Paper short abstract:

Economic uncertainties and political disquiet in today’s Cuba has pronounced how relationships are often based on economic prospects, rather than ‘love’. This paper investigates the complex and entwined connections resulting from this disquiet, between marital and/or cohabitant partnerships and Santería religious practice, sorcery, as well as the nationalist goals of the Cuban revolution.

Paper long abstract:

Although Cuba is no longer in the 'Periodo Especial' that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, where the country's inhabitants relied almost exclusively on government remittances for their very survival, there remains an air of uncertainty and disquiet, as Cubans wait patiently and expectantly for what will come following the Castro governance. Cuba has not escaped the current global financial crisis, and the footsteps that Cubans now follow in their daily lives are familiar territory; one has to 'luchar' (fight), as in the Special Period, for all things material in order to survive. A series of social consequences follow this disquiet, among them a waning trust in the Socialist agenda, and an increase in followers of Santería and 'brujería' (sorcery). This paper aims to investigate the effects of economic uncertainty on marriages and households in relation to Cuba's original revolutionary aims and how these are contested within marital/cohabitant relationships through the daily use of various forms of religious divination in Santería practice as well as through the spells and curses of 'brujería'.