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Culturas itinerantes y trayectorias migrantes afroamericanas

The New Forest School: Rituals of Resistance and Re-memberment in Life on the Margin (Bogotá, Colombia)

La Nueva Escuela del Bosque: Rituales de Resistencia y Re-membranza en la Vida Periferia (Bogotá, Colombia)
Brandon Lewis

Résumés

By way of exploring how pillars of transnationalism, faith, and history are harnessed by Cuban and Venezuelan migrants as a means to purposeful ends in potentially hostile urban environments, this study proceeds to investigate the religious phenomena that occur at the intersections of devotion and diaspora, belief and history, and gender and generation within the divergent migrant enclaves of Bogotá. Specifically, this research asks: If and how is religion operationalized among Bogotá’s migrant undercaste and how is it tied to resistance and hope? More precisely, how have aspects of two uniquely syncretic and diasporic religions, Santería and Maria Lionza, been deployed and subsequently altered (or extended) by migrant devotees in Bogotá and for what purpose(s)? Within various contexts, “Rituals of Resistance” and “Re-memberment” (as referred to herein are defined respectively as transcendental reformations/survival mechanisms and as processes of reclaiming (or reframing) historical, subconscious influences/modes of feeling that have been lost and/or transplanted due to dynamics of diaspora. From a diverse set of ethical encounters which utilize the kinetic ethnographic tool of Street Phenomenology “Go Alongs,” a myriad of ontological conceptualizations, via these individuals’ transitory experiences of what the sacred is and where it can be found, come to light.

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Texte intégral

“Destino: Ilé-Ifé”

  • 1 Rushdie, Salman, “Imaginary Homelands” In Ashcroft, Bill, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 2nd. Ed (...)

1The most defining figure of our times, and perhaps of our entire existence, is most assuredly the migrant.1 Within ever-expanding contexts of wandering, history appears inescapable, ritual adopts and adapts as needed, and faith remains just as practical as it is quixotic. Yet, this tractile trinity of history, ritual, and faith endlessly [re-]creates itself within a novel diaspora of sorts: a spiritual “call-response” of overlapping innovation and tradition, offering unique forms of memory, utility, and hope to those mired in structures of poverty.

  • 2 “Lived spirituality” within the contexts of this study evokes Morello’s Latin-Americanized version (...)

2Add that to the contemporary designation of a number of these travelers (originating, for the sake of this study, in Venezuela and Cuba) as practitioners of a seemingly second-class religiosity and those wanderings appear kaleidoscopic when considering “lived spirituality” and its social mileage in seeking feasible means to fruitful ends via the aforementioned trinity within Latin American cityscapes.2 This, along with maintaining the setting for this research as Bogotá, represent this work’s attempt to convert emerging experiences into nueva historia in a place still academically silent on topics of not only how religions of a matriz africana function, but also how they are to be revered, studied, and ontologically understood.

  • 3 While the term diasporic [religion] evokes much debate, this study utilizes the term to denote a re (...)

3Yet, whose spirits matter the most to whom in that preceding quest? That question would depend on several factors and the answer(s) need not be constant. The transnational and co-ethnic spiritual phenomena that occur at the intersections of devotion and diaspora, belief and history, and gender and generation within the steeped migrant footholds of Bogotá (alongside varied manifestations of spiritual and physical itinerance) are of particular interest to this research, which ultimately asks: If and how is diasporic3 religion operationalized among Bogotá’s migrant undercaste and how is it tied to resistance and hope? Moreover, how have aspects of two uniquely syncretic, transnational, and diasporic religions, Santería and Maria Lionza, been deployed and subsequently altered (or rather, extended) by migrant devotees in Bogotá and for what purpose(s)? This research seeks to inquire into such questions via testimonies of movement, belonging, and ancestralism from various interlocutors. It serves as part of a more comprehensive study, looking to also acknowledge the capabilities for agency and renewal via the aforementioned faiths, alongside corresponding conceptualizations of the sacred, as lived and observed in the daily lives of the participants; who were essentially snowball-sampled from a chance meeting discussed later in “Lifeworld Crossings in Street Phenomenology.”

  • 4 Said, Edward, “The Mind of Winter” In Ashcroft, Bill, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 2nd. Editio (...)

4While a hypothesis is not wholly appropriate for a phenomenological study of these, what Said refers to as, “creative empowerments”4 of spiritual resistance and adaptation, it was surmised that discoveries of syncretic and systematized ritualism were to be an expectation and not an exception in these communities as a very literal means to survival. Furthermore, said ritualism ultimately was expected, as per observations on similarly situated communities in Bogotá before the onset of this research, to forge a silent, yet visible, and flexible resistance (of which the practitioner, at times, may or may not even be aware).

Spiritual Sancocho: Allomorphism in Maria Lionza and Santería

5These two religions, replete with their respective recurrent waves of struggle and modification, share an interwoven history in a few aspects. Santería/La Regla de Ocha, an Afro-Cuban/Caribbean religion of Yoruba origin, involves among other things the veneration of a variety of Orishas (African deities) who are associated with corresponding Catholic saints (i.e., the Orisha Eleggua and Saint Niño de Atocha) alongside ancestral spirits, Eggún. It constitutes a major institution, prominently in Cuba, and has been a major focus of anthropological study for over a century. Maria Lionza, a relatively new religion originating specifically in Yaracuy, Venezuela, blends elements of African, indigenous, and Euro-Catholic religion and is named for its central figure: the goddess of nature, love, peace, and harmony. Above her six plazas (courts/pantheons) sit Las Tres Potencias (The Three Powers): Guaicaipuro, a Native American cacique; Negro Filipe, an African slave (or possibly Pedro Camjeo, the famed fighter of African descent in Venezuela’s war for independence); and the aforementioned Maria Lionza, the indigenous princess once devoured by a mystical serpent and now manifested as (not in) the mountains of Yaracuy. Interestingly, in this study’s interlocutors' experiences, these three spirits (and those within the courts they are associated with, such as the recently beatified Doctor Jose Gregorio Hernandez) can be channeled, but the Catholic saints under which Las Tres Potencias sit, cannot.

