ANTIAGO, Cuba -- In a
cramped back room of her tiny house in a run-down working-class neighborhood here, Noemi
Rafaela Constantin Garcia has for decades carefully tended an altar honoring Nuestra
Senora de la Caridad del Cobre, Cuba's patroness, and various other Catholic saints.
Naturally, she is elated that Pope John Paul II will honor the patron saint at an outdoor
Mass here Saturday. But Mrs. Constantin Garcia, a wizened 71-year-old grandmother, is also one of hundreds of santeros, or Santeria priests, who practice their African-derived faith in this city that has been called "the Rome of Santeria."So when she looks at the Virgin of Cobre, she sees not only the mother of Jesus, but also Ochun, the Yoruba goddess of rivers, love, money, joy and abundance.
The resulting tensions and contradictions, heightened by government moves favoring Santeria, appear to have been brought into sharp relief by the pope's visit, but the theological and political challenge they pose will endure long after he has departed from Cuba. "For us, Cobre and Ochun are one and the same thing," she said. "As Catholics, all these things come together for us. And that's the way it has been since before I was born, the way my ancestors handed it down to me and the way I have taught my own children and grandchildren."
When she was a child, Mrs. Constantin Garcia recalled, santeros were often persecuted by the police at the behest of local parish priests, who regarded the faith as nothing more than sacrilegious idolatry. But since "our beloved President Fidel Castro" took power, she added, Santeria has been allowed to flourish as never before in Cuba's 500-year history.
An estimated three-quarters of Cubans were Roman Catholics before the Cuban revolution in 1959. But the majority of Cuba's 11 million people, including many who consider themselves to be good Catholics, are now believed to follow Santeria and to regard it as an essential part of the nation's identity. "In the African faiths resides a goodly portion of the Cuban soul," said Orlando Verges, acting director of the Casa del Caribe, a government-sponsored cultural institute here that studies and promotes Santeria. "Practically all of Cuban music has emerged directly from syncretic cults, and much of its best art and even literature have been subject to its influence."
Santeria originated in West Africa and came to the Caribbean with the slave trade, which forced transported Africans to hide their polytheistic beliefs from their Spanish masters behind a facade of Roman Catholic saints. In Santeria, each of series of specialized gods are asked to intercede on behalf of petitioners. As a result, those deities acquired a dual identity so that, for instance, San Lazaro is also Babalu-aye, the god of healing, and the Virgin of Regla became Yemaya, mistress of the sea.
To the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy, however, Santeria's enhanced status under Castro, especially the protection and encouragement it has enjoyed since the Communist Party abandoned atheism in 1992, smacks of an organized campaign against Catholicism. "This is a way of undermining the true church at a time when she is seeking to return to her historic mission," said a foreign-born priest in Havana, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Manifestations of the favor that Santeria now enjoys are many. Santeria ceremonies, normally carried out in houses rather than churches, are supposed to require a permit, but those are easily obtained and often ignored. Catholics, however, regularly complain that they have been denied requests to take their religious processions out of their sanctuaries and into the streets. In addition, babalaos, as Santeria's high priests are known, have often been granted visas to travel to Africa and Latin America to take part in international ceremonies and conferences. Thanks to the recent emphasis on tourism as a means of earning desperately needed hard currency, the Cuban government supported the establishment of a Santeria museum here and has begun directing foreign visitors to Santeria ceremonies. "In the old days, you had to hide the saints," said Dioscoride Vevey Bordeloy, an 83-year-old babalao here who is a devotee of Ogun, the god of iron and wood who is identified with St. Peter. "But during the time of Fidel, especially since the mid-'80s, the state really hasn't messed with us."
Nowadays, santeros say, their biggest problem may be that Cubans do not have enough money to buy the animals needed for the sacrifices that are an essential part of the faith. "This special period has been tough," said Sebastian Herrera Zapata, a friend of Vevey's and fellow drummer in a Santeria drum choir, referring to the austerity Castro imposed after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. "It's hard to find the materials you need for altars."
The Roman Catholic Church has also grown in numbers and influence over the last five years, but its leaders, from Cardinal Jaime Ortega on down, seem unsure of how to respond to the growing Santeria challenge. Some seem to favor what they call "inculturation," or peaceful existence. Some take a hard line of opposition, while others seem to move from one approach to the other, depending on the circumstances. In recent homilies at Masses around Cuba, for instance, the cardinal urged Catholics to steer away from what the church magazine Palabra Nueva described as "religious fanaticism and superstition." Msgr. Jaime Gaitan, another prominent Havana cleric, has gone even further, condemning Santeria as a belief that "lowers man to mediocrity."
On the other hand, Vevey said, parish priests are often cooperative. "They respect us," he said, "and many of them let you go into their churches dressed all in white," the color that Santeria adepts are required to wear when they are baptized, a ritual essential to their faith. In another indication that the church is grappling with the issue, Msgr. Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, a former Vicar of Havana and long an advocate of tolerance toward the Afro-Cuban faiths, has recently been reassigned to a suburban parish. De Cespedes is a descendant of the Cuban national hero of the same name, who proclaimed the abolition of slavery in 1868 and dedicated his campaign for independence to the Virgin of Cobre.
The pope Babalaos in Havana complain not only that their offer of a drum ceremony to welcome the pope to Havana Cathedral was rejected by the church commission that organized John Paul's visit, but also that they have been unfairly excluded from an "ecumenical encounter" the pope is scheduled to attend Sunday morning with leaders of Protestant and Jewish groups. At a news conference here Monday, however, Ortega, who is also the archbishop of Havana and head of the Cuban Bishops' Conference, rejected those protests. He described practitioners of Santeria as "members of the Catholic family" rather than part of a separate faith that merits the Vatican's special recognition. "They are baptized Christians, and we cannot engage in ecumenism with a part of the Catholic Church itself," Ortega said, adding that he thought the controversy had been fomented by forces interested in dividing the church. "The church has always integrated popular religiosity, never excluded it, and this would be a way of excluding it."
Here, of course, the large number of faithful who regard themselves as both Catholics and Santeria followers are mainly interested in hearing how John Paul II plans to address the conflict. "I think that the Holy Father is smart enough to realize that he is in a country where popular religious expression has an African base," Verges said. Mrs. Constantin Garcia, known as "Cucha" to the neighbors who come to her for "limpiezas," or "cleansings," said there was no way she and her three daughters and six grandchildren would miss the Mass here Saturday morning. "We love God, the church, the pope and the Virgin of Cobre, so of course we will all be there," she said Thursday. But she also said that she intends to continue with the consultations that earn her prestige and a few pesos, advising followers who come to her with sick children, or seeking advice on amorous matters, or wanting to know how to assure they will get good grades or the job they want. Nothing, she said, not even the pope's disapproval, can stop her from that.