Religiões afro-cubanas na Colômbia. Abordagens e explorações possíveis

Abstract

In the portrait on the black presence and African civilizations in the Americas, it was stated that in Colombia a black culture had been created whose religiosity was characterized by popular Catholicism and the absence of traces of African civilizations (Bastide, 1969). Half a century later, that picture was modified by processes of re-territorialization of black populations in countries whose presence was scarce, as well as by processes thought of as re-localization and trans-nationalization of African-American religions. (Juárez-Huet, 2009, 2013). Recently, in Colombia, we have seen an increasing involvement of people with Afro-Cuban and, to a lesser extent, Afro-Brazilian religions. How did such religions arrive in that country? What are the links of black populations with them and what are their effects on black culture? What does the academic literature say about this? Here I argue that only the ethnographic exploration of people's religious trajectories and the processes of creating religious communities will make it possible to answer these questions, as well as to base statements about the origin, presence and characteristics of these practices in a new national context. Following Bastide, who claims that it is not civilizations that are in contact, but men (1971), I will use the account of the religious trajectories of the Quiñones sisters in Afro-Cuban religions to think of possible approaches based on these issues.