A General History of Regla & Its Cabildo Processional Tradition

April 15, 2021

By Alexandra P. Gelbard

Originally published April 15, 2021

The town of Regla sits directly across the entrance to Havana Bay to the east of Old Havana. A small, consequential port and municipality, Regla is home to one of the world’s Black Madonnas, the Virgin of Regla, who is housed in a church just off the water’s edge and situated behind a large ceiba tree seen to many as a sacred entity. To the Lucumí, the largest African Diasporic group forcibly trafficked to Cuba as enslaved laborers during the colonial period, the Virgin of Regla came to represent the Orisha Yemaya, one of the spiritual entities embodied within the natural environment. Regla de Ocha (also termed Santería), is the systematized devotional reverence and work with the Orishas, a set of practices recomposed within Cuba. Tens of thousands of West Africans from diverse identity groups became categorized under the Lucumí ethnic identity once they passed through the archways at Regla’s port, making it one of the most influential spaces in the process of forming this African-inspired Cuban religious practice that has now spread across the globe. The public displays of religiosity also influenced what the world now knows as “Afro-Cuban Folklore” seen through four Orishas carried through Regla’s streets: Eleguá, who opens and closes the crossroads; Ochun who lives in the rivers and lakes; Obatala manifested at the tops of mountains and in the air; Shangó whose energy is embodied within thunder and lightning; and Yemaya, the universal mother found within the seas and oceans. Throughout centuries, statues in the forms of Catholic Saints, but consecrated as sacred Orisha have been carried through the streets of Regla. Although street processionals are found throughout Cuba, having become a taken-for-granted part of Cubanidad (Cubanness), they manifest in various ways. They appear as congas, comparsas, or paseos categorized as “traditional popular culture.” Or they are singular Orishas, as is the case with the December 4th processional of Changó manifested in an adorned statue of Santa Barbara. Contemporarily within Regla, the September 7th processional directed by the Catholic Church maintains a solemnity. However, people also come to revere Yemayá, and/or consult the Espiritistas (Spiritualist Mediums) with their Muerto (Ancestor) Spirits embodied in dolls who line the street or sit in shaded nooks around the church. People also come with their own Muertos of divine feminine spirits connected to the essence embodied within Yemaya and/or Ochun. Yet the September 9 processional, derived from the Cabildo Yemaya, a Lucumí community of consciousness organized to provide mutual support and to recompose their African life ways, presented four Orisha: Ochun, Obatala, Changó, and Yemaya who were processed through the streets of Regla visiting, saluting, and performing ritual acts of reverence and communication at significant sites throughout the town. This practice became known as Regla’s tradition, formally re-initiated in 2016 after a 54-year prohibition, as a means to amplify the connection with Regla’s history and re-assert public displays of Regla de Ocha/ Lucumí religiosity. In a town defined by the miracles of the Virgin of Regla, a Black Madonna, a seminal place in both the religious and folkloric conceptualization of “Afro-Cuba,” the September 9th processionals of the Orisha under the banner of the Cabildo de Regla repair their connection to their past tradition so it can continue forward.

Black Saints and the Virgin of Regla

Black Saints are found throughout the world; their spread and veneration are intertwined with the colonial phase of the African Diaspora. While Catholicism was an integral part of the colonization project, Black Saints and the interpretations of their sanctity were used by African Diaspora members as spiritual constructs of agency and representation during a process that also sought to dismantle and deny the humanity of African-descended people. Black sanctity has a range of interpretations by an even broader spectrum of people and contexts. While debates engaging the intent of the virgin’s Black appearance range from representative symbolism to material/environmental causes, the existence of Black Saints continued to garner new interpretive meanings throughout the centuries. Black Madonnas were the first Black Saints to spread first throughout Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and then throughout the world, catalyzing the worship of the Virgin Mary.¹

The Virgin of Regla, a Black Madonna found in Chipiona, Andalucia, Spain, is said to originate with Augustine of Hippo, considered a father of the Catholic Church, who was born in North Africa in what is modern-day Algeria. The Church maintains that Augustine was visited by an angel who required him to carve a statue image of the Virgin Mary, which he promptly displayed in his chapel.² After Augustine’s death, Cipriano, one of the deacons at Augustine’s church traveled to Chipiona with the statue; the voyage met a severe storm, but they arrived safely, declaring this to be a result of the Virgin’s blessing and was considered her first “miracle.” Subsequently, a shrine was erected at the site on the beach where Cipriano disembarked.³ This location sits at the mouth of the Guadalquivir River, which runs from the Atlantic Ocean to Seville, Spain, one of the central locales within Spain’s colonial empire and the repository for the material resources and wealth extracted by the colonial project. As the ships left Seville, stopping along the river, the last stop would be at the shrine of the Virgin of Regla, so those on the ships could pray for their safe passage across the ocean. As an essential port city in the transference of gold, silver, and other resources extracted from the American colonies, Havana was the last stop for ships heading back to Sevilla where they would deposit the goods.⁴ The positioning of both Virgin of Regla shrines at each end of the Spanish colonial maritime route transferring material goods was seen as spiritual protection from one colonial epicenter to another.

What became the town of Regla after Spanish colonization began as part of the Guanabacoa reduccion (Indigenous towns, similar to reservations), and then became the Guaicanamar plantation in 1598, the site of Cuba’s first sugar mill owned by the wealthy and powerful Recio family.⁵ By 1687 a bohio⁶. was erected and dedicated to the Virgen of Regla, where worshipers revered an image of her painted onto a canvas.⁷ However, the church recognizes 1690 as the official date of the establishment of its formal shrine to the Virgin of Regla. This account credits Manuel Antonio “The Pilgrim” of Lima, Peru, for initiating the idea of establishing a chapel on the Recio property of the Guaicanamar sugar mill and is considered the official date of the town’s founding.⁸ Initially, the worshippers of the Virgin were sailors and fishermen, those of a lower-class stratum. But the shrine’s destruction as a result of Hurricane San Rafael in 1692 influenced the next phase of the shrine in two ways. First, a ship heading to Havana from San Juan de los Remedios (a town in north-central Cuba to the east of Havana) got caught in the storm, and one of the passengers, Juan Martín de Coyendo encouraged the other passengers to fervently pray to the Virgin of Regla. Should they live, he promised to dedicate the rest of his life in service to her, which he did for the next fifty-one years. The hurricane destroyed the shrine, though Martín de Coyendo immediately petitioned Don Pedro Recio de Oquendo, owner of the land, to help with the funds to construct a better church. The Virgin’s devotees immediately constructed a new shrine made of “masonry and roof tiles”, completed, and inaugurated on September 8, 1694. The shrine’s destruction in conjunction with Martín de Coyendo’s account of the Virgin’s miracle in the storm prompted an increase in her worshippers, including those in higher class positions. Subsequently, Don Fernando de Aranda y Avellaneda, sergeant major of the Spanish royal army stationed in Havana, brought a new handmade statue from Spain, which was ceremoniously installed within the Virgin of Regla’s chapel on September 8, 1696; it is thought to be the same one still worshipped at the church today.⁹ Thousands of people came to worship and revere the Virgin of Regla for her miracles and protection, especially on her pilgrimage days of September 7th and 8th.¹⁰ Subsequently, the Virgin of Regla was dedicated as the patron saint of Havana Bay in 1714; by 1733, small huts inhabited by fishermen appeared around the shrine in hopes their proximity would enable blessings for their labor. In 1805 or 1811, following another devastating storm the previous year, the Bishop of Havana formally inaugurated the Church sanctuary building.¹¹.

