Book Review: Havana Nocturne by T.J. English

Havana Nocturne:

How the Mob Owned Cuba...and Then Lost It To the Revolution

by T.J. English

      In The Godfather Part II, a famous scene is set in Havana, Cuba. Michael Corleone is taken by his brother Fredo and some friends to a nightclub where they watch a live sex show. It is in that sleazy establishment that Michael realizes Fredo has betrayed him. At the same time, communist revolutionaries are taking to the streets to fight and soon after the Mafia flies back to America. While this is a fictional story, it isn’t far from what the situation truly was in Havana, 1959. Fidel Castro’s revolutionary 26^th of July Movement was destined to clash with the American Mob because the presence of American organized crime gangs was one of the reasons the revolution happened. It’s all explained in T.J. English’s Havana Nocturne.

This book follows two main threads, that of the Cuban revolutionaries and that of the high level Mafia operations. The latter begins with two well-known characters in Mafia lore, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. At the end of World War II, Luciano was released from prison and ordered to leave the country. And Lansky was ambitious after having successfully opened the Flamingo hotel and casino in Las Vegas. With big plans in their minds, the two National Crime Syndicate bosses arrived in Havana and moved into luxury suites in the Hotel Nacional.

Meyer Lansky had a vision of turning the entire island of Cuba into a luxury resort packed with casinos from Matanzas to Oriente. Ex-president of Cuba. At the same time, Fulgencio Batista, was living exiled in Florida when he came into contact with Lansky who talked him into running for a second term. During the election of 1953, Batista slid behind in the polls so he launched a coup that ousted then president Carlos Prio, canceling the elections and becoming Cuba’s next dictator. The party leading in the polls was the Ortodoxos, running an anti-corruption campaign. Although unknown at the time, he most famous member of the Ortodoxo party was a young lawyer who would become the most polarizing figure in Latin American history. His name was Fidel Castro.

When Batista seized the governor’s palace, he brought the American mobsters in with him. A new era of greed, graft, tourism, and crime was initiated in Cuba. Meanwhile the common people were stuck in the redundant cycles of poverty and illiteracy, reinforced by state control through the mechanisms of torture, police brutality, and censorship. While the citizens suffered, bribery ensured that the Mafia got special treatment.

When the US government learned Lucky Luciano was comfortably living in Havana, they put pressure on the Cuban government to deport him. After Luciano made one last move to his final home in Italy, Santo Trafficante moved in to take his place. Trafficante rose to power as a Mob boss in Tampa by running the bolito racket. As a trilingual speaker of English, Italian, and Spanish, he was well suited to be a crime lord in Cuba. Even better, he was well-acquainted with Cuban cultural ways through his running of illegal gambling operations in Florida. He wasn’t on good terms with Meyer Lansky though. Despite their differences, the two oversaw a growing casino industry that was linked to the nightclub scene and the tourist trade. Lansky had an honest streak and he caused his casinos to flourish by cleaning up the business, kicking con men and corrupt pit bosses out. He knew from experience in Las Vegas that casinos where customers are treated fairly draw bigger crowds. Lansky also didn’t like violence so he kept his gang’s assassinations and strongarm tactics to a minimum. He preferred to do business the gentleman’s way through financial favors and tax evasion. He was a macro level gangster who didn’t concern himself with small rackets. Under Lanksy’s and Trafficante’s guidance, the Cuban branch of the American Syndicate also made inroads into banking, real estate, and hotels.

The narrative alternates between the story of the Mob in Havana and the story of Fidel Castro and his rise to power with the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Castro started out as a young boy with ambitions of becoming a Catholic priest. In college he joined a political gang. Later he became a lawyer then led an attack on the Moncada military barracks. The failed coup landed Fidel and his brother Raul in prison where they plotted a bigger venture in seizing power from the unpopular Batista regime. After their release, the Castro brothers fled to Mexico where they organized a militia, bought a boat, and sailed for Cuba. While hiding in the Sierra Maestra mountains and training for guerilla warfare, Fidel Castro was interviewed by a journalist from The New York Times. He also bought arms from the American Mob who possibly acted as middlemen and traffickers for the American government. Clandestine connections between American intelligence agents and Castro are hinted at by the author but never fully explored. Word of the Revolution spread rapidly throughout Cuba and soon Batista was on a plane to the Bahamas after being persuaded by the CIA to step down. This meant the end of American organized crime in Cuba as Lansky, Trafficante and pals were chased out of the country.

Aside from these main threads, there are a lot of side stories. A brief but detailed account of the history of the Mafia from the Castellamarese War to the forming of the National Crime Syndicate to the Kafauver Committee congressional hearings and beyond are all told. A lot is also said about the Cuban music scene and the culture of hotels, casinos, and nightclubs like the legendary Tropicana. Also of legendary Cuban lore is the unregulated underworld of vice that mostly catered to tourists. During the Prohibition era in America, Havana became a haven for lushes. Along with that came a seedy underbelly of whorehouses, cocaine dealers, hit men for hire, and pornographic movie theaters. Slightly more respectable were the fully nude dancers and live sex shows. The character called Superman, who gets it on with a lady tied up on a stage in The Godfather Part II, is actually based on a real person. The real Superman was an Afro-Cuban man who was hung like a horse. He made a living by perfoming in sex shows, pornos, and working as a gigolo to pleasure white female tourists from El Norte. And he did all this for a living even though he was gay. According to the author, the Mob didn’t actually having anything to do with this kind of sordid, street level sleaze. Their sights were set higher on bigger fish to fry like gambling, hotels, and politics.

These side story passages are interesting, but they amount to little more than padding to fill in a thin story. Most of these passages aren’t directly related to the Lansky-Trafficante activities. However, they do give some context and information that isn’t easily available in other sources. These are some of the most vivid and detailed accounts of Havana night life before the Revolution that I’ve encountered so far. But actually the Mob wasn’t in Cuba long enough to do anything too exciting. Fidel Castro killed Meyer Lansky’s dream of a gambling and offshore banking paradise long before he got a chance to build anything more than one ultramodern hotel on the Malecon. The strongest part of this book is its account of the Cuban Revolution which is short on fine details, but direct and comprehensive enough to be of value to someone who wants to learn what happened without plowing through dense historical tomes like those of Hugh Thomas or Tad Szulc.

There are a number of stray details I find questionable. T.J. English, for example, claims Fidel Castro was a Marxist from the start. A lot of other sources that go into greater detail about the dictator’s biography say otherwise. While Castro had studied Marx, he didn’t actually embrace communism as a political system until after he seized power. In the beginning he wanted to maintain trade and diplomatic relations with the USA, but John F. Kennedy snubbed him so he turned to the USSR for support and recognition instead. Fidel Castro was a puritan, a moralist, and an orator, but he was no ideologue. He was an adventurist, a man of action, and a narcissist more than anything else. Tad Szulc covers this extensively in his biography of Castro, which English uses as a source for this book, so it is surprising that this error was made.

Also questionable are some anecdotes about Frank Sinatra and John F. Kennedy. English claims Sinatra worked as a courier fro the Mob, carrying suitcases full of money and guns from New Jersey to Havana. He also claims that when Kennedy was a senator, Meyer Lansky arranged for him to have an orgy with three Cuban prostitutes in a hotel while Lansky watched through a two-way mirror in the next room. Given Kennedy’s reputation as the Don Juan of the Democrats, it wouldn’t surprise me if he went to Cuba for sex, but the part about Lansky watching doesn’t ring true. These stories sound like yellow journalism or conspiracy theory fodder more than fact, but of course I can’t know what’s actually true. In these days of the Epstein files being released, it’s hard to know what to believe about people in power. Still, stories like this seem too sensationalistic to be true.

This book also leaves a giant gap in accounting for the relationship between Lansky and Batista. The exact nature and depth of their relationship is not disclosed. Nor is Batista’s relations with American corporate businessmen, American intelligence agencies, and the American government. The details of why the Americans persuaded Batista to abandon his dictatorship are murky by all accounts, especially considering they had supported him for so long. Also murky are details about Fidel Castro’s relations with the USA; he went on fundraising campaigns up north, but details of who actually gave him money for the Revolution haven’t been examined in any books I’ve read.

