Recreating Collective Memories of Africa in the Afro-Caribbean Diaspora:
‘Spiritual Resistance’ in Cuban Santería and Haitian Vodou

Stephane Martin Demers 2T1
York University
Osgoode Hall Law School

Forced to succumb to a life of enslavement,
African-turned-Afro-Caribbean slaves devel-
oped a collective image of their beloved
homeland and forged an unbreakable chain of
solidarity among their many ethnicities. The
collective recreation of Africa as manifest in
the imagination of Afro-Caribbean slaves
through the practice of Cuban Santería and
Haitian Vodou in sixteenth- to eigh-
teenth-century Cuba and Haiti catalyzed their
resistance to European subjugation. In partic-
ular, these recreated cultural memories
served as a foundation for the enslaved to
subvert the dominant culture and resist
enslavement. Syncretism fails to properly
acknowledge the Afro-Caribbean slaves’
efforts in challenging the imperial regime and
the role these efforts played in maintaining
their African roots. The tumultuous yet
hopeful history through which Cuban
Santería and Haitian Vodou evolved reveals
that the African spirit continuously takes on
new forms but never dies.

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Africa, Caribbean,
Afro-Caribbean slaves, Santería,
Vodou, enslavement, syncretism

B I O

Stephane recently graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Music
and a Minor in History. Stephane is currently pursuing his Juris Doctor at Osgoode Hall
Law School at York University where he intends to combine his interests in music and
law to create a more equitable and just law school environment and legal profession.

© 2021 Stephane Martin Demers
Caribbean Studies Students’ Union, Canada - https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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Bettina E. Schmidt, “The Creation of Afro-Caribbean Religions and Their Incorporation of Christian Elements: A Critique
against Syncretism,” Transformation 23, no. 4 (October 2006): 237, https://doi.org/10.1177/026537880602300407.
Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert and Margarite Fernandez Olmos, Creole Religions of the Caribbean: An Introduction from
Vodou and Santería to Obeah and Espiritismo (New York: New York University Press, 2011), ProQuest Ebook
Central, 39.
Patricia González Gómes-Cásseres, “Afro-Cuban Religions: Spiritual Marronage and Resistance,” Social and Economic
Studies 67, no. 1 (03, 2018): 118, h
Schmidt, “A Critique against Syncretism,” 237.
Paravisini-Gebert and Olmos, Creole Religions of the Caribbean, 41.
Paravisini-Gebert and Olmos, 36.
Paravisini-Gebert and Olmos, 125.
Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (London: Thames and Hudson, 1953), 62, quoted in
Paravisini-Gebert and Olmos, 121.

Africans en route to the Americas during
the Middle Passage lost much of their
cultural heritage. The doggedness of
European colonial officials in their erasure
of lasting cultural memories was largely
responsible for the irreversible loss of
components of African religions and
music. Forced to succumb to a life of
enslavement, African-turned-Afro-Carib-
bean slaves developed a collective image
of their beloved homeland and forged an
unbreakable chain of solidarity among
their many ethnicities. Cuban Santería and
Haitian Vodou ,both Afro-Caribbean
religions originating in modern-day
Nigeria , are important manifestations of
this newfound solidarity. This research
argues that during the sixteenth to eigh-
teenth century, Africans in Cuba and Haiti
facilitated the collective recreation of
African-ness by practicing Cuban Santería
and Haitian Vodou. This allowed Afro-Ca-
ribbean slaves to successfully resist
European attempts to suppress their
religious and musical practices. Through
this ‘spiritual marronage,’ – a term coined
by Gómes-Cásseres – they were able to
endure the intolerable brutality of slavery.

