The Ceiba Tree as a Multivocal Signifier: Afro-cuban Symbolism, Political Performance, and Urban Space in the Cuban Republic

INTRODUCTION: AFRO-CUBAN SYMBOLISM, POLITICAL PERFORMANCE, AND URBAN SPACE Ivor Miller’s article “Religious Symbolism in Cuban Political Performance” brings to light an interesting phenomenon: twentieth-century Cuban politicians used symbols that were associated with Afro-Cuban religions to communicate multiple meanings in public rituals. Practitioners of AfroCuban religions brought most of these connections to Miller’s attention during his anthropological fieldwork in Havana in the 1990s. Based on his own research and oral accounts gathered by other twentieth-century anthropologists, such as Lydia Cabrera and Romulo Lachatanere, Miller enumerated a list of Cuban politicians who used religious symbolism in political performance, including Gerardo Machado y Morales, Fulgencio Batista, and Fidel Castro. On January of 1959, for example, Fidel Castro gave a televised speech to inaugurate his regime. During his speech two white doves appeared and perched on his shoulder and rostrum. Despite the fact that Castro’s emerging communist regime was far from religious, the dove was seen as a divine symbol, perhaps legitimating Castro’s new government. For the Afro-Cuban religion Santeria, a dove represents the divine spirit of Obatala, an important orisha, or divinity, in the Afro-Cuban cosmos. For Catholics, the dove is a sign of the Holy Spirit. Castro never officially admitted to being a santero/a, a priest of Santeria, but his political performance indicated an understanding of what Miller referred to as “conflicting mythologies that have found a way to coexist in Cuba.”1