The Enduring Pulse

---

Along with other regions in the Caribbean Basin - Haiti, where voodoo constitutes a highly popular cultural complex, extending into other neighboring countries and territories such as the Dominican Republic and Florida; or Jamaica where the obeah have similar traits although less important and significant — Cuba has preserved its dynamic cultural complexes that originated in Africa. For its variety and symbolic richness, these cultural preservations are only comparable in America, to those in Brazil. Three of them are best known and have exerted the greatest socio-cultural and historical impact: the so-called reglas of Palo Monte or Conga, the Ocha/Ifá — commonly known as Santería— and male secret societies of Abakúa, Nánigas, or Nánigos.

Since the slavery of African people in America was not confined to tribal frontiers in the continent of its origin, and included ports established throughout the Atlantic Coast from ancient Senegambia down to the Congo-Angola, and through the Indian Ocean, at least up to present Mozambique, the African origin of these cultural complexes in America is diverse. Palo Monte, or Regla Conga, came from tribes of the Bantu ethnic group. Ocha/Ifá had its genesis among the southern Nigerian Yoruba, whose influence extended to the former French Dahomey, today the Popular Republic of Benin. The Náñigos secret societies came from a territory between present Nigeria and Cameroon, known as semi-Bantu, a region inhabited by diverse tribes (the Ekoi, Ibibio, Ibo and the controversial Efik, among the most important) in the so-called Viejo Calabar (Old Calabar) at the mouth of Rio de la Cruz (Cross River).

Together with the Mandingas, the Ararás (Alladas) of Dahomey, Fulani and many other African ethnic groups, the forerunners of the already mentioned cultural complexes arrived in Cuba, under abject servile conditions from the black slave trade ports. In the intricate Cuban cultural universe, in a process that lasted centuries, they assimilated and integrated into the economic, religious and cultural life of the cubano, with adaptations due to cultural losses, unavoidable syncretism and to other expressions of Cuban culture — mainly Christianity and Spiritism. Through crass ignorance, many of their cultural practices were stigmatized with the label of witchcraft until the first decades of the twentieth century.

It is not possible to determine with accuracy the date when these cultural expressions were established on the island, but there is evidence of their distinguishing features since the nineteenth century: Regla Conga extended through a great portion of the national territory; Ocha/Ifá, with some pristine settlements in the west, were present in the region bordering the provinces of Havana and Matanzas. The latter is a relatively new practice that began well into the twentieth century in the eastern portion of the Island. The societies of the Náñigos show their singularity by their prevalence in three harbor zones of the west: the Bay of Havana with its capital city and the nearby towns of Regla and Guanabacoa, and the cities and sea ports of Matanzas and Cárdenas.

We may add, thanks to recent investigations, that during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth century, members of these groups arrived at the Floridian Key West, where thousands of Cuban tabaqueros (tobacco workers) — white and black, and some of them santeros or Náñigos settled starting in 1869, thus enriching both the population and the character of the city.

Forced by a racist disdain that reduced them to the shameful dangerous ways of primitive religious practices attributed to uncultivated and "savage" peoples, until well into the twentieth century, the comparative study of these three cultural complexes was simply deemed "cosas de negros" ("affairs of the blacks"). This obviously showed great ignorance and racial prejudice, but today it constitutes a rich field for researchers of a variety of scientific interests: anthropological, historical, sociological and socio-psychological. Thus, the variety of interest generated is abundant and not exclusively limited to the religious aspect with its respective theogonies and cosmogonies, or to the rites, hierarchies and sacred literary bodies. Indeed, it comprises fascinating research into music and dance with their respective mise en scene (staging). Sometimes these performances were not specifically sacred, but presented a profusion of diverse and colorful props with the ever-present drums and their rhythmic talking or musical functions over pre-established integrating motifs.

In today's Cuba, that powerful legacy has been incorporated not only into literature and a variety of musical genres, but also into a multiplicity of aesthetically strong traits in the plastic arts. All aspects of these Afro-Cuban features (afro-cubanía) resonate in the national culture as well as internationally.

