Magic in the postcolonial Americas

Romberg R (2015)

Publication Type: Book chapter / Article in edited volumes

Publication year: 2015

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Edited Volumes: The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West

ISBN: 9781139043021

Abstract

A Brief Introduction The first time I saw the altar of a bruja (witch-healer) in Puerto Rico, I was astounded by the bizarre mishmash of Catholic saints and African- and Amerindian-looking deities side by side with a Buddha and a chromolithograph of a blonde Jesus surrounded by all sorts of tall, colored candles. Hanging from a large bronze cross, I also noticed a small packet, obsessively wrapped with a cord - a magic work, I later learned, that had been left there to be empowered by the cross (Figure 19.1). What was the meaning of this carefully displayed, yet, to my view, incongruent configuration of icons and religious symbols that had crossed geographical, temporal, and, most importantly, cultural boundaries? These apparently incongruous mixtures - what for many would be examples of syncretism or creolization - tell just one side of the story, as will become clearer later in the chapter. They could be seen as sediments comprising the strata of past and present ritual practices, the products of recurrent, nonofficial, irreverent religious appropriations of hegemonic religious symbols, rather than just mixtures. Elsewhere I have characterized these power-laden processes as "ritual piracy" as an alternative, and more historically precise, way of discussing "creolization" processes and creole (vernacular) religions (Romberg 2005b, 2011c). The other story that creole religions tells has to do with the rewriting of these harsh creolization histories in ways that reflect the experiences and agency of their practitioners in the present. The shape and form of altars today may reveal to the ethnographically curious, then, not only the particular ritual practices of their owners, but they may also, in a broader sense, manifest the layered histories of volatile religious, cultural, economic, and political encounters in the Americas and their ongoing reinterpretation.

Authors with CRIS profile

Rachel Romberg

Involved external institutions

Tel Aviv University

Israel (IL)

How to cite

APA:

Romberg, R. (2015). Magic in the postcolonial Americas. In David J. Collins, S. J. (Eds.), The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West. Cambridge University Press.

MLA:

Romberg, Raquel. "Magic in the postcolonial Americas." The Cambridge History of Magic and Witchcraft in the West. Ed. David J. Collins, S. J., Cambridge University Press, 2015.

BibTeX: Download