Using Latinx Theology’s Lo Cotidiano to Decolonialize Oller’s El Velorio

Abstract

This article explores the theological valences of Francisco Oller y Cestero’s El Velorio (ca. 1893), his interpretation of the child’s funerary wake called bakine in Puerto Rico, using the Latinx theological concept of lo cotidiano and its decolonializing force. In contrast to Oller’s elitist and colonialized view of bakine as “brutish” and “superstition”, a decolonial cotidiano approach valorizes its nuanced expression of Puerto Rican popular religion, identity, and culture among everyday belief and practice. This approach construes bakine as a celebration of life, orthodox in light of Catholic doctrine, and representative of the reality of many Puerto Ricans to this day, a life in which redemption triumphs over sin and creativity over chaos even when rife with suffering and oppression. Indeed, El Velorio evinces a popular hermeneutic, a quotidian relationality, and a creative faith that has larger theological implications about the complexities of being human, being religious-in-community, and being created, and about the relationship between theology, art, and human.