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Afro-Cuban religions - especially the practice of santeria, based on West African traditions - are an essential aspect of contemporary Cuban identity, Christine Ayorinde argues, and their existence has forced the current revolutionary state into bizarre and contradictory positions. Ayorinde's bold assertion confounds official pronouncements about the irrelevance of religion in a modern socialist state. The revolutionary leadership has acknowledged the centrality of Cuba's African heritage, while upholding the idea of a nationhood that transcends racial difference. Ayorinde proposes that the conflict between the desire to recognize the country's African roots and the offical commitment to a secular state has created a complex, often paradoxical situation. Despite an ideological campaign to create a new, rational society, African-derived religions are emerging today for the first time from a position of marginality. Cuba now is beset with a sense of disorientation as well as a return to old habits and patterns, including racial inequality. Based mostly inside Cuba, Ayorinde's research includes interviews and conversations with individual Cubans, including practitioners of Afro-Cuban religions from different ethnic backgrounds. Ayorinde also interviewed both religious and atheist commentators on Afro-Cuban religions and culture, including academics, journalists, party officials, and members of governmental and nongovernmental institutions, many at the forefront of efforts to give santeria greater recognition as a central component of the national culture. In addition, the book offers a fresh historical overview of changing religious forms and attitudes in Cuba, examining the encounter with European culture and the Roman Catholic Church, religious practice among slaves in the 19th century, the concept of racial fraternity articulated by Cuban patriot Jose Marti, and the witchcraft scares of the early decades of the 20th century, when religious practices were associated with criminality. Its emphasis on the period since 1959 and on the current decade places it on the cutting edge of studies that examine contemporary Cuban culture.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Con los ancestros en la espalda (...); Págiina legal; Índice; Agradecimientos; Prólogo; Parte 1; 1.1 Santos, santeros y santería; 1.2 Experiencias multisituadas, personas y creencias; 1.3 Lugares clave, espacios y contextos; 1.4 ¡Aquí parece Cuba!; 1.5 Organización del texto; Parte 2; 2.1 Cosas de negros; 2.2 Santería e Ifá; 2.3 Espiritismo; 2.4 Palo monte mayombe; Parte 3; 3.1 De esclavos a negros brujos; 3.2 Ajiaco criollo (...); 3.3 El navío transatlántico recorre América; Parte 4; 4.1 Revolución cubana; 4.2 Periodo especial; 4.3 Exilio sudamericano en Cuba

• 4.4 La santería en perspectiva internacionalParte 5; 5.1 Etnografía de la memoria (...); 5.2 "Carga los santos que nos vamos pa' Chile" (...); 5.3 El sistema religioso de la santería (...); 5.4 "Traficando orichas" (...); 5.4.1 Las tienditas; 5.4.2 El barrio Franklin; Parte 6; 6.1 "Cruzando fronteras" (...); 6.2 Instalando la comunidad fuera de casa: (...); 6.3 "Buscando aché", ; 6.4 "Gente de pollera" (...); 6.5 "La calle de las brujas" (...); 6.5.1 La tiendita de Chacho y la botánica de Pepe; 6.5.2 Mercados populares; Parte 7; 7
• .1. "Folé-owó" (...); 7.2 "Iború Iboyá Ibocheché" (...)

• 7.3 "El aché viene de Cuba" (...)Conclusión; Bibliografía

Creolization-the coming together of diverse beliefs and practices to form new beliefs and practices-is one of the most significant phenomena in Caribbean religious history. Brought together in the crucible of the sugar plantation, Caribbean peoples drew on the variants of Christianity brought by European colonizers, as well as on African religious and healing traditions and the remnants of Amerindian practices, to fashion new systems of belief. Creole Religions of the Caribbean offers a comprehensive introduction to the syncretic religions that have developed in the region. From Vodou, Santeria, Regla de Palo, the Abakua Secret Society, and Obeah to Quimbois and Espiritismo, the volume traces the historical-cultural origins of the major Creole religions, as well as the newer traditions such as Pocomania and Rastafarianism. This second edition updates the scholarship on the religions themselves and also expands the regional considerations of the Diaspora to the U. S. Latino community who are influenced by Creole spiritual practices. Fernandez Olmos and Paravisini-Gebert also take into account the increased significance of material culture-art, music, literature-and healing practices influenced by Creole religions.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• I bow my head to the ground : Santeria thrones and rituals
• Ver para creer (seeing is believing) : the Prendas and ritual of Palo Monte
• It's my war now : the private sphere of Santiago's daily practice
• I am not from here : espiritismo and the congo spirits of the dead
• Afterword: ¿Y la otra? (and the other one?) : the nature of our collaboration.