6During the 1960's, Venezuela began to receive large influxes of Cuban and Haitian immigration. While many of these immigrants would adopt [fully or in part] the Maria Lionzan religion, they would end up contributing to it by adding Yoruba elements coming from Cuban Santería and, to a lesser extent, Vodou and Palo Monte. In such a fashion, the Maria Lionzan religion, along with the all-encompassing Venezuelan Santería complex, adopted an Afro-Caribbean profile, which had been largely absent from Venezuela's religious development until that time.

7Opting to focus on Bogotá’s migrant seguidores (followers) of Maria Lionza and varied Santería worlds from both Cuba and Venezuela is this work’s lifted anchor of focus on Afro-diasporic religion (via the TransAtlantic Slave Trade); bearing in mind that at least one of Maria Lionza’s six plazas maintains direct links to indigenous African traditions, as traversed in Andrade’s work, A Girardian Reading of the Myth of Maria Lionza on the various eschatological approaches to the Maria Lionzan religion. It should also be noted that Venezuelan Santería, often overshadowed by its Cuban counterpart in academic analysis, comprises a miscellany of standalone religions, or followings, whose occasional namesakes are those of the principal, and likely most recognizable, santo or spirit (i.e., Tibisay, Maria Lionza).

8While understanding the impact of the [spiritual] African Diaspora on the communities of relevance to this study is significant to say the least, the resulting dynamics of diffusion and unification are just as interesting, if not more so. Of the multitude of peer-reviewed literature relevant to this study which comprehensively examine the development of Maria Lionza and La Regla de Ocha within contexts of movement, Andrade’s aforementioned work, A Girardian Reading of the Myth of Maria Lionza and Beliso-De Jesus’ Electric Santeria respectively, offer the most native insight.

  • 5 Andrade, Gabriel, “A Girardian Reading of the Myth of Maria Lionza,” Escuela de Sociología: La Univ (...)

9Andrade’s synthesis of various ethnographic, sociological, and psychological perspectives on the uncertain history of Maria Lionza provides in-depth context for the horizontal nature of the religion in its presently visible state in Venezuela. Andrade posits that this religion is the utmost of utilitarian faiths as it manifests a “harmonious mestizaje” of Latin America’s colonial cultures, and is only deployed when needed, as affirmed by my observations during this study.5

10Beliso-De Jesus’ Electric Santería is a work of profound authenticity as it delves into the transnational and technological remodelings that have taken place within the realm of Santería and, more specifically, the changing nature of ritual, as explored in relation to analyses from Ammerman and Utriainen later in “Dimensionality in Lived Religion and Ritual Framing.”

  • 6 Quayson, Ato, The Cambridge Companion to the Postcolonial Novel, Cambridge University Press, 2015.
  • 7 Anthropologist Maurice Bloch coined the term Transcendental Social after theorizing on the capacity (...)

11Both Cuban and Venezuelan Santería’s respective pantheons possess innumerable similarities and contrasts, both of which vary not only by region and epochality (eventful shaping history and narratives with ontological stakes, as posited by Quayson6), but also by trends in individual preferences of reverence; as observed quite consistently in Bogotá, possibly lending more credence to the decision of many to arrive in this de jure hub of cosmopolitanism. So, neither faith comprises a monolith by any stretch of Bloch’s Transcendental Social, let alone the imagination.7 Some of these individual preferences of reverence discussed later in various interlocutor accounts.

Rituals of Resistance and Re-memberment

12It is important to note that within the context of this [portion of a larger] study, “Rituals of Resistance” and “Re-memberment” are defined, respectively, as transcendental reformations/survival mechanisms (like the in-person stringing and gifting of sacred necklaces during spiritual consultations which are to be treated with dignity and worn “antithetically”) and as the process of reclaiming (or reframing) historical, subconscious influences/modes of feeling that have been lost and/or transplanted due to the dynamics of diaspora; and while the use of these terms in contemporary academia on Ammerman’s Lived Religion remains unconventional at best, they remain terms that have taken on several manifestations, at varying intervals, throughout this particular discourse.

  • 8 Beliso-De Jesus, Aisha, Electric Santería, Columbia University Press, 2015.
  • 9 Ashcroft, Bill, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 2nd. Edition, Routledge, 2006.

13The notion of re-memberment raises many questions on what Césaire has referred to as “memory of the re-membered body.” In this case, the body is a metaphor for collective historical, cultural, or even spiritual memory or being. Regardless of how the body is re-membered (i.e., whether via “legitimized ingenuity,8” as Beliso De-Jesus puts it, or via rogue means), it remains a literal site of resistance as well as oppression of the psyche and physical body;9 a notion truly embodied by the original interlocutor for this study, Charlotte, and recounted in her letters that follow.

  • 10 Castor, Fideke, N, “Shifting Multicultural Citizenship: Trinidad Orisha Opens the Road,” Cultural A (...)
  • 11 Bogdan, Henrik, Occultism in a Global Perspective, Routledge, 2014.
  • 12 Mbembe’s Necropolitics explores his evocative concept of Deathworlds: sites of a ghastly social exi (...)

14The documented historical persecution of a miscellany of African-based religions in the Americas largely drove those practices: “underground and literally into the forest.”10 Hence the title of this work refers to “Forest Philosophers.”11 Those forests have now been replaced by crumbling tenements, comunas, so-called barrios de invasión, and marginalized settlements of the like. Or, rather, Deathworlds as Mbembe recounts in his work on Necropolitics.12

Re [-]membering La[s] Cara[ca]s [Lindas]

  • 13 Los Mártires is of particular interest to this study as it borders the localidad of Santa Fe, a de (...)

15A stroll from Bogotá’s Calle 80, near what used to be the Heroes Monument, along the arterial Avenida Caracas through the localidad of Chapinero and parts of Los Mártires13 (and to a lesser extent the far flung, lower-strata localidades of Suba, Engativá, and Kennedy; each distinct in their respective cultural coordinates) actually comprises a kind of spiritual reconnaissance. Without over-romanticizing, one can note that Espiritismo is literally all around, albeit in a subtle eclecticism of sorts. While security remains a major concern in these parts of the city, multitudes of colorful (and excessively repetitive) advertisements for spiritual guidance and assistance invoking a variety of entities, including Doctor José Gregorio, collage on shop windows and street light posts to offer help for those in a time of need, to resolve marital disputes, and to alleviate financial and/or health-related woes. A veritable alternative to the Structural Violence and resulting opportunism that plagues these areas.

