CU Santero
July 2003

Here's a little story I wrote up about one of our more dramatic experiences on the Santiago de Cuba trip:

After a couple of days learning and exploring around Havana, we took an overnight bus to Santiago de Cuba, the largest city in the southeast.  Santiago is much more Caribbean (read "African") than Havana and the west, the area around it is poorer, where much of the sugar is grown and where there is strong support for Castro among the people, both rural and urban.  Our guide, Juan, took us to see a cigar factory in Santiago, and while we were there, he ran into a Santero, or priest of the Santeria religion, whom he had met on a previous trip.  The Santero, a gay man in his late twenties, arranged for our group to meet him at his house later in the afternoon.  We started out walking there, but realized it was pretty far, so took some pedicabs, bikes with seats for two people behind, the Cuban version of a taxi.

We wandered through narrow street after street, until we finally found the Santero's house.  He graciously invited all eight of us in, and explained, more or less, about Santeria.  A mixture of the Yoruba religion from Nigeria thinly overlaid with Catholicism, he described the orishas (saints) and showed us two altars--one for "white" magic, with statues of many of the orishas positioned around it, and one for "black" magic, with a cloth with skulls on it and other less saintly looking objects.

As we were about to leave, the Santero asked Ann if she would like some beads that would give her strength and health, to which she answered yes.  Since somebody had to go to get the beads, and the others in our group wanted to get back to the hotel, they left Ann and me with the Santero (while our pedicab driver waited outside).  Soon the fellow came back with the beads.  I sat and watched as the Santero had Ann kneel before the altar.  Each string of beads, in different colors, represented an orisha.  She chose one strand from among about eight or ten, and the Santero said some kind of prayer in what sounded like a strange version of Spanish, threw some coconut shells on the ground, and then told her that that wasn't the one she should have, and suggested another (that orisha hadn't chosen her).  Then he did the same thing with that strand, and the shells "told" him that was a good one for her.  Then he did the same thing a second time, with a second strand.  She was given the beads of Chango and Oshun, if any of you are interested.

I, meanwhile, was just looking on, sort of wishing that I'd get some beads, too, but not really expecting him to ask me.  However, once he was finished with Ann, he motioned to me to come over to get some beads, too.  I first chose one which the coconut shells "told" him I shouldn't have, and then I got the beads of Ogun, a warrior saint and ruler of metals.  Then he chose another for me, Obatalah, all white beads, and, try as he may, he couldn't get the right answer for them.  Rather, the shells fell in such a way that he concluded I would have to be "cleansed" or I would risk sickness or accident on the trip.  By now, I was wishing I'd gone on with the others in the group and left Ann there by herself!  However, we agreed to come back the next day for my "cleansing," since it couldn't be done then--he would need to collect certain herbs, and prepare for it.  Also, when I came back I should bring a pint of Santero Aguardiente de Cane, which is a cheap rum, and a cigar.  I have to say that I was pretty upset by then.  I didn't know if the guy was scamming me or not, but I wasn't about to take the chance, either.

When we got back to the hotel, we told Juan about it, and he agreed to come back with us the next day--which turned out to be the next night, after dinner.  Juan's wife, Nancy, who is a urologist, was going to come with us, but at the last minute didn't because the cab could only take four people and another of our group, Rick, had wanted to go into town.  That was probably a big mistake, as you will later see.

We got to the Santero's at about 10 pm, after hunting all over the town for Aguardiente de Cane.  It turned out there was another Santero and a Santera there as well as the one we'd met the day before.  The new Santero sort of led the proceedings.  First, the five of us (two Santeros, Ann, Juan and I) sat around in front of the black magic altar, Santeros drinking from the bottle of Aguardiente and smoking cigars.  They first gave a very long prayer, in a sort of "slave" Spanish, which Juan says isn't even spoken anymore, and then, once the one Santero was in a semi-trance, he began to report (all in Spanish) what he "saw," a little like a psychic reading.  They were pretty right-on.  They picked up my father (a man with something wrong with the right side of his body), my house (a house with many steps, with something at the top--my redwood tree), the fact that Ann and I were a couple, and that we had houses in the city and the country.  At some point they decided that, since MA and I were so "spiritually close," she should be included in the ceremony, and told her that she should never have hip surgery (something she's been thinking she'd have to have), as she would never walk thereafter.  This "reading" went on for about an hour and a half, with Juan translating, until we decided it was getting pretty late and we should get to the ceremony.   (About a half hour before that, the Santera (woman) had gone out to the back yard and brought back in a pigeon and a chicken, which she held by the feet in one hand as she looked on.)

