military spending by the United States grew by 5.3% to a total of $732 billion in 2019 and accounted for 38% of global military spending. The increase in US spending in 2019 alone was equivalent to the entirety of Germany’s military expenditure for that year.
“The recent growth in US military spending is largely based on a perceived return to competition between the great powers,” said Pieter D. Wezeman, Senior Researcher at SIPRI.



In 2019 China and India were, respectively, the second- and third-largest military spenders in the world. China’s military expenditure reached $261 billion in 2019, a 5.1% increase compared with 2018, while India’s grew by 6.8% to $71.1 billion. “India’s tensions and rivalry with both Pakistan and China are among the major drivers for its increased military spending,” said Siemon T. Wezeman, SIPRI Senior Researcher.In addition to China and India, Japan ($47.6 billion) and South Korea ($43.9 billion) were the largest military spenders in Asia and Oceania. Military expenditure in the region has risen every year since at least 1989. (D.N.)

Trinidad and Tobago. Shango, sticking to roots.

Unknown to most people, and often considered a mere folkloric tradition, the Shango ritual plays an important role in the lives of  many inhabitants of  the islands of Trinidad and Togabo.

The Shango is a religious ritual which is still practiced today in the islands of Trinidad and Tobago where the majority of the population is black. The two Caribbean islands’ inhabitants are the descendants of those African slaves who were taken to the New World in the seventeenth century and who were renamed Lukumi by the white people after the words oluku mi, ‘my friend’, which they often used when they greeted each other. This expression also marked their group identity as ethnic Yoruba, who more than any other ethnicity has remained faithful to the ancestral tradition of the people of the ancient kingdom of Dabomey, which covered an area including the modern Benin, Togo and south-western Nigeria. These slaves brought  a complex mixture of rites and beliefs into the New World.

This spiritual amalgamation  combined the several religious elements belonging to the Yoruba, with Catholic, Hindu, Protestant and Jewish Kabalistic traditions, and it became one of the most complex and flourishing forms of religious syncretism of the African-American tradition. This is shown also in the Shango of Trinidad, whose first nucleus derives from the Yoruba cult, beliefs and religious practices, which were combined with Catholic rituals first and with many elements of Hindu tradition later.

 The white people’s refusal of the Lukumi’s ancestral traditions led the slaves of Trinidad and Tobago to disguise their traditional practices in the eyes of the Europeans. They, therefore, adopted Christian rituals and formulas, which, however, in reality were addressed to their African gods, in order to avoid persecution and prohibitions. With this clever system of homologies, the Shango ritual therefore is a relevant example of  faithfulness to the African tradition through processes of authentic cultural fossilization.

Possession

In the amazing expressive diversity of the Shango cult, possession is the only institutionalized element which is present and which is performed in the same manner  in the rituals throughout the two Caribbean islands. Achieving trance is the essential element that constantly recurs in any Shango religious ceremony.

The achievement of a trance state is stimulated by musical rhythm. The deities or gods worshipped in Lukumí religion are called orishas. The orishas serve as mediators between humankind and the Supreme Being. These deities can represent all the virtuous qualities of the divine, yet the orishas are also human-like in their characters and mannerisms. They are celestial, yet they are worldly too. The African religious tradition of Trinidad, though mainly characterized by Yoruba elements, also includes multiple elements of other ethnic groups such as the Fon (Benin) or the Ewe (Togo) . The rituals often take place in the peristyles (porticoed courtyards) of Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago.

 Both  rada (good spirits of African tradition) cults, which have been surveyed and which originate respectively from a soothsayer of Ouidah and a priest from Dahomey, perform the same rituals, and worship the same deities which are hierarchically positioned in family groupings (fanni) in the pantheon. These deities remind  one so much of  the voodoun gods of Abomey.
Dada Segbo is the Creator God in the rada cults of Trinidad, the equivalent of Nana Buluku, and Ogun and Legba and many others belonging to the Sakpatan family, such as Sobo (god of thunder), Agbe (ague) and Naete, the sea deities, are his descendants. The voodoo (rada) ceremonies and the sacrifices for the individual gods (first of all the offerings to Legba), are a precise repetition of the traditional rituals that can still be found even today in Benin, in Togo and part of southwestern Nigeria.

