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.