Afro-Caribbean Resistance Against
European Repression
Though Yoruba prisoners of war with a
broad knowledge of religious practices
were among the Africans who traversed
the Middle Passage during the eighteenth
century, European colonial practices
significantly reduced the amount of
knowledge that they were able to retain
and the number of individuals with this
knowledge. In Cuba, only twenty out of
the hundreds of orishas (gods of Santería)
worshipped in Africa survived to have any
lasting impact on the religious practices of
the Afro-Cubans. Still, African slaves
used the orishas that they did retain to suit
their present needs. For example, they
called on Chango, the warrior orisha in
Santería, to withstand the inescapable
oppression to which they were subjected.
Worshippers of Haitian Vodou also used
their Iwas (gods of Vodou) to challenge
colonial rule. They called on the Petwo, a
group of vengeful and violent creole Iwas
originating from Kongo and Angola, to
counter their initial displacement and
subsequent enslavement in Haiti.
Although Santería and Vodou were formed
under slavery and colonization, Afro-Ca-
ribbean slaves used the resistive capacities
of their deities of a bygone Africa to
protest their state of destitution.

4
5

6
7

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Paravisini-Gebert and Olmos, Creole Religions of the Caribbean, 36.
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Social control in slave plantation societies: a comparison of St. Domingue and Cuba
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971), 79, HathiTrust.
Hall, 40.
Hall, 41.

Restricted from openly worshipping their
deities in sixteenth and seventeenth
century Cuba, Afro-Cuban slaves had to
find other ways to oppose European
domination. While Afro-Cuban cabildos
often served this role, the Spanish imperial
regime would often use these separate
societies that fostered African solidarity
through public gatherings and religious
processions to further restrict religious
expression. Their first method to achieve
this goal was to stimulate interethnic
conflict among the Afro-Cubans. Specifi-
cally, they allowed only certain dances to
be performed in a short window of time on
specific days and prohibited the display of
African iconography during parades.
Aware of this colonial scheme, the
Afro-Cubans sustained ties to their African
roots and asserted their communal solidar-
ity. The king, queen, and captain, the three
most important figures of the cabildos,
rallied under an identifying flag while
outfitted in royal and military attire – a
bold statement in and of itself. Even
though each cabildo was associated with a
Catholic saint, the Afro-Cubans secretly
worshipped their ancestral gods. Thus,
instead of further dividing the Afro-Cu-
bans along ethnic lines, the cabildos
allowed them to maintain a sense of
religious and political autonomy through
their collective memory of Africa. In
doing so, they effectively countered the
prevailing social order narrowly focused
on weeding out their cultural practices.

Unlike the restrictions put in place by
Spanish colonizers to restrict African
religious expression in Cuba, the laws
designed to suppress Vodou in seventeenth
and eighteenth century Haiti were unmis-
takably repressive. Despite the law’s
attempt to eliminate any trace of this
‘devilish’ religion, Haitian slaves subvert-
ed the social order by taking up arms
against whites, congregating in meetings,
and escaping bondage. Vodou equipped
these slaves with the power to undertake
these acts of defiance. If for any reason a
slave attacked a white person, they would
either be given the death penalty – either
broken alive on the wheel, or flogged.
Undaunted by these punishments, in 1758,
infamous Haitian religious leader François
Mackandal attracted a large group of
maroons through the transgressive power
of Vodou to eliminate whites from the
colony. These networks of followers
across estates were instrumental in
attempts to overthrow the colonial frame-
work in Haiti. Though Mackandal’s death
at the hands of authorities later that year
effectively suppressed the rebellion, he
rallied enough slaves whose religious
convictions were steeped in the power of
Vodou and African unity to attempt to
supplant the social order.

Though short-lived, Mackandal’s Conspir-
acy inspired slaves to congregate and
collectively rebel in spaces free of the
watchful eyes of planters. In violation of

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Leslie Gérald Desmangles, The Faces of the gods: vodou and Roman Catholicism in Haiti (Chapel Hill, NC: The
University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 26, HathiTrust.
Desmangles, 27.
Paravisini-Gebert and Olmos, Creole Religions of the Caribbean, 36.
Paravisini-Gebert and Olmos, 40.
Barbara Bush, “African Echoes, Modern Fusions: Caribbean Music, Identity and Resistance in theAfrican
Diaspora,” Music Reference Services Quarterly 10, no. 1 (October 22, 2007): 19, doi:10.1300/J116v10n01_02.
Paravisini-Gebert and Olmos, Creole Religions of the Caribbean, 35.
Reed, “Shared Possessions,” 7-8.
ANP (Archives Nationales de Paris), File F52; File F3, 90: 110-21, quoted in Desmangles, The Faces of the gods, 23.
Roger Bastide, African Civilizations in the New World, trans. Peter Green (London: C. Hurst and Company, 1971),
156, quoted in Paravisini-Gebert and Olmos, Creole Religions of the Caribbean, 38.

