Keywords: blackface<\/a>, Cuba<\/a>, Mexico<\/a>, Afro-Cuban religions<\/a>, rumberas<\/a>, santeria<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n The aesthetics of Afro-Cuban religions in the refraction of transatlantic scenarios This article shows how the aesthetics of Afro-American religions, in particular the dance and music of Afro-Cuban Santeria, are part of a broad \u201cblack\u201d gestural, musical and corporal repertoire that has been constructed as such through transatlantic interconnections since at least the 19th century. I argue that this back-and-forth transforms the scenarios for the representations of this repertoire into a platform that takes on a \u201crefractive\u201d character (Grau, 2005). That is, they decompose ideas of what it means to be \u201cblack\u201d into multiple symbolic and interpretive referents that may even contradict each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keywords: Afro-Cuban religions, blackface, rumbera<\/em>, santeria, Mexico, Cuba.<\/p>\n\n\n\n C<\/span>hen I speak of a \u201cblack\u201d gestural, musical and corporal repertoire, I am not referring to an essence that naturalizes or racializes a style. I refer, following the reflection of Stuart Hall (2008: 221), to cultural repertoires product of transatlantic historical and cultural transmissions and experiences of the African diaspora and its descendants. However, the representation of this repertoire at the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century often implied a racialization that, based on bodily features or supposed behaviors and aptitudes, distinguished an "other" as "black", caricatured it, they diminished or exoticized. At the same time, a valuation of the \u201cblack\u201d also emerges from the lens of artists and intellectuals of the first decades of the 20th century, which seeks to reverse a long-standing devaluation, thus opposing a representation of the \u201cblack\u201d very different from the of the scenarios of the blackface<\/em>, that of the criminological perspective or that of human zoos at the turn of the century. The mediators of the transmission of the various representations of "black" are diverse and their signifiers are gaining particularities that are defined within the framework of historical contexts and moments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The aesthetics (not the spiritual and ritual dimension) of Afro-Cuban religions, especially their music and dance, was valued since the beginning of the first half of the 20th century, both in the artistic sphere and in anthropological discourse. An assessment articulated with a process in which the \u201cAfro\u201d, linked to the population of African origin on the Island, emerges as a fundamental element of Cubanness (Karnoouh, 2012: 98). This repertoire of sound and body also circulated in Mexico, although mediated by other channels such as the cinema. From a broad perspective, many of the markers that were historically imprinted on their representations were reproduced in the films of the Mexican gold cinema, specifically in the genre of cabareteras and suburban cinema, where the \u201cblack\u201d is associated with a mediated Africa. for the Caribbean, in this case Cuba, and that at the same time is excluded from \u201cMexicanity\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jorge Grau (2005) proposes as one of the analysis criteria for anthropological reflection on fictional audiovisual products the refractive character, which he understands as a narrative strategy that allows understanding the intentional distortion of a representation and simultaneously its anchoring and meaning in a certain context. Thus, for this author, the emphasis of the representations in these visual documents should be placed on their refractive configuration and not on a supposed faithful reflection of reality. This approach makes it possible to bring to light that refraction is an intentional process that integrates \u201cvarious narratological strategies that not only focus on the image, but also incorporate the audio, the scenery, the construction of the character, the use of colors, the dialogues, subliminal references ... "2<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the author focuses on the film media, I consider that his proposal may be useful to think about how this \u201cblack\u201d repertoire is broken down into different settings based on multiple symbolic and interpretive references that may even be opposite. A refraction that can be observed in the images and staging that circulate in different transatlantic settings (theaters, shows<\/em>, human zoos, acclimatization gardens, markets) along with photographs, posters, cartoons and other visual expressions that complement or reinforce them. Thus, the circulation and massification of representations of "black" in the first half of the 20th century, and the gestural and corporal repertoires with which it is associated, were often intentionally distorted. Their mediations involved not only the reproduction of negative stereotypes, but also those that sought to reverse them, based on a revalued inheritance. These were the conditions from which the aesthetics of Afro-Cuban religions circulated in transatlantic circuits that unite Mexico with Cuba, but also with the United States and France. Although this space will not allow me to delve into each context, my intention is to map in a general way the circulation of this repertoire through Cuba, France, the United States and especially Mexico, highlighting the refractions of the "black" implicit in the repertoire. Afro-Cuban ritual, but adapted for a scenario of mass cultural consumption such as the Mexican gold cinema.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Minstrel show poster by Strobridge & Co. Lith (http:\/\/hdl.loc.gov\/loc.pnp\/var.1831) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n\n\n\n Historians such as WT Lhamon (2008) point out, contrary to the dominant version, that it was in the markets of the 19th century and not in the theater stages where the first Atlantic circulation of the black body and gestural repertoire can be located. This is illustrated by the history of Catherine Market<\/em> in New York, considered as a "zone of tolerance" that fostered "exchange and seduction" between young workers, merchants, free blacks and slaves from Long Island, who in the 1820s met in this place to give way to a competition called dance of the eels, in which black slaves were paid to perform it (Lhamon, 2008: 18-24). These spaces are for this author the "ancestors of the theater scenes" of the Minstrel<\/em> or Blackface<\/em>, in which white comedians would interpret this "black repertoire" under the tune of a caricatured racism, not without certain ambiguities and contradictions that made evident a fascination and the desire to appropriate "black gestures" and "affiliate with them". The commercial shows of Blackface <\/em>from the forties,<\/em> whose antecedents date back to the early nineteenth century, manage to position itself as one of the most notable styles of entertainment in these geographical latitudes, although in this process, the historian assures, "it was black culture and not blacks that had been integrated" ( Lhamon, 2008: 32).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this context, a cultural icon of Blackface is born: Jim Crow, <\/em>played by Thomas D. Rice, a New Yorker from an Anglo-American family who spawned Crow from a broad and multiple collective inspiration that goes beyond the plantation black and who had great success between the 1930s and 1950s in shows directed at a mixed public (not only white) and that represented, according to this same author, the intense interaction of the white working class and the blacks of this city (Lhamon, 2008: 236-237). This emblematic symbol is interpreted in the Jump Jim Crow,<\/em> executed by Rice himself, also known as "the Ethiopian comedian"3<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n<\/p>\n\n\n\nIntroduction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
From the market to the theater<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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