Cuban Symbols Meanings

[Margorie Gomoran]

Reglais also an historical center of Afro-Cuban religions (see Brown 2003), including the Congo-derived Reglas de Palo Monte/Mayombe, all-male Abaka societies with their roots in the Cross River region of Nigeria, and the Reglas of Ocha and If, religions based on traditional Yoruba practices whose devotees worship West African deities or orichas.[1]

In 2005, church officials placed a laminated document on the wall of the sanctuary recounting the history of the church and the legendary yet little known North African origins of the Virgin of Regla. The final passage is the most telling:

Evidently, the contentious relationship between Afro-Cuban religions and Catholicism is far from resolved. However, this new document at Regla suggests both a sense of resignation to the hybridity of Cuban religion, on the one hand, and an attempt to reclaim the space of the Catholic Church in Cuba by establishing clear guidelines for orthodoxy on the other. I see this as a small victory. First, the statement acknowledges the African origins of this black Virgin, a folk history of which few people are aware. It even implies the complicity of the Church in the institution of slavery in Cuba. I read it as a realization that the Church must accept that a good number of their supporters are not only Catholic. Scholars frequently assert that the Catholic Church never took hold in Cuba as it did in the rest of Latin America. However, Catholicism did take root in Cuba, much to the chagrin of colonial (and now contemporary) religious officials, by adapting itself to the hybrid character of Cuban religious devotion. This meant that the church had to become an Afro-Catholic church, a process that began perhaps as early as the 16th century with the establishment of the first cabildos in Havana (Brown 2003: 34). This process was solidified through the manipulation of contested symbols and meanings that were used to express alternate cultural and national identities (Afrocuban, Cuban Chinese, communist Catholic).

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In the party hall on a centre stage there is a huge cake, often lavishly decorated with adornments such as running-water fountains, lights, candles, little dolls depicting the dancers on the lower levels of the cake and the quinceaera standing on the top level of the cake (see photo 3).

All these elements observable in modern quince parties; European styled outfits along with horse-drawn carriages were typical symbols of the new rich class in 18th century Cuba (see Moreno Fajardo 1998). Quinceaeras appeared in outfits and environments that made them look like 18th century Spanish-originated aristocracy (see photo 4).

The emphasis on Spanishness in the symbolism of quince is made more explicit in the photos taken during the ritual. Almost all the quince photos I saw included an image portraying the girl as a Spanish woman of the colonial era. Spanishness was portrayed also as Catholicism in the photos. I saw this Spanish Catholic character for the first time in a quince photo dating from 1998. The girl was wearing a wide Spanish comb in her hair, she had a cross hanging from her neck and in her hands she was holding prayer beads and a little book, the Catechism. She was photographed kneeling down to pray in front of a crucifix. In later photos, dating from 2003, a church could be seen in the background. This Catholic female character represents a religious, high-class woman of the colonial era, connecting the ritual symbolically both to Cuba's history as a colony of Spain and to the Catholic Church.

The extract from el Diablo Ilustrado suggests that in terms of Cuban state discourse, quince appears as a purely commercial tradition of the colonial elite, a leftover of the foreign bourgeois societies (Spain and United States) that governed Cuba in the past. As such, the ritual fits somewhat uncomfortably into the new socialist society that was to be created by the 1959 revolution. 23 Indeed, several aspects of the symbolism of the quince ritual mix rather uneasily with the central principle of egalitarianism guiding the official ideology of the Cuban state.

Quince as a ritual practice can be seen to represent the point where the desires and wishes of individual Cuban women intersect with the official values of the Cuban revolutionary state. Apart from the practical needs that the celebration of quince requires (access to ritual locations, attainment of ritual objects such as quince dresses, contact with ritual experts such as photographers, organisation of ritual publicity such as a newspaper announcement), the revolutionary Cuban government can enable or disable the celebration of certain rituals via laws, incentives or other means of social control. This is done by either promoting the public celebration of some rituals (like the May Day parade), while making other rituals illegal or difficult to realise (like Catholic weddings before the 1990s as stated by my Cuban informants, see also Malarney 1996).

