|
Books
on Cuba
The Autobiography of a
Slave /
Bridges to Cuba/Puentes a Cuba
/
Santeria from
Africa to the New World: The Dead Sell Memories
Fidel Castro and
the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture in Cuba /
Reyita: The Life of a Black Cuban Woman in the
Twentieth
Century
Singular Like a Bird: The Art of Nancy Morejon
/
Caliban
and Other Essays /
The
Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball
Santeria
Aesthetics in Contemporary Latin America Art /
Culture and
Customs of Cuba /
Man-making Words; Selected Poems
of Nicholas Guillen
Afro-Cuban Voices: On Race and Identity on
Contemporary Cuba /
Afro-Cuba: An Anthology of Cuban Writing
on Race, Politics, and Culture
Nicolas Guillen:
Popular Poet of the Caribbean /
Selected Poetry by Nancy Morejon
/
Cuba: After the
Revolution
* * * *
*
The Quest
for the Cuban Christ
A Historical Search
By Miguel A. De La Torre
The Quest
for the Cuban Christ /
Santeria:
The Beliefs and Rituals / Ajiaco
Christianity
* *
* * *
Foreword
The History of African-American Religions
series seeks to further historical investigations into the
varieties of African-American religions and to encourage the
development of new and expanded paradigms, methodologies, and
themes for the study of these religions. The editors [Stephen W.
Angell and Anthony B. Penn] see the series as an opportunity to
expand the knowledge of African-American religious expression and
institutional developments to include underappreciated regions and
forms.
This fine volume by Miguel A. De La Torre, the
third in our series -- Laborers in the Vineyard of the Lord:
The Beginnings of the AME Church in Florida by Larry Eugene
Rivers and Canter Brown, Jr. (2001) and Between the Cross and
the Crescent: Christian and Muslim Perspectives on Malcolm and
Martin, by Lewis V. Baldwin and Amiri YaSin Al-Hadid (2002)
--, concretely demonstrates that by the word American we include
the whole of the Americas, including the Afro-Latin diaspora of
the Caribbean and of Central and South America.
The story of religion in Cuba, an island only
ninety miles from U.S. shores, uniquely brings together North
American and Latin American realities that mutually and
unexpectedly illuminate each other. Even the most cursory
consumers of headline news found their minds and emotions engaged
by the controversy over a six-year-old Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez,
which preoccupied Cuban and American officials and their
respective publics from November 1999 to April 2000. De La Torre,
in his brief comment on this matter, throws new light on the
religious significance of the Elian story, so he does not ignore
the topical.
But he goes much further, illuminating the
current reality of Resident and Exilic Cubans by making profound
use of long-ago manifestations of the bifurcation of Cuban
existence. He highlights the ambiguity of usable memories by
showing how the present exiles and Cuban residents both
misappropriate and justifiably appropriate the figure of Jose
Marti, a North American exile for fourteen years before his
martyrdom for the cause of Cuban independence.
At times, De La Torre's quest for the
historical Marti seems to be as intricate as the quest by Albert
Schweitzer and others for the historical Jesus. And De La Torre
shows that even Fidel Castro himself found the North American
exile community useful in 1955, as he raised funds for his coming
campaign against the regime of Fulgenico Batista.
Inevitably, the race question in Cuba looks
somewhat different from the way it appears on the other side of
the Florida Straits. "Blackness" is not always as
obvious a theme in De La Torre's work as it will be in many other
volumes in the series, but it remains a very important
factor in the background and sometimes in the foreground. De La
Torre provides a forcible rejoinder to those (including, at times,
Castro) who have insisted that Cuba does not have a problem with
racial discrimination.
Neither does De La Torre portray Cuba as
employing the mestizo racial category as easily as most other
Latin American nations. But, quite appropriately, not all matters
of oppression and injustice in Cuba are rendered in
black-and-white dimensions. In fact, the opening of his book gives
a penetrating look at the original sin of Cuban's existence, what
he calls the Spanish "ethnocide" of the island's
aboriginal inhabitants, the Taino. De La Torre commendably resists
efforts to reduce Cuban complexities to patterns more familiar to
its North American neighbors.
De La Torre's study gains great strength from
its fascinating blending of methodologies, including ethnohistory,
historical theology, and art history. Just as the Cuban and
American historical relationship plays on minds and hearts at many
levels, so does this work. As De La Torre methodically searches
the Cuban cultural inventory for a vision of Christ that will
speak to all of the varying needs of Cuba's humildes (the
poor), he will bring all of his readers to new levels of
appreciation of the richness and poignancy of Cuban religion and
history.
Readers are urged not to overlook the beauty and
provocativeness of the images that he has employed to illustrate
the significant themes from the essence of Christ's nature to
speak tot he spiritual needs of the humildes. Anyone
interested in liberation theology will find important insights in
De la Torre's book.
For all of these reasons, we strongly commend this
illuminating book to the widest possible readership.
Stephen W. Angell and Anthony B. Pinn
Series Editors |