Orisha

Nowadays, the inhabitants of Trinidad worship the major gods of the Yoruba pantheon. In the Orisha and Shango deity lists, gods can be identified and one can notice how their original names have been locally changed. So, Ajajà o Mama Loatlè, the mother of all nations, in the Shango of Trinidad, changes into Baba-byu-aye and Yemaja in the Lukumi pantheon. Olurum, known in Cuba under the name of Olafi or Obatala, splits into the male and female principles Batala and Lyamba.
The ecclesiastical system is also run by a strongly hierarchized clergy according to the powers received during the initiation phase (the only means by which one can access to the Shango cults). According to the Yoruba model, the candidate, who wanders into the forest for a specified period of time, will receive at the end the power: a sort of Christian grace symbolically sanctioned by a liturgical object, sacred to the gods, where each colour is linked, according to the African rules, to the nature and the will of the individual orishas.
All the local Shango clergy takes part in the Shango ritual of Trinidad, which is  based on Protestant hymns and African dances around a central pole. All these elements are essential to the achievement of the hypnotic condition.

This tradition evokes the most vivid aspects of a major revivalist religion on the island, that of the shouters, which was prohibited in the early last century and which has continued  to be clandestinely performed until today, providing an even clearer picture of African-Protestant syncretism. As for the places of worship, the temple includes Christian elements (such as the altar with the Bible, the cross, the candles, the pulpit of the preacher) and African elements (the central pole, the poteau-mitan, which had already  been used  in the voodoo cults  of Haiti, and that is also found in some candomblé rituals in Bahia, Brazil). Like the deities, the Shango clergy is also hierarchically organized, according to the powers received during the initiation, and it is constituted by preachers (who interpret the Bible), teachers (who interpret the dreams of the faithful), leaders (who baptize), doctors (who have the gift of healing the sick), soothsayers and prophets (who predict the future), and nurses (corresponding to the ‘ekedey’ priestesses of the Yoruba sects). A well organized system. (M.R.)

https://www.southworld.net/trinidad-and-tobago-shango-sticking-to-roots/

WHO IS NATURE?: YORÙBÁ RELIGION AND ECOLOGY IN CUBA

By

Amanda D. Concha-Holmes

May 2010

Chair: Faye V. Harrison

Cochair: Michael J. Heckenberger

Major: Anthropology

http://etd.fcla.edu/UF/UFE0041101/holmes_a.pdf

Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School

of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Scholars must find culturally appropriate methods to interpret African ecological

knowledges in order to improve our understanding of shifting, multisited, multivocal and

multisensorial landscapes especially concerning human-nature relationships. This research is in response to the general academic need to examine how black histories have been conceived and written. Instead of folklore, I look to the Osainistas (healers and herbalists initiated into the secrets of Osain) in Cuba as possible partners in a conversation in collaborative conservation.

My study of Lucumí (Yorùbá-derived) religion and Osain (deity of the sacred forests,

herbs and healings) reveals an embodied understanding of nature through which the boundaries of subject as well as material and spiritual become collapsed and traversed through specialized communication techniques. Ways of knowing through invocations, praise poetry, music and dance are essential to nearly all Yorùbá ritual in which spiritual forces are actualized–evoking and thus invoking spirit into physical form. Yorùbá employ these embodied techniques to transcend boundaries and open communication among spirit, material, temporal and spatial worlds, particularly to understand and work with natural resources. This embodied knowledge is, as Yvonne Daniel argues in her book Dancing Wisdom, “rich and viable and should be referenced among other kinds of knowledge” (2005:4).

This intermittently conducted 2003-06 ethnographic study, relies on what I am calling

evocative ethnography, which is organized around ethnography using visual and cognitive

techniques along with archival research to explore how Lucumí conceptualize nature and how I can translate these embodied perceptions. Additionally, since these Lucumí ways of

understanding nature encourage, according to the practitioners’, “respectful” environmental

behaviors, I hope that this research will aid future studies and more importantly improved

collaborations between Lucumí, scientists and policy-makers.