The September 7th celebration for the Virgin of Regla. Photos taken in 2016, 2017, and 2019 by Alexandra P. Gelbard.

Regla: A Port Town on Havana Bay

Regla’s geographic placement on the east side of Havana Bay made it an ideal space for importing material goods to be transported to the plantations throughout western Cuba. The expansion of Havana and its subsequent occupation by the British in 1762, influenced significant population growth that ultimately included active and former military servicemen and their families in addition to those who had left Florida due to the British occupation. Amidst these military personnel included Black members of the Batallón de Pardos y Morenos, (Battalions of Brown and Black Militia). In 1755, Regla’s population numbered 164 residents. In addition to Regla’s spiritual and economic importance due to its geographic positioning, Regla also became known as a party town and space for illicit activities, a reputation that continued well into the nineteenth century.¹² This reputation likely accounted for the steady population increase that would continue throughout the eighteenth century. A little over twenty years later, in 1778, that number increased to 789 residents; by the end of the eighteenth century, Regla’s population numbered around 2000.¹³ Cuba’s takeover of sugar production in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) caused a rapid economic expansion, especially in Havana Bay.¹⁴ This sparked a consequential increase in the importation of forcibly trafficked enslaved Africans to conduct the necessary labor for sugar production. As a result, the population also steadily increased throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Regla’s population remained steady through 1812, at around 2,000 people who worked in industries such as fishing, coastal trade, on the docks of Havana, and in smuggling. The 1827 census reported another significant increase in the population that would only continue with 5,693 individuals living in Regla: 64% were classified as white, 14% were classified as free people of color, and 22% were identified as enslaved Africans.¹⁵

By the 1830s, African Diaspora members, be they free or enslaved, comprised a third of Regla’s population. Though it is unknown if there were cabildos de naciónes in Regla prior to 1836, the earliest known registered cabildo was the Abakuá all-male secret society Bricamó Ápapa Eflí registered under the Carabalí ethnicity.¹⁶ Cabildos de nación, an organizational structure first initiated in 1392 in Sevilla, Spain, was a way for the Sevillain government to avoid providing social services to marginalized populations within their social order. Within the colonial framework, the Cabildos (capitalized) referred to the colonial town councils who were ultimately under the authority of the Spanish Crown. The organizations known as cabildos de nación were arranged by singular “ethnicities” as generalizable constructed identity categories that referenced singular ports of embarkation, such as the case of Carabalí and Congo, or, as in the case with the term Lucumí, a common linguistic regional greeting (contemporarily, Lucumí are considered part of the Yoruba identity group). Cabildos de nación in Cuba sometimes had organizational ties to confraternities, (Catholic lay brotherhoods). In some cases, the leadership positions of cabildos de nación maintained positions in confraternities linked to each other across centuries.¹⁷ Cabildos de nación had formally been in existence in Cuba since the late sixteenth century. There are indications that these organizations formed organically within African Diasporic communities, at least in Havana and Santiago de Cuba, the two largest cities on opposite ends of the island. Research on the presence of cabildos de nación in Regla is still ongoing; one of the goals of the Cabildo de Regla project is to expand upon this history of its African presence and the legacy of the community’s spiritual and cultural traditions.

Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, Regla had become a major port within Havana’s harbor economy that received the largest number of enslaved Africans in the Americas.¹⁸ Tens of thousands of enslaved Africans disembarked through the archways of Regla’s pier and were marched three blocks up a slight hill to the barracones (holding cells) where they waited to be sold and transported to the plantations throughout the region. An adjacent building served as the hospital where they received medical treatment for injuries, sickness, and dehydration caused by the horrors of the Middle Passage.¹⁹

The oldest barracon-hospital in Regla. Photo by Alexandra P. Gelbard, 2017.

Throughout the late 1830s through 1860s Regla’s population continued to grow, though the percentages of both free and enslaved African Diaspora members lessened in relation to the increase of those identifying as white. According to the 1846 census, 75% of the population identified as white, free people of color made up 10%, and enslaved Africans comprised 14% of Regla’s population.²⁰

The following year, on March 6, 1847, the first Chinese indentured laborers disembarked in Cuba through the port of Regla. Although there were legal differences in status, both Chinese and Africans, forced to live under the systems of indentured labor or enslavement, faced similar experiences of violence and dehumanizing treatment.²¹ The entrance of Chinese laborers is contextualized by the growing racial fears of “another Haiti” compounded by successive anti-slavery rebellions throughout western Cuba: the Aponte rebellion of 1812, the Guamacaro uprising of 1825, the Bemba rebellion of March 1843, and the Triunvirato rebellion in November 1843.²². As a result, Cuban plantation owners sought alternative labor sources to Africans, prompting the entrance of the Chinese into Cuba, which had a significant impact on Regla.