The following are characteristics shared by these religious systems:

• The belief in a Supreme Being, a celestial deity responsible for creation, later becoming distant and indifferent to man's destiny, although everything— in the first and last instance — comes from Him and goes to Him: his name in Palo is Nzambi or Zambia; in Ocha it is Olofi, Olorun or Oloddumare, as a Creator who dispenses light and life, Sun and Almighty respectively; and among the Náñigos it is Abasi, or in the Ekoi branch and according to his origins, Obasi Osaw as regards the sky, and Obasi Nsi for the earth, both of whom are integrating divinities that bring fecundity, life and death.
• The use of a cryptic, secret, vocal, and graphical language in Palo, Abakúa and in the Ifá branch in Ocha, is necessary for the celebration of the ceremonial rites and for communication among followers and the mysteries that transcend them. In comparing the tongues to those existing in the regions of their African sources, surprising similarities have been revealed, in spite of geographic distance and the many years since their arrival in Cuba. This is due to the fact that, as happens to the majority of rituals, they are entrusted for safekeeping to those required to painstakingly preserve their sacred condition.
• The animism supposed to be present in all nature, with the assistance of benign or malignant spirits (forces, powers) and the possibility of the reincarnation of the dead who, in order to achieve a desired result, require the satisfaction of certain obligations during physical life. In the universe, considered as a harmonic whole, the forces of good and evil combine and oppose themselves in a non-dogmatic, non-Manichean way, with those of evil frequently resorting to a feared witchcraft known as "black witchcraft." With animism, it is also common to believe in fetishism, and in the certainty of "the beyond" (el más alla), in a world of the dead perceived as a real possibility of coming back to the world of the living. The worship of ancestors, an acknowledged cornerstone of African religions has lost, in overseas countries such as Cuba, its close link to the lands, the waters and the woods bequeathed to the tribes, sub-tribes, clans, villages and families related by marriage, and protected by the "end without beginning" of the founding fathers. They have also lost that primordial basis but preserved it by its substitution with the respect felt for the founders of the "houses" of Ocha, Palo and the Náñigas "lands."
• Places or centres specially outfitted for the celebration of ceremonies, many of them secret, including with varying complexity the houses of Palo and the ilés of Ocha, and the mysterious fambás of the Náñigos with chambers forbidden to the non-initiated; as well as the hierarchy of high priests with specific attributions and pre-established responsibilities in the rites: from the tata-ngangas of Palo, to the babalaos (babalawos), babalochas and iyalochas of Ocha/Ifá, and to the iyambas, mokongos or isués of Abakúa or Nañiguism, among others.
• The mundane participation of spirits (the dead) or deities, indispensable for the consecration of their respective ceremonies: in Ocha and Palo, "possessions" by deities and by the dead respectively occur among the attendees. A fundamental "dead" (muerto) in Palo is the nkisi, integrated and acting in the prenda (pawn) or nganga; also in Ocha there is the presence of the dead, but those representing deities are more spectacular, properly the orichas, while in the Náñigas societies, where there are no possessions, that ineffable presence is materialized in the iremes or diablitos (little devils). We shall speak more about them later. Another common and ineffable presence appears through the use of the talking drums, through which deities and ancestors "talk," giving guidance and permission, and establishing the presence of the dead or deities.
• The celebration of ritual banquets, agapes of co-participative communion, with the obligation of offering portions of food to the dead or to the deities, who they are forced to satisfy if they intend or wish to receive their protection and help.
• The secret conditions are another feature, which is observed (and sworn to, in some cases) by the initiated in one or another of these cultural complexes. All of this is better known today due to ever-increasing research and marketing or commercialization of admission into the regla of Ocha, but other important portions of its dramatic and literary complex are still kept hidden. The Palo Monte and the Abakúa have been more scrupulous in keeping their practices and other details secret. They consider that being known by the profane could affect their own sacred essence and, therefore, their marvelous efficacy. One of the obligations imposed to the initiated, in the Nánigo oath is, precisely, not to transgress the mystery of the Arcanum, even under the threat of death.
• The above-mentioned syncretism is even much more evident in the regla of Ocha with Christianity and in Palo Monte with the Ocha and to a minor and much more tenuous extent in Nániguismo. Such syncretism is an arguable consequence of their study since for some specialists it is more superficial than substantial; it being more a matter of convenient historical secrecy than of a loss or substitution of the foundations. Syncretism could also be considered as part of a much more complex phenomenon, one defined by the Cuban scientist Don Fernando Ortíz, father of such anthropological studies in Cuba, who coined the term "transculturation," internationally accepted to mean socio-cultural, dialectical, results of diverse influences which lead to new and peculiar-forms of expression after an encounter and mutual cultural give and take. Ortíz applied his findings to the study of the Cuban national character. Thus, the reglas of Ocha and Palo, together with the Abakúa societies, would be national exponents of an African heritage, but not identical to their matrix contents due to aggregations, losses, substitutions and other changes which, without altering their mystical meaning, give them other expressive forms, another physiognomy.