As one osainista explains, religious practitioners respect and care for the plants through

specifically outlined environmental practices such as only taking the branches and never the

roots of plants, and only taking what is needed for that day. This is a critical finding for

ecological anthropology because it is situated at the nexus of cosmology and conservation, and thereby noteworthy for understanding an important aspect of the African diaspora on a particular Caribbean landscape. In contemporary times of quickly disappearing neotropical forests, these results are significant not only to the current debate on the politics of conceptualizing and conserving nature, but also to collaborative, community-based conservation and development endeavors

PROLOGUE

In order to better communicate and understand diverse perspectives of the world using more locally relevant categories and expressions, I completed a Foreign Languages degree at New College, the Honor’s College of Florida. Although I had studied Russian, American Sign Language, French and Spanish since high school, and German in college, I mastered fluency only in French and Spanish—primarily through traveling and lived, experiential learning. To learn to speak French, I backpacked around France and West Africa for several months until the French would ask me if I were from the South of France—my accent was obviously not Parisian. Also, I hitchhiked, shared homes, stories, meals and sometimes just a bench with West Africans who instilled in me a recognition of dignity, strength and cultural individuality—very unlike most of the images that I had received of Africans through the media. To increase my Spanish fluency, I traveled and lived in Ecuador for almost a year. For the first two months, I volunteered at the Jatun Sacha Biological Reserve in the Amazon. There I learned about different ways of perceiving the environment when I would go on walks through the jungle with Quichua (local indigenous) guides. During that time, I lived at a nursery of Amazonian plants, and I helped create signs and structures to maintain indigenous ecological knowledge. Later, I moved to the town of Cuenca located in the Ecuadorian Andes. While teaching English to local high school students and adults, I conducted my research for the Bachelor’s thesis, Foreign Language Pedagogy, specifically examining the use of music and experiential education in learning a foreign language. My time in both the Andes and the Amazon made me realize the vast depth of indigenous ecological knowledge. Intrigued by indigenous voices of the landscape, those whose concern for earth are for her sentience, spirituality and ability to heal, I decided to obtain my Master’s in Latin American Studies 18 (MALAS) with a concentration in Tropical Conservation and Development (TCD) at the University of Florida. Through my graduate research and my work experience in the field of conservation and development in the tropics, I found that learning multiple perspectives is fundamental to understanding different cultures’ interpretations of nature and therein their distinct versions of development. Influenced by Marianne Schmink’s emphasis on multiple stakeholders and gender in ecosystem analysis, Taylor Stein’s in depth appraisal of ecotourism as a possible way to merge development and conservation, along with Sandra Russo’s Feminist Political Ecology books, I set out to study ecotourism at the renowned site of Pinal del Rio in Cuba. But, due to the political climate and United States legislation prohibiting travel to Cuba, I was not able to obtain the permission in time to conduct my master’s research. Instead, I followed Helen Safa and Jerry Murray’s advice and went to the neighboring Caribbean island of Hispaniola, and do research in the Dominican Republic, which holds a completely different political history from Cuba in relation to the United States. For my Master’s in Tropical Conservation and Development in Latin American Studies, I conducted an investigation that used locally relevant categories of development to evaluate an ecotourism venture, which I discuss in the master’s thesis: Resident Perspectives of Ecotourism as a Tool for Community-Based Development: a Case Study in Arroyo Surdido, Samaná, Dominican Republic. Thus, my concern with representing and accessing distinct ways of understanding nature comes through my graduate studies on Development, Conservation and Science Studies, and also from my work experience. I have been employed by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the InterAmerican Institute for Global Change Research (IAI). For these organizations, I conducted ethnographic research, co-authored and 19 edited papers that dealt with the interplay of ecology and anthropology, including issues of climate change, livelihoods, gender, indigenous rights (legislation and land) and collaborative management of natural resources. These studies were made available to the World Bank, local and national nongovernmental organizations (NGO), published and presented at international venues. For instance, the study on the MesoAmerican Barrier Reef system in Central America was published in the international journal Policy Matters (2002). This study shaped my future research on ecological knowledge production, since the results demonstrated that