Havana Nocturne isn’t great, but it’s interesting. There is a lot of filler, but at least the filler is informative even though the bulk of it isn’t directly related to the story. It is good for filling in some details about organized crime in Cuba before the Revolution. While books on that particular turning point of the Cold War in the Caribbean always mention the Mob presence in Cuba, the actual story of what they were up to hasn’t been thoroughly examined in any book I know. It’s also a good read for Cubanophiles and those who want to understand how a small group of underworld criminals had a major impact on world affairs. But is there a moral to this story? Yes. The next time you are at a live sex show, be aware that commies might be coming to chop off your head. Be careful and don’t be a Fredo.

 

Book Review: Cuba and Its Music by Ned Sublette

Cuba and Its Music:

From the First Drums To the Mambo

by Ned Sublette

      When it comes to exports, Cuba is known for a handful of things. Cigars, sugar, communist revolution, and refugees immediately come to mind. With the exception of that last category, those are, to some extent, not so good for your health. But there is one Cuban export that makes up for all that and music is what I’m talking about. What most people don’t realize is that those polyrhythmic salsa songs are the long range product of several centuries of history. Can you blame them? They are probably too busy listening or dancing when they hear Cuban music to be inclined towards studying where it all originated. Unless they are my neighbors and they are probably too busy fuming with anger at all the loud music blasting from my stereo to really care. But for those who are inclined towards historical scholarship and not just the infectious grooves and dance steps, Ned Sublette’s Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums To the Mambo is the ultimate guide for exploring the musical roots of that tropical island’s tradition of melodic innovation.

Music doesn’t emerge out of a void. That is why the cultural and political systems of the regions that preceded Cuban colonial settlement are the starting point for this exploration. This history starts in medieval Spain on the island of Cadiz where Jews played the oud and in Al-Anadalus, now currently known as Andalusia in present day Spain, where Muslim poets recited Koranic verses to single-stringed instruments and drums. Up until the voyages of Columbus, the kingdoms of Spain were a Mediterranean crossroad for migrating cultures that included Celts, Franks, Visigoths, Romanis, Moors, Berbers, Basques, and a few others. All of them brought some small contribution to the music of Spain.

Cuba’s second large immigrant group is the African people due to the slave trade. They were mostly brought to the Caribbean by European traders from Central Africa and the western coastal regions which are now Benin, Nigeria, and Angola. These slaves brought a variety of drumming styles like talking drums and vocal harmonies along with the unique percussive bamboo thumb pianos which later influenced the piano lines that are so pervasive in contemporary mambo and salsa.

For many slaves, the port at Havana was an entry point into the Americas where they were sold at auction and then redistributed to other Caribbean islands, Brazil, and the United States. The slaves who remained in Cuba mostly worked in the sugar industry. Unlike the United States, they were allowed to practice their traditional religions and play variations of their traditional music. The societies of Lukumi, Palo, and Abakua were spaces where dance, music, and spirit possession flourished. When the Catholic church cracked down on these traditions, the Afro-Cubans continued worshiping the old deities by associating them with the cult of the saints. And so Santeria became prominent. To this day, drummers in Cuban music bands are initiates in Santeria or one of the other African diaspora religions. Drums are ceremonially possessed by spirits in Abakua lodges before they can be used in public performances.

Just as important to Cuban percussion are the rhythm sticks called “clave”. Afro-Cubans who worked in the ship building and repair industry would sing while they worked. Wooden ships were held together with wooden pegs that workers would hit together while singing to keep time. These became known as “clave”, a word which has a double meaning because “clave” is also used to designate the simple 2/2 rhythm to revolve around that acts as a central point for syncopated and polyrhtyhmic songs. Clave is a beat that holds all the complexity together and the high-pitched rhythm sticks are still used to this day.

The history of rumba is also of interest. The tradition originated in Central Africa. The word “rumba” did not originally signify a particular style of music. Rumbas were actually a type of party or celebration held by Cuban slaves on their days off. It involved drumming, chanting, and singing as accompaniments to bare knuckle boxing and highly sexualized dances that anthropologists have called ritual courtships. Rumba had a direct influence on the development of son in the early 20^th century.

As a colony, Cuba had musical styles that corresponded to class divisions. Aside from Afro-Cuban innovations, Spanish Creole street musicians, buskers, and folk singers were common, often playing styles like boleros. We can only guess what that music sounded like because lower class musicians played music by ear and never wrote down lyrics or musical notations. The upper classes of Europeans brought classical and orchestral traditions with them and opera was part of that. Ballroom dancing was also a past time for the rich and well-connected and styles like habanera, contradanza, and danzon came out of those milieus. The lower classes also had dance halls where lonely Cuban men and sailors on shore leave could rent girls to dance with. But class lines were sometimes broken because white Cubans of all statures were fascinated by Santeria and were often present at ceremonial gatherings.

The 19^th century in Cuba was a time of war. Cubans rallied around the nationalist Jose Marti in the Wars of Independence. Marti was an advocate of racial equality so the slaves supported the end of colonialism along with the abolition of slavery. This brought the Afro-Cubans and mulattos closer together. After the abolition of slavery in Cuba during the 1880s, and the liberation of Cuba from the Spanish colonialists by the USA in the Spanish-American War, Afro-Cuban music exploded, proliferated, and expanded overseas. Ned Sublette traces the influence of Afro-Cuban music on ragtime, tango, dixieland jazz, big band jazz, swing, and bebop. This happened because musicians traveled frequently between Havana, New Orleans, and New York. Radio and the invention of records also played a huge role in spreading the rhythms across the island and far from Cuban shores.

The first half of the 20^th century in post-colonial Cuba was possibly the most politcally turbulent time in the nation’s history. It was also a time of economic growth and a mass influx of tourism. Cuban casinos and nightclubs became world-famous and so did the underground economy of vice and crime. Havana had an edgy, urban atmosphere and it created its most innovative and influential musicians during then. Talented musicians have often been difficult, temperamental, mercurial, egotistical, and sometimes violent. Cuba’s modern were no exception. Some of the stories related about their lifestyles are comparable to what you find in the biographies of rock and hip hop artists of the latter half of the century in America and the U.K.

Sublette gives brief biographies of musicians and singers like the blind Arsenio Rodriguez and the OG Cuban gangsta Chano Pozo. Those musicians and other like Celia Cruz, Machito, Beny More, and Desi Aranaz brought Cuban sounds to the USA where the likes of Benny Goodman, Xavier Cugat, Dizzie Gillespie, Nat King Cole, and Tito Puente took the styles and ran with them. Cuban musicians were especially influential in Spanish Harlem where they became popular primarily with a Puerto Rican audience.

This was the time when bongos and congas were invented and son became the most prominent style, elevating the percussive rhythms of Afro-Cuban tradition into the center of Spanish influenced songs. Regardless of style, any Cuban, tropical, or Caribbean influenced music at this time became classified as “rhumba” for American audiences. As all the strands of Cuban music merged with son, it eventually coalesced into one form which was called “mambo” by the time the 1950s arrived. That is the point where Sublette’s history stops.

Cuba and Its Music is vast in its scope and detail. It doesn’t just tell the history of Cuban music up until the Cuban Revolution of 1958; it gives enough contextual information on the political, cultural, and economic history of the island to be used as a history book in general. If you want to learn about Cuba, but want more than just the political side, this is the perfect book for you. The only major problem with it is that Sublette sometimes writes about music with heavy doses of jargon and technical terminologies. If you aren’t well-versed in the vocabulary of music, these passages will be difficult to understand. You can use language to describe things like machinery or architecture so that the reader can visualize what is being described, but using language to write about music is a fool’s errand. It just can’t be effectively done. That’s not to say that Ned Sublette is a fool though. Quite the opposite since this book is consistently engaging and encyclopedic at the same time. This is a work of extensive research and he accomplishes more than most academic scholars ever will. And those paragraphs full of musician’s esoteric terms don’t last so long that he loses the reader. They are always padded between easier to understand passages so a persistent reader will stay lost for long.