The sense, the raison d'être, dearest to the regla Conga or to Palo Monte is in the making of the nganga, with the advantage of its ensuing powers: physically to its recipient — often a big iron caldron - with magic charge, strengthened by blessings, that gives to its owner, the ngangulero, strength and protection. Its effectiveness is based on a magically acquired vitality, sufficient to act in favor of its owner, which oftentimes means disgrace to another or others.

At least three types of ngangas are recognized in Cuba, different from each other due to having been made, and given vitality (or animated) in order to obtain benefits, good or evil, or both purposes: kimbisa, in the first case, said to have originated in Cuba, with a Christian cross among its ingredients; mayombe, feared for being malicious; and brijumba. According to their own purposes their "charges" vary, known by the tata-ngangas or "fathers" of ngangas, although for all of them the meaning of being "Nature" becomes in general the environment in which good and evil coexist, as it is the case within men.

In the nganga everything is anointed - from the recipient — with magical signs revealed before receiving the "charge": everything responds to a deep pragmatic knowledge about Nature and its integrity. Above all, it is about the forests and its mysteries, revealed and fruitful: the palos (boughs), hence its name, and the herbs, but also animal remains have as their specific function to give the nganga the most extraordinary properties. Among these is the capability for distinguishing odors and to have an acute sense of hearing as sharp as a dog, vision as sharp as a vulture (in Cuba, aura tinosa), and to be such an untiring worker as the termite. In such a way is the nganga allowed to grow, helped by the fact that, in order to be alive, it has to be nourished, particularly with blood, which carries superior energetic properties according to all of these cultural complexes.

The making of the nganga, with the actions and formulas of its ritual drama, only ends when it bonds with human remains, obtained at cemeteries during the night and thanks to infamous alliances and the complicity of gravediggers. The dead, nfumi, have the function of organizing and leading the powers contained in the prenda (pawn) in order to effectively respond to the desires of the ngangulero. Nfumi must be satisfied, be taken care of and fed because, otherwise, it can turn against the owner of the nganga. At the 

time of slavery on the sugar plantations of the nineteenth century, this multiple relation

"owner of the nganga/nfumi" and its ingredients established other relations. Among them were the socio-productive relations of the sugar cane fields at the sugar mill with those of their labor exploitation: owner /mayoral (kind of overseer in the fields) / dotación (in Cuba, slaves on a plantation) with the ngangulero / owner as the main beneficiary, and the nfumi/major-domos (or butler), satisfied and in charge of leading the palos / dotación in their work.

The African status of the South Nigerian regla of Ocha, characteristic of the numerous Yoruba people, seems to have been losing ground in Nigeria since the nineteenth century due to the double foreign penetration and increasing influence of Christianity and, above all, Islam. However, the city of Ife, where humanity originated after the Creation of man, continues to be its sacred city, while others, like Oyó and Abeokuta, are centers of a renowned particular cult to the orishas (or Ochas) as Shangó or Oggún.