what was called collaborative management had little to do with learning from the locals, and actually did little more than integrate residents into a one-sided conversation, which effectively told them they had to leave the soon-to-be-conservation area and thereby drastically alter their livelihood patterns. Conservationists comprising mainly international organization and nongovernmental organization personnel who interpreted conservation to mean protected areas without people were dominating the legislation and practice with value-laden agendas. Thus, my master’s education exposed me to texts and visions from Africa, the Americas and the Caribbean that challenge internationally dominant views of development and conservation, yet rarely become included in international policy. Cuba, however, is an exemplar of a country that has dedicated its national development and conservation policies toward an alternative to a hegemonic model of neoliberalism. Thus, I directed my doctoral scholarship in Ecological and Visual Anthropology with a concentration in Religion and Nature to that Caribbean island, and specifically the ecological knowledge of West African-derived religions, particularly Yoruba, which are prominent there. My dissertation, Who is Nature?: Yoruba Religion and Ecology in Cuba, focuses on improving methodological inquiry 20 to better understand and represent Lucumí or Yoruba-derived knowledge and ways of knowing nature in Cuba. This entails, as the title suggests, a strong element of understanding nature as subjects rather than objects. By this I mean that positivist science1 practitioners often gloss over nature as object or objects (including everything from climatological patterns, bears, oceans, mosquitoes, trees, and great whales, or that which is nonhuman). Whereas Yoruba practitioners conceptualize nature as very specific subjects, that include particular forms of agency, subjectivity, judgment, and attitude, which impact humans. In order to attempt to portray this comprehension of nature and human-nature relationships that rely not solely on human judgment but integrate different subjects of nature, particularly through very precise embodied communication techniques, I employ visual techniques (including cognitive methods [i.e., visually mapping conceptions], photography and video) to study the meanings of nature and human behaviors for the Yoruba diaspora and the people aligned with it in Cuba, and beyond. One of the best ways I have found to bring information, people, knowledge and skills together is through video. Video is a significant tool to document multisensory practices, and it has tremendous capacity for representing visceral sensations and diasporic epistemologies since it is characterized by experimental styles that can attempt to represent the experience of living between two or more cultural regimes of knowledge. Since scholars’ diligent mental and mindful work of separating, categorizing, and naming may not get them any closer to understanding what 1 I note here that I do not wish to convey that natural scientists or positivists were were a monolithic group. Instead science practitioners are myriad and each individual or subgroup will focus on very specific nodes of nature including conceptualizing ecological niches as habitats or systems, or focusing on specific groups of vertebrates, invertebrates, reptiles, or avian species. Indeed, as Tsing (2001) lucidly points out, science and scientists should not be collapsed into one monolithic, homogenous clump. Instead, each scientist and her discipline will conceptualize and focus on different aspects of “nature” in different ways according to her individual backgrounds: e.g., forester, wildlife ecologist, wetlands specialist, climatologist. Nevertheless, all of these scientists often are conceptually following a similar paradigmatic understanding of nature, which separates an “it” from a “she” or a “he,” who is human. This paradigm, oten referred to as “Western,” influences theoretical and methodological knowledge production in very concrete ways. 21 is meaningful to the people with whom they study, I integrate video as an embodied approach and an additional epistemological model critical to examine local knowledges and ways of knowing nature, particularly with Yoruba practitioners in Cuba. The result of my research is hopefully evoking an alternative way of knowing—not only accessing knowledge through categorizing, naming and sometimes othering—but also through evoking, feeling and sensing. This focus on experiential learning is not only the foundation of my life and my research, but also of my teaching. Whether I am teaching about environmental issues, indigenous rights, gender, the African diaspora, Latin American and Caribbean regions, visual anthropology, yoga, or dance, I employ pedagogical techniques that rely on engaged, active, locally, and personally relevant learning, à la Freire (1982[1970]). Thus, I embrace experiential learning (including music and movement) as integral to my own syllabi as well as in my discussions and workshops to diversify other teachers’ pedagogical techniques. Video, music and movement can be used for education, whether it is for students in a classroom, scientists in the field, scholars at conferences, or religious practitioners in their landscape.

