A HOUSE DIVIDED BY CLASH OF THE GODS

Cuban Santeria priests bump heads over politics on year's predictions

January 9, 1997, in the Miami Herald
By JUAN O. TAMAYO
Herald Staff Writer

The high priests of Afro-Cuban religions have issued their prognostications for the year 1997. Not surprisingly, they are deeply divided along Cuba’s political fault line.

In Havana, pro-Castro high priests known as babalawos say their gods predicted a good year, with social peace and bounteous harvests. But less revolutionary brethren in Havana forecast hunger and job problems in 1997.

In Miami, anti-Castro babalawos say their Gods spoke of civil war and the death of President Fidel Castro. Those cheery Havana predictions, they sneer, are dirty manipulations by Castro’s secret police.

``There’s little ethics and too much politics in this,’’ moaned Jose Montoya, a Miami babalawo who said he has been called a ``Castro agent’’ because he accepts the predictions of a Havana group recognized by Castro’s government.

The gap between predictions might seem absurd, were it not for the fact that many Cubans give serious weight to the forecasts divined by babalawos from seashells and other sacred objects during secret rituals each Dec. 31. Cuban police briefly detained one babalawo last January after one forecast predicted a wave of government repression in 1996. And academic experts on Afro-Cuban religions say they don’t doubt that Havana security agents manipulate the annual predictions for political gain.

Then there are those predictions that come eerily close to reality: Forecasts of security crackdowns and hurricanes in 1996 came true, with a harsh wave of arrests of Concilio Cubano dissidents in February and Hurricane Lili’s destructive rampage through central Cuba in October.

The 1994 predictions that many Cubans would ``take baths in the ocean’’ and ``remain unburied’’ coincided with the rafter crisis that saw some 36,000 Cubans flee the island aboard homemade rafts and boats, and an undetermined number drown.

``There are lies and politics, but the real predictions are gods speaking,’’ said Rigoberto Zamora, head of the Miami-based International Federation of Afro-Cuban Yoruba Religion, who faced four charges of cruelty to animals over a televised sacrifice in 1995.

`Worst year ever’

A 59-year-old Cuban army veteran who fought against Castro in the late 1950s and now leads the Association of Veterans of the Anti-Communist War of Cuba, Zamora said the gods consulted by his federation’s eight babalawos predicted ``the worst year ever’’ for Cuba in 1997.

``On Cuba, the predictions speak of a civil war, of a revolution within the revolution,’’ he said. A separate ritual in early December to divine Castro’s future had this result: ``It’s his time to die.’’

To get protection from evil, believers should place ``a white flag with a painted elephant’’ over the doors to their homes, Zamora’s group reported in an English-language fax sent to reporters.

The prediction, also known as the Oddun or Letter, also forecast violent weather and an increase in street crime. Some predictions apply to both Cuba and Miami, Zamora said.

The Odduns often contain vague phrases and anecdotes or parables. ``ICA Ogunda Ano Osobo, governing INLE and OSAIN,’’ was part of the Zamora group’s Oddun for 1997. Babalawos interpret the text, based on their own knowledge and sacred texts.

A different group

A different forecast by a group of Havana babalawos regarded by academic experts as free of government influence predicted 1997 would see hunger and problems with work everything from unemployment to job accidents and repression for written works.

But they predicted a relatively good year for Cuba: no weather catastrophes or civil war and only ``a change of head,’’ presumed to refer to changes among Cuban government leaders and not Castro himself.

These babalawos make their forecasts public through a trusted outsider and refuse to be identified even by their ``families’’ the clans that initiated them into cults that combine elements of Roman Catholicism and African religions imported by black slaves.

A third forecast by Havana babalawos published over the weekend by Cuba’s official Prensa Latina news agency predicted 1997 would be ``a good year for money’’ and agriculture, despite serious work problems.

``Anyone who has a job should care for it, because it will be a difficult year in which to find a new job,’’ said the prediction, which added that all Cubans should seek ``reconciliation’’ to improve their lives in 1997.

A fourth prediction issued by babalawos from five well-known and respected ``families’’ in Havana also mentions problems at the workplace and rising street crime, Miami’s Montoya said.

Criticized as a fraud

Some of those babalawos are linked to the Havana-based Yoruba Cultural Association of Cuba, officially created in 1991 and criticized by Miami Santeria followers as a fraud. Association members have government permission to charge U.S. dollars to Cuban exiles and foreigners being initiated into the Afro-Cuban religions.

``That’s nothing but a cultural front created by the government to bring in hard currency,’’ said Ernesto Pichardo, president of the Hialeah-based Church of Babalu Aye.

Montoya said the five families’ Oddun is the one he accepts, however, even though some ``politically distorted’’ versions now circulate in Cuba, because the families have the longest tradition of issuing New Year’s Odduns.

``In Cuba and Miami there are people we don’t know if they have bad intentions or political goals of some kind who are issuing their own Odduns. That is all very suspicious,’’ Montoya said.

``Some say there’s manipulation by Castro security agents. It’s not me who says that, but it is said. Others are more anti-Castro than religious. There’s a lot of disunity, and everyone does what they want to do.''

``It's such a mess,'' he said.

Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald