WLSU: I Don't Practice Santeria

Hi friends. As you may know, I am currently on sabbatical and we'll be out until August 11th. Throughout my time off we have a couple new episodes that I recorded prior to leaving that are related to my sabbatical journey. We will also rerun a couple of previous episodes that are connected to the ongoing theme of transformation and best of all.

This blog is also available as a podcast

My father died in September of 2004. I was about to turn 32. I had spent the last year tending to dad’s needs as his health had started to decline. Five years prior to Dad’s diagnosis of prostate cancer, he had been through a partial foot amputation and had overcome challenges to walk again. So when he received the cancer diagnosis, we thought he could still overcome this too. That was not the way this was going to go. In 6 months' time, he was gone.

As I approached his casket, hand in hand with my aunt, right before they took him to be buried, I dropped a pouch in there with him and closed that top and when he was buried some of my hurt and frustration released and went along with him.

I should say now that our relationship had not always been a good one. He was a very complicated man, volatile and angry. He was not always a great, or even good father. I can remember many instances of violence in my home at his hands, that would later affect me in ways I’m still working through.

Fransico Valdes was a man who grew up poor and without a formal education. He strived for self-improvement and enjoyed reading and philosophizing. Traits I admired that in later years thankfully would become a place where we finally connected.

You see, my father had lived his life in a manner that could leave trails of tears for those in his path. He literally ran away with a circus in Cuba when he was 13, traveled as a merchant marine in his late teens, fought during the revolution in Cuba in the 50’s, came to America in his early 20’s and was a bodyguard for the then-exiled last freely elected President of Cuba. My father married and divorced 5 times and had three children from different women. His life read like a Hemingway novel, truly. At least that’s what I thought.

When my father left Cuba, the only things he could smuggle out were pictures and a little pouch with something in it that I would come to understand the many implications of. The pictures he would eventually assemble into albums with images from his youth all the way to the present. Pictures of family and friends long forgotten or left behind. Most of these were people I would never have the chance to know, some family I would eventually meet. But the pouch…that was mysterious, secretive, and ominous even to me. I would come to learn what was in that pouch roughly 5 years before my dad left this world and that pouch would fundamentally affect my faith journey.

To explain this pouch, I should probably first say that some of my father’s family were practicing Santeros. You may not be familiar with Santeria, or if you are you may see it as some kind of pagan voodoo, but Santeria quite plainly is an African diasporic religion that arose in Cuba in the 19^th century as a mix of traditional West African polytheistic Yoruba religion mixed with our very monotheistic Catholic form of Christianity. It is a form of spiritism, very animistic and to many Christians it’s probably heretical, but here we are.

Growing up, my mom and dad enrolled me in catechism in our local Roman Catholic church. I became a very devout practitioner and took pride in my religious conviction. I was not modeling anyone at home since neither my parents nor grandparents attended church regularly.

All the while this “other” religion loomed in the background. My paternal grandfather hosted Santeria gatherings and my father would go, but we were not allowed to attend. To my mother, who could be paradoxically judgmental, all of this was nonsense. It didn’t help that it was stigmatically seen by many as a religion of the poor and uneducated. Mom, who had her own rocky relationship with her faith and even more with my father, had no interest in introducing us to any of this. But, like many others, she was respectful of it, just in case...

When they divorced in my 8^th year, shell-shock mixed with intrinsic curiosity would set me on a life-long search that would eventually include an education in theology and, of course, what was in that little pouch.

I was in my late 20’s when my father finally told me the story of his Santeria “resguardo.” The literal translation means guard but, in this instance, his guardian, in the form of an amulet of sorts. The shape was round, the form hard, and it had been covered with woven fabric. He recounted the story of how it was woven for him by his grandmother when he was just a child and he had carried it with him since. He also explained how important it was to follow the rules of keeping it. Dad also had a statue of Our Lady of Charity, patron saint of Cuba, and a veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Like many who practiced Santeria, he would place offerings of sweets at her feet. Also at her feet was that resguardo, prominently displayed in a glass cup filled with alcohol. All those years on that altar he had I saw that statue and noticed the sweets; I had never ever noticed “el resguardo.” But there it was, all along.

Complications with diabetes were what led to the partial amputation of his foot, and it was during his time in rehab that I was faced with tending to his “resguardo.” This was something completely foreign to me. Even though I was familiar with my dad’s family’s faith, I was brought up Roman Catholic and though I was not attending church regularly anymore, this was something completely pagan that I was most certainly going to go to hell for, according to all familiar sources.

The tending wasn’t arduous at all, just fill the container with alcohol to make sure the amulet was covered, he would do the rest. I got to it and every time that alcohol would dissipate, I would refill and hope I wouldn’t be punished for sacrilege. Eventually it just became a mundane task, like any other. Lightning never struck.

Around the same time, I had returned to college as an adult, and more coursework in theology led to hours of questions and conversations with my father about his faith and his life. These were talks that I had not been able to have with him up to that point. His openness was what helped me to eventually explore different faiths and faith traditions. We connected in beautiful ways. It was a renaissance for our relationship. I was excited to see him every time we got together. Everything was going perfectly, finally, then came the cancer. By the time he was diagnosed it had spread and within 3 months he was unable to walk. It was swift.

My father’s funeral was as large as the life he lived. There were people of all walks of life. Our family, his friends, my friends, business associates and acquaintances, former Cuban freedom-fighters, and current political activists. It was a funeral fit for the man that came from nothing but managed to get into everything. My aunt Mireya, whom I was named after, leaned over to me at the funeral and said, “I spoke to someone who confirmed that you must bury the “resguardo” with him. It was meant for him and only him, it will bring bad luck to anyone else.” She continued with many stories of superstitions and bad juju and although I wasn’t completely convinced about the bad luck part, I was certain that it must go with him since it meant so much to him. After I dried it and put it in that pouch, I tucked it in his hand and gave him one last kiss.

That “resguardo” turned out to be a guardian to my dad as well a catalyst for me in my transformation and a path to love and reconciliation. If that’s not of God, I don’t know what is.