After finishing Cuba and Its Music, it is easy to see how mambo, salsa, and everything that came after came to be. When you listen to Cuban music today, you are literally hearing layers of sound that stretch back beyond the island itself to the rainforests of Africa, the arid regions of Spain, the music venues of the United States, and a few other things as well. You are literally listening to a living, breathing, loving, spinning, swirling, gyrating melange of beats, voices, and rhythms propelled outwards by the sexual lifeforce itself. If this is where Cuban music has arrived, it will be interesting to see how it expands from here on out. But as good as Ned Sublette’s history is, Cuban music isn’t intended to be read about. It is intended to be listened to. So get off your ass and dance. That’s what he would want you to do anyways.

 

Book Review & Critical Analysis: Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco & Sugar by Fernando Ortiz

Cuban Counterpoint:

Tobacco & Sugar

by Fernando Ortiz

      If you mention Cuba, the first thing most people will think of is revolution, politics, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara. The second thing would probably be music and dancing. After that, I’m guessing another strong association with that Caribbean island nation would be cigars. There might be a few other general associations like beaches, palm trees, jungles, Ernest Hemingway, and rum. Somewhere in there you might also find sugarcane. This is significant for Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz since the titular essay of his book Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco & Sugar is about defining his country’s national identity through its most prevalent economic industries.

While Fernando Ortiz is considered to have been Cuba’s premier anthropologist to date, the titular essay really isn’t a work of social science. The point of it is to compare and contrast Cuba’s sugar and tobacco industries in order to define the national character of the Cuban people. From the start it is clear that he believes tobacco to be the ultimate symbol of Cubanismo and that he has a less favorable view of the sugarcane industry even though it has been the backbone of Cuba’s economy for at least two centuries.

His argument is provocative. Tobacco is a native plant to Cuban soil and its cultivation and use was a part of the Taino and Arawak indigenous people’s culture before the arrival of European colonialists. Tobacco is grown in dry riverbeds called “vegas” and even though some cigars are manufactured using machinery, those of the highest quality are hand-rolled. Thus, making a good cigar is a craft or an art form, as he puts it, more than an industrially produced commodity. Cuban cigars are also a source of national pride because they are popular worldwide and considered to be the gold standard of smokes by connoisseurs. That is why if you tell someone you have a box of habanas or puro cubanos they know by association that it is a box of the best cigars you can buy. Even cigars from neighboring countries like the Dominican Republic or Jamaica don’t compare. The use of the words “habanas” and “cubanos” to mean cigars proves semantically just how closely people outside the country associate cigars with Cuba.

Sugar, on the other hand, is just sugar. While the quality of tobacco can range from putrid to a champagne-like elegance, there is little to no difference once sugar crystals have been processed and granulated into the white powder we find in any grocery store around the world. Sugar that comes from sugarcane is also indistinguishable from that produced by sugar beets. People generally don’t associate sugar with any particular nation the way tobacco is strongly associated with Cuba. Sugarcane was also imported by colonialists and is therefore, not native to the Caribbean. Sugarcane cultivation and the manufacture of processed sugar is also the primary reason so many slaves were imported into Cuba. This is a source of shame to Ortiz who also uses this as a chance to take a swipe at capitalism since it requires that laborers, be they slaves, indentured servants, or wage laborers, get treated as commodities for production rather than as human beings. You could easily counter this claim by arguing that communism does the same thing. Thus that problem probably has more to do with the technology of industrialization than it does with whatever politico-economic system that utilizes it.

So as it stands according to Fernando Ortiz, tobacco is far superior to sugar when it comes to symbolically defining Cuba’s national identity.

I’ll be honest at this point. I have no emotional investment in this subject. I have no ancestral ties to Cuba, but I find the history and culture of the nation endlessly fascinating. I do appreciate sweet foods, but I gave up smoking long ago when I became wise enough to admit that I am afraid of getting cancer. So the argument over whether tobacco or sugar is more suitable for defining Cuba’s identity is of no importance to me. I could weigh the pros and cons of Ortiz’s reasoning, but I don’t feel its necessary to expend my mental energy on the matter. It reminds me of John Milton’s rhetorical argument that the moon is superior to the sun. But Milton’s essay on that matter is a great work of art. I’d say that Fernando Ortiz’s essay is a great work of art too. It is fascinating to read from beginning to end and, even if you don’t agree with his opinion, or even care all that much, it does say a lot about Cuban history and society. It certainly serves as a good introduction to anybody who wants to learn about tobacco or sugar cultivation and how it relates to Cuban culture.

Some of the ideas might be outdated though. Ortiz argues that tobacco is masculine and sugar is feminine in a way that relies on traditional gender stereotypes. Even considering those stereotypes, I find his reasoning on that point to be vague and insufficient to make his case. And his attempt at defining national character leads in the direction of essentializing in a way that would get labeled problematic by hyper-sensitive social theorists today. I have some problems with the concept of “essentializing” to beging with, but this is not the place to take that up. The use of outdated words like “Negro” “retarded”, and “Mongoloid” will also be jarring to some, but this essay was written in the 1940s when those words were considered neutral terminologies. Any offense you might naively take will also be undercut by that fact that Ortiz was a strong proponent of racial equality and the bulk of his work was done to document the cultural practices and patterns Afro-Cuban people. Hopefully someday more of his works will be translated into English.

The following essay in the book is of some interest up to a point. Ortiz examines the cultural uses of tobacco in pre- and post-contact indigenous societies. Although he starts by examining the practices of the Taino, Arawak, and Carib peoples, the scope extends farther into what we now call North, Central, and South America. The cultural uses of tobacco fall into four main categories being the social, the medicinal, the ritual/spiritual/religious/shamanistic, and the individual/leisure uses. He examines the history of how tobacco was ingested and the paraphernalia used as well as the social etiquette and praxis. He also examines whether or not tobacco was the only substance used in these ways. Various other writers have labeled tobacco and nicotine with contradictory terms like “stimulant”, “depressant” amd “hallucinogen”. Thus he analyzes evidence from colonial, missionary, archaeological, and pharmacological sources to figure out if some naive scholars in the past, not paying careful attention to details, mistakenly designated plants other than tobacco as tobacco. A lot of the essay is also devoted to disputes amongst anthropologists and archaeologists over what tools and paraphernalia were used for ingesting tobacco smoke and snuff. I feel like those debates are of more interest to specialists in this field and not so much for the general reader. His arguments aren’t hard to follow though and if you want to learn about the reasoning process and problem-solving methodologies in the social sciences, this is an accessible place to look.

The remaining essays are about the history of sugarcane cultivation and the effects of the Industrial Revolution on mass production and consumption of sugar. Again, these essays are well-researched and easy to follow, however, they feel more like filler than anything substantially related to the supposed main theme of the book which is Cuba and the importance of tobacco and sugarcane to its culture and economy. These filler essays stand on their own but stray too far outside the subject of Cuban national identity to be worthwhile in the larger context of the book. If you are solely interested in the subject of Cuban culture, you might want to consider reading the titular essay only and skipping the rest of the book. If you’re interested in the history of tobacco and sugar from a global perspective than the whole book will be of value. I fall into the former category, not the latter, so reading a lot of this felt like a chore even though all the essays are well-written.

Cuban Counterpoint was written at the end of World War II when the post-colonial era was taking off. Cuba was politically turbulent at the time, but it was also at the peak of its pre-Revolution cultural development. At that time the island nation was asserting itself internationally as a tourist destination and a producer of goods for international trade. In this context you can see how the subject of national identity and character could be of importance to a social scientist like Fernando Ortiz, especially considering his high academic stature then and now. Still, the book feels a bit dated. The negative health effects of smoking tobacco have caused it to be associated more with lung cancer than Cuba. Processed sugar is now associated with obesity, tooth decay, and other diseases. The tobacco and sugar industries plus communism should have made outsiders’ perceptions of Cuba inherently bad yet the country’s reputation is still alluring. Maybe it’s time for Cuba to choose a new symbol to redefine its national character. I’d choose their music to be a symbol of that identity if it were up to me (it’s not). Who couldn’t be enticed by those beautiful curvaceous women in tight skirts and stilleto heels defying the laws of gravity while dancing to mambo, rumba, charanga, salsa, cha cha cha, or Latin jazz. And if this book is dated, it still can evoke fantasies of sipping rum in a shack on a beach, palm trees swaying in the wind while clear waved waters wash ashore as you relax with a burning puro, its tip dipped in honey, while the silvery blue smoke you exhale disperses in the Caribbean breeze. If we lived in a just world, cigar smoke wouldn’t be harmful. But we don’t. Your dreams, however, won’t hurt you. Let those dreams keep you alive. 