“Chango ’ta veni’ /Chango has come”: Spiritual Embodiment in the Afro-Cuban Ceremony, Bembé

 Joseph M. Murphy

 Black Music Research Journal,

 Volume 32, Number 1, Spring 2012,

 pp. 69-94 (Article) Published by University of Illinois Press 

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/487801/pdf

Over seventy years ago, Melville Herskovits ([1941] 1990, 8) argued that the African heritage of any people of the African diaspora could not be understood without reference to the others. He saw and documented cultural continuities from Dahomey to Suriname, Trinidad, Haiti, and the United States. What struck Herskovits, and many visitors and scholars since, is a remarkable similarity in what he called “emotional expression” in the religious life of communities of African descent (210). These “highly emotionalized religious and ecstatic” experiences, he argued, could be attributed to a shared African heritage in which music, dance, and trance were linked.

The focus of this essay is this spirituality of embodiment, where the divine being is “called” by percussion, singing, and dancing to become manifest in the body of an initiated medium and in the body of the congregation as whole. Our community is that of Afro-Cuban variously called Lucumi, Santería, or regla de ocha, where direct African provenance is apparent in nomenclature and the historical record. Yet, after a description of the batá drums that invoke the spirit, and the bembé ceremony that makes it manifest, we will ask whether the same isomorphism of music, body, and divine presence is the touchstone of religious experience and cultural memory throughout the African diaspora.

Afro-Cuban Diasporan Religions: A Comparative Analysis of the Literature
https://scholarlyrepository.miami.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1009&context=iccaspapers

Sara M. Sanchez

“The coercion and resistance, acculturation and appropriation that typify the
Caribbean experience are the most evident in the Creolization of African-based
religious beliefs and practices in the slave societies of the New World. African
religions merged in a dynamic process with European Christian and Amerindian
beliefs to shape syncretic theologies that provide alternative ways of looking at the
world ‘in a certain kind of way.’ Powerful repositories of inner strength and cultural
affirmation, the Caribbean’s African-derived syncretic religions and healing
practices . . . have penetrated to the core of cultural development in the Caribbean,
leaving deep imprints on every significant cultural manifestation of the various
islands” (Paravisini-Gebert, 1997:2).

Introduction

The entire Caribbean region has experienced significant African cultural influences
and is, in fact, perceived by some to be the outer edge of an African culture complex.
African-based religious systems and magical rites have had a particularly profound impact
and transcendence in Cuba, permeating Cuban culture, linguistics, art, and literature, in
addition to its religious, historical, and ethnological dimensions. It has been said that one
cannot understand Cubans without taking into account their African roots or influences. Our
task is to describe the various religious systems, cults, and sects that germinated through the encounter of the African, European (in this case Spanish popular Catholicism) religions and, to a lesser extent, the native indigenous cultures. This paper analyzes the literature that has been produced up to now about each of these systems, comparing the relative abundance or scarcity of the literature devoted to each of them and the scholarly quality of the supporting research. 

Children for Ransom: Reading Ibeji as a
Catalyst for Reconstructing Motherhood in
Caribbean Women's Writing
Nadia I. Johnson

https://fsu.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fsu:181798/datastream/PDF/download/citation.pdf

A Thesis submitted to the
Department of English
In partial fulfillment of the
Requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
Degree Awarded:
Spring Semester, 2005
Copyright © 2005
Nadia I. Johnson
All Rights ReservedFlorida State University Libraries
Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations
The Graduate School
2005

For my nanny, Ramdoolarie Ragoonath and my mother Samdaye Samaroo, and for all the
Caribbean mothers who bequeath to their daughters a legacy of strength in the face of
adversity.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract .......................................................................................................... vi

INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................... 1

1. REMEMBERING HOW TO DANCE: RECLAIMING A
SPIRITUAL INHERITANCE IN ELIZABETH NUNEZ-HARRELL’S
WHEN ROCKS DANCE ............................................................................. 23

2. A SOUL DIVIDED: BREAKING THE CYCLE OF SEXUAL TRAUMA IN
EDWIDGE DANTICAT’S BREATH, EYES, MEMORY .......................... 46

3. DISSOLVING NATIONS: REUNITING THE DIASPORA IN CRISTINA
GARCIA’S DREAMING IN CUBAN........................................................ 61

EPILOGUE .................................................................................................... 80

WORKS CITED ............................................................................................83

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .........................................................................89

ABSTRACT

This study is an attempt to provide a new alternative to understanding the way
that motherhood and the mother-daughter relationship are drawn and conceptualized in
Caribbean Women’s Writing in connection to propertied relationships that concern land
ownership and the female body. I argue that by invoking the metaphysical powers of the
ibeji, the Yoruba belief that twins are spirit children that possess certain powers, we are
provided with a new understanding of motherhood and are more fully able to
comprehend the complexities that motherhood and the mother-daughter relationship
entail in relation to the material world. In the selected works, the ibeji serve as a catalyst
to spur the women of the texts to restructure Caribbean constructions of the propertied
relationships dealing specifically with the land and the female body, as well as to create a
new space forged through the possibilities of diaspora. Thus, the way motherhood and
twins intersect is that they bring into dialogue the manner which African slavery in the
Caribbean was constructed around various propertied relationships such as those of land
and body.