By imposing African slavery on the Cuban geography, special cults of one or the other of the orishas by regions could not be established on the Island so they — or rather those that maintained their eminence — combined in a very rich pantheon where they shared common stories, depicting their respective features and relations. In some Catholic churches there certainly has been a complementary cult through patronymic syncretism with fervent devoutness, as in the church devoted to bishop San Lázaro. In that Havana neighborhood, the people venerate Baba-lu-Ayé, though not as much in the representation of the canonized bishop but in that of the image of "San Lázaro of the crutches and dogs." In the churches devoted to the Patron Saint of Cuba, the Virgin of La Caridad del Cobre is viewed as Ochún. Yemayá, the orisha of the sea, is revered in the port parish devoted to the Virgin of Regla, the Patron Saint of Havana Bay and of seamen. Obatalá, orisha of virtue and pureness is revered in the images and in the church devoted to the Virgin of Mercy, also in Havana. The representations of Santa Bárbara are worshiped as Shangó, orisha of the thunderbolts and of violence. This significant equivalence of ochas/Christian saints is the factor that determines the fact that in and out of Cuba it is commonly known as Santería.

But the ochas are not saints; they are intermediary deities between men, the dead and the supreme Olofi, who is, in turn, "sanctified" as God. If the orisha and their virtues and acts are to be compared to another system of beliefs, a more appropriate contrast would be with Ancient Greece, or with some of the great sacred pre-Columbian complexes in America, instead of Christianity. The regla of Ocha presents many of the characteristics corresponding to a phase of development of religious thought more advanced, for instance, than that of the regla of Palo Monte, but less developed than Christian Monotheism.

The Ochas are, as the Olympic Greeks, deifications made in the image and by resemblance of men and women to Nature, somewhat magnified, as a whole. Their behavior or passions are human, a response to social relations. Hence, there are those of the land and vegetation, of the salt and sweet waters, of the sky, or of the wind and divination, as well as of the capacity of being kind or unmerciful, generous or mean, wise or dull. But their natural condition moves them nearer to men, unlike the osogbos, powers of evil and declared enemies of men, as illness, paralysis, hunger or death. As in Palo Monte, in the regla of Ocha, the dichotomy of right and wrong is permanent, unifying, dynamic, conniving. In the initiation ceremonies the orishas are taken in to benefit their children, but there is no initiation to take in the osogbos: they are apparitions, incubus, that make themselves present (always because of hostile foreign intentions through witchcraft actions) by bringing harm and misfortune with them and asserting themselves in spite of the protecting care of the orishas who can also abandon their children to suffer a cruel lot due to the lack of deference and care on their part.

At present, specialists in Cuba prefer to call the regla Ocha-Ifá, and they are not wrong since, in fact, it comprises two cultural aspects: properly that of Ocha — with its deities and hierarchies where the babalocha and the iyalocha (father and mother of the Ochas) reign, open to both genders, with their divination systems, above all the diloggún with its 16 consecrated shells and rites, the beat of drums, dances and mystical possessions; and the one which centers around Ifá, with the use of divination systems thanks to the wisdom of its high priest, the babalao (father of the secrets), a man who, in a consecrated fashion, "received" Orula (or Ifá), the Orisha. The babalao, in the distribution of functions and responsibilities of the deities, was given that of manipulating the means through which he receives the messages from the Orishas (as well as those from the dead), and that of revealing those messages thanks to his knowledge about the literary body of Ifá, a discourse that is rather obscure to laymen and quite complicated in its variety since it comprises 256 answers and their combinations. Its most frequent guessing instrument is the okpele or cadena de Ifá (Ifá's chain), a game of eight pieces of coconut that revolve around a chain thrown by the priest as the main part of the ceremonies. The most hermetic and complex is the board of Ifa, watched over by the frolicsome Elesgua, lord of destinies who "opens and closes the doors. At the beginning of every year, a copious meeting of babalaos takes place and by means of Ifa's board they announce the letter or character of the year (la letra del año), that is, which orishas are going to preside over the year and how one should appropriately behave in daily life in order to overcome natural, social and personal threats.

The hierarchy of babalao is masculine and the ceremonies of guessing or divination he presides over are held without music, singing and dancing. The ceremonies concentrate on divination without psychical transmutation of spiritual possession.

Specially during the last decades, the Cuban Santería was given an international twist, with priests of Ocha and Ifá practicing their crafts not only in countries in the region, like Mexico, the United States or Venezuela, but also in other more remote nations, like Spain. In addition people from these and many other countries visit Cuba to explore the santería religious system and profess an interest in joining the ranks (hacerse santo).

