Global Know-Now <<<<<<>>>>>> [The Cuba Edition] 06/2006-8/2006

Cuba: Proposal/Background of Documentary "HOLY SOuLD"

Intrigued by the complexities of Afro-Cuban religions and possessed by the desire to further my understanding of contemporary Cuban culture, I propose to document the impact of tourism on Afro-Cuban religions and participants. With many Cubans identifying Santeria, also known as La Regla de Ochoa, as a major player in their national identity, I seek to find out how Santeria and other Afro-Cuban religions are being influenced or changed by the tourism phenomenon.


The destabilizing effects of the fall of the Soviet Block gave subsequent rise to the Special Period in 1990. As a result tourism has increasingly played a major role in Cuban economy. My interest centers on locating the factors that have led to Santeria’s emergence into the public arena from the much-guarded private space it occupied prior to the Special Period.
Although the focus of my Documentary seeks to identify tourism during Cuba’s special period, it is important to note that tourism is not a new phenomenon to the island. In fact, prior to the triumph of the revolution of 1959, Cuba boasted one of the largest tourist industries in the world, in which many elites, mostly from North America, frequently frolicked. However, following the revolution, the image of an open Cuba quickly dissolved, as Fidel Castro declared Cuba’s past as “corrupt” and halted all tourist activities for the next thirty years.


With incentives from the Soviet Union, Cuba found itself in a favorable position, for the Soviet allegiance allowed Cuba to counter the United States’ embargo and sustain its population without resorting to any other foreign capital. However, the fall of the Soviet Bloc would prove detrimental to Cuba’s economy, reducing its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by fifty percent and similarly increasing the unemployment rate to fifty percent. With the collapse of the economy the Cuban government passed restrictions and implemented rations across the board, giving rise to the Special Period, still in operation today.
In 1982, despite Castro’s past staunch support for the ban on foreign capital, Cuba enacted a decree, which permitted restricted foreign investment for the first time since the triumph of the revolution. Thus, multinational companies were welcomed for business on the island with the condition that the state own fifty-one percent of the shares and the company forty-nine percent. This sudden change of Cuba’s economic stand created a dichotomy, since it rejected market-oriented economic reform, but heavily promoted foreign investment. Viewed as the “necessary evil” by the government, the hard currency brought in by international tourism allowed Cuba to have solvency of their ever-mounting foreign debt.


Despite the celebratory aspect of Afro-Cuban religions, one cannot undermine its tragic past, forged from struggle, for they were shaped by the oppressive colonial structure on bounded peoples. The slavery system induced a hybrid belief among those oppressed and subsequently also taken up by the European oppressors accepting it as their own. Although legitimized through the freedom clause in the new constitution of 1943, Afro-Cuban religions would once again become a vast underground belief system for the Cuban people, since after the triumph of the revolution Santeria was seen as a malevolent practice by a vast secular movement. Consequently, Santeria became forbidden from public display for thirty years. Thus, forcing an amalgamation between devotee and devotion. Eventually ending in 1991, with Fidel Castro easing the laws on worship, acknowledging that Santeria was the main legitimate religion of the Cuban people.


To conduct research on the subject of Afro-Cuban religions and tourism seems a daunting task at first glance. For the reason that empirical data is apparently limited, and the media rarely cover the topics. Moreover, as it is the case in other parts of Latin America like the Dominican Republic and Brazil, most Afro-religious practitioners are facing a similar struggle with their cultural heritages. This is the case mostly because of the consequences of modernity, in this case globalization in the form of tourism.. Nevertheless, sixteen years later Cuba is a drastically different country. While still having to bear severe economic problems, the country has implemented a Dollar and Euro economy in order to counter high inflation and has permitted its citizens to enter into self-employment which are believed to have a direct or indirect relationship with tourism. Thus giving rise to a new economic order in the country.


In the midst of the changes the relevant questions then become: how far-reaching into Cuban spirituality, specifically in Afro-Cuban religions, is this new economy? Are the economic pressures of the Special Period and the new employment model allowing for public performance/display of such practices to tourists, and if so, has religion become a commodity easily exploited at this juncture in Cuban history?

posted by Henry A. Obispo @ 3:39 AM