16All of this and more abound in a presumed, yet precarious, harmony. In these same locales, which manifest the setting for this study’s countless encounters, faith clings dearly to religious objects (i.e., talismans, bracelets, statues); curiously more so than anywhere else in Bogotá.

17Paradoxes? Not quite. Syncretic rituals of resistance? Quite possibly.

  • 14 Morello, Gustavo, Lived Religion in Latin America: An Enchanted Modernity, Oxford University Press, (...)

18Why, aside from economic rationales, is this measure of Morello’s “Enchanted Modernity,” the religious landscape in which eclecticism, contradictions, and unorthodox practices are all welcomed and indeed flourish14, not as often clearly visible in higher strata communities? Observations and affirmations from the interlocutors of this study uphold the notion that the most deplorable conditions determinedly indeed yield the starkest displays of enchantment and spirituality: La vida vibra más donde es más dura.

Lifeworld Crossings in Street Phenomenology

  • 15 Kusenbach, Margarethe, “Street Phenomenology: The Go-Along as Ethnographic Research Tool,” Ethnogra (...)
  • 16 Achebe, Chinua, The Arrow of God, New York, Anchor Books, 1989.

19Street Phenomenology “Go Alongs” (a qualitative research tool that differs slightly from participant observation and formal interviewing in that it captures subtle meanings of place through active interviewing while physically exploring places of significance; i.e., engaging in neighborhood strolls, attending social/cultural events) were utilized at varying degrees in this study, fostering socially-deep and culturally-broad discernments of interlocutor experiences regarding the sacred. The ambulant nature of the “Go Along” method provides a unique benefit as it unerringly exposes the complex and subtle meanings of place in everyday religious experiences and practices, bringing greater phenomenological sensibility to the study of Lived Religion within a living environment, specifically as it applies to these research questions and subjects; leading to deeper understandings of participants’ attitudes/stances/positions on places and spaces of relevance as well as notions of social architecture (the range of desired social behaviors in pursuit of a set of goals).15 Finally, I would add, following Achebe, that such methods employ a kinetic performance/process, an interpretive rhythm that is distinctly African: “You do not stand in one place to watch a masquerade.16” Even so, this [perhaps] “imagined Africa,” as posited by one of the interlocutors of this study, remains a distinctly different one.

20Aside from the aforementioned dynamics and a vital appreciation for imagination, the conditions for the “Go Along” ethnography that informed this research involved constant movement, flexibility [with time and location], and an openness that can only be described as arresting. As recounted in a journal I kept from the very beginning of this research, “On what would be an endless and memorable night…in a dimly lit bar, Leo’s red buffalo hat and black silk shirt obscured his slight form. Darting from table to table accompanied by the spindly yet elegant silhouette that would be Charlotte; the one I had originally come to see. He appeared in that very instant to be the Opener of the Ways and trickster Orisha, Eleggua, in the flesh (whose colors are black and red), I eventually made my way over to their reserved table to greet Charlotte and present myself to him.”

21I arrived having scheduled a meeting and perhaps a “Go Along.” I left with a sincere connection unbothered by academic intent and [with time] a connection trusting enough to grant me a glimpse into its community’s fold. The resulting “Go Alongs” would undoubtedly yield more veritable experiences due to the “organic genesis,” as described by Leo, of the connections forged in this study. He would say the same about his own iyorwaje (initiation) experience as a young man and that statement admittedly dominates his spiritual gaze today despite the changes that abound.

22Participant Observation at toques (spiritual gatherings), and the journeys to them, seemingly became the most exclusive of “Go Alongs” conducted throughout this study. By examining the coming together of uneven and differently situated seguidores who understand themselves to be connected both religiously and transnationally, I pondered how these connections are envisioned and experienced. What sentiments, modes of feeling, perceiving, and ontological reformulations of religious practice are enabled, halted, and transformed by these connections?

Dimensionality in Lived Religion and Ritual Framing

  • 17 Ammerman, Nancy, Studying Lived Religion: Contexts and Practices, New York University Press. 2021. (...)
  • 18 Ibid, 8

23Lived Religion is in many ways paramount to this study which follows Ammerman to ask: “How do ideas about the sacred emerge in [the most] unofficial [of] places?”17 Ammerman’s work makes the case that “any kind” of religious engagement is “multidimensional: [including dimensions of] embodiment, materiality, emotion, aesthetics, moral judgment, narrative and spirit.”18 While a myriad of texts indeed delve into this, Ammerman’s Studying Lived Religion stands as the most cited and overall handiest of guides in unpacking how the embodiment of a spirituality is best observed.

24Yet, in much of the literature to be found, Lived Religion is designated as a phenomenon, an approach, and a field of study – or all of these. In light of this complexity, I add the following with respect to this research: Lived Religion, as observed here in Bogotá with this study’s interlocutors, pertains to a deliberate and/or opportune seeking of purpose in literally everything and not just the idea of [a] God; albeit inconsistently, with occasional uncertainty, despair, and impracticality at times, to the practitioner. Hence, it comprises a religious quixotism, envisioning a world and seeking it when the moment (or need) strikes. A way of life devoid of a sacred text that does not take perceived absurdity into account. It is lived as we live, with seasons.

  • 19 Ashcroft, Bill, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 2nd. Edition, Routledge, 2006. p. 441.

25As mentioned earlier, “any kind” of religious engagement is essentially multidimensional; yet, I expand this deduction to include that “exile milieus”19 may add a unique feeling and creativity to these dimensions, as they do for the communities represented in this study. After all, it was those very exile milieus that gave rise to the mulata version of Oshun (the Orisha of rivers, love, beauty, and sensuality) in the Caribbean; a legitimized shift from tradition that has seemed to go unquestioned among the santeros involved in this study.

  • 20 Utriainen, Terhi, “Lived Religion Meets Secular Life: The Dynamics of Framing and the Subjunctive P (...)

26Utriainen provides a perspective for understanding the ways Lived Religion, in the sense of regular engagement with supernatural phenomena, is embedded within daily life in secular society (i.e., Ritual Framing, or demarcation). While often invisible to others, this engagement has a presence that is significant, empowering, and life-directing for believers.20 This Ritual Framing became ostensibly clear on one particularly well-documented “Go Along” with Leo that ended in a crowded toque at his seventh floor apartment; where, at almost the strike midnight in the middle of a communal session of Yoruba dance and song, one of the participants would be stung on the top of his head by a bee while dancing only to quickly kneel in pain with all rushing to his aid. While clearly being a peculiar time and place for this to happen, we were clamorously reminded by the elders present that bees are emissaries of Oshun and that a blessing had indeed taken place. Still, within seconds the barb and what I perceived to be the venom sack were carefully removed by a woman who identified with the Orisha Yemayä (revered as a universal mother figure who is associated with the sea and healing; considered in most traditions to be the elder sister of Oshun). His pain would eventually subside and his praise resumed with more vigor than before.