As for the Abakúa, or an aggregate of Nánigas secret societies, it is the most reserved cult of the three cultural complexes here presented, having the historical-geographical characteristic of a restricted national presence. It is open only to men who happen to be meticulous regarding their own unquestionable masculinity, the African creators of the Cuban Nánigos were "leopard men" associated, at least, to two powerful societies of the Viejo Calabar (Old Calabar): the Ngpe of the Ekoi and the Ekpe of the Efik, meaning in both cases leopard, an animal common to all of them. In Cuba, the sacred transmission preserved their ethnic denominations, and the Náñigos grouped in two main branches: che Efik (or Efi) and the Ekoi (or Ekoi Efor) to which a third one was added, the Oru (or Oro), of a possible Ibibio origin (Bibí in Cuba).

In the 1880s the Náñigos of the Efik and Efor branches confronted each other, even with bloodshed, due to the fact that Andrés Petit, an Isué of the great "power" Bakakó Efor, sold their secrets to the white men enabling them to create white men's societies, provoking an angry rejection on the part of the Efi branch with its discriminating criteria which harshly rejected the idea of living together racially. Since then, white societies (or "lands," "nations," "powers") were added to those of the black people, until the entrance of men regardless of skin color was allowed in a number of societies in the twentieth century.

Another aspect, which distinguishes the Náñigos, is their relation with the labor movement in Cuba, as well as in exile in Key West where they also helped the Cuban Independence cause. These were men who in great numbers worked in labor centers, as in the slaughter-houses, tobacco factories and on the docks. Membership in their societies was nourished by men who simultaneously carried on working interests and life together with those of the beliefs and rites practiced in their respective societies, in such a way that, through protection and mutual assistance sworn in by the Abakúa "brothers" (moninas or ekobios) the working class and its labor unions were strengthened.

The fambá, a consecrated room or chamber of the Náñigos, is the place where their liturgical objects are kept and exhibited during the cere-monies, especially a talking drum whose existence and sound is their most beloved mystery. It is related to the myth that explains the African Genesis of the first society, among the Ekoi, after a series of dramatic episodes (components of the Abakúa sacred theatre) which start from the capture of a venerable and disputed fish that served as a temporary dwelling of a great common ancestor, and also from the sacrifice of a woman who found out the secrets allowed only to duly authorized men. That drum is Ekue, also translated as leopard, whose feared roar is essential for carrying out ceremonies, since his "voice" is, while that of a leopard, also of the fish (tanze), that of the sacrificed but honorable woman (Sikán or Nsi-Kan), as well as that of the dead Náñigos, whose presence in the rites is also essential.

In Nañiguismo (Cuban secret societies of Nánigos), there are neither dances nor spiritual possessions. Drums belonging to the fambá are not for making music. In processions performed out of the fambá, however, there is a Nánigo orchestra playing music, episodes of the ceremonies with participation in the sacred room of the common remes (condemned in hell as diablitos, little devils) who — for being deaf and blind — are guided through their elegant and expressive movements by a special drum, or by four güiros gourds used as instruments to accompany music while dancing) shaped like a cross, that are carried by the Nánigo responsible for that function.
 

Palo Monte, together with Ocha-Ifá and Abakúa are not the only African heritage incorporated into the Cuban culture, but they are the richest, so as to allow researchers and any other persons interested in the subject to penetrate in that legacy which Don Fernando Ortiz many years ago called "the obscure jungle." Other legacies are the regla Arará, from ancient French Dahomey, limited today to some groups in the province of Matanzas, and the Voodoo, not directly African since it arrived in Cuba —as well as in the Dominican Republic or in the United States — through its Haitian transculturation with a distinguishing, though vague, foundation in Dahomey.

The possibility of a comparative study among these cultural complexes and other forms of religiosity, such as Catholicism, Santería or the Jamaican Rastafari, makes the little Island of Cuba, and its multi-secular conjuncture of peoples, an extraordinary stage where forms of popular religiosity coexist and prosper. One may even study in situ the evolution of religious thought: from the primitive animism of Palo Monte, passing through the fascinating "Olympic" charm of Ocha-If, up to the theological and philosophical elaborations of Christianity, or of Judaism; not to mention those of the Far East. The great absent religion is that of the Muslims, forbidden by Spain under inquisitorial penalties throughout the whole Colonial period, which lasted from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.