Profiles in Africana Religion-Part 30: Ida B. Wells-Barnett

2/11/2020

http://www.afrometrics.org/africana-religious-studies-series/archives/02-2020

Paul Easterling

In the freedom struggle there are few who have exemplified the effort and tenacity that has been put forth by Ida B. Wells-Barnett.  Throughout the latter part of the 19th century and the early 20th century Wells-Barnett worked tirelessly against the evils of postbellum American society.  She battled against Jim Crow, the politics of anti-feminism, the horrors of lynching and the evils of racism.  Moreover, she was very active in organizing the National Association of the Advancement of Color People (NAACP), as well as the Black Women’s Club Movement.  In addition, she also astutely addressed issues of Black male chauvinism which seemed to run rampant through many of the movements and organizations of her time.  She fought for freedom on all fronts, not just against white supremacy, but also against male chauvinism and sexism of her time.  This essay will discuss the dynamic nature of Wells-Barnett’s leadership as well as he role in laying the foundation for protest and struggle for the 20th century.
            Wells-Barnett was born into slavery in Hollins Springs, Mississippi to James Wells and Lizzie Warrenton.  Her father, who was enslaved in Mississippi, was a talented carpenter whose skills were often hired out by his enslaver throughout the region.  Lizzie’s life, on the other hand, was a bit more difficult under enslavement in Virginia.  Her and her family were sold away to different enslavers throughout the South, making her part of the one of millions of displaced and broken Black families.  Nevertheless, despite the problems created by the peculiar institution Wells-Barnett’s parents did well for themselves after emancipation.   Lizzie became a famous and accomplished chef while James founded a successful carpentry business as well as he was named a trustee of Shaw College, what would be named Rust College one of the oldest Historical Black Colleges in the country.  James was also a ‘race man’, fighting for the advancement of African Americans throughout the South.[1]  Wells-Barnett was deeply influenced by the lives and efforts of her parents and by extension made it her mission to do as her parents did: to fight for the freedoms of her people.
            Wells-Barnett was one of eight children born to Lizzie and James.[2]  Unfortunately, her parents and one of her siblings were claimed by the yellow fever epidemic of the late 19th century.  Wells-Barnett was able to avoid the affliction because she was away at Shaw College.[3]  After her parents and sibling were buried, social services of the time threatened to separate her family because she did not have the capacity to take care of all of them by herself.  However, she and her siblings moved to Holly Springs with their grandmother (Peggy Wells) in order to keep their family together and allow Wells-Barnett to continue with her studies.  While earning her education she also taught elementary school to help make ends meet and to keep her family from be swallowed up by poverty.  Wells-Barnett came from very strong and considerably affluent Southern roots, but she saw first-hand the devastation of poverty and racism reflected in her family and community and appropriately used that energy to become one of the most powerful and uncompromising voices in the African American freedom struggle.
            Religiously, saying nothing about her personal beliefs, Wells-Barnett did not rely on the church or notions of God to solve the problems of the Black community.  She believed the issues that plagued African Americans took more than simple prayer to remedy.  To be clear, Wells-Barnett understood that the best way to deal with American racial oppression was head on, aggressively and without compromise.  One of her most famous quotes - “a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home.” - clearly tells of her resolve.[4]  Wells-Barnett was not shy about her understanding that violence must be met with violence and he felt that Black people had the God-given right to defend themselves against tyranny and oppression, which was reflected clearly in her speeches and writings.[5]