Regla in the 1840s through 1860s saw a huge economic boom due to its increasing role in the importation and exportation aspects of Cuba’s economy. By 1843 Regla’s massive warehouses were under construction, increasing Regla’s economic importance and wealth; a late 1860 description of one of the enormous Regla warehouses described Chinese laborers as the only workers within.²³. However, that was not the overall pattern, as Africans and Cuban-born African descendants connected to the Abakuá societies also comprised a large number of the laborers at the docks and warehouses of Regla. The presence and significance of the warehouses were amplified by their connection to the emerging railroad lines, facilitating the transport of crops from the plantations to the bay for exportation. By 1856, the railroad connecting Havana, Regla, and Matanzas not only facilitated the movement of goods for Cuba’s economy but also the connections among African Diaspora members throughout the region. As Oba Miguel “Willie” Ramos discusses, this facilitated an amplified network amongst Lucumí and Carabalí groups, aiding in the recompositioning of their African-inspired cultural and religious practices amidst the rupture of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and dispersion into the African Diaspora.²⁴

The Cabildo of Yemaya: Origins of a Tradition

Within Cuba, the Lucumí became one of the broader African ethnic identity categories of people forcibly brought to the island. They originated from the geographic area now called Nigeria and the contemporary Yoruba ethnic identity.²⁵ The identity of Lucumí within Cuba encompassed a diverse spectrum of groups from within the geographic region, most notably identified as being from Egbado (Egguadó) and Oyo. Within Cuba, these two identity groups both collaborated and clashed in the process of establishing themselves and their ritual communities throughout the nineteenth century. Along with the Abakuá-Carabalí, The Lucumí maintained a strong influence. For the first half of the nineteenth century, the majority of Lucumí practices in Regla were guided by Egbado knowledge, consecrating Regla as Ará-Olokún (Land of Olokún), considered the Orisha of the Sea. On January 6, the Day of Kings celebration, the Egbado of Regla celebrated Olokun with a processional guided by Egguado drummers as they revered this Orisha, who now is considered another side of Yemayá.²⁶ By the time one of the most important members of Cuba’s Lucumí community arrived in Regla, there was already an established Lucumí processional tradition revering an Orisha associated with the Seas. The arrival and establishment of Remegio Herrera-Adechina as one of the most highly respected members of the Lucumí and Regla’s African Diasporic community solidified this processional tradition, helping it transform into the Oyo-based practice we now know it to be.

*Remegio Herrera-Adechina. Photo date unknown. Provided by the Museum of Regla.*

Of Lucumí descent, Adechina was forcibly brought to Cuba, disembarking in either Havana or Matanzas while in his late teens or early 20s sometime in the late 1820s-early 1830s.²⁷. Adeshina became manumitted sometime in the early 1830s, likely because those Lucumí he encountered recognized his religious stature as a babalow due to the ritual markings on his face.²⁸ He then became the leader of the Cabildo Lucumí Santa Bárbara in the town of Simpson, Matanzas in the 1840s. Regla baptism records from 1851 in which he is listed as the godfather indicate he, at the very least, had deep connections to Regla even if he was still living in Matanzas. This movement across the western provinces was facilitated by the existence of the railroad in the region, which allowed for easier mobility and contact to grow the Lucumí religious network. While it is not clear exactly when Adechina moved to Regla, it happened in the first few years of the 1860s when he was documented living at 31 Calle Ciprián (now Fresneda) with his new wife Francisca Burlet, his daughter Josefa “Pepa” Herrera/Eshú Bí, who was born in Regla in 1864,²⁹his son Teodoro in 1866 and a number of other family members.

As a young child, Pepa was ordained to Elegua due to health reasons by famed Iyalorishas³⁰ Ña Inés García-Yeyé Tolokún (godmother) and Ma Monserrate “Apóto” González-Obá Tero (ojubona).

*Ma Monserrate “Apóto” González-Oba Tero. Date unknown. Photo provided by the Museum of Regla.*

Pepa-Echú Bí was socialized for leadership growing up in and around the Lucumí network as it strengthened throughout the second half of the nineteenth century.³¹ As an active iyalorisha, she participated in lots of ceremonies in Palmira, Cienfuegos, and of course Regla where she was highly revered and respected.³²

Adeshina’s social positioning within Regla as a highly respected babalow and stonemason during the 1860’s was also contextualized amidst a growing integration of white Cubans into African-inspired Cuban religious practices, such as Abakuá, beginning in the late 1850s, and Ifá in the 1890s.³³ Archival records reflecting baptisms and Adechina’s own marriage show he maintained social ties to wealthy white residents as well, which would have likely facilitated his ability to purchase properties and organize a spiritual community.³⁴ Adechina formally established the Cabildo Yemayá in Regla sometime in the early 1860s in collaboration with Ño Juan el Cojo/Añabí, and Ño Filomeno Garcia/Atandá.

The events leading to the formation of the Cabildo Yemaya began in the 1830s when Añabí and Atandá connected in Regla. Initiated prior to his enslavement and forced trafficking across the Atlantic, Añabí was a babalow (diviner of Ifá), olosáin (ritual herbalist), and oni-ilú (consecrated player of the sacred batá drums). After injuring his leg carrying sugar cane on the plantation where he was enslaved, he was brought to the barracón-hospital for enslaved people in Regla. During his convalescence, he heard familiar sacred drumming and singing to the Orisha absent from his life in Cuba thus far. At the same time, he re-connected with Atandá, who he knew from their African homeland as a sculptor and drum maker. As was typically the case, this cabildo organically formed due to their mutual recognition of each other’s ritual knowledge. After attending a drumming ceremony at the Cabildo Lukumí Alakisá on Egido Street in Havana,³⁵ they realized there was an absence of ritually consecrated batá drums in Cuba. Since they held knowledge of how to construct the necessary drums, they collaborated in building the first consecrated set of batá, called Añabí (Aña–the sacred essence of the drums—is born). How they connected with Adechina is not clear, though it’s likely to have occurred through the burgeoning Lukumí community networks throughout western Cuba and due to Adechina’s reputation as a babalow. By 1866, all three were in Regla: they had founded the Cabildo Yemaya and debuted the second consecrated batá set, the Voz de Oro (The Golden Voice) for the Cabildo Yemaya. Constructed from dark mahogany wood, Atandá carved the walls of the iya (mother drum) very thin with a curvaceous shape.³⁶ It is very possible the Cabildo Yemaya had been founded earlier, as the pattern emerging within research on cabildos de nación throughout the island (and not just focusing on nineteenth-century western Cuba) is that these communities typically formed prior to any formal registration with the colonial government. By 1872, Adechina owned two properties: the home at 31 Calle Ciprián and a large open lot on what is now Calle Perdomo. By 1900, he owned multiple rental homes as well.³⁷

*Looking down Calle Diaz Benitez at the intersection of Perdomo, where many of Regla’s Abakuá and Lucumí cabildos were situated. Photo by Alexandra P. Gelbard, 2019.*

To date, I have not yet found descriptions of the Cabildo Yemaya processionals as they occurred throughout the second half of the nineteenth century during the period of the Cuban independence wars.³⁸ It is unclear if the processionals consistently occurred, happened occasionally, or paused completely during this period. At least one processional went out between the end of the Ten Years War in February of 1878 and the start of the Little War in August of 1879. A document recently found in the Guanabacoa archives of Adechina petitioning to conduct a cabildo processional (dated September 2, 1878) requested permission to carry the image of the Virgin of Regla:

“…from the Cabildo house situated on number 175 Santa Ana Street to the Church or Sanctuary of this town and from there, return to its place of departure accompanied in this procession by music and instruments in the style of its country along the route it travels.” The discovery of this document in the Guanabacoa archives in 2018 is credited to the Cabildo de Regla project initiative by inspiring attention to amplify the existing research. One of the key intentions of the project is to fill out the history after its organizers and community members recognized that existing scholarship only told part of their story and history. ³⁹

This positioning of Santa Ana Street (now Calle Maceo) as a central east-west artery of the town and the numeration of the house, likely close to his other properties, placed their starting point in the tercer barrio (third neighborhood) in the south-eastern portion of town.