In the summer of 2000, two award-winning photographers, Claire Garoutte and Anneke Wambaugh, were in Santiago de Cuba, a city on the southeastern coast of Cuba. A chance encounter led them to the home of Santiago Castaneda Vera, a priest-practitioner of Santeria and Palo Monte. Out of that initial meeting, a unique collaboration developed. Santiago opened his home and religious practice to Garoutte and Wambaugh, who returned to his house many times over the next five years, cameras in hand. The result is "Crossing the Water", an extraordinary visual record of Afro-Cuban religious experience. A book of 157 striking photographs, many of which are in colour, "Crossing the Water" includes images of elaborate Santeria altars and Palo spirit cauldrons, as well as of Santiago and his godchildren, members of his large religious 'family', engaged in ritual practices: spirit possession, the feeding of the spirits, and private and collective healing ceremonies.As the head of a religious community, Santiago helps his godchildren with contentious relationships, physical ailments, emotional crises, and the hardships of poverty. He combines different traditions to achieve healing and harmony: not only Santeria and Palo Monte but also Espiritismo, a Cuban version of nineteenth-century European Spiritism. For Santiago and his followers, the three religions together form a coherent theological whole. Santiago eventually became Garoutte's and Wambaugh's godfather and spiritual leader, and "Crossing the Water" is informed by their experiences as practitioners of Santeria and Palo Monte. Their text provides clear explanations of the objects and practices depicted in the images. Describing the power and meaning of human-spirit interactions, and the sights, sounds, scents, motions, and sensations of many ritual practices, "Crossing the Water" takes readers deep inside the intimate world of Afro-Cuban spirituality.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Spirits at the crossroads of belief and pragmatism
• Spiritism and the place of the dead in Afro-Cuban religion
• On good mediumship: science, revolution, and legitimacy
• Encounter, selfhood, and multiplicity
• Development as cosmogony: ritual and materialization
• Epilogue: biographical intersections.

Despite its powerful influence on Cuban culture, Espiritismo has often been overlooked by scholars. Developing the Dead is the first in-depth exploration of contemporary Espiritismo in Cuba. Based on extensive fieldwork among religious practitioners and their clients in Havana, this book makes the surprising claim that Spiritist practices are fundamentally a project of developing the self. When mediums cultivate relationships between the living and the dead, argues Diana Espirito Santo, they develop, learn, sense, dream, and connect to multiple spirits (muertos), expanding the borders of the self. This understanding of selfhood is radically different fromEnlightenment ideas of an autonomous, bounded self and holds fascinating implications for prophecy, healing, and self-consciousness. Developing the Dead shows how Espiritismo's self-making process permeates all aspects of life, not only for its own practitioners but also for those of other Afro-Cuban religions.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Spirits at the crossroads of belief and pragmatism
• Spiritism and the place of the dead in Afro-Cuban religion
• On good mediumship: science, revolution, and legitimacy
• Encounter, selfhood, and multiplicity
• Development as cosmogony: ritual and materialization
• Epilogue: biographical intersections.

Despite its powerful influence on Cuban culture, Espiritismo has often been overlooked by scholars. Developing the Dead is the first in-depth exploration of contemporary Espiritismo in Cuba. Based on extensive fieldwork among religious practitioners and their clients in Havana, this book makes the surprising claim that Spiritist practices are fundamentally a project of developing the self. When mediums cultivate relationships between the living and the dead, argues Diana Espirito Santo, they develop, learn, sense, dream, and connect to multiple spirits (muertos), expanding the borders of the self. This understanding of selfhood is radically different fromEnlightenment ideas of an autonomous, bounded self and holds fascinating implications for prophecy, healing, and self-consciousness. Developing the Dead shows how Espiritismo's self-making process permeates all aspects of life, not only for its own practitioners but also for those of other Afro-Cuban religions.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Patakís from the composites of Okana
• Patakís from the composites of Eji Oko
• Patakís from the composites of Ogundá
• Patakís from the composites of Irosun
• Patakís from the composites of Oché
• Patakís from the composites of Obara
• Patakís from the composites of Odí
• Patakís from the composites of Unle
• Patakís from the composites of Osá
• Patakís from the composites of Ofún
• Patakís from the composites of Owani
• Patakís from the composites of Ejila Shebora

