The contribution of Catholic orthodoxy to Caribbean syncretism: The case of La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre in Cuba

Abstract

The polity of the Spanish Empire during the baroque period rested on two definitions of place: the local, where nationality was celebrated bya plethora of customs and traditions; and the global, where Catholicism and its defender the Spanish Crown, protected the assorted nationalities from the divisive forces of heresy and rationalism. The devotion towards the Cuban madonna, Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre, develops during the baroque period of Spanish history. I maintain that during the baroque, Christianity "knit together disparate class and racial groups" particularly by developing a Marian devotionalism. In other words, instead of merely two different coded meanings for the same set of religious rites and symbols corresponding to two antagonistic classes as proof of syncretism, can we find an example of syncretism in one transculturated meaning. There was a fusion of local place with mixed racial background. Since this madonna is a national patron for all Cubans of all racial origins, syncretism has led practioners of Afro-Cuban religions to incorporate Our Lady of Charity under the identity as the Yoruba Ochun. In the process of making the Cuban Catholic Virgin African, this syncretism also makes the African religion Cuban. We may perhaps invoke Mikhail Bakhtin (1986) and ask if we have not onlya case of monological syncretism, wherein Christianity or African religions talk past each other in order to absorb only bits and pieces from each other, but also a dialogical syncretism in which the exchanges go in several directions. © Cairn 2007.