 

Book Review: Voice Of the Leopard: African Secret Societies and Cuba by Ivor L. Miller

Voice Of the Leopard:

African Secret Societies and Cuba

by Ivor L. Miller

     The general public is familiar with African diaspora religions in the Caribbean and South America via popular culture. Most of what people think of in association with Voudou (voodoo) or Lukumi (Santeria) involves skulls, drums, zombies, and black magic. It isn’t hard to see how film makers, artists, writers, and musicians have appropriated elements from these religions since mystical and sometimes dark imagery can easily capture the imagination. But not so many people realize that African diaspora religions are complex social systems that exist within broader historical, socio-political, and economic systems and thereby have function and meaning as groups within those larger systems. One of the lesser acknowledged African diaspora religions is Abakua, a secret society that began in Cuba in the 19^th century and continues to thrive today. Voice Of the Leopard, by the American anthropologist Ivor L. Miller, gives a broad overview of this group and the role they played in Cuban history.

When West African people were brought to Cuba as slaves, their religious practices accompanied them. While these religions were mostly forbidden in the United States, slave owners in places like Brazil, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Cuba allowed them to flourish, mostly because they relieved some psychological pressure that built up under the living conditions of slavery. This may have worked to some degree, but the number of slaves who escaped to live in isolated communities in the Sierra Maestra mountains, called “cimmanrones” or “maroons”, proves their situation was not one to envy. Nonetheless, Cuba was unique in that the colonialists allowed slaves to earn and save money which they could use to buy their way to freedom. That is one reason for Cuba having a small population of free African criollos who survived by working as craftsmen. According to members of Abakua societies, there was even a smaller number of West African immigrants who voluntarily came to Cuba to give slaves guidance on how to safeguard their religion in the new land. The accuracy of that belief is of no importance in this book because that is what the Abakua believe and it influences how they see the world.

Using linguistics and cross-cultural comparisons along with historical records, Miller has traced the origins of Abakua back to the Cross Rivers region along the border of Nigeria and Cameroon. In that part of Africa, fraternal societies called Ekpe have existed since times long before colonialism. The language, rituals, and mythologies of Abakua and Ekpe bear too many similarities to be coincidental. This is especially true because Abakua initiates have their own language that is only spoken with Abakua members and, although time and distance have caused morphological changes, it is essentially the same language spoken by Ekpe initiates. A similar linguistic analysis has been used to trace the origins of Roma (Gypsy) people to Rajastan in northern India, a significant discovery since that ethnic group existed for centuries without knowing precisely where they originated. The mapping of the human genome has recently justified these ancestral histories.

Miller gives some brief explanations about what Abakua members do. He starts by analyzing what kind of a group they are. He prefers the term “initiate society” over “secret society” since membership in the group is not kept secret, only their beliefs and practices are. Readers hoping for a detailed explanation of those beliefs and practices will inevitably be disappointed since such information is only transmitted to initiates who have risen through s series of degrees and offices to widen their scope of Abakua. Some basic information is shared with the public though, for example various motifs from the Ekpe/Abakua mythology, their transmission of historical narratives through call and response chanting done to the accompaniment of drumming and dancing, and the presence of the fundamento in every juego (lodge). The fundamento is the ceremonial centerpiece, or omphalos, of each juego. The original is said to have been brought over from Africa by the aforementioned voluntary immigrants from the Cross Rivers region who taught the slaves how to practice Abakua in Cuba. The Abakua juegos are open to men only. There is no discussion as to whether Abakua is actually a religion or not. From my limited knowledge of the society, I prefer to think it doesn’t fit easily into any category, containing elements of religion, magic, political secret societies, social clubs, and mutual aid fraternities.

Abakua juegos serve various functions. One is that of a mutual aid society. Dues collected by each juego can be used as health or life insurance for each member. Money is also collected for charity or educational funding. During the 19^th century, illiterate slaves who joined Abakua could receive some education they wouldn’t get elsewhere. At a local level, lodges provided a means for upward social mobility in a colony where such mobility was limited for free Afro-Cubans and usually unobtainable for slaves. Membership in a lodge required the mastery of knowledge, commitment, and responsibility. Money could also be raised in an Abakua society to help a slave buy their own freedom. Plus, the hierarchical nature of the juegos gave motivated individuals a means for moving up a social ladder thereby growing and maturing as people.

Abakua was also important for historical reasons. Since juego activities were secret and only accessible to initiates, they served as near-perfect places for clandestine political activity. Afro-Cubans who sought for an end to slavery were deeply committed to the two Cuban Wars of Independence and used their gathering places for planning military and political strategies. The Independence leader and national hero Antonio Maceo was a member of Abakua for this reason. Freemasonry also had a strong presence in 19^th century Cuba and pro-Independence Masons collaborated with Abakua to fight against the Spanish crown. The Wars of Independence also led to the establishment of Abakua juegos for both white and Chinese members who were dedicated to the Cuban nationhood cause.

Other topics covered by Miller include the reasons why Abakua has not spread further geographically than it already has and the influence Abakua has had on Cuban music and art. In the latter case, Abakua drum rhythms have a strong presence in the syncretistic styles of mambo and son. The chapter covering music is not highly detailed so deeper insights into the subject should be looked for elsewhere. In the former topic, the explanation is that strict and complicated protocols for establishing new lodges has made it nearly impossible for Abakua to spread much farther than the regions surrounding Havana and and the nearby city of Matanzas. If you want to join, your only option would be to move to Cuba. Miller also writes about recent contact and collaboration between Ekpe initiates in Nigeria and Abakua members in Cuba who have traveled to Nigeria recently with assistance from the author who is an Ekpe initiate himself aside from being an anthropologist.

Since the practice of Abakua is kept secret and only accessible to members, this book is mostly historical in nature. However, some of their ceremonies, including dances, drumming, and call and response chanting, are publicly accessible since some ceremonies are done in the yards of juegos were neighbors can observe them or hear them from a distance. I speculate that this is done as a means of proselytizing and arousing the curiosity of potential recruits. Despite not providing much information about the inner workings of this society, its influence on Cuban history is a fascinating story to learn about, especially because mainstream historians have given so little space to Abakua’s role in achieving independence and building national identity. Unfortunately, there is nothing said about Abakua in their relation to the Cuban Revolution of 1958 and Fidel Castro’s subsequent dictatorship. Abakua survived throughout all of that so there must be something to be said about them during those times.

Voice Of the Leopard gives a good overview of Abakua and its history. It serves the purpose of demonstrating how such a secret society can maintain social stability and mental health in the midst of a chaotic and ever-changing world. By giving members a sense of participation in history and having roots in an antiquarian culture, a direct line between past and present is maintained which contributes stability to the community. In this way, Abakua has acted as a positive force in Cuban society. Up until recent times, America had societies based around common interests in much the same way that the Cubans have Abakua. In 2025, fraternal orders like the Masons or the Elks, hobbyist groups, bowling leagues, labor unions, social clubs, and other societies in which people create social bonds and a sense of belonging are mostly on life support if they still exist at all. As a result of the internet, people spend more time looking at screens on laptops and cell phones then they do in the presence of others. As a result, the rates of loneliness, depression, mental illness, and suicide have spiked, especially among young people. It would be interesting to research what the rate of these ailments are in African diaspora religions. My educated guess is that they would be far less frequent than in American society. Maybe a few more groups like the Abakua could save us from ourselves.

 

Book Review & Analysis: Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom by Hugh Thomas

Cuba:

The Pursuit of Freedom

by Hugh Thomas

           It’s amazing how little Americans know about neighboring countries. Actually it’s amazing how little Americans know about America, but that’s another matter. Miami is closer to Havana than it is to Orlando or Atlanta and yet a lot of people couldn’t name the capital of Cuba if you asked them. What some people do know abut Cuba doesn’t extend much farther beyond cigars, salsa, and communism. Obviously there is so much more and a lot of Cuban history has been directly influenced by American politics and business. Hugh Thomas’s Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom gives an epic rundown of Cuban history that is far from complete. Yet with about 1.500 pages, you can’t fault the author for leaving a few things out.