            For some, her ideas and philosophies were a bit radical.  That is to say, Wells-Barnett had little interest appeasing those of the “talented-tenth”.   She constantly quarreled with leaders and influencers who seemed to be more interested in pacifying whites for career advancements.  Though she herself had little interest in kowtowing to Whites and stroking their cultural egos, but she was not above using them for her own gains.  Scholar Thomas C. Holt argued that “Wells-Barnett saw ruling-class whites as the key to social change.  But she was less concerned about gaining their favor than with manipulating their self-interest.”[6]  To elaborate, Wells-Barnett often made it a point to hit the ruling class in their pockets, reminding them that their real interest was in money.  She did this in a number of ways.  For example, she argued that boycotts were useful in demonstrating that having segregated rail cars was bad for the bottom line of railroad corporations, which would also have an adverse effect for big money investors of the corporations.[7]  Similar tactics were used during the Civil Rights Movement some fifty years later under the guidance of Martin Luther King Jr.
Wells-Barnett had a habit of rubbing her detractors and rivals the wrong way in large part because she was uncompromising in her approach while many of her contemporaries were willing to acquiesce for position and/or status.  To elaborate, her perspective on lynchings in the South directly went for the jugular of the problem.  That is, she believed and argued vehemently that white women were rarely the victim of raping by brutal Black men and were more often willing participants in white women’s desires for the forbidden fruit of the sexual prowess of Black men.  Holt elaborates “while black men have betrayed weakness and stupidity in contracting such alliances, the women were very often willing participants.”  Despite the astute and correct nature of her argument she was asked by many on her side of the isle to soften her attack on this hypocrisy.  She refused.[8]  And as a result she was shunned, ostracized and even booed public talks.  It is not clear exactly why notable African Americans of her time asked her to not address this issue as aggressively, except for fear of angering their white supporter and financiers.  Nonetheless, this issue was likely the reason why she was ostracized by Black scholars and elites of the time period.    
 Because of her unwillingness to acquiesce to white supremacy and its violent contradictions many turned their back on Wells-Barnett.  Holt argues that “The most persistent themes in Wells-Barnett’s memoir are the loneliness of her struggle and the ingratitude of her people.”[9]  To elaborate, Wells-Barnett’s aggressive and uncompromising approach against white supremacy made her more enemies in the freedom movement than friends.  For example, Booker T. Washington seemed to almost forgive the atrocities of white supremacy by rarely addressing the problem of lynching at all.[10]   While she was clear about her disdain for Washington and his methods, she felt she still had an ally in W.E.B. DuBois and the Niagara Movement which she helped to found.  However, she was eventually and similarly ostracized by DuBois as well who distanced himself for her and her work the more he became involved in the NAACP.  This is not to say that DuBois and the NAACP were not concerned about the lynching of Black people, because the historical record is clear that that was not the case.  However, this is to say that her approach was perhaps a bit too aggressive for DuBois and his white allies who did their best to work within the established system to address the horrors faced by the Black community while simultaneously ensuring that white people were comfortable.  It is very possible, even probable, that DuBois was asked to distance himself from her work because it made white supporters of the NAACP uncomfortable, but there is nothing substantive to that assertion, only speculation.  Nonetheless, Wells-Barnett had no interest in making white people or their allies comfortable, especially when the lynching of Black people was such a huge problem in America. 
            Next to Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells-Barnett may have been the most impactful leader of the Black freedom struggle in America.  Her understanding of the dynamics and inner workings of white supremacy provided a very sober understanding of the problems facing Black America.  In addition, her fearless uncompromising attack of it made her a force to be reckoned with.  Moreover, she was equally fearsome in her attack of patriarchy within the ranks of the Black freedom struggle, demonstrating early the interconnectedness of oppression.  She saw the heart of oppression and stabbed at it with her wit and tireless work ethic, laying down and important legacy for us all to follow. 