Since ancient times the Yoruba of West Africa created sacred stories - patakís - to make sense of the world around them. Upon arrival in the New World, the Yoruba religion began to incorporate elements from Catholic and Native traditions, evolving into Santería and new patakís were born, adding to the many chapters already found in the odu of the diloggún - the sacred oral teachings and divination system of the Yoruba, or Lucumí, faith. Comparable to the myths of ancient Greece and Rome and rich with jewels of wisdom like the I Ching, these Santería stories are as vast as the Hindu Vedas and as culturally significant as the parables in the Torah, Talmud and Christian Bible. DILOGGÚN TALES OF THE NATURAL WORLD presents more than 40 patakís that shed light upon the worldview of Santería. Each story in this collection, reassembled from the oral tradition of the African diaspora, is centred on a spiritual principle in nature: the waxing and waning of the moon, solar and lunar eclipses, the phenomenon of shooting stars, the separation of sky and earth and the origins of the animals and birds who play key roles in Santería symbology. Revealing the metaphysics, theology and philosophy of the Yoruba people, this volume shows these stories to be as powerful and relevant today as they were to the ancient Yoruba who once safeguarded them. Includes more than 40 myths, stories and histories from the Lucumí tradition Reassembles the oral fragments from the African diaspora into coherent stories Demonstrates that the African peoples, specifically the Yoruba, had deep philosophies and metaphysics involving nature and the natural world

• Introduction : transnational Santería assemblages
• Electric Orisha
• Transnational caminos
• Pacts with darkness
• Scent of empire
• Contaminating femininities
• Epilogue : a death at dawn.

SanterIa is an African-inspired, Cuban diaspora religion long stigmatized as witchcraft and often dismissed as superstition, yet its spirit- and possession-based practices are rapidly winning adherents across the world. Aisha M. Beliso-De JesUs introduces the term "copresence" to capture the current transnational experience of SanterIa, in which racialized and gendered spirits, deities, priests, and religious travelers remake local, national, and political boundaries and reconfigure notions of technology and transnationalism. Drawing on eight years of ethnographic research in Havana and Matanzas, Cuba, and in New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay area, Beliso-De JesUs traces the phenomenon of copresence in the lives of SanterIa practitioners, mapping its emergence in transnational places and historical moments and its ritual negotiation of race, imperialism, gender, sexuality, and religious travel. SanterIa's spirits, deities, and practitioners allow digital technologies to be used in new ways, inciting unique encounters through video and other media. Doing away with traditional perceptions of SanterIa as a static, localized practice or as part of a mythologized "past, " this book emphasizes the religion's dynamic circulations and calls for nontranscendental understandings of religious transnationalisms

• Author's NotePreface: DespedidasAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Transnational Santer a Assemblage
• s1. Electric Orich
• a2. Transnational Camino
• s3. Pacts with Darknes
• s4. Scent of Empir
• e5. Contaminating FemininitiesEpilogue: A Death at DawnGlossaryNotesReferencesIndex.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Santer a is an African-inspired, Cuban diaspora religion long stigmatized as witchcraft and often dismissed as superstition, yet its spirit- and possession-based practices are rapidly winning adherents across the world. Aisha M. Beliso-De Jes s introduces the term "copresence" to capture the current transnational experience of Santer a, in which racialized and gendered spirits, deities, priests, and religious travelers remake local, national, and political boundaries and reconfigure notions of technology and transnationalism. Drawing on eight years of ethnographic research in Havana and Matanzas, Cuba, and in New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay area, Beliso-De Jes s traces the phenomenon of copresence in the lives of Santer a practitioners, mapping its emergence in transnational places and historical moments and its ritual negotiation of race, imperialism, gender, sexuality, and religious travel. Santer a's spirits, deities, and practitioners allow digital technologies to be used in new ways, inciting unique encounters through video and other media. Doing away with traditional perceptions of Santer a as a static, localized practice or as part of a mythologized "past, " this book emphasizes the religion's dynamic circulations and calls for nontranscendental understandings of religious transnationalisms.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)