27Admittedly so, not all santeros present (whether fully initiated or not) on this night perceived this occurrence to be as thought by the elders; but for those who framed it as such, it served a re-membering function aligned to ancestral teachings and affirmed the divine connection and Ashé (a sacred Yoruba concept connected to life force and creative energy) that their toque had produced. “An affirmation that continuously re-affirms with every re-telling of the story,” noted Leo and a fellow santero at another “Go Along” weeks later.

Journeys Matter

  • 21 Quayson, Ato. Duke Franklin Humanities Institute Lecture Series, The Diasporic Imaginary-Part I, Yo (...)

28Movement played a continuous role in this research and it became starkly evident from “Go Alongs" that freedom of movement does not denote freedom of worship. Quayson’s Postcolonial discourses on diasporic imaginaries found their way into these understandings via encounters that revealed an apparent nostalgia for a lost space and the importance of stories of “traversal, disembarkation, and interaction with the bureaucratic apparatus”21 as related by Leo on several occasions. Therefore, the approach to dialectically understanding the spirituality relevant to an interlocutor requires an understanding of the actual stories of travel, arrival, visa processes, and any accounts of suffering along the way as juxtaposed with origin. “I suffered; therefore, I am…” Ubuntu (collective responsibility towards a collective humanity) with a twist.

  • 22 Quayson, Ato. Duke Franklin Humanities Institute Lecture Series, The Diasporic Imaginary-Part I, Yo (...)

29It is also clear that these stories, what Quayson specifically refers to as “Genealogical Accountances,”22 exist as a surveilling mechanism of sorts: narratives provide protection, protection fashions the enclave. For these reasons, in the “Go Alongs” conducted for this study, very little of spirituality was overtly discussed. Rather, the distinct phenomenology of travel narratives and any suffering involved was applied, resulting in an elucidation of interlocutors’ spirituality with an unparalleled authenticity; albeit not without exceptions.

Findings and Significance: “La nnuestra

30The following is a selection from a larger collection of re-memberances, roots, and routes that light four distinct “paths” of the ontological Ilé (house) of Lived Religion for some of the main interlocutors and subsequent chain-referrals who contributed deeply to the scope of this study. Each of these paths constitute a theme of inquiry, to which correspondences “written in the voices” of the individual and collective psyches of the interlocutors are applied; comprising this collection of memories, entitled: La.muestra/nnuestra.

31The pun on the letters M/N underscores a theme of duality of meaning in everything (la muestra, indicating the revealing of something that is ours, la nuestra) as the interlocutors see it. Ejiwapo, or the twoness of everything in nature (including the “self”), is also a foundational Yoruba belief. Appropriately so, this work reciprocates the concepts of la muestra and la nuestra continuously, by emphasizing the ever-present (and even questioned at times) influence of the unseen and by deploying the epistolary tradition to transmit authentic voice while potentially resisting the pervasive effects of trans-latio.

32In tracing these discoveries of ancestral huellas in the everyday experiences of Lived Religion, the reader and the interlocutors come closer to comprehending the significance of one of life’s confounding anomalies, of which Rushdie has reminded us: Is the past home and the present foreign or is the past foreign and the present home?

  • 23 Rushdie, Salman, “Imaginary Homelands” In Ashcroft, Bill, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 2nd. Ed (...)

33The following “voices” represent only a fraction of those involved within the greater scope of this study, employ of a particular strain of encanto, and are all based on factual events as experienced and recounted by the interlocutors turned Griots; providing valuable insight despite being obliged to “deal in broken mirrors…[whose] shards of memory [duly] acquire greater resonance because they are remains:”23 The interlocutors highlighted in this article are Charlotte (Cuba, LGBTQIA+ activist, santera), Leo (Cuba, actor/dance instructor, santero), and Angel (Venezuela, Marialioncero).

La[s] Isla[s] Que Se Repite[n]

Critical Ashé

34The letters included in this section address perceptions of Critical Spirituality, or what has been reframed here as Critical Ashé for the sake of this study by reenacting (and re-membering) the role of Griot to confront questions on group origin, structure, promise, rites, inter/intra-group relations, innovations, and even contradictions insofar that they provide a uniquely eclectic and holistic analysis on Lived Religion as experienced by the interlocutors of this study.

      Charlotte

  Chapinero, Bogotá, 2021:
Contradictions abound, indeed.
How can a sister santera tell me what I felt when I felt it? And I, her?
I am a contradiction to the Other and myself…So is my religion.

But perceived contradictions do not concern me…
Rumors abound as well.
Rumors of my brujería.
…of holding others’ hands to snatch away their Ashé.

Hearing this nonsense saddens me.
Condemned to roam amongst the dead, like my Orisha: Oya.
To say that they fear what they do not know is cliché; but ever so true.

Nevertheless, WE have a purpose.
The detractors do too.
And, I have a legion of ahijadas behind me.

      Who, although may have arrived to my aegis as “lost boys,” have found solace in the Ashé this way of life brings. Now, they are brujas in their own right with their own ahijadas. You see, we learned to multiply without the ability to do so.

  And I am still the Oracle who has learned to be no one.
STILL…some say I am a charlatan,
Counter-mapping my own faith for personal gain, alas.

  Eggún remain our ancestral guides here where the terrain still matters.
A trans person in a trance must look ridiculous to the Other’s other.
Misunderstandings abound in this city.
Even Shangó crossdressed once.
We are not that different.
Ashé.. .