This history book, which weighs weighs about as much as an iron dumbbell, doesn’t start with the Taino or Arawak Indians. It doesn’t even start with the arrival of Columbus. It starts with the British invasion of Havana led by Lord Albemarle. This might be a strange starting point considering how minor an event it is in Cuban history and all that came after, but as stated before, a book of this length wouldn’t benefit from any extra information. In any case, the 18^th century was when Cuba became an island of central importance to colonial businessmen in the Caribbean. The tropical jungle island had a perfect climate for sugarcane and tobacco farming and its location made it ideal as a hub for distribution and transport of cargo. This led to an influx of Spanish criollos and, regrettably, a thriving trade of slaves brought over from West Africa and indentured servants from China.

The most interesting parts of these early chapters include descriptions of the social lives of Cuba’s inhabitants. It’s especially interesting to learn about how the plantation and factory owners allowed the slave laborers to practice their traditional religions, something that helped them to cope with slavery and later catalyzed the thriving of African diaspora religions in the Caribbean. It’s also interesting that slaves were allowed to buy their own freedom and a class of African craftsmen grew in Havana as a result.

Yet as agriculture and industry in Cuba grew, more Africans were brought in from Jamaica and Haiti, making them the dominant demographic of the colony. The Spanish criollos grew uneasy because small slave rebellions broke out, setting off a long string of political violence and rebellions that culminated in the Cuban Revolution of 1958. On the other side of that was a small group of Spanish businessmen who wanted Cuba to be annexed by the United States. At this time, Cuba was owned and politically dominated by the Spanish crown who paid little attention to the distant island. Simultaneously, the economy and industry were largely influenced, if not outright controlled, by the U.S.

The annexation movement may have been obscure and ineffective, but it did inspire a nationalist movement and an eventual War of Independence. During this time in the 19^th century, the journalist and poet Jose Marti emerged as the voice of Cuban independence. Rebellions were led from the eastern province of Oriente by the mulatto captain Antonio Maceo as well. Both of these men are considered to be Cuba’s first national heroes. Adding to the turbulence of the 1800s were also the boom and bust cycles of sugar production and their reliance on the fickle international market. Sugarcane was the dominant crop of Cuba’s agriculture and the island’s economy relied heavily on the sugar market, something that could be easily offset by the farming of sugar beets in Europe and the United States where transport costs were lower and import tariffs non-existent if grown locally.

By the end of the 19^th century, the Spanish-American War had broken out. As the Spanish Empire grew weaker and they began to lose control over their overseas territories, the U.S. used the explosion of the battleship Maine, anchored off the coast of the Florida Keys, as an excuse to “liberate” the remaining colonies of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. For the Cubans, this meant the much desired nationhood they craved, but it also meant a subservient position to the United States. The Platt Amendment was attached to the first Constitution of Cuba, giving the U.S. the right to intervene in Cuban affairs under certain circumstances. This remained a sore point in the minds of nationalists who wanted complete independence. But Thomas argues that some guidance was necessary for the fledgling nation. Early Cuban politicians lacked political will and expertise, and the economy was largely dependent on businesses owned by Americans. The American government was paternalistic and patronizing to Cuban politicos and this caused friction with the Cuban populace, something that Americans were too blind and arrogant to see.

Eventually, a democracy emerged on the island nation, but it was fraught with difficulties and instability from the beginning. The term “gangsterismo” was coined to describe the Cuban political style. After the election of Fulgencio Batista to his first term of office, corruption and violence took hold of the government. The lines between politics, organized crime, and guerilla warfare became blurred as different factions emerged out of the underground to fight for power. These political gangs had less to do with ideology than they did with violence, graft, and loyalty, a factor that made Havana volatile and sporadically dangerous until the middle of the 20^th century. After a string of corrupt and ineffective presidents who were constantly under threat of assassination, Batista returned to power as a dictator; at first he was welcomed as a savior, but the Cubans quickly turned against him when they saw he was all about business as usual.

Enter Fidel Castro.

The future Cuban dictator was raised by a wealthy family of sugarcane farmers. After passing the bar exam, the young intellectual worked for a law firm of no importance before assembling a small army and launching a raid against the Moncada military barracks. After a stint in prison, Castro went to Mexico and met up with his right hand man Che Guevara. The two of them trained a small band of guerillas, sailed a decrepit boat through a storm to Oriente province in Cuba, and launched a revolution that caught on in the rural areas and mountains of the island nation. It is important to note that Fidel Castro was never an ideologue. He was an adventurer and a natural born leader with outsize charisma. This goes a long way in understanding what the Cuban Revolution of 1958 was all about. To the surprise of many, the revolution quickly gained momentum and soon the CIA and American media were lending some reluctant support to his cause. The CIA, seeing Batista as a weak leader, convinced him to step down and allow Castro to take over the country. Castro’s success did not come solely from his charisma; his revolutionary message about Cuban independence was sufficiently vague enough to appeal to varied groups of people, many of which had opposing points of view. One thing they all had in common was the weariness of political instability and economic backwardness, something they ironically coped with by nurturing a strong and passionate culture.

After the rise of Castro, Hugh Thomas revisits the state of Cuban society around the time of the Revolution. It’s an interesting contrast with the section at the beginning of the book that addresses the same issues as they stood in at the turn of the 19^th century. The book ends with America’s botched Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. It also ends with an analysis of Cuban politics and society after the Revolution. Thomas is certainly biased against Castro although he does a fair job of presenting nuanced views of the country in the 1960s. Living standards rose for some while going down for others. Massive amounts of refugees left to settle in the United States. Castro, with no political experience or ideology, grasped on to communism and made everything up as he went along. He appointed Che Guevara to manage Cuba’s industry and economy, but Guevara made a mess out of that due to his similar lack of experience in the real world. Thomas accuses Guevara of being a quasi-fascist due to his enthusiasm for political violence and warfare over the less exciting nuts and bolts of economic policy. Fidel Castro essentially turned Cuba into a personality cult.

Due to its length, this book is not for readers looking for a quick and easy understanding of Cuban history. It starts out strong with its sociological history of the colony in the 1700s. The author clearly identifies and outlines the key events, rebellions, wars, and political movements of the subsequent century. His analysis of the sugar and tobacco industries is top notch in its detail even if it is a bit dry. But some of the politics get bogged down in excessive detail. There are a lot of obscure arguments made by obscure men with obscure intentions over obscure issues. There are times when the reader has to keep a stiff upper lip while plowing through all the muck. The same can be said for some passages of the democratic and gangsterismo era of the 20^th century that led up to the Revolution. The peaks of early and mid Cuban history are fascinating enough to keep the narrative going though. And Fidel Castro’s Revolution is one of the most exciting political adventure stories I know of. As a reader, Thomas makes it easy to see how people could get caught up in all the intrigue. I have read better accounts of the Cuban Revolution though.

The worst part of this book is the way Thomas insists on listing the names of every single person who contributed to the Revolution so that you get long lists of people like Jose Garcia Ecehvarria Gonzales y Fuentes de las Casas. I’m not saying this to make fun of Spanish names. I’m just saying that these lists can be off-putting to even the most dedicated of readers especially because most of these people never reappear in the narrative after being mentioned once. It’s like reading the genealogies in the Old Testament. It’s the kind of information that should be included in an appendix.

The chapters on the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis are hasty and brief; there are far better accounts written in more recently authored books. The chapters on post-Revolutionary Cuba are interesting, but since this book was published in 1972, it is obvious that the author did not have the sufficient historical distance to give a well-rounded perspective. It would be interesting to read accounts of life inside Cuba from the time of the Revolution up to the present.

By the end a pattern emerges. From early slave rebellions to independence movements and liberation from the domination of the United States, Cuban history is marked by a desire for freedom. Ironically, the price they paid for national independence was a dictatorship that restricted civil liberties and political opposition while being somewhat under the wing of the Soviet Union and still economically tied to the turbulent international sugar market. The subtitle of this book is appropriate as it gives form to the chaos of Cuban history. Fortunately, Thomas does not over-emphasize this thesis since doing so would have contained the narrative in an unnecessarily narrow theory of interpretation. Perhaps Cuba’s shortcomings in the pursuit of freedom are overridden in the cultural expressions of their music, dance, and easy going lifestyle as well as the thriving of the African diaspora religious societies known as Abakua, Palo Monte, and Santeria or Lukumi. When political oppression is all-pervasive, passions for freedom can be expressed in other creative ways.