Calle Santa Ana (now Maceo) between San Ignacio (now Pereira) and Barrero (27th of November Street), looking east towards the boundary of the Third Neighborhood (Tercer Barrio). Photo by Alexandra P. Gelbard, 2019.

*Calle Santa Ana (now Maceo) between San Ignacio (now Pereira) and Barrero (27th of November Street), looking west towards the bay. Photo by Alexandra P. Gelbard, 2019.*

Cuba at War and Anti-Brujo Persecution

Due to the Ten Years War, the sugar industry went into decline; by the 1880s Cuba’s economy began falling into a depression. The disruption of trade impacted the labor force, creating a major unemployment crisis in all sectors of the Cuban economy.⁴⁰ Given Regla’s position within that economic system, it undoubtedly had devastating effects on the town, particularly upon the African Diasporic and Chinese populations who worked as laborers within the warehouse and dock industries. The Ten Years War and economic depression began the entrance of U.S. business interests who traded stocks in U.S. corporations for property deeds from white creole plantation owners.⁴¹. The U.S. invasion of Cuba in 1898 and subsequent occupation of Cuba through 1902, ushered in the presence of U.S. business owners who purchased a significant number of properties and businesses in Regla at the turn of the twentieth century.⁴² However, this did not seem to impact Adechina’s holdings; as discussed previously, his list of properties by 1900 shows an increase in wealth situating him within the upper echelons of Regla’s community of free people of color.⁴³

The U.S. occupation of Cuba also catalyzed racist prejudice aimed at African-inspired religious and cultural practices. Black Cuban troops, comprising a majority of the troops within the Independence army, used spiritual warfare and African-inspired ritual elements for protection while in battle. This display of Africanity fed into the U.S. racism and the anti-Black fear from the Cuban Creole elite who began re-framing white leadership within the Independence Army as “civilized ‘and “cultured” while maligning Black troops, including leaders such as Quintin Banderas.⁴⁴ The U.S. questioned whether Cuba had the “political maturity” to self-govern, arguing that Cubans were, “swayed easily by emotions and led readily by demagogues.”⁴⁵ As part of the occupation, the U.S. implemented a “civilizing” campaign that targeted a massive, island-wide infrastructure upgrade, separation of Church and State, and a re-organization of the University of Havana. This last aspect was responsible for creating the Department of Anthropology and Anthropomorphic Exercises, an academic framework that centered on biologistic racism and white superiority. This became intimately linked to the process of criminalizing expressions of Africanity and the anti-witchcraft movement that fueled anti-Black racism throughout the first three decades of the 20th century.⁴⁶

Adeshina passed away in 1905 transferring the leadership of the Cabildo Yemaya on to his daughter Pepa-Eshú Bí.

The only known photo of Pepa Herrera-Echú Bí, appearing on the left. Taken towards the end of her life at one of the Cabildo Yemaya processionals. Date unknown. Photo provided by the Museum of Regla.

It does not appear that the cabildo processionals went out in the early period of the twentieth century, likely due to the continuing anti-brujo persecution of any expressions of Africanity. This complex period of Cuban history as a nascent independent Republic, grappling to appease the white supremacist respectabilities of a “civilized” society imposed by the U.S. and supported by the white Cuban creole elite, focused an assault on the realities of its African influences and Black population. This prompted an intersecting collaboration of the police force, which was substantiated by the Lombrosian theories of criminality associated with Blackness and Africanity. Young lawyer Fernando Ortiz began his intellectual engagement with these ideas in the first few years of the 1900s, publishing Hampa Afro-Cubana: Los Negros Brujos ([1906]2011), which became an essential manual for the police and subsequent investigations of “brujeria.” The subsequent police raids launched against cabildos de nación and other African-inspired religious practitioner communities resulted in the seizure of ritual objects, establishing the foundation for the Museum of Anthropology’s collection.⁴⁷

A set of batá drums confiscated by the police from Regla’s cabildo Changó, currently on display at the Museo Bellas Artes. Photo taken and digitally altered to include the display’s information cards by Alexandra P. Gelbard, 2019.

Amidst these raids, the police allegedly confiscated the Cabildo Yemaya’s Voz de Oro batá drums and their whereabouts still remain unknown.⁴⁸ By 1911, members of the Sociedad Lucumí Santa Rita de Casia y San Lazaro in collaboration with the Sociedad de Socorros Mutuos bajo la Advocación de Santa Barbara initiated a campaign towards Ortiz in an attempt to demystify their practices, arguing they were “Christian Lucumí morality” framing their Lucumí rituals and beliefs within the 1901 Cuban constitution. In so doing, they evoked the statutes declaring Catholicism as the official religion of the Cuban nation but allowing other beliefs and practices as long as they maintained “respect [for] Christian morals and public order.”⁴⁹ This clearly had an impact on Ortiz; between 1916 and the early 1930s Ortiz also came into contact with Regla’s Cabildo de Yemaya, shifting his intellectual posturing away from the Lombrosian biologistic approach to one that advocated for the inclusion of Cuba’s Lucumí practices into the framework of Cuba’s national culture.⁵⁰ This would subsequently influence the construction of “Afro-Cuban Folklore” as a cultural genre, compartmentalizing the cultural portrayal of Orisha and expressions/practices of Lucumí religiosity.

