Oakland Ross, Special to The Globe and Mail
Saturday, July 10, 1999
Cuba without its babalawos would be a bit like Toronto without psychotherapists - a harrowing prospect.
Regla, Cuba -- 'You have had sexual relations at some point?" The question is posed by a Cuban faith-healer named Genobebo Cobas Espino. He squats in his temple wearing a red gingham cap, He is trying to figure out what's bugging you.
You acknowledge that sexual relations are a thing that you have, on occasion, had.
"And yet you have no children?"
Also true.
"Ah!" Mr. Cobas grins at his assistant, a mustachioed fellow named Papito, who happens to be his brother. "Then your problem may be physical, a production problem."
"No," you say. At least, you don't think so.
You are perched on a small wooden stool set on a white sheet spread across the floor of Mr. Cobas's temple, a structure cluttered with holy receptacles, statues of African gods and other sacramental artifacts. Someone has painted a large mural on three of the walls depicting an impressive
pantheon of santeria gods.
A fusion of African and Christian religious influences, santeria is to Cuba more or less what voudou is to Haiti -- a nation's cultural lifeblood.
Mr. Cobas looks up. "Your girlfriend . . . ? You are concerned that she is betraying you with another?"
"Not really," you reply, a trifle nonplussed. You believe you have already explained the situation in detail. "In fact, that's not it at all."
You describe the problem again. It's a commitment thing. You have difficulty committing yourself fully to any one woman, and this is causing you unease. Partly for this reason, you have sought out Mr. Cobas, a prominent babalawo or santeria priest, who dwells with his family in the working-class
Havana suburb of Regla. You are hoping he can help.
Mr. Cobas listens patiently, but it is evident this particular malady -- a reluctance to commit -- is not one that crops up often in his practice, at least not in the guise of an affliction requiring treatment. This is Cuba, after all, where men are often unabashedly promiscuous. Why would a man
want to commit?
Still, Mr. Cobas is a babalawo, and so he gives the matter his full attention. This is his job, to listen and heal. That's partly why he and others like him are in such heavy demand. Cuba without santeria would be a bit like Toronto without psychotherapists -- a harrowing prospect.
There are an estimated 2,000 babalawos in the country, or one for every 4,000 people. No reliable figures exist, but santeros almost certainly outnumber the adherents of other organized religions in Cuba.
As Mr. Cobas attends to business in his temple, his slender wife, Amarili, is bustling about in the adjoining kitchen, preparing thick, sweet Cuban coffee, which she will serve in small china cups, followed by glasses of rum. Meanwhile, the rather incongruous strains of the Backstreet Boys drift
through the tropical air from the living room, where Mr. Cobas's comely mulata daughter, Yoanet, is soaking up American culture.
Eventually, Mr. Cobas feels he has got a grip on your condition. You are too indecisive, he says, and you tentatively agree. He gets down to business. Out come a dozen small shells, which he proceeds to toss onto the white sheet. He reads the results of each toss and whispers to his brother, who
makes notations in a red book.
So far, all is much as you expected. The practice of seeking out a babalawo to resolve personal problems is as deeply Cuban an enterprise as a guy and a girl working out a new salsa step on a narrow balcony in Old Havana. It's difficult to find a Cuban who does not have a personal santeria cure
to talk about.
Consider one young woman, who gave her name as Iliana. She was seated one afternoon by the curb on La Rampa in the Vedado section of Havana. She sought a cure about three years ago, when she had a problem with her boyfriend. "I wanted him to go away, but he wouldn't go."
At a cost of about $3 U.S., a babalawo solved her problem. The man in question took a hike and has not come back.
But that's romance. What would Iliana do if she had a physical complaint? Like many Cubans, she said she would seek out a Western-style doctor first. Only if that proved unsuccessful would she turn to a babalawo. "The doctors themselves tell you to do that."
In many cases, it works. Nine years ago, for example, a young Cuban named Vilma Penalver underwent an elaborate healing ceremony, replete with food, music, chanting and animal sacrifices. The aim was to rid her of asthma, and it worked.
Such tales may seem difficult to credit, but there is little doubt that babalawos are able to overcome many medical complaints that stymie Western-style doctors. Such cases tend not to be entirely physical in nature.
"In the cases I have known," says Lazara Menendez, a professor of Afro-Caribbean studies at the University of Havana, "they often have a high psychological content."
In the case now before Mr. Cobas, this is certainly so. As he tosses and reads the shells, he peppers you with questions about your private life. He hands over two stones -- one white, one black -- and instructs you to shake them in your clasped palms and then separate them. Shake. Repeat.
Shake. Repeat. "Ah," he says, "now we are getting somewhere."
Santeria is just one of several branches of African-based spiritualism in Cuba, albeit the most popular. All are deeply rooted both in Africa's and in Cuba's colonial history. When a plantation economy began to flourish here, hundreds of thousands of African slaves were imported to the island.
Unlike their counterparts in the English-speaking Caribbean, Spanish plantation owners encouraged tribal groups to maintain their distinctive practices, hoping that this might prevent blacks from uniting against them. As a result, African animist beliefs thrived.
Over time, santeria's African roots became entangled with Christianity. Nowadays, most of santeria's huge pantheon of African gods, also known as orishas, are identified with Christian saints. Chango, the santeria god of lightning and warfare, is also represented by Saint Barbara. Obatala, the
creator of Earth and the sculptor of humans, is identified with the Virgin of Mercy. You might think most of Cuba's santeria adherents would be descendants of African slaves, but it isn't necessarily so. Santeria's practitioners are as likely to be white-skinned as they are mulatto or black.
At least until the Cuban revolution in 1959, the religion was shunned by the country's social and intellectual elite. In recent years, this has been changing. Young Cubans, in particular, seem attracted.