Leo
Zona G, Bogotá, 1999:
After only a few weeks, the Rosales Plaza Hotel almost felt like a Panopticon. Constant surveillance that I may or may not have been aware of, persisted. I am a racial, not to mention artistic, anomaly to the curious gaze of the majority culture here in the north of Bogotá…and without access to my santos, this has truly been a lonely time. While I have my Eleggua (the Orisha with which everything begins and ends), made of caracoles to signify Ayé (the earth of living things and, via my Madrina’s interpretation, “traveling grace”) I do not have the company of the others; notably Oshun. Even so, I feel I am supposed to be here…

Nuria, My Madrina. I truly miss her and at this moment she would have told me to go find a santero family for the time being. I knew of other Lucumí groups around Bogotá but having never had time to approach them, I often found myself alone in my hotel room on various nights or early mornings, crooning cantos in Yoruba to the Orishas. The housekeeper must have thought of me as a foul human being for the plates of food and glasses of water I left in the bathroom and in various other places [for my ancestors]. Just like my religion…and just like my ancestors, who continue to engage in spiritual warfare on my behalf, I have been resilient. They breathe through me when I cannot…but it was starting to become clear that this would not work for long…even now.

“Food for the Eggún”

“Food for the Eggún”

Fig. 1 – Offerings to the Eggún (ancestral spirits) in the home of one of the participants of this study (Leo), taken during a Toque (gathering) for Eleggua

Lewis, Brandon, “Food for the Eggún,” Photograph, September 2022.

Here, sometimes I notice that my religion is just another plume in the storied spiritual caps of others. They follow it in ways they see fit and make changes that mean nothing to the transcendental community of La Regla de Ocha, in my opinion. The jineterismo of my religion saddens me. Sometimes I wonder why I am so beholden to traditions that other aceres apparently are not? All I know is, my genesis was organic.

This brings to mind the patakí in which Oshun, after being mistreated morally and, perhaps, spiritually by her lover Shangó, decided to court his brother Abeyi in an act of revenge. Upon finding out, Shangó interrogated Abeyi, who responded: “Hermano, I have given Oshun what you were incapable of giving Her. You have maltreated and embarrassed Her for which She is now tired; She has rid Herself of you. With me, She is happy and honored as the Iyalode She is.” I will not give in to the whims of society, Oshun. Never.

Paradigm Shifts in Ritualism

35Ritual framing and perpetual reframing, along with an examination on its observed practicality in Lucumí and Maria Lionzan communities is touched upon in this letter; which indirectly redresses: How is authenticity defined for these communities? How is power developed and/or altered? How, if so, might ritual contradict itself?

Angel

Chapinero, Bogotá, 2018:
My trek to this place, in fact, saw many of those little statues. Border police in Cúcuta never broke them open, let alone touched them.

In my current entorno, it is my aunt who so heavily depends on them. I keep them around for her sake and for any extra help I believe they can offer. My aunt, who is the most clairvoyant of all of her sisters, says that she “heals in different directions,” but only with ones that reaffirm the past as she believes it to be.

“Las Iyalodes”

“Las Iyalodes”

Fig. 2 – An artistic representation of a transcendent fusion of Maria Lionza with Ochum. This image displays several other sincretismos as well from Lucumí and other traditions

Ghonem, Menna, “Las Iyalodes,” Painting, October 2022

There seems to be one for everything now, but she is not with that crowd. She continues, “No new santos, but rather, new ways to see, reach and use them…and well, that’s okay I suppose.”

Our humilde home here is literally populated with santos: La Negra Tomasa, Tibisay, Maria Lionza, Guaicaipuro, Negro Felipe, Jose Gregorio, some Viking hero, various Virgines, and some that I cannot even name. There is a rusted crucifix on the wall above all of them near a lengua de suegra plant at the entrance. When my aunt’s friends enter, they greet the santos (sometimes with offerings); say, “Aché” a lot, and always end with the sign of the Cross on their chests. I do the same, almost blindly. We tell ourselves that we are saving up for a pilgrimage to Yaracuy someday, but those savings never make it through the month.

No one finds us strange because all of us are just like us: Venecos. I actually hate that word but I am indeed proud to be Venezuelan (and an incidental santero), despite everything.

Milieus of Resistance

36Is resistance genuine if not acknowledged or felt by the one who clearly exhibits huellas of it? The following letter suggests that the answer is a resounding yes and where that resistance is found may be even more interesting; pondering: how does this resistance contribute to enclave building and how does this resistance juxtapose with the concept of trust in these communities?

Charlotte

Santa Fe, Bogotá, 2002:
Diana and I are co-madres of the street on the dodgy esquinas of Avenida Caracas in Santa Fe. Later, however, I wish that we would stand as voices for the coruscating causes of a colorful multitude on those same corners, but the ecosystem of poverty in which we find ourselves is unrelenting and dreary; yet, not always… At 10:00, whether a.m. or p.m., on those crowded corners, with all of us baring the holes in our souls/soles, both Diana and I managed to keep it together. Makeup covers bruises, pride conceals pain, and laughter is just that. Occasional fights, thefts, and murders sprinkled short-lived sorrows on our days. There is never much time to be fearful or mourn. We “overstand” and over-live to overcome.

Diana wears prismatic bracelets and necklaces of an importance that I had previously instructed her on. I gave them to her with religious benefit in mind but, bereft of any dedication to that, she took a liking to them more for their stylish look and proceeded to apply her own meanings to them; even so, she revered them spiritually from time to time as I do until now. For me, however, these more than adornments are as systematic and mandatory as drinking water. Powers, poverty, and possibilities are Our daily fragrances and accessories.

My religion’s patakí seem to always fit our reality (especially back then when we were both fresh as flesh for sale); being transgender seemed not to matter. After all, Shangó (as I always say) had his opportune transition. My own transition began whilst I was in Havana and continues years later, even now, as I still seek completion to my process; that is, if I am to live to see it. Death, for me, always hovers nearby, like an anxious waiter at an expensive restaurant, as Arundhati Roy (who I LOVE) wrote years ago.

I would be remiss if I did not mention how at these times, despite everything, Oya’s “winds” speak to me daily, dispatching assurance alongside that ever present prospect of death or worse. Which is what she is supposed to do.

How could I be so sure of her presence and what she meant for me? That is the secret. We never really know. Faith pushes us through, and somehow makes things happen. We become what we think about. Or better yet and simply put, “if you know, you know;” and that “know” can be different for everyone. My “know” was and still is propagated from my kaleidoscope of personal experience, which differs from many in my santero circle.