[1] Paula J. Giddings. Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching (Reprint ed.).  (Amistad, March 2009), 5-10.
[2] Patti Carr Black.  “Ida B. Wells: A Courageous Voice for Civil Rights”.  Mississippi History Now. Retrieved (February 2019).
[3] Ibid.
[4] John Hope Franklin and August Meier, eds. Black leaders of the twentieth century. Vol. 82. (University of Illinois Press, 1982), 45.
[5] Wells-Barnett, Ida B., and Henry Louis Jr Gates. Selected Works of Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Oxford University Press on Demand, 1991.
[6] John Hope Franklin and August Meier, eds. Black leaders of the twentieth century. Vol. 82. (University of Illinois Press, 1982), 45.
[7] Ibid., 46.
[8] Idid.,48.
[9] Ibid., 58.
[10] Ibid., 49-50.

SERVING THE SPIRITS: THE PAN-CARIBBEAN AFRICAN-DERIVED
RELIGION IN NALO HOPKINSON’S BROWN GIRL IN THE RING

MONICA COLEMAN
https://monicaacoleman.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/serving-spirits-pub.pdf

Set in the Caribbean-Canadian community of Toronto, Canada, Nalo
Hopkinson’s Brown Girl in the Ring reflects the unique ethnic and national identities
of the Caribbean diaspora. Both literary scholars and Hopkinson herself note the
ways in which Hopkinson uses language to identify both the different national
distinctions within the Caribbean immigrant community and the relationship that
the Caribbean community has to the larger Canadian society. However, it is through
her description of “serving the spirits” that Brown Girl describes a pan-Caribbean
identity within the Caribbean diaspora of Toronto. In the concept of “serving the
spirits,” Hopkinson draws together various African-derived religious traditions found
throughout the Caribbean into one religious practice. By dissolving the boundaries
in religious practices, “serving the spirits” functions as the basis for a unique panCaribbean identity for the characters of Brown Girl.

Brown Girl in the Ring is set in the future decaying inner city left when Toronto’s
economic base collapses. The city center is inhabited only by the formerly homeless
and poor, now squatters, and is ruled by drug lord Rudy and his posse. The
protagonist, a young Caribbean-Canadian female named Ti-Jeanne, lives with her
grandmother, who runs a business in herbal medicine that has become vital to the
disenfranchised of the Burn. Ti-Jeanne’s grandmother, Mami Gros-Jeanne, is a faithful
follower of the spirits. Ti-Jeanne, on the other hand, believes that the herbal medicine
and African-derived spirituality of her grandmother should have no role in the lives
of sane and practical people. Jeanne must finally face her spiritual heritage or risk
her life and family. In the climactic scene of the book, Ti-Jeanne summons the powerful
Yoruba òrìsà by name connecting the earthly world with the spiritual world. Then
she is able to end the evil that plagues the inner city, and begin the work of recovery
and healing.

Comfa, Obeah, and Emancipation:
Celebrating Guyanese Freedoms While Captive in Cultural Politics
by
Jeremy Jacob Peretz
Master of Arts in Culture and Performance
University of California, Los Angeles, 2015
Professor Allen Fraleigh Roberts, Chair

https://escholarship.org/content/qt1m44r9hh/qt1m44r9hh.pdf?nosplash=22b000ddab89dc31e00b61251c9aefc6

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

This thesis examines a singular event commemorating the 1838 emancipation of enslaved
Africans in Georgetown, Guyana. When slavery was abolished in the British Empire it had
rippling effects throughout the rest of the slave-holding world, as well as within the politics of
cultural self-determination and representation for those newly “freed” yet still colonized people.
One change that occurred was the re-evaluation and interpretations of Obeah, a wide-ranging complex of knowledge and practices utilized for harnessing empowerment to effect changes in people’s social, “spiritual,” and bodily well-being. Prior to emancipation colonial authorities considered Obeah as a malignant tactic of rebellion, and even revolution, requiring vigilant action to suppress. Directly post-emancipation colonial policies aimed more at controlling Obeah as a cultural form epitomizing a Euro-American-imagined “Africa,” one deemed culturally and intellectually “backwards” and in need of “Christian civilizing.” For these combined reasons, and others, Obeah was outlawed and popularly demonized throughout Anglo-Caribbean societies, leaving an ambivalent legacy to follow for those who continue to utilize it, and similar ritual practices, today. A 2014 Libation Ceremony in Georgetown honoring the 1838 emancipation iii featured a constellation of sensory and performative atmospheres that invoked an aura and memory of “Africa” and African identity, including the use of varying ritual practices associated with Obeah. Analyzing vernacular speech acts and other performance features of audience/participants during this ceremonial night reveals conflicting and often ambiguous understandings of Obeah’s connections to cultural politics. Primarily framed through local and contemporary politics of national and religious identity construction, this study also engages cultural politics of transnational global significance, and through historically informed perspective. 

The terms Obeah and Wanga are African diasporic words that occur in The Book of the Law (the sacred text of Thelema, written by English author and occultist Aleister Crowley in 1904): Also the mantras and spells; the obeah and the wanga; the work of the wand and the work of the sword; these he shall learn and teach.

Obeah and Wanga - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Obeah_and_Wanga

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