During the 2024 edition of the Nit de les Religions (Night of Religions), at an event organised by the Religious Affairs Office (OAR), a Babalorixá (male priest in the Afro-Brazilian religion of Candomblé) spoke about his religion in relation to a series of African Yoruba pieces housed in the Museu de les Cultures del Món. One of these artefacts is an Ifá oracle tray. The Candomblé religion comes from Africa, from the Yoruba people, and the priest was trying to explain to the audience what the oracle consists of. However, he had to clarify repeatedly that the oracle was not a fortune teller, and that it could not predict the future; if it could, it would be able to predict the lottery numbers and he would be rich. The oracle only opens pathways, only indicates what the orixás, or gods, want. It does not predict exactly what will happen.

The prejudice against Afro-American religions, the voodoo stereotype, as forms of magic or witchcraft, still persists in our country, as in many other places. And yet, voodoo is nothing more than the word that refers to the deities in the Fon language of West Africa. It is not witchcraft, but a religion. This prejudice against “black magic” might be one of the reasons for the rather timid public presence of these religions, even though in recent decades its practice has seen notable growth in our country. This growth is the result of the immigration of people practising these religions from countries like Brazil, Cuba and Venezuela, but also due to other people of various backgrounds taking up the practices, including people born in Catalonia, in a context of growing globalisation.

In Barcelona, we find practitioners of religions such as Santería, Candomblé, Umbanda and the Cult of María Lionza. Santería and Candomblé are religions whose origins lie in West Africa, centred on the worship of orixás (deities in Yoruba) or voduns (in Fon). They were brought to Cuba and Brazil by enslaved Africans and in those countries received different names: Santería in Cuba and Candomblé in Brazil. Cuba and Brazil were the last countries in the western hemisphere to abolish slavery and maintained trade with West Africa until the end of the 19th century.

A common question is how these religions managed to survive the genocide that was the transatlantic slave trade. Various explanations can be offered, starting with the enslaved Africans’ active resistance to losing their religions, but there may be other factors too – such as the continuation of the slave trade up until the abolition of slavery, meaning enslaved people maintained constant contact with their African roots; the fact that the evangelisation of enslaved people was only superficial; or, paradoxically, the interest that slave owners themselves had in these religions. African religions were certainly subject to public repression, but in private, many members of the white upper classes took part in religious festivals and even became initiated. This ambiguity, in fact, was reciprocal, since many Candomblé practitioners also participated in Catholic religiosity. The main difference, however, between Catholicism and African religions was that the former was the official, public religion – with large churches at the centre of cities, processions and celebrations, weddings, baptisms and funerals – while the latter was practised on the peripheries of cities, in hidden places, in secret.

Secrecy is, in fact, central to these religions, which are based on initiation rituals; they are not evangelical religions seeking to spread their message. However, the fact that they are centred around initiation rituals does not mean they are not potentially open to everyone, since they are founded on the belief that all people, black and white, and all things in the world have a corresponding orixá – everyone “belongs” to some orixá. But there is no need to spread the message: it is not people who convert to the religion but rather the orixás who call them to it.

The orixás were originally kings and queens of African cities, with their own stories of love and battles. They are associated with natural elements, such as rivers, storms, plants and animals, food, colours, people's temperaments, and so on. Xangô, for example, was the god of Oyo; he is the god of thunder, generous and just, his colour is red, his symbol the double-headed axe (Osé) and his animal the lion. Oshun is the goddess of rivers – the Osun River runs through Nigeria; she is the goddess of seduction, beauty and wealth, her colour is gold, her symbol a fan, her associated offering is honey and her plants include, for example, basil.

All things and people that exist in the world correspond to one orixá or another. But this does not mean that this orixá requires us to worship them or become initiated. How do we know that an orixá wants us to be initiated? It is not something that is easy to understand. It is often reached through suffering; a series of events or symptoms that lead the person to seek counsel from a Babalorixá. In order to respond to their request, the Babalorixá consults the orixás through the oracle. This is, then, the purpose of the oracle: to communicate with the gods. And there can be many kinds of responses, as the person’s problems may have nothing to do with the orixás. However, it may be the case that the gods, or some god, is asking their “son” or “daughter” for a form of recognition, which could range from a simple offering to initiation into the religion.

