IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 6 ENGLISH | Page 137

At the same time, Cuba has the most
varied traditions of the entire African
Diaspora in the Americas. It has four
religious-cultural groupings: Santería
(Yoruba), Palo Monte (Kongo), Arará
(Ewe-Fon), and the Abakuá secret
society (Calabar culture). As the native
population was eliminated, the Cuban
socio-cultural
environment
always
promoted the “creolizing” integration of
immigrants. For centuries, slave workers
were imported from Africa, which made
it so men and women with these
traditions,
and
the
unique
Europeanization of the Caribbean, were
not differentiated from the rest of the
Cubans. Thus, they felt and acted Cuban.
Those African attributes that had not
dissolved into this new, mixed culture,
these core practices, beliefs, customs,
and views of reality, are the thematiccultural center of Afro-Cubanness, and
distinguishes those who identify with
this culture from the synthesizing form
of Cuban culture, which also includes
elements of Africanness. These nuclei
are not living fossils, but rather evolved
components in a new medium across the
Atlantic; they are hybrid, inv