After finishing Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom by Hugh Thomas, it is clear that the author is anal retentive in attention to detail, yet it is written without losing sight of the bigger issues guiding the study of Cuban history. At times, the writing is dense, but when you break through to the more interesting parts, it becomes clear that this is a monumental achievement both for the author and the reader who has enough patience to see it through to the end. 

 

Book Review: The Mexican Revolution 1910-1940 by Michael J. Gonzalez

The Mexican Revolution 1910-1940

by Michael J. Gonzalez

      Tons of books have been written about the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. They vary widely in length, attention to detail, attitudes towards the people involved, and political bias in general. They also contradict each other depending on what information the authors had access to. Content can be confusing as well since different leaders and factions of the Revolution changed allegiances and sometimes fought with those they previously supported. And from the top political leaders to the military commanders to the common rank and file soldiers, there is an extremely wide range of reasoning for joining in the battles. Whether it was even one revolution or a series of loosely related rebellions and counter-rebellions is still an open question. In short, learning about the Mexican Revolution can be a mind-boggling task. Some places are better than others to start. Michael J. Gonzalez’s The Mexican Revolution 1910-1940 is one of the better entry points into this vast and overwhelming period of Latin American history.

As a historical text, this one reaches back into the 19^th century, charting the rise of Porfirio Diaz. He can largely be credited with ushering Mexico into the modern age by introducing industrial technology into the country and embracing liberal, big business economic policy. While this benefited the wealthy class most, it also left the majority of Mexicans behind in poverty. The hacienda system of economic organization also disinherited some agriculturalists from their holdings. American businessmen and multinational corporations, especially oil companies, were given almost free access to Mexico’s natural resources. None of this benefited the Mexican people except for the well-connected oligarchs and technocrats. It is the old story of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Porfirio Diaz became more autocratic and dictatorial while the rest of the country went into economic decline.

A pro-democracy movement started with the Portuguese aristocrat Francisco I. Madero. The initial battles of the revolution started when the peasantry joined forces with members of the middle and upper classes to overthrow the Diaz regime. This inspired land reform movements led by Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. After Madero’s assassination, the Huerta counter-revolutionary presidency took over. It was short lived and after the revolutionary conference of Aguascalientes, another landowner named Venustiano Carranza took office and established a new Mexican constitution. As the warfare wore down, leaders like Obregon, Calles, and Cardenas institutionalized the ideals of the Mexican Revolution although the Zapatista ideal of land reform that received so much support from the rural peasantry fell by the wayside. Mexico’s ruling party, the PRI, was established but, unfortunately sold out by becoming more autocratic and corrupt, allowing foreign corporations to access their resources once again though to the chagrin of the American empire, the PRI nationalized the oil fields. They continued making noises about pushing Mexico towards the status of a first world nation, but forward movement progressed only in bits and pieces. The PRI betrayed some of the dreams of the Mexican Revolution, but not all of them. The realization of that dream is yet to come.

Gonzalez’s analysis of the years following the end of revolutionary combat operations is one of this book’s strong points. A lot of books on this subject end with the political ascendancy of Obregon. It’s as if the forces set in motion by the revolution just abruptly stopped in 1920 according to many accounts. Of course, any student of history will tell you that isn’t a realistic way of looking at political upheavals. Otherwise this book is mostly a top down view of the Mexican Revolution meanng the emphasis is placed on politics at the governmental level. While the activism and leadership of Villa and Zapata are readily acknowledged, they take a back seat to what went on at the federal level. Villa’s stint as governor of Chihuahua is never even mentioned. Details of different battles are almost entirely left out and biographical information about key figures in the revolution is absent too. This book really just documents and summarizes the high points of the movement according to Gonzalez’s viewpoint. He does this in a way that is accessible, clear, and engaging though.

The Mexican Revolution 1910-1940 serves as an easy introduction to this pivotal conflict in Mexico’s modern history. It draws you in and prepares you for further reading from more in depth sources. It can also be of interest for those who already know about the Mexican Revolution and who the major figures were. It can clarify the intricate mess that more complete studies make it out to be. It can also be a good recap or refresher if you’ve previously read about it and want to get back into the subject matter after some time has passed. Michael J. Gonzalez has written a good functional book that doesn’t exhaust the subject matter but does prime you for more. The Mexican Revolution is a significant event in the formation of the Mexican national identity and understanding what went on will help you understand the roots of contemporary Mexico and their relations with the rest of the world, especially with the United States. This book is a good place to start. 

 

Book Review - Subcommander Marcos: The Man and the Mask by Nick Henck

Subcommander Marcos:

The Man and the Mask

by Nick Henck

It was the night of New Year’s Eve, 1994 in San Cristobal de las Casas, a small city in the Mexican state of Chiapas. An army of guerilla warriors blocked off all roads to the city and seized the town square. Their spokesman emerged, wearing a green army uniform and a black ski mask. He smoked a pipe. He called himself Subcomandante Marcos and his image would soon spread around the world. Marcos’s army was called the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional or the EZLN, though they commonly came to known as the Zapatistas. Since it was the day that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, Subcomandante Marcos declared this to be an uprising against the establishment, one that would put the rights of Mexico’s Indios in the spotlight in a bid for higher living standards and greater political autonomy. Nick Henck’s Subcommander Marcos: The Man and the Mask gives a comprehensive history of the EZLN movement and the most in depth biography of its leader to this day.

After the uprising in 1994, and a few years into the 2000s, Subcomandante Marcos’s identity remained a mystery even though his image and message spread rapidly around the world due to media coverage. Nick Henck did a bit of digging around to find out who he was and where he came from. The first third of the book gives as much biographical information as he could find. Marcos’s true identity was that of Rafael Sebastian Guillen Vicente. He came from a middle class background, got a college education at a liberal arts university, worked as a philosophy professor at another university, and got drawn into left wing politics. Initially he was a Marxist and joined a radical activist organization called the FLN. Their plan was to overthrow the Mexican government and establish a new socialist state. This section on the early life and radicalization of Marcos wears a little thin at times. The author gets sidetracked into some long discussions about the political climate of Mexico and its history that don’t help to clarify or add much to the overall story of Marcos and the EZLN. The narrative picks up again in the second section.

By the mid-1980s, Marcos had had enough of revolutionary theory and decided he wanted action. The FLN assigned him to the jungle highlands of Chiapas to prepare for guerilla warfare. He attracted a loyal army of Mayan Indios and landless agricultural workers. Marcos learned to speak their language, lived according to their lifestyle, and ate only the food that they ate. Critics of Marcos have accused him of exploiting the Indios and luring them into a political conflict they otherwise would not have engaged in. His supporters have countered this accusation by pointing out that he completely integrated into their society and became one of them. He still lives a humble existence with the Mayan people to this day. In any case, he spent ten years preparing the EZLN army for the uprising of 1994.

One interesting problem Marcos encountered along the way was related to the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of communism. Marcos had been teaching Marxist and Maoist political theory to his followers for some time when the Iron Curtain came down and suddenly the politics of the Left looked irrelevant. The FLN realized they had to change their message or else they would never be taken seriously so Marcos eventually phased out the Marxist jargon and began emphasizing the need for stronger representation of Indigenous people in the Mexican government. He came to advocate for the Mayan people to have their own semi-autonomous government, acting as a sub-nation within the nation of Mexico.

The third section of the book explains what happened after the initial uprising of 1994. After some minor skirmishes that resulted in a small number of Zapatista deaths, Marcos realized his guerilla army was outgunned. The uprising caught the media’s attention and he seized on the opportunity to bring the cause to the public. The Mexican middle classes came out in strong support for the Zapatistas and as long as they stayed in the eye of the press, the EZLN maintained their support. Subcomandante Marcos also pioneered the use of the internet as a tool of revolution. He reached a worldwide audience by writing communiques that were witty, imaginative, and a bit fantastical. Some of his supporters even claim they had valid literary merit though only time will tell if that is true. Pro-Zapatista activist groups sprung up on every continent and suddenly the subject of post-colonialism and the rights of Indigenous people around the world filtered into a new Leftist reorientation, carrying over into the anti-WTO protests in Seattle in 2000 and Occupy Wall Street a few years later.