Perhaps the 1912 Independent Party of Color (PIC) uprising and the subsequent massacre of at least 3,000 Black Cubans throughout the island contributed to Ortiz’s change in beliefs as well. Though the violence was mostly concentrated in Oriente (eastern Cuba), Regla and Havana did not escape the assault on Black life. White mobs, Cuban military personnel, and U.S. Marines patrolled the streets of Regla armed with guns, machetes, and rifles committing antagonistic violence and murdering Black Cubans. Even white Abakuá members who were part of the dockworkers’ labor unions turned against their Black compatriots, accusing them of advocating for racial preference to their exclusion. The months of violence spurred many of Regla’s Black residents to flee the town for a number of years; this included Pepa-Eschú Bí. Another racist event occurred in 1919 as part of a larger wave of violence, sparking a lynch mob and extended violence towards the Black Cuban community in Regla. As a result, the municipal elections of 1920 saw Antonio Bosch y Martinez win the mayoral seat; his support for the Abakuá societies of Regla instilled confidence in many of Regla’s exiled Black residents to return, including Pepa Herrera.⁵¹

While Pepa-Echú Bí was gone, Susana Cantero-Omi Toké, arrived in Regla, establishing her own Cabildo Yemaya, filling a void left by Pepa.⁵²

*Susana Cantero-Omi Toké. Date unknown. Photo provided by the Museum of Regla.*

Born in Cienfuegos, Cuba, Susana Cantero-Omi Toké came to the Havana area at the turn of the twentieth century and was ordained as an iyalorisha of Yemaya. She moved to Regla in 1914, informally establishing (as in, not registered with the government) her Cabildo Yemaya.⁵³ By 1921, Pepa returned to Regla and began the 20th-century iteration of the Cabildo Yemaya processional amidst the raw and fresh memory of the racial terror experienced by Black Cubans. As a public display of their African-inspired religiosity, using their own cabildo images of the Orishas syncretized as the Catholic Saints to maintain the public appearance of Christian Lucumí morality, they enacted a processional through the streets of Regla carrying four Orishas: Ochun, Obatalá, Changó, and Yemaya. While some scholarship indicates an assumption that Susana-Omi Toké took out Orishas in the same 1921 processional, it is unclear if that has been confirmed by paperwork requesting permission, as it has for Pepa-Echú Bí. Community members indicated that Susana-Omi Toké’s Cabildo Yemaya began formally participating a couple of years after the 1921 processional. However, Susana-Omi Toké’s participation became an integral part of the processional tradition.

Susana-Omí Toke’s house and where her cabildo was located on Calle Santa Ana (now Calle Maceo) between Calle San Ignacio (now Pereira) and Barrero (now 27th of November Street). Photo taken by Alexandra P. Gelbard, 2019.

The Cabildo Returns: (Re)Building the Processional Tradition

The 1921 processional is considered the initiation of Regla’s tradition embraced and reinitiated by the Cabildo de Regla project. The 20th-century cabildo processional process began at midnight on September 7, wherein the cabildos throughout Regla would perform a tambor (ritual drumming) for the Yemaya throughout the night.⁵⁴ The evening of September 8th, the Orisha would be brought down to the church, and “sleep” inside the sanctuary. In the morning, the priest would conduct a mass, and while blessing the images, the batá, and the participants, he’d sprinkle holy water. Before starting the processional, the cabildo leaders would conduct a ritual communicating with the Orisha—referred to as “giving coco” (dar coco) to see if it was ok to commence. The processional would then go down to the water’s edge where participants gave offerings to Yemaya and Olokun. The batá would play and participants would sing, creating an efficacious environment for the Orisha to come down and mount participants (also referred to as possession), a normative part of spiritual communication and reverence within this practice. They would then head east up a main artery road, stopping to salute the homes of respected Olorishas, key places within the town such as the government building, the market,⁵⁵the police station, and other homes that would give a derecho (financial payment or “rite”). At each stop, they would give coco, sing, and drum accordingly in reverence to the Orisha. This processional continued to the eastern edge of town, to the old cemetery, where Africans remained buried after the construction of the new cemetery in 1900 at the top of the hill on the far eastern boundary, the processional’s next stop. Once there, the bata would play for Oya, the Orisha who owns the cemetery, and wait until Oya mounted one of the participants initiated to her. After giving coco to the cemeteries and receiving permission to continue, the processional would stop at the homes of various Olorishas throughout the town, including some just outside Regla. The processional would return to the cabildo house and commence another tambor throughout the rest of the evening.⁵⁶

Throughout the next forty years, the Cabildo Yemaya processionals continued annually on September 9th.⁵⁷. The consecrated statues used by Susana-Omi Toké’s cabildo were three times as big as Pepa-Echú Bí’s and appeared in all of the known photos of the 20th-century cabildo processional. However, because both cabildos went out on the same day, they staggered their start times, with Susana-Omi Toké’s beginning at 9 in the morning at the first mass, and Pepa-Echú Bí’s commencing at 11am. However, according to Ramos, Pepa-Echú Bí’s Orisha statues would stay at the door, while Susana-Omi Toké’s entered the church. The routes and rituals were all the same, though the only distinctions were in the consecrated images. As Elizabeth Pérez states, the vast difference in the size and adornment reflected “the potentiality of religious images to construct reputations and identities” that subsequently reflected their respective positions.⁵⁸ Upon Pepa-Echú Bí’s death on July 13, 1946, the processional continued under the supervision of Panchita Cárdenas, who’d directed the processional in the years that Pepa-Echú Bí’s health had begun to fail and had difficulty walking after losing her foot. Cárdenas lived several doors down from the Virgin of Regla Church Sanctuary and worked there as a chambermaid.⁵⁹ A iyalorisha of Yemaya, she maintained a sacred space dedicated to Yemaya that her family (while not practitioners) continues to maintain to this day. She was also a highly respected and important source for Rómulo Lachatañeré, who conducted influential research on Afro-Cuban religions in the 1930s.

Panchita Cardenas’ sacred space for Yemaya, still maintained by her descendants. Photos by Alexandra P. Gelbard, September 7, 2019.

