There is always a spirituality that accompanies us in the spaces we pass through in our daily lives and as we move toward other dimensions. Africa’s spiritual contributions to our continental and Caribbean diversity are the result of older, faith-driven rebellions that played out over several centuries. Today, thanks to Africa’s spiritual traditions, millions of African descendants––and other ethnic groups––are sheltered in religious practices they can use as the foundation to rebuild our humanity.
Vodun as a liberating energy
Haiti served as the largest enslaving engine of French colonialism in the Caribbean. To drive this productive machinery based on sugar cane, the French captured, kidnapped, and enslaved hundreds of thousands of human beings from Africa’s Fon civilization, the creators of Vodun.
Living in subhuman conditions under the harsh conditions of forced and continuous labor, the enslaved Africans agreed, on Aug. 14, 1791, in a Caïman forest ceremony, to start one of the most important rebellions of the African diaspora in the American hemisphere.
According to historians, the rebellion began with a prayer in the Fon language led by a mambo, or Vodun priestess, known as Cécile Fatiman. The ceremony’s prayer went like this: “The Vodun that has made the sun shine on us from on high, that shakes the sea, that makes the storm roar…listen to me, you, the good Vodun who is hidden among the clouds. There good Vodun beholds us and sees all that the whites do. The god of the whites commands crime, our Vodun requests good deeds. Our Vodun will lead our arms and give us resistance. Let us destroy the image of the god of the whites who thirsts for our tears…let us hear in ourselves the call of freedom.”
It was with these words of that Vodun priestess that all the enslaved men and women of Saint-Domingue (former name of Haiti) rose up against the enslaving system. The island was burned from north to south, from east to west, until freedom was achieved on Jan. 1, 1804. That was the first triumphant African religious rebellion in the Western world where Vodun, the religion practiced by 90% of the population, was used.
The year 2024 will mark the 220th anniversary of Haiti’s independence, which was the result of that 13-year liberation battle (1791–1804), crowned by General Dessalines, who signed the independence declaration over the skull of a white French soldier.
For the first time in contemporary history, marriages were made official in the manner of Haitian Vodun. (Incidentally, the city of Wydah, Republic of Benin, erected a statue in homage to Toussaint L’Ouverture, leader of the Haitian rebellion, in 1994.)
Yoruba rebellion
The Yorubas, a civilization in the western part of Nigeria, was one of the ethnic groups abducted and enslaved in large numbers at the end of the 18th century and well until the end of the 19th century, when slavery was finally abolished in Cuba (1886) and Brazil (1888). Yorubas had and have one of the most complex and complete religious orders in sub-Saharan Africa.
In the Americas, Yoruba men and women led several rebellions, such as the Afro Cuban rebellion that took place in Havana, Cuba, in 1812. According to Afro Cuban historian Pedro Deschamps Chapeaux, the epicenter of this rebellion was the Cabildo Shangó Teddún, presided over by the Yoruba known by the Catholic name of José Antonio Aponte––a son of Shango.
In 1835, Havana was again shaken by a Lucumie (Yoruba) uprising led by Hermenegildo Jáuregui, in which Juan Nepomuceno Prieto, who was foreman of the cabildo, was involved. In both of these emblematic rebellions, the spiritual center was the Yoruba religion, which was grouped and organized through cabildos that were basically Ilé Ocha.
The Abakuá Secret Society
Men and women from the Efik-Efok civilization entered Cuba and other places in the Americas as Carabali. In their place of origin, the Carabali formed secret societies that they reproduced in Cuba; these became known as the Abakuá Secret Society. They were organized in the most important ports of Cuba, such as the ports of Havana and Matanzas, where they contributed to the liberation process of Cuba. Through their Abakuá cabildos, organized from the 19th century onward, they reproduced the great god called Abasí in their religious structure.
Afro-spiritual re-reading
The time has come to reassess the religious contributions of Africans and their descendants to the liberation movements of our continent and the Caribbean islands. The efforts made by our ancestors through religious maroonage have today been projected in various religious manifestations, such as the Rule of Ocha (Cuba), Shango Cult (Trinidad and Tobago), Candomblé (Brazil), Regla Kongo (Cuba), Candomblé Angola and Umbanda (Brazil), Vudu (Haiti, New Orleans, and Tobago), and Abakuá (Cuba), among other religious expressions.
With every day that passes, African spirituality is gaining more strength in different corners of the American hemisphere.