274 Chapter 12
kin, neighbors or friends. In this sense, death downplays the divisions
that are central in day-to-day social relations.
In addition to keeping company to the living, a wake is also a way
to keep company to the deceased. While my informants generally
feared and disliked funeral homes and cemeteries—even non-religious
persons considered that such places associated with death may have
contagious properties and pass bad ‘energy’ on to those going within
their vicinity—at the wake people stay close to the body. Usually the
children and/or the grandchildren of the deceased stay close to the
body for the wake’s duration. In a wake for a significant state person-
ality, his children and grandchildren remained next to his body, crying
throughout the wake. This emphasized the deceased’s position as a
loved father and grandfather as opposed to that of a prominent social-
ist, a role that was stressed in the symbolism of the wake. One of my
informants referred to the wake as “taking care” of the body, and this
is what in particular the children and the grandchildren of the
deceased are doing by remaining constantly close to the body
throughout the wake.
Normally after 24 hours the wake ends. The guests file outside to
wait for the coffin to be brought out and placed in the hearse that
takes it to the cemetery. The body is taken either to the cemetery, to
the crematorium or to another province to be buried depending on
the wishes of the deceased and the family members. Many of the per-
sons who attended the wake go home to rest at this point but the clos-
est family members follow the body to the cemetery.
The Burial
At the cemetery, the funerary ritual tends to take on a more religious
feel in comparison with the wake. In Colon, Havana’s main cemetery,
the body is customarily taken via a Catholic chapel to receive the last
sacraments. This Catholic observance of the last rites is a favored
practice in Cuba, and represents one of the two most popular Catholic
life cycle rituals in the country—the other being, Catholic baptism.