A Tradition, Ruptured

Susana-Omi Toké passed away in August 1948 and her niece Carmen Cantero inherited her processional Orishas continuing to lead the practice until its prohibition in 1962. The triumph of the 1959 Cuban Revolution and its subsequent embrace of Marxist-Leninist policy resulted in measures restricting public expressions of religiosity while grappling with the idea of spiritual beliefs being in conflict with the Revolution’s social policy.⁶⁰This subsequently prohibited Regla’s cabildo processional tradition, eliciting protests from community members and a petition to continue the practice.⁶¹ The 1976 PCC congress (Communist Party of Cuba) determined that folkloric values and expressions derived from Afro-Cuban Religions, music, dance, and instrumentation, were important to Cuba’s national culture. The congress mandated the further extrication of spiritual components from the culture as they were not considered “scientific truth.” Subsequently, cultural producers such as writers and artists were encouraged to incorporate the Afro-Cuban folkloric elements into their work, while academic entities engaging in folkloric studies were to cultivate theoretical frameworks for their “assimilation” into Cuba’s national culture.⁶²

After Carmen Cantero’s death in the late 1960’s, the cabildo images were passed down to one of Susana-Omi Toké’s godchildren, Omi Lana, an iyalaocha of Yemaya. When she passed away in the late 1970s, care for them passed to Omi Lana’s daughter, Omi Dina. As Ramos recounts, Omi Dina was very protective of the images and did not allow anyone else to take them, including the Regla Museum. She tried to revive the cabildo processional, taking out the images and processing with them for two blocks or so from her home to the cemetery on September 7th, though without the accompaniment of batá drums. Any extended processional was cost-prohibitive.⁶³ An additional attempt to reinitiate the cabildo processional tradition occurred in the mid-1980 when a Regla citizen’s fervent petitions to the government for resuscitation were met with a compromise. The government agreed to allow a processional with a living woman dressed in the Afro-Cuban folkloric style of the Orisha Yemaya to be carried on a platform around the town while she danced as the Orisha. This occurred one year in either 1985 or 1986 but was not well received by the community.⁶⁴ It wasn’t until 2015 that the efforts to re-initiate the Regla cabildo processional tradition finally garnered success. You can read about this in the blog post, “The Process of Re-Initiation”.

Bibliography

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• Anderies, Julie Parella. 2006. “The Virgin of Regla Diaspora of a Dark Madonna in the Spanish Colonies.” Masters of Arts, University of Denver.

• Ayorinde, Christine. 2003. Afro-Cuban Religiosity, Revolution, and National Identity. History of African-American Religions. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.

• Benson, Devyn Spence. 2016. Antiracism in Cuba: The Unfinished Revolution. Envisioning Cuba. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.

• Bronfman, Alejandra Marina. 2004. Measures of Equality : Social Science, Citizenship, and Race in Cuba, 1902-1940. Envisioning Cuba. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip0417/2004009060.html.

• Brown, David H. 2003. Santeria Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

• Castellanos, Zoila. 1962. “Los Cabildos de Regla.” Mujeres Cubanas, 1962.

• Duque, Francisco M. 1925. Historia de Regla: Descripcion Politica, Economica, y Social, Desde Su Fundacion Hasta El Dia. Habana, Cuba: Imprenta y Papeleria de Rambla, Bouza, y Ca.

•Ferrer, Ada. 1999. Insurget Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

———. 2014. Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

———. 2019. “Introduction to Part II.” In Breaking the Chains, Forging the Nation: The Afro-Cuban Fight for Freedom and Equality 1812-1912, edited by Ada Ferrer and Fannie T. Rushing, 131–37. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.

• Fuente, Alejandro de la. 2008. Havana and the Atlantic in the Sixteenth Century.

• Fuente, Alejandro de la, and Ariela J. Gross. 2020. Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana. Studies in Legal History. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

• Gomez Luaces, Eduardo. 1945. Historia de Nuestra Señora de Regla. Sus Fiestas, Los Cabildos. Con Datos Ineditos y Jucios Criticos Sobre Regla. Regla, Cuba.

• González Figueroa, Xiomara, and Roberto Rodríguez Menéndez. 1986. La Casa de Todos: Los Muchachos de Regla. La Habana: Editoria Abril de la UJC.

• Hazard, Samuel. 1873. Cuba with Pen and Pencil. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low & Searle.

• Helg, Aline. 1995. Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.

• Iglesias Utset, Marial. 2011. A Cultural History of Cuba During the U.S. Occupation, 1898-1902. Translated by Russ Davidson. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.

• López, Kathleen. 2013. Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History. Envisioning Cuba. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.

• Martínez Betancourt, Julio Ismael. 2017. “María Josefa Herrera Burgles (1864-1947), incio y rescate de una tradición en el pueblo de Regla, La Habana.” Catauro 19 (36): 100–115.

•Martínez Casanova, Manuel. 2009. Las Devociones Marianas En Cuba. Santa Clara, Cuba: Editorial Capiro.

• Martinez-Alier, Verena. 1974. Marriage, Class and Color in Nineteenth-Century Cuba: A Study of Racial Attitudes and Sexual Values in a Slave Society. Women and Culture Series. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

• Martínez-Fernández, Luis. 2018. Key to the New World: A History of Early Colonial Cuba.

Miller, Ivor. 2009. Voice of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba. Caribbean Studies Series. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

• Ogundiran, Akinwumi. 2020. The Yorùbá: A New History. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

• Ortiz, Fernando. 1954. Los Instrumentos de La Música Afrocubana. Vol. 4. 5 vols. Cardenas y CIA: Editores e Impresores–Egido, 568.

• Palmié, Stephan. 2013. The Cooking of History: How Not to Study Afro-Cuban Religion. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

• Palmié, Stephan, and Elizabeth Pérez. 2005. “An All Too Present Absence: Fernando Ortizʼs Work on Abakuá in Its Sociocultural Context.” New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids 79 (3 & 4): 219–27.

• Pedroso, Luis Alberto. 2008. “El Ultimo Cabildo de Yemaya: Roberto Salas.” Taller Marco.

Perera Díaz, Aisnara, and María de los Angeles Meriño Fuentes. 2013. El Cabildo Carabalí Viví de Santiago de Cuba: Familia, Cultura, y Sociedad (1797-1909). Bronce colección. Santiago de Cuba: Editorial Oriente.

• Perez, Elizabeth. 2010. “The Virgin in the Mirror: Reading Images of a Black Madonna Through the Lens of Afro-Cuban Women’s Experiences.” Journal of African American History 95 (2): 202–28.

• Pérez Jr., Louis A. 2006. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.

• Ramos, Miguel W. 2000. “The Empire Beats on: Oyo, Batá Drums and Hegemony in Nineteenth-Century Cuba.” Masters of Arts (History), Miami, FL: Florida International University.

———. 2003. “La División de La Habana: Territorial Conflict and Cultural Hegemony in the Followers of Oyo Lukumí Religion, 1850s-1920.” Cuban Studies 34: 38–70.

———. 2013. “Lucumí (Yoruba) Culture in Cuba: A Reevaluation (1830S -1940s).” Doctor of Philosophy History, Florida International University. https://doi.org/10.25148/etd.FI13120402.

