Funerals in Socialist Cuba 279
which the deceased is closely integrated. At the same time, the use of
kinship idiom in this way stresses the value such roles maintain in
Cuba.
There are rarely speeches in Cuban funerals, but I attended a
funeral where the deceased man’s son-in-law spoke briefly at the end
of the burial. In my opinion, this had to do with his position as some-
one at the same time ‘far enough’ and ‘close enough’ to the deceased.
This is a practice that does away with the normal kinship divisions—
the son-in-law ceases to be an affine, and becomes “family” instead.
This same tendency to turn ‘affines’ into ‘family’ in funerals can be
observed in the statement of the informant whose only visit to a
church had been when her mother-in-law passed away. Death seems
to merge together those kinship bonds that are conceived as distinct
in day-to-day life.ConclusionCuban matrifocal gender and kinship relations are transformed at the
moment of death, and funerals need to be explored in the context of
the whole life stage, when more stress is on the usually marginal patri-
lateral relations.
Cuban funerals are to a large degree composed of socialist ritual
practices, making them simple and in a way ‘scarce’ in symbolic con-
tent—the Catholic blessing is the only exception to this ‘ritual auster-
ity’, and even that is completed in ten minutes. At the same time, the
Catholic performance of the last rites is deeply meaningful to Cubans
as a way to ensure the deceased with a safe passage to the afterworld.
The dead form part of the lives of the living a long time after
death. Via mediums, spirits of the dead come to visit their living rela-
tives and via dreams they offer the living their insight and advice on
life. On Mothers’ Day, Fathers’ Day, on the anniversary of death and
on the anniversary of the deceased’s birthday, the living visit the dead
in the cemetery bringing flowers, food, drink, tobacco, performing