Paper short abstract:

How can one be a communist and also be initiated in an Afro-Cuban religion? Although there might be tensions between these different roles one person can have, these are not so much in existential terms. How can we account for them and how anthropology might benefit from a 'syncretic' perspective?

Paper long abstract:

The category of religion has long been scrutinized and even rendered problematic (see Asad 1993); the same can be said on that of syncretism (see Steward and Shaw 1994; Greenfield and Droogers 2001). One can imagine, then, how problematic the term 'syncretic religion' may sound. Even though we might have become more attentive to how exactly we employ such terms, this has not refrained scholars from constantly detecting and dealing with such said phenomena.

Cuba with its Afro-Cuban religions, has been a relatively well-known place of syncretic religiosity. The most famous dimension is that of an apparent coming together of Christian and African elements, but this has been very little explored and rather taken for granted. In the present, much more dynamic and intense is the coming together of different religious strands, such as Santería, Ifá, Palo Monte and Espiritismo or even more 'modern' spiritualities, such as astrology, Buddhism, reiki, among many others. Less obviously but more interestingly, one can meet passionate communists or positivist doctors who practice and are initiated in some of the above practices. Anthropologists themselves, both Cuban and foreigners, who study such phenomena, are also very often personally committed and involved. Do all these different kinds of 'syncretism' have anything in common? Are they so contradictory as they initially may sound? Is anthropological discourse 'syncretic' itself and how? Through ethnographic data gathered from Havana, I try to respond to such questions.