Subcomandante Marcos was winning a war of wits with the Mexican government. This probably was aided by the widespread opposition to Mexico’s PRI party that had been ruling the country since the 1930s. With minimal violence, a high profile media campaign, massive street demonstrations and conferences of varying success, the Zapatistas managed to establish their own alternative government based on traditional Mayan principles in Chiapas and also got their cause brought up in a Mexican congressional hearing. Finally they succeeded in striking a deal with the government that was beneficial to the Indios of Mexico. In the end, Marcos hed led a semi-successful political movement with minimal bloodshed. Subcomandante Marcos has since remained reclusive, living with his people in the highlands of Chiapas. He remains a mysterious figure and actually sounds like a pretty decent guy. One thing you can say after reading this biography is that he was authentic and sincere.

There isn’t much to critisize in this book. There are some slow parts in the beginning that border on irrelevancy, but everything else is clearly written and sufficiently explained. There are some missing pieces that could have been included though. A brief description of Mayan culture would have enhanced the context and a little more description of the jungles and mountains would give it an added depth. It would also be helpful to hear more from the Mayan people themselves about the EZLN; it would be interesting to hear what they thought of the outsider Marcos considering he was a middle class mestizo who came to them from Mexico City. Although it is beyond the scope of this book, it would also be interesting to learn about the long term effects of the EZLN uprising and whether or not it continues to make a difference in the lives of Mexico’s Indigenous people.

This is the best book about Subcomandante Marcos, the Zapatistas, and the January 1, 1994 uprising I know of so far. It’s also inspirational. Marcos spent a decade preparing for a guerilla war. Once it started he realized that bloodshed would lead to nothing but mass suicide for his followers. He was quick-witted and pragmatic enough to see how he could influence public opinion without having to resort to further violence. More than ten years after the initial siege of San Cristobal de las Casas, the EZLN were able to get something they wanted. Patience, adaptability, and communication were their greatest allies. They proved that change doesn’t have to be immediate or even grandiose. There is a lot for future activists to learn here. The fact that this political movement happened fairly recently in Mexico makes it all that much more interesting.

 

Book Review: Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico by Bill Weinberg

Homage to Chiapas:

The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico

by Bill Weinberg

On New Year’s Eve 1994, a ragged army of soldiers seized San Cristobal de las Casas, a small city in Mexico’s poorest state Chiapas. Wearing ski masks and homemade army uniforms, the rebels carried rifles and pistols, though many of them were actually carrying wooden sticks made to look like guns. The rebel army was the EZLN, also known as the Zapatistas, and they were primarily made up of Mayan Indians. Some people took them to be a low-level threat and some tourists weren’t happy about the uprising disrupting their travel plans. Some might have even said the EZLN were quaint. But the Zapatista uprising shook Mexican society to its core, sparked a few other insurrections, and brought attention to the problems faced by the poorest people in the country. Although incomplete in ts scope, Bill Weinberg’s Homage to Chiapas puts the rebellion into context and looks at its short term consequences.

The book starts off with a whirlwind tour through Mexican history going back to pre-colonial times, detailing the relations between the indigenous Mayans and the Uto-Aztecan empire that conquered and assimilated them. By Weinberg’s account, rebellion has been a part of Mayan heritage from the beginning. After the Spanish Conquistadors and the Catholic church arrived to do the dirty deeds of the Castilian empire, the tradition of Mayan uprisings continued. Some elements in the church had humanitarian sympathies and defended the Mayans against the excessive cruelties of the colonialists and this alliance between Catholic activists and the indigenous people of Mexico continues to this day. Weinberg’s history of Mexico is brief and serves the purpose of setting a historical context for Mayan and Indian political resistance in Mexico and other parts of Latin America. He strongly emphasizes the history of the Mayan people. If you’re familiar with Mexican history, this part of the book might feel incomplete. If you’re not, it might feel a little muddled and confusing. But this book isn’t about the grand scope of Mexican history and the opening chapters do serve their purpose of drawing a connecting line from the Mayan past to the present.

The same can be said for the chapters on modern Mexico. The Mexican Revolution gets explained, especially the cause of land reform heralded by Emiliano Zapata, the guerilla fighter that inspired the EZLN in the 1990s. A lot of attention is also drawn to the domination of Mexico by the American government and multinational corporations during the industrialization and modernization process. Weinberg goes into great detail about how outside interference in Mexico’s culture and economy led to the widespread environmental damage, economic displacement, and loss of ancestral lands for Indians and campesinos. He brings us up into the 1990s when the corruption of Mexico’s dominant PRI political party and American free trade agreements under Reagan and Bush, like GATT and NAFTA, were ratified and exacerbated the unresolved problems the Mexican Revolution was meant to correct. These chapters are heavily detailed and the reader may feel lost in the weeds, especially in sections detailing environmental sciences and economics. Weinberg overdoes his explanations in a way that could alienate his audience.

Then we come up to New Year’s Day of 1994, the day that the NAFTA treaty went into effect, giving oil companies and other multinational corporations sweeping rights over Mexican natural resources, manufacturing in the maquiladoras along the border, and industrialized agriculture that killed off varieties of traditionally grown produce and further disinherited Mexicans from privately and publicly held land all for the sake of making money for American businessmen.

A decade previous, in the mountains of Chiapas and the Lacandon jungle along the border of Guatemala, a mysterious figure arose and began preparing armies of Mayan people to fight the Mexican government. His name was Subcomandante Marcos and no one knew who he was at first since he hid his identity behind a black ski mask. The New Year’s uprising of 1994 led to some small skirmishes with a small amount of casualties, mostly EZLN fighters. The Zapatistas realized they could not fight Mexico with arms so instead they captured the media’s attention and Marcos reached a global audience by posting dispatches on the internet that gained worldwide sympathy. The Mexican middle classes took sides with Marcos and the Zapatistas and their message caught on in all continents and regions of the world. Their message was simple: they wanted land, they wanted self-governance, and they wanted all the material benefits of modernity. They wanted political participation in the Mexican government and desired to be like a semi-autonomous nation within the nation. They eventually built a parallel government in rural Chiapas and refused to recognize the official governments run in the urban municipalities of the state. The conflict between the EZLN and the government was unresolved at the time this book was published. Weinberg is successful in defining the goals of the EZLN, but falls short on writing about their history. A lot of his account is bogged down with descriptions of his travels into Zapatista territories, hidden in the mountains and jungles, and his attempt at getting an interview with Subcomandante Marcos himself, which eventually happens but doesn’t lead to any great insights.

The next section of the book looks at other indigenous uprisings that happened parallel to or after the EZLN uprising of Subcomandante Marcos. The most interesting chapter gives an account of indigenous people rebelling against oil companies in the state of Tabasco who wrecked the environment and contaminated their drinking water making farming almost impossible and causing a wave of health problems. The author again bogs the reader down with excessive details. You might need to be an expert in chemistry or biology to fully understand everything he writes. He could easily make the point abut environmental destruction and its impact on the agricultural economy without going into such fine, technical details. But it is a good section because it documents some attempts at revolutionary activism that probably will otherwise be forgotten due to lack of attention from other writers.

The rest of the book moves sideways into accounts of the intersection between the Mexican government, landowners, the military, law enforcement, and the drug cartels in the North, especially in Sonora. The Tarahumara or Raramuri Indians get caught up in this mess due to poverty and lack of political power. These chapters get to be frustrating because the author introduces a lot of government officials, law enforcement officers, military generals, and hacendados who made the mistake of involving themselves in drug trafficking. Most of these people get assassinated soon after they enter the narrative and a lot of this just reads like lists of people you know close to nothing about getting murdered. It barely has any connection to the EZLN, indigenous people, or the state of Chiapas. It should probably have been left out of the book altogether.