I want to thank Karen Armstrong, Valerio Simoni and the two anonymous reviewers for their help with the earlier versions of this article. Fieldwork in Cuba was founded by The Finnish Cultural Foundation, the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund and by a travel grant from the Oskar flund Foundation.

Barreal Fernandez, I. et al. (ed.) 1998. Fiestas populares tradicionales cubanas. La Habana: Editorial del Centro de Investigacin y Desarrollo de la Cultura Cubana Juan Marinello y Centro de Antropologa de la Academia de Ciencias.

- - - 1999. The Role of Music in the Emergence of Afro-Cuban Culture. In The African Diaspora. African Origins and New World Identities (ed.) I. Okpewho et al. (James Maraniss translator) 197-203 Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Davalos, K. M. 2003. La Quinceaera: Making Gender and Ethnic Identities. In Perspectives on Las Amricas: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation (ed.) M. Gutmann et al. 299-316 Oxford: Blackwell.

Daz, M. 1993. Uniones Consensuales de Cuba. Ciudad de la Habana: Dpto. de Estudios sobre Familia. Centro de Investigaciones Psicolgicas y Sociolgicas. Ministerio de la Ciencia, Tecnologa y Medio Ambiente.

Morales Menocal, A. 1998. Introduccin. In Fiestas populares tradicionales cubanas (ed.) I. Barreal Fernandez et al. 1-9 La Habana: Editorial del Centro de Investigacin y Desarrollo de la Cultura Cubana Juan Marinello y Centro de Antropologa de la Academia de Ciencias.

Moreno Fajardo, D. 1998. Aclaracin. In Fiestas populares tradicionales cubanas (ed.) I. Barreal Fernandez et al. 10-17 La Habana: Editorial del Centro de Investigacin y Desarrollo de la Cultura Cubana Juan Marinello y Centro de Antropologa de la Academia de Ciencias.

Rosendahl, M. 2010 [1997]. To Give and Take: Redistribution and Reciprocity in Household Economy. In Perspectives on the Caribbean. A Reader in culture, history and representation. (ed.) P.W. Scher 41-53 Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Heidi Hrknen is currently in the process of completing her dissertation on care, reciprocity, lifecycle and the state in socialist Cuba. Her research focuses on the changing dialectics of Cuban gender and kinship relations over the lifecycle and their interplay with the socialist state policies. Her wider research interests include gender, kinship, lifecycle rituals and socialism.

This is clearly shown by the central position of the quince photos in the ritual (see below), as well as by the ethnographic material I obtained on the subject; quince is not a matter of talking but of seeing and experiencing.

The girl also wears this same type of dress on the day of the photo and video shoot, parts of which often take place on a different date to that of the party due to the large monetary expense of each.

At the time of my fieldwork both in 2003-2004 and in 2007, the average monthly salary in Cuba was about 260 pesos, the equivalent of $10 USD but almost everybody had other sources of income. A quince party could cost up to 20,000 pesos. During my fieldwork in 2008 there were rises in both salaries and prices in Cuba and the changes in Cuban state economy and labour life have continued throughout to December 2010.

Until April 2008, these activities were largely unattainable to normal Cubans also in practice. Due to the state-imposed restrictions Cubans were forbidden from entering tourist locations such as hotels. The purpose of this law was to inhibit jineterismo, the hustling of tourists by local Cubans. My Cuban informants told me that in order to enter these tourist locations, quinceaeras and the photographers, video-makers, family and friends accompanying them, bribed their way into hotel lobbies and pools. In April 2008 the Cuban government made changes to this law, allowing the entrance of Cubans to hotels and other tourist locations. However, in practice hotel (and other) doormen still often obstructed Cubans from entering and demanded bribes to enter.

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