• Real Academia de la Historia. n.d. “Recio Castaños, Antón.” Digital Library. Diccionario Biograáfico de a Real Academia de la Historia. Accessed April 6, 2021. http://dbe.rah.es/biografias/108522/anton-recio-castanos.

• Rowe, Erin Kathleen. 2019. Black Saints in Early Modern Global Catholicism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Schmidt, Jalane D. 2015. Cachita’s Streets: The Virgin of Charity, Race, and Revolution in Cuba. The Religious Cultures of African and African Diaspora People. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

• Vargas Ugarte, Ruben. 1947. Historia Del Culto de Maria En Iberioamerica y de Sus Imagenes y Santuarios Mas Celebrados. Segunda Edición. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial Huarpes, S.A.

• Wheat, David. 2016. Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean: 1570-1640. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

End Notes

1
See Erin Kathleen Rowe’s Black Saints in Early Modern Global Catholicism(2019) for an in-depth history of the broader spectrum of Black Saints throughout the globe and the spectrum of interpretations of Black Sanctity. The information cited here derive from pages 4, 16-17.
2
Pérez 2010:204, who cites Gomez Luaces 1945:1. Pérez’s article can be downloaded here: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.5323/jafriamerhist.95.2.0202
3
Ramos 2013:209, who cites Gomez Luaces 1945:1.
4
Anderies 2006:5-7; De La Fuente 2008:4-5; Miller 2009:66-67; Wheat 2016:10.
5
The Recio family, established in Cuba by Antón Recio, were one of the oldest and most powerful families during the colonial era. There are at least two Antón Recios referenced in the early colonial histories. The first Antón, one of the first colonizers of Havana, established one of the most powerful and wealthiest families in sixteenth-century Havana, and died in 1575. He had multiple children of mixed Taino and Spanish lineage due to his co-habitation with Cacanga, the daughter of the Guanabacoa Taino cacique, and had two children María and Juan. Juan was “legitimized” by the Spanish colonial government in 1567 and received the largest inheritance of anyone at the time, including the land now known as Regla, adjacent to Guanabacoa. Juan’s son, also named Antón is sometimes conflated with his grandfather in some of the historical narratives (De La Fuente 2008:191–95; Martínez-Fernández 2018:95–97; Real Academia de la Historia n.d.).
6
Bohios originate with peoples native to the Caribbean and are round shelters constructed of palm fronds, guano, and/or mud
7
Pérez 2012:211; Martínez Casanova 2009:82.
8
Duque 1925:11-12; Vargas Ugarte 1947:329.
9
Duque 1925:11-12; Martínez Casanova 2009:81-82; Pérez 2010:211; Ramos 2013:2010; Vargas Ugarte 1947:329-330.
10
Martínez Casanova 2009:82-83.
11
Duque 1925:11-12 cites the 1806 date, while Ramos 2013: 210-211 cites the 1811 date
12
Ramos 2013:221-225.
13
Ramos 2013: 212, 226.
14
Spain initially aligned itself with the Haitian Revolutionary Army, sending troops from Cuba to fight alongside Toussaint Louverture’s army against the French between 1793-1796. These Cuban troops included in its leadership many of the white creole plantation owners, who stole the necessary machinery for sugar production amidst the war. This allowed them to easily and rapidly transfer production to Cuba. See Ada Ferrer, Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution (2014).
15
Martinez-Alier 1974:62; Pérez 2010:212. In a population total of 5,873 people, 3,758 identified as white, 797 as free people of color, and 1,318 people were identified as enslaved Africans.
16
The Carabalí “ethnicity” was an imposed label on enslaved Africans forcibly trafficked from the port of Calibar in the Cross River region of contemporary eastern Nigeria along the western border of Cameroon. Those categorized under “Carabalí” in Cuba originated from various groups throughout the coastal and interior region around the Bight of Benin. The Abakuá, who descended from the all-male secret societies of the Ékpè/Mgbè in Cross River delta, (Miller 2009:6-7, 37-41, 77-78). While Miller and many others conflate Carabalí as Abakuá, this is a regional assumption, as the presence of Carabalí cabildos de nación reflects Igbo descendants as early as 1659 in Santiago de Cuba. Santiago’s Carabalí community had no relationship to Èkpè and there have never been Abakuá lodges (ponencias) there (Field Notes 2008, 2019). Elsa Isabel Almaguer Andreu cites the formation of a Cabildo Carabalí in her unpublished master’s thesis, El Cabildo Congo en Santiago de Cuba(2010). Also see Aisnara Perera Díaz and María de los Angeles Meriño Fuentes El Cabildo Carabalí Viví de Santiago de Cuba: Familia, Cultura y Sociedad(2013).
17
Perera Díaz & de los Angeles Meriño Fuentes 2013:116-118.
18
Ferrer 2019:131.
19
Palmié & Pérez 2005:219.
20
Of the total population numbering 6,689 people, 5,071 people identified as white (2,696 men and 2,375 women), 644 free people of color (324 men and 320 women), and 974 enslaved people (519 men and 428 women). See Martinez Alier 1974:64.
21
This date is marked by a plaque in Regla situated across from the old dock. In 1846, Cuban merchant Pedro de Zuzueta, cousin of notorious and wealthy plantation owner Julián de Zuzueta, proposed the idea to bring Chinese contract laborers into Cuba to mitigate the need for laborers amidst the growing pressures to abolish the trans-Atlantic slave trade from Africa, initiated by England in 1810. Despite the categorization and intimation that these indentured laborers voluntarily signed contracts, this was not always the case as some were kidnapped. There is also conflicting dates for the initial arrival of the first ship of Chinese people entering Cuba, wherein Kathleen Lopez states this occurred on June 3, 1947 (2013:19-22, 26, 32).
22
Finch 2019: 138-139; López 2013:18-20. These rebellions throughout western Cuba would ultimately spark a year-long period of enhanced cruelty, violence, and persecution committed by the white Cuban authorities against Black Cubans in response to the anti-slavery rebellions of the previous years and catalyzed by the discovery of the Escalera Rebellion of 1844. For more details on this rebellion see Aisha Finch, Rethinking Slave Rebellion in Cuba: La Escalera and the Insurgencies of 1841-1844 (2015). It is also important to note that anti-slavery rebellions occurred within Oriente as well, despite their exclusion from the historical narratives, mostly committed by the self-liberated neo-African maroon communities (called palenques) found throughout the mountainous zones of the eastern region of the island
