Diásporas del alma: Notas sobre representación y uso estratégico de prácticas espirituales afrocaribeñas

Abstract

From official cultural policies to the tourism industry in the Caribbean, a racialized spirituality (seasoned with blackness) is celebrated, folklorized and cleaned-up to be used strategically to sell "authenticity" and local traditions (such is the case of Puerto Rico, Cuba and Dominican Republic). Yet, negative representations and discrimination against Afro-Caribbean religions continues. What place do we occupy in the Universe? Which kinds of cosmological maps could help us navigate and represent our contradictory human experience? How could we negotiate a healing space for our daily sufferings, challenges and desires? These transcendental spiritual questions become a huge material and philosophical problem in the violent colonial context of plantation slavery in the Caribbean, where the very humanity of enslaved people and their descendants was denied. But these questions become also a huge problem from the perspective of the masters. In these preliminary notes, I offer concerns and reflections about strategic uses of Afro-Caribbean spiritual practices. Particular attention is paid to how marginalized communities in the Caribbean and its diasporas use these small acts of resistance as workshops of vernacular knowledge, memory archives and healing spaces.