ATS2371 Chap.5 Syncretism and Afro-Diasporic Religion in Latin America
Syncretism and Afro-Diasporic Religion in Latin America
Week 5 introduces syncretism as fusion that keeps what it absorbs. Elements from two traditions combine into something new while the older element survives inside the new form, usually alongside acculturation and transculturation.
The lecture starts with familiar cases, Guanyin and the Halloween calendar, before turning to the Americas, where colonisation, the Middle Passage and the encomienda created the particular conditions from which Santeria, Espiritismo and Vodou emerged. Santeria carries the detail: orishas mapped onto Catholic saints, the neutral energy called ashe, independent house-temples, and divination performed to restore harmony.
The week closes on the question that makes it examinable, which is whether calling this an Africanisation of Catholicism describes it or flattens it.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Syncretism defined as fusion plus retention, and its relation to acculturation and transculturation
- 02
Warm-up cases outside the Americas: Guanyin, and the Christian calendar absorbing Samhain into All Hallows
- 03
The historical conditions: colonisation of the Caribbean, the encomienda, the Middle Passage and Yoruba arrivals
- 04
Santeria's structure: orishas and their Catholic manifestations, ashe as amoral neutral energy, Olodumare, and the independent ile
- 05
Ritual practice: the consulta with a santero or santera, training by older practitioners, divination and prescribed offering
- 06
The framing question: coping strategy, resistance, or an ordinary religion in its own right
Test whether one practice counts as syncretic
- 1Identify the two traditions contributing elements: the Catholic liturgical calendar and West African ritual practice.
- 1Show fusion: the elements are not performed side by side but combined into one observance with a single occasion and a single congregation.
- 1Show retention: the older element survives inside the new form, because participants still name the orisha rather than only the saint.
- 1State the failing condition: if the African element had been replaced rather than subsumed, or if the two were kept in separate observances, the case would be substitution or coexistence rather than syncretism.
Key terms
- Orisha
- A deity in the Yoruba-derived tradition underlying Santeria, capable of manifesting within other religious systems and commonly paired with a Catholic saint.
- Ashe
- The amoral and neutral energy through which the orishas are held to manifest, which is why the tradition treats all religions as deserving respect.
- Ile
- The house-temple that organises Santeria practice, independent of every other house rather than answerable to a central hierarchy.
- Consulta
- A consultation with a santero or santera in which divination establishes the source of a disturbance and what is required to restore harmony.
- Acculturation
- The change in cultural forms that follows sustained contact between groups, frequently the process alongside which syncretism takes place.
- Encomienda
- The colonial grant of indigenous labour to a Spanish holder in return for instruction in Christianity, one of the arrangements that produced the contact conditions behind Caribbean syncretism.
- Middle Passage
- The forced transatlantic voyage of enslaved Africans, which carried West African religious traditions, primarily Yoruba, into the Caribbean.
Syncretism and Afro-Diasporic Religion in Latin America FAQ
What is the reading for Week 5?
Mena's 1998 article in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, which compares Cuban Santeria, Haitian Vodou and Puerto Rican spiritualism as a multiculturalist inquiry into syncretism. The week also sets a required video, listed on the unit's own week page.
Is Santeria a syncretic religion or not?
The lecture puts this as an open question rather than settling it, and that is the point. The pairing of orishas with Catholic saints looks like textbook syncretism, but reading the tradition only as an Africanisation of Catholicism makes the Catholic frame primary and the Yoruba material derivative, which practitioners and scholars have both contested.
Why does colonial history get so much lecture time?
Because syncretism here is not a neutral meeting of traditions. The lecture works through the settlement of the Caribbean, the encomienda and the Middle Passage to show that the fusion happened under coercion, and that the resulting religion functioned as a set of coping strategies under oppression.
Can I use this week for an essay?
Yes, and one of the fourteen set questions asks directly for a case study of religious syncretism in a particular setting. Santeria is the best-supported option in the unit's own materials, which is what the sources criterion in the rubric rewards.
Assessment move
Draw the Santeria material as a two-column map, Yoruba element against Catholic manifestation, and add a third column for what the pairing lets a practitioner do under surveillance. The third column is where the analysis lives, and a description without it stalls in the pass bands of the essay rubric.
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