Over time whilst here in Bogotá, I grew to know that I needed those toques more than I had previously realized. Those drums and cantos feed my soul. Like those who go somewhere to worship every Sabbath but grow increasingly weary when they miss a Sabbath or two. This is true, as do I grow weary during extended absences from those precious invocations, that I must admit, may have me completely mistaken at times; as I have said before. My relationship with the Eggún, Oya, and my spirituality overall is a complicated one. It is precarious at times and does not function the way I always want it to. Yet, even in those moments, it functions as a means to an end of a particular kind. No teleological analysis needed. Perhaps my spirit is fractured and cannot absorb Ashé the way it used to. Is that even possible? Still, I perceive that I get what I need from whatever it is I do in this regard…Which brings to mind my hermano Leo.

Leo and I are because they were! We crossed paths in Havana…where our bodies really did become our archives. Yet, Leo and I do not agree on everything. Spats over ceremonial touches at toques are not uncommon. Still, our hermandad through this beautiful religiosity keeps us stubbornly stuck to one another; and that would be forever.

“Toques, Guijiros, and Cajónes”

“Toques, Guijiros, and Cajónes”

Fig.3 – Invitations to various santero gatherings accompanied by call/response group cadences of Lucumí cantos and dance in Chapinero’s barrio Teusaquillo. These initiated spaces are also welcoming to curious, but respectful, outsiders and generate a powerful sense of belonging alongside spiritual fulfillment for practitioners and visitors alike.

Lewis, Brandon, “Toques, Guijiros, and Cajónes,” Photographs, September 2022.

Re-membering an “Imagined” Africa

37The following passage evokes visions of an irrevocably new African imaginary on behalf of the participants of this study and their respective counterparts while helping to understand how diaspora has been responsible for the innovative adaptations that engender such philosophies. Who/What is African to the interlocutors, as they see it? How do processes of reconnecting lost “body parts” (re-memberment) actually function and look in spheres of daily life?

Leo

Cayo Hueso, La Habana, 1997:
One of the main pillars of the Yoruba religion, as we see it here, is to reconstruct a lost family. To provide parental love where there are no physical parents present. And, in this religiosity, if one feels it, then one is. While I was aspiring to be an actor, my initial search for my “Lost City” led me to a would-be-friend who showed me the beauty of the Yoruba religion. Quickly becoming obsessed with their “imaginative strength,” and the potential to reclaim that which I had been robbed of by Atlantic waves of history, I found myself not only wearing but actually making my own collares of various Orishas and donning them proudly.

Yet, in retrospect, I might have done so quite excessively. My neck would be completely covered in them (almost up to my chin!), as if I were a distant relative of the Karen in Thailand or Masaai in Kenya. Still, I felt pride when wearing them, as if my Afritude suddenly had more credibility and substance but I also recall arriving late for some castings for my collares’ sake. Putting them on in the mornings was a complicated, but pleasurable and all too necessary (for me at that time), task. Understandably so, I placed a tremendous amount of importance on them, but later I would learn that these objects are an exceptionally small part of being a santero. Still, back then it came as a surprise to discover that this way of life had been around me the entire time in Havana but I never once perceived it to be there. I noticed the collares and people in white of course, but I also did not “see” them. It all depended on where I stood…

Then came that fateful trip to Matanzas to confront a very wise (and very white) soon-to-be Padrino that would give me my first Eleggua, made from coco. He gave it to me with such faith and adoration that I would end up replicating that symbolic interactionism with the object itself. This coco really was Eleggua, to me. I prayed to it often (and it truly worked some what I could now call miracles, helping me even to avoid military service and to secure various “longshot” casting opportunities) and I remained steadfast in my faith; so long as I had that Eleggua physically with me. I actually felt invincible when holding it. Nevertheless, I was still not aware that this was, and is, a “philosophy of life” and that I should duly proceed to complete the path of being a santero, should I want to solidify my reclaiming process.

All of this would change or, rather, “expand” at an opportune tambor de Eleggua in Havana when I met Nuria in the midst of her iyorwaje process. Despite not being able to touch her, we were both left touched in some way. The electricity of attraction, I suppose; but of a spiritual kind…Nuria, whether she wanted to or not, became my mother.

She attended all of my acting events, even just the preliminary castings. Showed me how to cook properly, how to do cantos to the Orishas, and, of course, how to speak Yoruba (as we do in Cuba). Many months later, I would ask that she initiate me as my Madrina. Which, again, she sincerely obliged. One time, when I called her, distraught for not having my Eleggua (made of coco) with me while preparing for a casting, she reproached me with a simple line: “Leo, Eleggua does not live there. Eleggua lives everywhere.” The perpetual bundanga [mystery] that surrounds us. I knew it without knowing it. Nuria’s words left me wounded but with faith renewed. Ashé.

Discuss16n

  • 24 Pöykkö, Pannu-Matti, “Levinas and the Ambivalence of Recognition," Open Theology, 2016, n° 2, p. 63 (...)

38Clearly, many questions remain unanswered from these excerpts. Bearing in mind that the above letters were fashioned from conversations that took place on busy street corners by day, alongside graffiti murals and upon moonlit rooftops by night, in the backseats of taxi cabs on gridlocked streets, in bars of Chapinero and Suba Rincón, at toques in various practitioners’ homes, and at scholarly cátedras (academic forums), one can begin to imagine how the interlocutors’ stories took on a life of their own while simultaneously initiating me into a very personal space; forging that ever elusive “simultaneity of freedom and belonging.”24

39Still, spaces that illuminate how and why diverse instances of religious placemaking occur, as seen through the eyes of Venezuelan and Cuban migrants, were the ones to which this study sought access. These three interlocutors’ different but nonetheless unifying perspectives provide a glimpse into such spaces and in seeking to understand, not to simply uncover and substantiate and/or invalidate, these often misinterpreted connective experiences the following would be discovered:

  • Non-traditional gender “shifts" in religious leadership are more evident in migrant communities in Bogotá than in its clearly defined rolo sectors. Similar shifts in sexual identity and sexual behavior among seguidores are also more evident in these communities. This is most likely due to Bogotá’s large, yet still widely persecuted, LGBTQIA+ community and the “connective tissue” of said oppression with the already marginalized seguidores of Santería and Maria Lionza. Accordingly, there are varied trends towards individualized spiritualism with no signs of slowing down. Charlotte, who is transgender, carries experience that affirms this in her daily interactions with her own ahijadas.
  • The precariousness of the destino engenders the aforementioned “creative empowerments.” Discord breeds enclave building and hence, unity; albeit a fractured one at times. While the differences and changing paradigms of gatekeeping with how Charlotte and Leo and their respective seguidores perceive their roles, structure, and raison d’etre are mutually recognized as just, questions of legitimacy from personal (and group) changes or extensions of tradition appears to contribute to the splintering of La Regla de Ocha’s orthodox state. So is a form of macro unity still feasible and necessary in terms of spiritual revolution? It should be understood that these two religions are, in a way, allotted room to maneuver or adapt as needed; so long as foundational structures remain intact: Ingenuity is legitimized through connections to an authentically experienced past; which in this case, is the notion of exile.
  • There is a valid critique here for the proverbial box of exoticism that these practitioners find themselves in (whether by their own doing or not) insofar that it is seemingly preserving cultural tradition at the cost of political renewal. Authenticity, in this sense, breeds a staticness which denies the chance for a truly organic, changing culture; even though dedication to said authenticity may be ephemeral and thus dependent on external conditions. This can be seen in how Leo’s “genesis” in Cuba is perceived by him as authentic and at the same time has had to engender changes in his rites and traditions for necessity’s sake. Furthermore, in the wider study of the research questions I observed that many of the practitioners who are breaking from the traditionalist view know and feel strongly about this and hence see their spirituality as a vehicle for social change just as much as they do their political affiliations.
  • Initiation requires elements of both the spiritual journey and the physical one. Traversing both paths via oral tradition with the community of initiates is a staple of these practitioners’ proceedings. All three of the interlocutors exhibit this in stories of their own as well; as observed, albeit in part, in their letters. Their stories of arrival, and life thereafter, underscore the aforementioned “I suffered, therefore, I am…”.
  • Another tendency observed, specifically in Maria Lionzan circles, is that practitioners pursue their religions on their own terms as their own religious authorities. In all of the locales involved in this study, I found that mandatory religious rituals were seen to be hostile to the practice of self-discovery. The advent of technological means by which to worship has also contributed to this individualization. Moreover, there is continual framing in/out amongst these marginalized communities, especially in how and when supernatural interaction is occurring, as noted in Angel’s account. Veneration is deployed when needed and is usually accompanied by a second, albeit Western, religion. Having said that, the ever present pedestal upon which Catholicism is placed remains puzzling for me as an observer, insofar that it continues to dictate many religious proceedings for the target communities (i.e., Catholic Saints cannot be “received” by a person as Orishas can). How resistant, then, does resistance need to be?
  • Initiation into these spaces, even mine, is not solely ritual; rather, it becomes resistance, even in regard to how these interviews were conducted. Encounters with all three interlocutors presented self-confronting moments at times, prompting a rethinking of a previously believed idea and the “Go Alongs” methodology undoubtedly prompted this. For instance, on another “Go Along” with Leo (not mentioned in the letters), conversing while walking past an apartment where in the past toques would occur (presided over by him) prompted a recollection of the way things were done at those toques and the way things are done now (i.e., him now actually promoting the playing of the batá by one of his ahijadas who is a cis-woman; it was previously commonplace to deny this access to women). There was a moment of regret and self-questioning as to why that limitation was put there for a religion that already values the place of women to a large extent. I believe that his staunch relativism and ethnocentrism of the recent past were confronted by the liberalism and idealism of his current circumstances in that moment. This very deduction would remerge in a cátedra at Instituto Colombiano de Antropología y Historia (ICANH) in which I as well participated.
  • The word “resistance” rarely comes up in the discussions with interlocutors but it is clearly visible in their actions. Leading members of these communities (like Charlotte and Leo) scramble to assemble strategies of recuperation for lost cultural heritage and overall acceptance. Do they create religion where it seemingly does not exist as seen in facets of Lived Religion? Possibly. Have certain elements of these practices been fetishized by some practitioners? Yes. Nevertheless, these are all forms of a cultural and spiritual sortie against the majority culture in Bogotá, which has actively caused or passively allowed the marginalization of these communities and their beliefs.

40In addition to the initial research questions (addressed by the previous 7 points in different ways), this study also raises important questions about how to best study religions of a matriz africana. This study submits that ethnographies on topics of critical spirituality in subaltern communities (and any other kind for that matter) should value the human experience just as much as the spiritual experience. Lived Religion, in this way, appears to take on an “extension of tradition” of its own. The varied settings, undertakings, and representations for this study invoke a flexible eclecticism representative of Latin American migratory experiences and the overall ethnoscape that created them. While the urban penalty for the interlocutors’ communities and those who are similarly situated remains, spaces of power within them do as well; they possess an elusive promise for liberation beneath a cover of oppression, albeit not easily observable at times. As Leo recalled:

“...I also did not ‘see’ them, then. It all depended on where I stood…”

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Bibliographie

Achebe, Chinua, The Arrow of God, New York, Anchor Books, 1989.

Ammerman, Nancy, Studying Lived Religion: Contexts and Practices, New York University Press. 2021.

Andrade, Gabriel, “A Girardian Reading of the Myth of Maria Lionza,” Escuela de Sociología: La Universidad de Zulia, Maracaibo, n.d.

Ashcroft, Bill, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 2nd. Edition, Routledge, 2006.

Beliso-De Jesus, Aisha, Electric Santería, Columbia University Press, 2015.

Bloch, Maurice, “Why Religion is Nothing Special but is Central,” Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, 2008, vol. 363, n° 1499, p. 2055-2061.

Castor, Fideke, N, “Shifting Multicultural Citizenship: Trinidad Orisha Opens the Road,” Cultural Anthropology, 2013. vol. 28. n° 3, p. 475-489.

Kusenbach, Margarethe, “Street Phenomenology: The Go-Along as Ethnographic Research Tool,” Ethnography, 2003, vol. 4. n° 3, p. 455-485.

Mbembe, Achille, Necropolitics, Theory in Forms, 2019.

Morello, Gustavo, Lived Religion in Latin America: An Enchanted Modernity, Oxford University Press, 2021.

Pöykkö, Pannu-Matti, “Levinas and the Ambivalence of Recognition," Open Theology, 2016, n° 2, p. 636-652.

Quayson, Ato, Duke Franklin Humanities Institute Lecture Series, The Diasporic Imaginary-Part I, YouTube [online], 2014, [Accessed September 2022], Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gcsOWn2MlA.

