Nahayeilli Juárez Huet She has been a research professor at Ciesas Peninsular since 2011. She received a doctorate in Social Anthropology from the Colegio de Michoacán. His research was awarded in 2008 with the prize for the best doctoral thesis of the Chair Dr. Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán (uv-ciesas), from which he derived his book entitled A little piece of God at home: transnational circulation, relocation and praxis of Santeria in Mexico City (2014). His topics of interest are about transformations in religious practices and beliefs, the circulation of Afro-descendant cultural expressions, and racism. She is academic co-head of the unesco / inah / ciesas Chair Afro-descendants in Mexico and Central America: recognition, expressions and cultural diversity.

Realidades socioculturales

The aesthetics of Afro-Cuban religions in the refraction of transatlantic scenarios

  • Nahayeilli Juárez Huet

The present article shows the way in which the aesthetics of Afro-American religions, in particular the dance and music of Afro-Cuban Santeria, are inserted as part of a “black” gestural, musical and corporal repertoire that is constructed in transatlantic interconnections from at least the 19th century. I argue that in this sway, the scenarios of the representations of said repertoire become a platform that takes on a “refractive” character (Grau, 2005), that is, they decompose an idea of the “black” into multiple symbolic and interpretive references that they can even be opposite.