the Police Rulings of 1758 and 1777
which “…prohibited the slaves, under
penalty of death, from meeting during the
night or day,” they violently attacked
planters and recklessly raided plantations
during Vodou meetings. This shared
religious solidarity that fueled these
insurrections gave rise to slave revolts that
would emerge during the Haitian Revolu-
tion. During this time, religious conviction
fuelled similar acts of resistance in Cuba –
though not leading to revolt as quickly.
Afro-Cuban slaves similarly resisted
slavery by absconding from their owners
to congregate. It was in the palenques,
fortified settlements on the periphery of
society, to which Afro-Cuban slaves
escaped slavery and continued to practice
Santería using a combination of percus-
sion instruments and coded call-and-re-
sponse vocals to communicate. In devel-
oping strong community networks rooted
in a collective representation of Africa,
Haitian and Afro-Cuban slaves resisted
their conditions to protect their cultural
practices from erasure.

Though Haitian and Afro-Cuban slaves
escaped to areas where they could safely
practice their religions, they remained
influenced by a colonial structure where
Roman Catholicism was the only religion
officially permitted. Steeped in the belief
that Santería and Vodou were against
everything Christianity stood for, Europe-
an planters were determined to expunge
the slaves’ ‘strange’ practices with “proper
Christian behavior.” The law both reflect-
ed and shaped this mode of thinking.
Under Articles II and VI of the Code Noir,
every slave had to be baptized and
instructed in the Catholic, Apostolic, and
Roman faiths. But the inability of planters
and lawmakers to enter the spiritual realm
of worshippers of Santería and Vodou
meant that the latter could worship their
African gods under the guise of Catholic
saints. Roger Bastide recounts how during
a Catholic ceremony, Haitian slaves who
appeared to be dancing before a Catholic
altar were most likely worshipping their
African deities. Under the threat of severe
punishment, the slaves went to great
lengths to safeguard their memory of
Africa, preserve their African religious
traditions, and reclaim their humanity.

21
20
19
18

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Schmidt, “A Critique against Syncretism,” 237.
Paravisini-Gebert and Olmos, Creole Religions of the Caribbean, 79.
Bush, “African Echoes, Modern Fusions,” 21.
Fernando Ortiz, La africania de la música folklórica de Cuba (Havana: Ministerio de Educación, Dirección de
Cultura, 1950), quoted in Bush, 19.
Schmidt, “A Critique against Syncretism,” 236.
Paravisini-Gebert and Olmos, Creole Religions of the Caribbean, 33, 172.
Schmidt, “A Critique against Syncretism,” 239
Katherine Gerbner, “Theorizing conversion: Christianity, colonization, and consciousness in the early modern
Atlantic world,” History Compass 13, no.3 (2015): 138, doi:10.1111/hic3.12227, quoted in Gómes-Cásseres,
“Afro-Cuban Religions,” 123.

Through the prohibition of musical
performance, specifically drumming,
European slaveholders attempted to sever
the Afro-Caribbean slaves’ connection
with Africa and its cultural practices.
Since the drums had the power to blur
ethnic divisions among imported Africans
and in turn encourage them to embrace
their common African identity, these
restrictions were felt far and wide. Slave
revolts and successful attempts at marron-
age were opportune moments for the
slaves to use the drums to resist colonial
rule. Furthermore, through their “…imita-
tion of tone and sound of the Lucumí
language,” the drums reminded Afro-Cu-
ban slaves of the strength they wielded
over their white masters, which increased
their willingness and ability to unseat their
oppressors. Even when the “rhythms of
resistance” were prohibited, slaves used
their bodies to call on the Afro-Cuban
orishas and Haitian Iwas for assistance in
surviving their seemingly inescapable
condition. Since the Africans’ religions
and music existed in a spiritual realm that
was largely inaccessible to the Europeans,
their recreation of Africa in their collective
consciousness was never entirely severed.