This is how many people of non-African descent became initiated into these religions upon arriving in the New World, and this is still the case to this day. But these encounters also gave rise to new religions that incorporated aspects of the African initiation-based religions and aspects of Christianity, both popular Catholicism and new forms of knowledge that bridged religion and science, such as Spiritism. This is how religions such as Umbanda in Brazil or the Cult of María Lionza in Venezuela were born. These religions are characterised by their integration of African pantheons with spirits and entities of other origins – European and Indigenous – including historical figures.

Since it first emerged at the start of the 20th century, Umbanda in Brazil has sought to be recognised as a religion. But the other religions remained as they had at the outset – outside the public sphere, not only as a strategy to avoid repression, as mentioned, but also due to their initiation-based characteristics.

The histories of these religions in the 20th century, however, differed in each country. The Cult of María Lionza and Santería, despite being recognised in Venezuela and Cuba as traditional popular religions, have not sought public recognition by the state. On the other hand, Candomblé in Brazil has received considerable cultural and political recognition. Yet in recent decades, the growth of evangelical churches that are openly hostile to African religions has once again placed Candomblé at the centre of conflict.

This general context can help us understand the situation of these religions in our country. As mentioned, immigration from countries like Brazil, Cuba and Venezuela has led to an increasing presence of these religions here, but their public presence remains very limited. We also noted that, originally, these religions developed outside state institutions and the official Catholic religion, in an era of colonialism and slavery. In this sense, in a context of globalisation and immigration, when these religions arrive in the former imperial metropoles where they first emerged – such as Spain – they already arrive with a history of resistance and concealment in the face of racism and dominant religions, which paradoxically means they appear to be immune to religious, cultural and racial discrimination. In few cases will we find practitioners of these religions reporting racism or discrimination – but paradoxically, this absence of complaint may stem from an internalised marginal and subordinate position that assumes discrimination as a given. In other words, there is an unspoken understanding that they will encounter racist attitudes – even if at times this racism is simply paternalistic and condescending, for example, from public institutions or other religions that merely “tolerate” their existence but prefer not to engage with them directly. This marginalisation is also intertwined with the fact that they are initiation-based religions, practised in secret, rather than public religions that seek proselytism in the public sphere and develop in relation to the state – as is the case with religions that have a book, essentially Catholicism, but also other forms of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, which still dominate our definitions and even our laws on what does or does not count as religion. These religions are certainly not like Catholicism or Islam, and this sometimes makes it difficult for them to be publicly recognised as such.

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects that distinguishes these religions from book-based religions is their relationship with sexuality and family moral codes – particularly in the case of Afro-Brazilian religions. Whereas book-based religions, as we know, are openly patriarchal and defend traditional models of family and sexuality, grounded in law and institutions, Afro-Brazilian religions have often served as a refuge for other sexualities and propose family models that fall outside patriarchal norms. Historically, this has contributed to their marginalisation, but is has also been one of the characteristics that allows these religions to appear radically relevant today, in a context of moving beyond patriarchal models, and a far cry from the stereotype of religion as a refuge of tradition and fundamentalism, which is often present in critiques of religion in general.

In fact, we might say that these religions are radically contemporary – not only in their recognition of sexual multiplicity, but also in their recognition of human multiplicity more broadly. In contrast to book-based religions, which are founded on the idea of a single community worshipping a single god, there is no single way to enter Afro-American religions; on the contrary, there are as many ways as there are people. Each person is connected in a specific way to their orixá, and the role of the Babalorixá is to help guide the development of that relationship. In this sense, they respond in a much more flexible way to contemporary subjectivities – far more individualised and with divergent trajectories – and are far removed from any form of fundamentalism.

Given the current situation of globalisation and internationalisation in our country and city, it seems likely that the presence of these religions in Barcelona will only continue to grow – and may even give rise to new religions, in which the rivers and mountains and mythical figures of our country become new spirits, who speak to their “sons” and “daughters” of stories we could never have imagined before.

 

Roger Sansi

Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Barcelona