Voices of the River: Tracing Cross River Ékpè and Cuban Abakuá in Jonatás y Manuela (1994)

• In Event: Mobilising memory in the present

Description for Program

This presentation centres the revisionist engagement of history as engendered in the neo-slave narrative Jonatás y Manuela (1994) wriiten by Afro-Ecuadorian, Luz Argentina Chiriboga. With this novel, Chiriboga presents an Afrocentric narrativisation of African enslavement in Spanish colonial Ecuador and, ultimately, subverts the Eurocentric whitewashing of this historical incidence. Through the narrative, which is portrayed from the perspective of a three-generational lineage of enslaved female protagonists, Chiriboga literarily figures the trans-generational developmental trajectory of the African diaspora in Ecuador from its origins in Africa. The primary aspect of Chiriboga’s dynamic figuration of diapora that this analysis treats is the diasporic transposition and translation of African spirituality, specifically that of Ékpè, also called the Secret Leopard Society, that originates from the Cross River basin of south-eastern Nigeria and south-western Cameroon, and Abakuá, its diasporic version that is practiced in Cuba. The author textually locates her engagement of these spiritualities within her portrayal of slave capture, heralded by the divine voice, that takes place in a river and, utlimately, leads to the Transatlantic journey of no return. Thus, this presentation explores Chiriboga’s nuanced engagement of these spiritualities as well as the complexities of their diasporic, maritime transposition and translation.

Author

• Kaezia Mills, University of the West Indies, Mona