Critiquing ‘Syncretism’ as Theoreti-
cal Frame
Even though cultural encounters between
Afro-Caribbean slaves and Europeans
were characterized by resistance and
suppression, this process led to the merg

-ing of old cultural traditions to forge new
ones, a process Frederick Ortiz calls
transculturation. “Santería” for example
literally means devotion of Catholic saints,
and each Cuban orisha and Haitian Iwa is
associated with a Catholic saint. While
apologists see this as evidence of the fact
that Cuban Santería and Haitian Vodou are
syncretic religions, the relationship
between the Vodou Iwa Dambala and the
Catholic Saint Patrick is one such example
that illustrates why the label ‘syncretic’ is
a mischaracterization. In 406 AD, St.
Patrick, a man of Romano-British origin,
was brought to Ireland by Irish pirates as a
slave. He eventually escaped his condition
and was reborn into an evangelizer. By
linking St. Patrick’s experience of slavery,
hardship, and freedom with Dambala’s,
the Master of Waters in Vodou, and their
own experience of the same sort, Haitian
slaves destroyed the “…imperial dichoto-
my of…the colonizer and the colonized.”
Syncretism assumes that the dominant
religion drives the ‘creolizing’ process of
both religions forward. But the reverse is
true. Africans incorporated Christian
elements in their religions to continue to
“see the world through the religious prism
of their African ancestors.” Thus, the only
purpose Christianity served was to further
the slaves’ cause of liberation against the
tyranny of oppression, thereby bringing
them closer to their past life in Africa.

29
28
27

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Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993),
189, quoted in Schmidt, “A Critique against Syncretism,” 240.

Conclusion
Afro-Caribbean slaves developed Cuban
Santería and Haitian Vodou based on a
collective memory of Africa that was
“…frozen at the point where blacks
boarded the ships that would carry them
into the woes and horrors of the middle
passage.” Using this recreated memory of
Africa as a foundation, they subverted the
dominant culture and resisted enslave-
ment. They resisted their condition by
adapting their gods to the circumstances of
an unforgiving environment, preserving
their cultural practices in the Afro-Cuban
cabildos, inciting slave rebellions and
pursuing marronage through religion and
music, and discreetly worshipping their
gods in place of Catholic saints. Syncre-
tism fails to properly acknowledge the
Afro-Caribbean slaves’ efforts in challeng-
ing the imperial regime and the role these
efforts played in maintaining their African
roots. The tumultuous yet hopeful history
through which Cuban Santería and Haitian
Vodou evolved reveals that the African
spirit continuously takes on new forms but
never dies.

(January 20, 2022 / 08:53:09)

122815-1b_CaribbeanQuilt_Vol6_rev.pdf .95

Bush, Barbara. 2007. “African Echoes, Modern Fusions: Caribbean Music, Identity
and Resistance in the African Diaspora.” Music Reference Services Quarterly
10, no. 1 (22 October): 17–35. doi:10.1300/J116v10n01_02.
Desmangles, Leslie Gérald. 1992. The Faces of the gods: vodou and Roman
Catholicism in Haiti. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
HathiTrust.
Gómes-Cásseres, Patricia González. 2018. “Afro-Cuban Religions: Spiritual Marronage
and Resistance.” Social and Economic Studies 67, no. 1 (March): 117-136,
142-144. http://myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/login?qurl=https%3A%2F%2F
www.proquest.com%2Fscholarly-journals%2Fafro-cuban-religions-spiritual-
marronage%2Fdocview%2F2305086720%2Fse-2%3Faccountid%3D14771.
Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo. 1971. Social control in slave plantation societies: a comparison
of St. Domingue and Cuba. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. HathiTrust.
Paravisini-Gebert, Lizabeth, and Olmos, Margarite Fernandez. 2011. Creole Religions
of the Caribbean: An Introduction from Vodou and Santería to Obeah and
Espiritismo. New York: New York University Press. ProQuest Ebook Central.
Reed, Teresa L. 2012. “Shared Possessions: Black Pentecostals, Afro-Caribbeans, and
Sacred Music.” Black Music Research Journal 32, no. 1: 5-25.
doi:10.5406/blacmusiresej.32.1.0005.
Schmidt, Bettina E. 2006. “The Creation of Afro-Caribbean Religions and Their
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