Bill Weinberg gives us an interesting glimpse into the world of indigenous political activism in Mexico. As mentioned before, the main issues of the narratives get somewhat obscured by too much extraneous information. A lot of the information gathered by Weinberg is incomplete which isn’t entirely his fault. The historical roots of these indigenous uprisings, especially those of the Zapatistas, was not well known at the time of writing. Furthermore, he also wrote this too close to the time of the events themselves. There isn’t enough historical distance on his part to give these uprisings the clarity they deserve. But still it’s good to read about how indigenous people can organize and challenge the injustices of the Mexican political and economic system.

Despite all its many flaws, including sloppy writing and a thick jungle of arcane details that is hard to see through, Homage to Chiapas is worth reading once just because it draws attention to struggles that are not well-documented elsewhere. On a final note, the title should probably be changed as very little of what takes place in these pages happens in Chiapas. Besides, it is more of an homage to Mayan people and the EZLN than it is to Mexico’s poorest, but also one of the most fascinating, states. The dense jungle, the highlands, its ancient temples, its history, and the culture of its peoples make it a place worth visiting and learning about all on its own. 

 

Book Review: Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte the Skeleton Saint by H. Andrew Chesnut

Devoted to Death:

Santa Muerte the Skeleton Saint

by H. Andrew Chesnut

Over the last two decades, interest in a skeleton saint has grown in both Mexico and Latino communities north of the border in the U.S.A. In fact, the popularity has begun to spread outside of Latino communities too as different ethnic groups become familiar with each other. This saint is called Santa Muerte and it has also begun to attract media attention because of its popularity with Mexican drug cartels and other people associated with the underworld. What the media doesn’t tell you is that Santa Muerte’s appeal is wider than realized and in fact most of her devotees are ordinary people without any nefarious intentions. Anthropologist R. Andrew Chesnut sets the record straight in his study of this fledgling religious movement in Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte the Skeleton Saint.

After stating his intention to save the Santa Muerte community from negative publicity, Chesnut examines the history of this saint. He starts by discussing the Uto-Aztecan death goddesses. But he is more convinced that the image of Santa Muerte was not part of pre-Conquest culture and actually arrived with the Spanish invaders and the Catholic church. They brought over images of the Grim Reaper which sprung up during the Black Plague. The intention was to scare the people of Mexica into submission, but secretly some people were secretly putting the Grim Reaper on altars and making sacrifices to him for favors. Similar traditions have proliferated in Central America and Argentina, but these involved a male Grim Reaper and appear to be unrelated to the current phenomenon of Santa Muerte. In recent years, due to syncretism with African diaspora religions like Candomble, Vodou, and Santeria, Santa Muerte has emerged from hiding and taken on a new life.

In Mexico City, a grocery store with a shrine to Santa Muerte started attracting so much attention that the owner began offering monthly prayer and worship services complete with mariachi bands. Another chapel called the Temple of Death opened and the cult has been snowballing in membership ever since. Chesnut uses the word “cult” in the Latin sense of the word “cultus” which means “religious community” and in no way applies to the more current usage indicating authoritarian, high control groups led by charismatic leaders.

Each chapter in this book is about the different ways Santa Muerte is worshiped and petitioned for favors with some commentaries on who her devotees are along the way. Whether people are making offerings for money, work, love, or protection from harm, most ceremonies are relatively benign and innocent. Offerings of candles, incense, food, and drinks are common. The most controversial gifts include alcohol, cigarettes, and marijuana. Animal and human sacrifices are mostly the stuff of urban legends and media sensationalism.

While there are Santa Muerte devotees from all walks of life, a quick survey of the book reveals that most of them are working class mestizos like truck drivers, small business owners, police, and prison guards. There are, however, some upper class and educated followers too. Some are lawyers, some are teachers, and some are celebrities or corporate businessmen. A couple people the author interviews are goths with black clothes, nose rings, and tattoos. It should be considered that some people from a counter-culture like that might be pre-disposed to being receptive to a saint whose appearance is that of the Grim Reaper in women’s dress. And while Chesnut does rightfully downplay the media’s negative association of Santa Muerte with criminal activity, he does provide a chapter detailing the appeal of Santa Muerte to drug cartel members and organized crime gangs since altars to the Mother of Death are commonly found on their premises during police raids.

While the author does provide a lot of details regarding the practices and culture of the Santa Muerte cult, he doesn’t do any heavy theorizing and there is only minimal explanation as to why it has grown in popularity. He does identify some causes though. One is that Santa Muerte is available to everybody regardless of class, gender, ethnicity, or position in life. Santa Muerte is also amoral in a way that has caused the Catholic church to condemn her; she is believed to do favors for good or bad purposes without passing judgment on the devotee and that is why doctors as well as drug kingpins can approach her. Santa Muerte has a strong presence in the ambient popular culture too. She appears in novels, TV shows, horror movies, song lyrics, tattoos, and t-shirts. Finally, Santa Muerte is believed to be more powerful than other saints, especially those approved of by the church.

Chesnut doesn’t explain much beyond that. You are left to your own thoughts as to the proliferation of the Skeleton Saint. Personally I feel that the issues of power and condemnation from religious leaders are a part of the appeal. The skeptic in me that doesn’t believe in magic says that there is an equal statistical chance of any saint, spirit, or deity delivering what a devotee asks for in exchange for ritual offerings. There would be a random chance of obtaining the desired outcome no matter who or what is prayed to. But the perception that any one of these supernatural entities is more powerful than the others is what matters to the believer. Therefore as more people align themselves with the cult of Santa Muerte the more stories of successful rituals will circulate socially making it appear that she is the most powerful of them all. Meanwhile, people are more likely to remain silent about the ceremonies that fail creating a socially derived illusion that Santa Muerte ceremonies have a higher rate of success than they really do.

There might also be a subversive element in the worship of Santa Muerte. Since she is not recognized by the church, interacting with her could be a way of rebelling against traditionally accepted authority. This trend might be wider than Santa Muerte since the author points out that Evangelical Christianity is currently catching up in popularity to the Catholic church while African diaspora religions and secular humanism are also making inroads into Mexican society. This would indicate that Mexico is in a time of social transition and attraction to Santa Muerte is one manifestation of that change in answering to people’s needs.

The issue of power might also say something about who follows Sants Muerte. Occupations involving criminal activities on both sides of the law are extremely high risk. Life is just as dangerous for prison guards as it is for prisoners. People who work in construction, poorly regulated factories, the sex industry, or the taxi business are risking their safety every time they go to work. An unemployed man on the verge of going homeless would have extreme levels of anxiety. Santa Muerte, the most powerful saint, often appeals to those whose lives have put them on the front line of danger or despair so it would make sense that they would petition and desire to placate the representative of death to bless them with the gift of life. As for more mundane concerns like winning a poker game, passing an exam, or attracting a lost lover back, those desiring such favors might as well turn to the most powerful saint available. Why turn towards weaker saints? But otherwise the widespread devotion and rapid spread of Santa Muerte’s cult might be an indication of growing social anxiety. If magic is about power and control, than the growing popularity of a religion involving magic might indicate that wide sectors of society feel as though they have little or no control over the circumstances of their lives. While that lack of control could be present at any given time throughout history, the beginning of a new cultural practice addressing that anxiety might be a sign that the old ways are failing and the younger generations are searching for something more effective. Widespread anxiety might be commonplace, but changing cultural practices could indicate that a precarious rupture with the past might be happening.

R. Andrew Chesnut’s intentions here are to clear up misconceptions about Santa Muerte and advocate for the variety of people who are attracted to her rising popularity. It is written for the general reader. This is good because clarifying the beliefs and practices should encourage people to tolerate something about Mexican culture that they don’t understand. It’s too bad Devoted to Death doesn’t go deeper into an analysis and explanation for what is happening on both the south and north sides of the border though. It would be nice to have heard a professional anthropologist’s views on what this says about Mexican society. He just leaves you hanging to draw your own conclusions.

Anyhow, the next time you see a veladora decorated with an image of Santa Muerte, probably beside candles depicting the Virgen de Guadalupe, in a grocery store, a market, or a bodega you can ask the people selling it how to do a ritual. My experience with Mexicans and Chicanos has been that they are usually eager to talk about their culture with non-Latinos like me if you show a sincere interest. You might open some doorways, make some new friends, and maybe, if you’re lucky, you might even be blessed with good fortunes from the Skeleton Saint herself.