276 Chapter 12
The deacon asks no questions on the religiosity of the deceased
when a body is brought in. It does not matter whether the person
would really be labeled as Catholic by the church or not, and Cubans
themselves do not see a problem in combining distinct religious prac-
tices. An informant conceptualized her reasons for the performance
of Catholic funerary rituals as: “There in the church of the cemetery
they do a mass, a mass to let God know that you’re going there.”
Another informant did not divorce Catholic funerary practices from
Afro-Cuban and Spiritist religious practices, which are also frequently
performed to the deceased and his or her family members at death:
“There is something that is done so that the spirit rises [to heaven].
You have to do certain prayers so that the spirit does not latch on to
the body, to the material, and when a person dies, the spirit stays like
fragmented, and it is as if it doesn’t know whether it’s alive or dead.”^11
My informants had several distinct notions on what happens to a
person after death. My informants believed in the possibility of rein-
carnation and saw that it is possible to obtain information on a per-
son’s past lives via mediums and cartomancists (see also Espirito
Santo, 2009). Muertos (dead people) are seen as residing in the ceme-
tery. On specific dates people go to the cemetery to chat with their
dead relatives (their muertos), as well as to ask for distinct favors from
those muertos that are specifically capable of performing miracles (such
as Amelia la Milagrosa, see Martiatu, 2006: 143-146). However, without
going into a more detailed examination of these distinct religious
aspects relating to Cuban notions of death here, I believe that the
great popularity of Catholic funerary rites in Cuba has to do with the
general high religiosity in the country, as well as with the fact that
many Cubans perceive almost any type of religious ritual bearing a
general blessing and protection upon the person to whom they are
performed.
- The most usual ones are the Ituto ceremony performed by santería priests (babala-
wos) at the death of initiated practitioners, as well as the special funerary rituals perfor-
med in Ifá when a babalawo dies. An informant described the latter ceremony: “15
babalawos get together and there can be no one else except the babalawos. And they
have to decide to whom they will give all the religious things [of the deceased].” See also
Alcaraz, 2003: 65-66.