23
Hazard 1871: 267-268; López 2013:33; Ramos 2013:214-216
24
Ramos 2013:216.
25
See Akinwumi Ogundiran’s book The Yorùbá: A New History engaging the complex historical process involved in the construction of this identity group.
26
Ramos 2003:44; 2013: 211 (citing John Mason, Olóòkun: Owner of Rivers and Seas,1996:18), 225 (citing Fernando Ortiz, Los bailes y el teatro de los negros en el folklore de Cuba, 1981:451).
27
Ramos 2013:373-377. Ramos describes the variations and contradictions of Adechina’s story prior to his arrival in Regla in the middle of the nineteenth century and the debate as to Adechina’s heritage. Some claim he was from the Oyo; based on the ritual markings on his face, some scholars believe he was from the area of Egba and Ijebú, which became part of the Oyo empire in the eighteenth century. Others state he was from Ijesaland (in Cuba this is referred to as Yesá or Iyesá). Ramos concludes that Adechina’s heritage from Oyo is more likely due to his connections with the Egbado Lucumí community in Matanzas
28
The process of Adechina’s manumission is also contested, and the versions are outlined by Ramos (2013:374-375). Manumission was a process of emancipation from slavery. For more on this process and Cuba’s distinctive form, see Chapter 2, “The ‘Inconvenience’ of Black Freedom: Manumission, 1500’s-1700s” in Alejandro de la Fuente & Ariela J. Gross, Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana(2020).
29
The 1864 date is most commonly used; however, Ramos cites 1863 as her year of birth. I’ve not seen other scholarship using that date thus far.
30
Ramos defines this term as “mother of an Orisha” indicating someone has gone through the ritual processes of initiation (2003:42, Fn.25, pg 64.)
31
Martinez Betancourt 2017:102; Pérez 2010: 213; Ramos 2003:42.
32
Ramos 2013:384.
33
The first white Cubans were initiated as Abakuá in 1857. (Ramos 2013:380). Ivor Miller argues that contact beginning in 1763 between free African Diaspora members working the docks and encountering whites working on the ships would ultimately facilitate the initiation of whites into Abakuá a century later (2009:107). This is discussed more extensively throughout chapter 4, “From Creole to Carabalí.” The first white Ifá initiate Bonifacio Valdés, a merchant from Regla, instigated a long ritual lineage of his own that now spans the globe (Palmié 2013:26).
34
Ramos 2013:379-380. Ramos cites Brown 2003:78, Fn. 4, 317-318.
35
This cabildo de nación was led by Ma Monserrate “Apóto” González-Obá Tero and became known by this derogatory name meaning “garbage heap” as a result of the “division of Havana” (Ramos 2003: 50). This article is publicly accessible through eleda.org at http://eleda.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/pdf/LaDivisionDeLaHabana_Ramos.pdf
36
Ramos 2000: 143-146, 148; Ramos 2013:377-378; Ortiz 1955: 315-316. Ramos also recounts the various origin stories for the batá drums in Cuba and concludes that it is likely two distinctive forms of batá drumming arose between Matanzas and Havana (Ramos 200:156-164).
37
Brown 2003: Fn. 4, 317-318.
38
The Ten Year’s War lasted from 1868-1878, the Little War from 1879-1880, and the Independence war from 1898-1902.
39
Quote reprinted in Martínez Betancourt 2017:101-102, my translation.
40
Pérez Jr. 2006:99-104.
41
Pérez Jr. 2006: 102-104
42
Although the U.S. technically relinquished the power of self-governance to Cuba upon their exit in 1902, they implemented the Platt Amendment in 1903 wherein the U.S. gave itself the right to invade Cuba should the U.S. deem it necessary (Pérez Jr. 2006:142-144.)
43
His status as a “libre de color” translated as “free person of color” was a social identity category found throughout the historical narratives and archival documents reflecting the intersections of race and class.
44
Benson 2016:11-13; Bronfman 2004: 11, 67-69,73; Ferrer 1999:173-85.
45
Pérez Jr. 2006:141-142.
46
Bronfman 2004:26-29, 69, 98-99; Ferrer 1999:188-191. Iglesias Utsat 2011:18-25,31-33, 59. For details on the child murders that catalyzed the anti-brujo persecution, see Bronfman 2004: 37-58.
47
Bronfman 2004:28-29.
48
Pérez 2010:214.
49
Bronfman 2004:23; Palmié 2013:55-56. In this context, sociedades (societies) functioned in the same way as cabildos de nación.
50
Palmié 2013:56-57.
51
Bronfman 2004:83; Helg 1995:172, 213-215; Palmié 2002: Fn 35, 343; Pérez 2010:215-216. Duque’s writing on the history of Regla also includes commentary about this violence but does so with a framing that appears to justify the horrors committed against Black Cubans in Regla (1925:127-130).
52
Pérez 2010:2016.
53
González Figueroa & Rodríguez Menéndez 1986:65; Pérez 2010:213.
54
Gomez Luaces 1945: 19.
55
Pedroso 2008:1. The market was destroyed in 1933 but remained a stop until then.
56
Gomez Luaces 1945:19-21; Pérez 2010: 218; Ramos 2000:147-148. This account is based on an integration of the three citations in conjunction with the verbal accounts provided by community members since 2016. Ramos’s account of the 20th-century processional states it went up Calle Maceo, which implies the processional would have had to cross over a street to get to the government house and police station. If the processional had gone up Calle Real (now Calle Martí) they would have been one block parallel and to the north of Calle Maceo/Santa Ana but would have directly passed the town sites without crossing back and forth. It’s quite possible, but it also means there was a lot of movement winding through the streets. According to Pérez, there were upwards of 100,000 people who came to Regla for this event, indicating a lot of movement back and forth.
57
Castellanos’ article on the Cabildo de Regla mentions that sometime during the Machado era (1925-1933) the cabildo processional was prohibited once (1962, no pagination)
58
Pérez 2010:218-219, 227 Fn.120.
59
Pérez 2010:219.
60
Ayorinde 2004:96-97. Also see Jelane Schmidt (2015), chapter 8 “’The Streets are for Revolutionaries!’ Prohibiting Processions”.
61
Castellanos 1962: no pagination.
62
Ayorinde 2004:98-99.
63
Ramos 2000:148-149.
64
Field Notes, 2018.

A General History of Regla & Its Cabildo Processional Tradition

Black Saints and the Virgin of Regla

Regla: A Port Town on Havana Bay

The Cabildo of Yemaya: Origins of a Tradition

Cuba at War and Anti-Brujo Persecution

The Cabildo Returns: (Re)Building the Processional Tradition

A Tradition, Ruptured

Bibliography

End Notes

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