Tue May 8, 2007 2:48 PM BST
By Catherine Bremer
HAVANA (Reuters) - After a few minutes tossing a string of flat beads
and chanting, Rogelio Castellano decides his tourist client is
emotionally scarred by an old conflict. Only a $500 (250 pound) ritual
goat sacrifice will put it right.
He's insistent. Even after he halves the fee, it's more money than he
could make in a year on a Cuban state salary.
A babalawo, or priest, of Cuba's ritual-filled Santeria religion,
Castellano wears a gold chain and has a TV and a telephone that stand
out from the animal skulls, pigeon blood, melted candle wax and feathers
that litter his dingy home.
Such modern accoutrements are testament to a flow of tourists that has
made Santeria a lucrative business for some, bringing in foreign
currency that makes the difference between a frugal lifestyle or
relative wealth in communist-run Cuba.
"I see seven or eight foreigners a week. Germans, Mexicans, Italians,
Americans," said Castellano, who spent years studying the African-based
faith of ancestral spirits and shrines teeming with fruit, horse hair,
ribbons and rum.
"Quite a few come off the cruise ships," he added, grinning to reveal a
set of gold-rimmed teeth that most Cubans could not afford.
Whereas a Cuban would pay with a fistful of pesos, a foreigner might
spend $20 to meet a priest and $50 on good-luck charms like
gravel-filled gourds or plastic bead bracelets.
A full-on initiation ceremony into Santeria, which grew out of the
Yoruba religion brought to the Americas by African slaves, would cost a
foreigner well over $1,000.
Such prices are normal for Yoruba-style rituals in much of the
continent, but they are dizzying in Cuba, where people get by on a state
wage of around $15 a month plus whatever they can do on the side.
"It can be a swindle. But not with me. Foreigners have come to me for
years," said Castellano, dusting off a feathered clay head which for $10
-- and if one pours rum and honey on it and blows cigar smoke over it --
will keep bad spirits away.
WARM BLOOD
Some seven in 10 Cubans are Santeria followers and consult babalawos, or
"santera" priestesses, about health, financial or relationship woes,
like followers of Yoruba-based faiths in countries like Haiti and Brazil.
Everyone in Cuba knows somebody whose life was changed forever by a
Santeria ritual, which can entail being beaten with herbal plants or
sprayed with warm animal blood.
Yet backpackers directed to babalawos by tour guides or taxi drivers
invariably pay more than the couple of dollars guide books suggests for
a "fast-food" helping of Santeria.
Across the Havana bay in the Santeria-rich port of Regla, santeras greet
tourists arriving off a rickety ferryboat.
After a fortune-telling session with Tarot cards or seashells, they
offer to stay in touch by e-mail and urge foreigners to send over their
friends.
"Tourists come every day to see me. Mostly Spanish and Mexicans," says
Laura, a voluptuous santera decked out in a tight lycra bodysuit and a
mass of tinkling gold jewelry.
"People come back to Cuba to see me or stay in touch by e-mail. I send
advice and they send gifts. I even have "ahijados" (godchildren) in
France," she said, pausing to sell half a dozen $10 amulet bracelets to
a Mexican tourist clutching a wishlist from his friends back home.
Her speedy $20 consultations, next to a bead-strewn altar to the Virgin
of Charity El Cobre, Cuba's patron saint, are entertaining -- but a
little short on insight.
A reading of a time-worn pack of cards and some cowrie shells cheerily
predicts wealth, career success and an imminent love affair leading to
marriage and two kids.
But you're obliged to buy a tiny cloth bag of gravel, for luck, a bead
bracelet and a wooden figurine -- total $30 -- and there's an order to
come back soon with friends.
MARITAL TIPS
Blending Yoruba deities called "Orishas" with Catholic saints, Santeria
took root among slaves on sugar plantations run by Spanish colonialists.
It thrived after Castro's 1959 revolution displaced Catholicism, with
babalawos offering personal advice in intimate consultations.
As Cuba opened up to tourism in the 1990s, some babalawos were licensed
to deal in dollars with foreigners, from curious academics to would-be
priests, and sell Santeria souvenirs.
Today, these white-clad taxpaying babalawos are on a level with Cubans
with permits to run book stores or drive taxis.
And the ones working on the quiet make more than they would as cigar
hawkers or tour guides. Many are among the few Cubans with access to a
phone or e-mail.
Still, like anything in life, when Santeria goes too commercial, it
loses much of its magic.
"Santeria is not a commercial thing. Everyone has to pay to be cleansed,
but priests shouldn't pester people for business," said Cuban
anthropologist and Santeria expert Natalia Bolivar.
"Foreigners have always come to see babalawos, because it's fashionable
or someone told them about it. There are unscrupulous people who take
advantage of that. But truly religious people never would."
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