Popular Religion and Popular Protest in a Mid-Century Havana Shantytown

• In Event: The Spatial Politics of Afro-Colombian and Afro-Cuban Mobilization, 1920s-1970s

Abstract

This presentation explores the intersection of the popular Cuban religions Santeria, Abakua, and Palo Monte with the social claims and political alliances of shantytown residents in Havana during the 1950s and 60s. Scholarship on Cuba has explored the ways that these religions had to contend with the stigmas of poverty and marginality as they gained recognition as symbols of national identity. Yet these studies often foreground religion in their analysis, and seldom focus directly on issues of poverty and marginality in their own right.
Rather than ask how marginality affected the acceptance of popular religion in Cuba, I ask the reverse: How did popular religion shape the social and political activism of poor people in Havana? How did it relate to wider struggles for racial equality for Afrodescendants? To land rights and social welfare for shantytown residents?
An analysis of oral testimony from several shantytown residents in mid-century Havana who were also religious practitioners, reveals the complicated overlaps between religion and social activism at the city’s margins. On the surface, religion was often tangential to other forms of collective expression from neighborhood leaders and associations. Yet religion had the effect of elevating a class of local leaders, who played pivotal roles in demanding rights and respect for their neighborhood in the political arena. And, following the Cuban Revolution of 1959, shantytown residents looked to the ambivalent position of popular religion to navigate their own complicated place in Cuban society.

Author

• Jesse Horst, Sarah Lawrence College