So the ceremony began!  After another long prayer, we were "beaten" with the herbs; I'm not exactly sure what they were, maybe yerba buena, but scented, as everything else was, with cheap perfume; he slapped this huge bundle of grass all over us, front and back, head to toe, until we were dripping wet and covered with little leaves.  Then he took the chicken and beat us all over with that, too, and that was quickly followed by the pigeon. I think the chicken and pigeon were alive, but they must have been somehow wounded, because after the beating we had chicken and pigeon blood and feathers all over us, along with the leaves.  After each bird, he would, I think, break its neck and place it on the altar, because they died there within a few seconds.  Then came the Aguardiente--he'd take big mouthfuls of it and then spray it all over us.  This was followed by cigar smoke, which he blew all over us, from top to bottom.  The last thing was a coconut, which had some ashes mixed with water on it, I think, and we were to rub this all over us, arms, legs, face, everywhere we could reach.  Then he placed all four of our hands on the coconut and had us raise it high over our heads, and told us to throw it on the ground to break it.  We did, and it broke very evenly in half, with both of the "meat" halves up.  Both Santeros let out a huge cheer; for some reason, this meant good fortune.  I guess we were finally cleansed, because then he had us kneel down to pray for whatever we wanted.  Ann and I, incredulous, looked like two bloody, drenched things the cat dragged in.  I'd worn an old shirt and shorts; Ann had worn her best shirt.  (When she realized it was all bloody, she was pretty upset--Juan, ever the nonbeliever, cynically told her to pray for a new shirt.)  So I prayed for health and strength and safety and anything else I could think of in that state of shock and disbelief, and the ceremony was over.  Then the Santeros cleansed themselves and the Santera, and another woman who was watching the whole thing.  They wanted to cleanse Juan, but he wouldn't let them, and he told us later that they put up quite an argument, saying the evil spirits were in the room and that if he didn't get cleansed, there could be danger for him.  The last thing they said was to be very careful of an accident on the road (we were taking off for about a week of 400 miles of biking the next morning).

So the next day we took off, wearing our beads, on some of the most beautiful roads I've ever seen--sort of like the Big Sur coast, but with little farms all along the coast and beaches where we'd dip our heads in the ocean to cool off before we started up again.  We rode 77 miles that day, and the next day was to be shorter, about 40, to a fancy hotel, Marea del Portillo, on the southeastern coast.  When Ann and I got to the hotel and were having lunch, two of the other women came up and told us that Nancy, Juan's wife, had had a terrible accident; she had lost control of her bike on a down hill, been thrown, and they had found her in a pool of blood, and that the sag vehicle riding behind had driven her to the hospital in the next town.  We were all in shock and so upset, and Ann and I thought back to the ceremony two nights before.  The next morning we found she'd gone to a small hospital and had then been taken by ambulance to a larger hospital in another town, where she was x-rayed and found to have a broken shoulder but no head fractures, but her face was a total mess with scrapes all over it, her shoulders, arms and legs.  Her helmet, all banged and bloody, saved her.  We saw her the next day, and I could hardly believe that she had survived; her face was so swollen and scraped.  She stayed with the group for the next four or five days, until we got back to her home in Matanzas, gradually getting better. It will be some time before she's healed, although I think she'll completely recover.

I have no idea if the Santeros were onto something or if it was mere coincidence, but I think Juan thought more than once about what would have happened if he'd gotten cleansed.  Or what would have happened if Nancy had come with us.  Would she have gotten cleansed?  In any case, I wear Ogun and Obatalah all the time, and Ann wears Chango and Oshun.  Who knows?  Who wants to find out?

We had many more adventures on the trip, but none quite so dramatic.  I ended up loving Cuba even more than I had before.  It is a beautiful island, filled with vibrant, happy, very talented and hard-working people, and it feels like such a travesty that the US has made their development so difficult for all 44 years of its existence.  If you ever get a chance, go there, especially while Castro is alive!  Who knows what will befall Cuba once he goes?  I only hope the orishas will be able to protect it.