"You sense there's a gradual growth," says Prof. Menendez, "especially among youths from 18 to 25. Many of them are very proud of it."
Although she was raised an atheist and schooled in rationalism, Prof. Menendez has become a believer in santeria, a transformation that took place gradually and surprised no one more than herself. "Now I have a personal interest. It came about very much like poetry. Even now, it's an effort
for me to realize there are things that can't be explained rationally."
Although formally godless, Cuba's revolutionary government has tolerated organized religion during its four decades in power, although not always comfortably. The Catholic Church has struggled in this climate. Babalawos -- accustomed to operating without official sanction -- have managed very
well. Mr. Cobas, for example, seems to be doing fine.
"The people come," he says. "They come to cure themselves and to resolve their problems with girls, with business and with illnesses. We call this 'the hidden science.' "
A dark-skinned man with bulging eyes and an animated, almost plastic, face, he clearly relishes his role as priest and counsellor.
As the consultation draws to its close, his brother returns from the kitchen with a large pair of scissors. He closes the temple door and goes to work. He takes clippings from your toenails and fingernails and small shanks of hair from your head, armpits, chest and elsewhere. He wraps these in
bits of cotton batting and arranges them on a white plate, which he places on the temple's already crowded altar.
No one bothers to explain this somewhat unsettling procedure, and you think of santeria's darker side, which involves the casting of hexes or spells on others, a practice known as brujeria or witchcraft. So prevalent are such things that at least some people here dwell in a swirl of
santeria-induced suspicion and fear.
"If someone trips and falls in the street," says a gracious Cuban grandmother named Eduvigis, "they immediately look up and wonder, 'Who has put a spell on me?' Cubans are like that."
You don't have to look far to see evidence of santeria. Many, if not most, Cubans keep small santeria altars in their homes, and many wear the beaded necklaces that identify them as children of a certain orisha -- white beads for Obatal, red and white for Chango, green, black and purple for
Oggun. Typically, they discuss their beliefs openly and with pride.
For his part, Mr. Cobas maintains that he eschews the darker side of santeria and does not cast spells. This may or may not be true. "They all say that," cautions Prof. Menendez.
You start to worry when Mr. Cobas removes a large screw-cap bottle from his altar. It is filled with rum and what looks horribly like human viscera. (It is apparently various kinds of roots.) He pours some of the concoction into a small hollowed gourd and passes it to you. You close your eyes
and drink. Either it will kill you or it won't.
Actually, it tastes pretty good.
He announces that, in order to cure you of your commitment problem, it will be necessary to conduct a three-day ceremony. What with the purchase of food and drink, the hiring of drummers and the acquisition of animals for sacrifice -- pigeons, chickens, goats -- the total bill will come to $350
U.S.
You aren't sure your condition is quite that serious. You negotiate, and the price comes down to $150. This is probably a legitimate fee; Cubans will pay such sums. Vilma Penalver estimated that her asthma treatment cost the equivalent of $100, all of which had to be raised by her mother.
But you have already made a $40 offering to the gods. Besides, you're uncomfortable with the idea of sacrificing innocent animals on the altar of your love life. Mr. Cobas shrugs. We can skip the animals, he says, and he arranges to conduct a more modest treatment four days hence. You agree and
head back out to your car, pausing to chat with his daughter on the way.
Like any other religion, santeria is in large part a means of making sense of the world and of humanity's place in it. It has its own creation myths, for example, and a treasury of tales and legends detailing the intrigues of the gods. Like the deities in ancient Greek mythology, the orishas of
santeria tend not to be entirely noble. They seem almost human in their behaviour, beset by foibles and defects and often involved in petty disputes.
"It's complicated," says Mr. Cobas, who can -- and will -- recount a santeria history of the world at the drop of a handful of shells. "It's long. But it's nice."
This is no time for stories. It is time for your final cure. At 11 o'clock on a Sunday morning, you pull up outside Mr. Cobas's compact house on Calle Perdomo in Regla.
The babalawo is ready. He wears a baker's cap today, and on the floor of his temple he has set out three receptacles, each of which contains the essence of a particular santeria god.
Eleggua, the one who opens and closes passageways, is represented by a humanoid bust moulded out of some sort of plaster around the base of a cobo seashell. Oggun, the god of minerals and mountains, occupies a small steel pot filled with bits of rusty metal. Osun, who guards the heads of
believers, takes the form of a slender metal chalice with a sculpted chicken on top.
Mr. Cobas has determined that these three gods will serve as your spiritual warriors, fighting throughout the firmament on your behalf. He instructs you to hold up the Eleggua bust while he and his brother recite several chants in Yoruba. In Spanish, he intones the words "quiet" and "development"
and the phrase "all goes well." You repeat the words and then kiss the bust. You perform the same ritual with the pot belonging to Oggun.
Finally, you hold the chalice of Osun above your head and hop about on your right foot while he bounces on his right foot in front of you and chants in Yoruba.
You set the chalice back on the floor of the temple and are immediately embraced by Mr. Cobas, who enjoins you to have done with indecision -- to go forth and commit yourself to one woman. He predicts the woman in question will be Cuban -- possibly, though not necessarily, his own daughter. He
mentions that the gods would now welcome an offering.
Already $40 down, you turn miserly and place one U.S. dollar on the altar.
"It's supposed to be $21," Mr. Cobas says.
You say nothing.
"You don't have $21?"
"No."
He shrugs. "Oh, well. Maybe next time."
Later that day, you repent your lack of generosity. In the evening, you return to Regla, hand Mr. Cobas a $20 bill, and ask for the babalawo's permission to spirit his lovely daughter away to have dinner with you in Vedado.
Permission granted. His daughter agrees. The rest is up to Eleggua, Oggun and Osun.
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