Orishas

            Thursday, yesterday, we had our weekly trip discovering Havana.  This week we went to this little place right across from the capitol building called El Museo de las Orishas (The Museum of the Orishas).  I didn’t know until right before we went that Orishas were what the followers of Santería called their gods.  Santería is not quite voodoo but very similar and has its roots in the same tribes in Africa.  I had absolutely no idea what to expect, anywhere from chickens being sacrificed right in front of me to movies about people being possessed to an art museum.  I literally had no clue what I was getting myself into.

            Thankfully there were no chicken sacrifices going on and definitely no possessions.  We ended up on the second floor of a restored colonial building with giant vaulted ceilings that  had echoes from the 1800s around every corner.  Lined up against all of the walls were statues of all of these different gods with their corresponding information displayed for all to see.  I was confused because I thought that they must have been artist renderings because, well, who can know exactly what any god looks like?  Apparently though, the Yoruba people, who were the first practitioners of Santería in Cuba, had recognizable gods that maintained the same features throughout the history of the religion.  Even after slave owners and the church had tried to erase all of their ties with their home Africa, these gods survived.

            One thing that I had not realized was so prevalent was the syncretism that went on between Santería and the Catholic faith.  I did not grow up Catholic, so I’ve never really been exposed to saints and the role that they play in the Catholic Church.  It was amazing to see that each one of these black, tribal gods had a parallel saint in the Catholic faith.  I don’t know how I would feel about that if I was a Catholic today and especially if I had been Catholic back then.  I was a little confused by the whole idea of syncretism and how each god corresponded to a saint, but this religion has managed to survive some of the most difficult trials.  They definitely have my respect if not my full comprehension.

            The last thing that grabbed my attention was the fact that each god seemed to come from a certain and different part of Africa.  Apparently, the slave trade mostly brought peoples from the middle area of Africa but that still encompassed a lot of territory.  So once all of these slaves arrived here, they contributed their own gods and Santería became a blend of the gods from all different religions.  As a result of this, there is a lot of overlap.  For instance there were two gods of the sea, but one was for the deep parts of the sea and the other one was for the surface and shallow areas.  Lots of repetition and very interesting.