Quayson, Ato, The Cambridge Companion to the Postcolonial Novel, Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Rushdie, Salman, “Imaginary Homelands” In Ashcroft, Bill, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 2nd. Edition, Routledge, 2006, p. 428-434.

Said, Edward, “The Mind of Winter” In Ashcroft, Bill, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 2nd. Edition, Routledge, 2006, p. 439-442.

Utriainen, Terhi, “Lived Religion Meets Secular Life: The Dynamics of Framing and the Subjunctive Power of Ritual,” Journal of Contemporary Religion, 2020, vol. 35, n° 2, p. 195-212.

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Notes

1 Rushdie, Salman, “Imaginary Homelands” In Ashcroft, Bill, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 2nd. Edition, Routledge, 2006, p. 428-434.

2 “Lived spirituality” within the contexts of this study evokes Morello’s Latin-Americanized version of Ammerman’s Lived Religion (how religion occurs in everyday life). His extensive work frequently refers to what he calls “Enchanted Modernity,” signifying how modernity, contrary to popular academic opinion, has resulted in needs for a paradigm shift in religious practice grounded in the innovative autonomy of the practitioner.

3 While the term diasporic [religion] evokes much debate, this study utilizes the term to denote a religion that not only originates in a specific location from which it has thus moved, but also one for whom the place of origin remains in a state of veneration; notwithstanding the innovative adaptations that duly follow in its new locale.

4 Said, Edward, “The Mind of Winter” In Ashcroft, Bill, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 2nd. Edition, Routledge, 2006, p. 439-442.

5 Andrade, Gabriel, “A Girardian Reading of the Myth of Maria Lionza,” Escuela de Sociología: La Universidad de Zulia, Maracaibo, n.d.

6 Quayson, Ato, The Cambridge Companion to the Postcolonial Novel, Cambridge University Press, 2015.

7 Anthropologist Maurice Bloch coined the term Transcendental Social after theorizing on the capacity of humans to transcendentally unify with groups, klans, and even the dead, via idealized religious codes (i.e, prayer, meditation). Essentially, one can be a member of a community or nation without ever having come in contact with its members.

8 Beliso-De Jesus, Aisha, Electric Santería, Columbia University Press, 2015.

9 Ashcroft, Bill, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 2nd. Edition, Routledge, 2006.

10 Castor, Fideke, N, “Shifting Multicultural Citizenship: Trinidad Orisha Opens the Road,” Cultural Anthropology, 2013. vol. 28. n° 3, p. 480.

11 Bogdan, Henrik, Occultism in a Global Perspective, Routledge, 2014.

12 Mbembe’s Necropolitics explores his evocative concept of Deathworlds: sites of a ghastly social existence where vast populations are subjected to conditions conferring upon them the status of the “living dead.” Yet, its relatability to this study in terms of the locales in which it was conducted, while clearly evident, merits further research. Mbembe, Achille, Necropolitics, Theory in Forms, 2019.

13 Los Mártires is of particular interest to this study as it borders the localidad of Santa Fe, a de jure Tolerance Zone of Bogotá with origins in government diminution of not only the sex trade but also accompanying forms of criminality to lower strata communities; later, growing to include dynamics of “migrant appropriation” as a robust transitory space.

14 Morello, Gustavo, Lived Religion in Latin America: An Enchanted Modernity, Oxford University Press, 2021.

15 Kusenbach, Margarethe, “Street Phenomenology: The Go-Along as Ethnographic Research Tool,” Ethnography, 2003, vol. 4. n° 3, p. 455-485.

16 Achebe, Chinua, The Arrow of God, New York, Anchor Books, 1989.

17 Ammerman, Nancy, Studying Lived Religion: Contexts and Practices, New York University Press. 2021. p. 5.

18 Ibid, 8

19 Ashcroft, Bill, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 2nd. Edition, Routledge, 2006. p. 441.

20 Utriainen, Terhi, “Lived Religion Meets Secular Life: The Dynamics of Framing and the Subjunctive Power of Ritual,” Journal of Contemporary Religion, 2020, vol. 35, n° 2, p. 195-212.

21 Quayson, Ato. Duke Franklin Humanities Institute Lecture Series, The Diasporic Imaginary-Part I, YouTube [online], 2014, [Accessed September 2022], Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gcsOWn2MlA.

22 Quayson, Ato. Duke Franklin Humanities Institute Lecture Series, The Diasporic Imaginary-Part I, YouTube [online], 2014, [Accessed September 2022], Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gcsOWn2MlA.

23 Rushdie, Salman, “Imaginary Homelands” In Ashcroft, Bill, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, 2nd. Edition, Routledge, 2006, p. 429.

24 Pöykkö, Pannu-Matti, “Levinas and the Ambivalence of Recognition," Open Theology, 2016, n° 2, p. 639.

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Table des illustrations

Titre “Food for the Eggún”
Légende Fig. 1 – Offerings to the Eggún (ancestral spirits) in the home of one of the participants of this study (Leo), taken during a Toque (gathering) for Eleggua
Crédits Lewis, Brandon, “Food for the Eggún,” Photograph, September 2022.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/docannexe/image/104772/img-1.png
Fichier image/png, 1,3M
Titre “Las Iyalodes”
Légende Fig. 2 – An artistic representation of a transcendent fusion of Maria Lionza with Ochum. This image displays several other sincretismos as well from Lucumí and other traditions
Crédits Ghonem, Menna, “Las Iyalodes,” Painting, October 2022
URL http://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/docannexe/image/104772/img-2.png
Fichier image/png, 1,3M
Titre “Toques, Guijiros, and Cajónes”
Légende Fig.3 – Invitations to various santero gatherings accompanied by call/response group cadences of Lucumí cantos and dance in Chapinero’s barrio Teusaquillo. These initiated spaces are also welcoming to curious, but respectful, outsiders and generate a powerful sense of belonging alongside spiritual fulfillment for practitioners and visitors alike.
Crédits Lewis, Brandon, “Toques, Guijiros, and Cajónes,” Photographs, September 2022.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/docannexe/image/104772/img-3.png
Fichier image/png, 1,0M
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Référence électronique

Brandon Lewis, « The New Forest School: Rituals of Resistance and Re-memberment in Life on the Margin (Bogotá, Colombia) »Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos [En ligne], Questions du temps présent, mis en ligne le 16 décembre 2025, consulté le 13 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/104772 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15d0m

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Auteur

Brandon Lewis

University of Houston-Clear Lake

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