Arguably, Latino history has not belonged to Latinos for the longest time—with some even finding that it has yet to be reclaimed. However, even among Latinos exists disagreement on how history should be archived—what events, stories, and voices must be preserved, and which shouldn’t? This coincides with the search for identity among Latinos, inspiring great outbursts of narratives to fill in what may be missing from history. Such is the case of the Cuban Revolution, the time when Fidel Castro and his Communist Regime were in power. Cuba evolved into a solitary island nation, irrevocably changing the course of Latino and global history and the methods we retell it. Aside from the global ramifications, interpersonal and individual impacts continue to be thoroughly explored from multiple Cuban perspectives. An example lies within Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina García, who shares the story of a fragmented family during the reign of Castro, peeling at the socio-political layers through her work of fiction. Within the novel, she is diligent in shedding light on a historically neglected foundation of Cuban society, culture, and history: Santería. García devotes much of the novel to the exploration of “the underpinning of Cuban culture” (García 255) which is the religion born from the syncretism between the Yoruba religion and Catholicism in Cuba. García emphasizes the massive extent of Santería’s impact on Cuban history and culture through Felicia del Pino’s background and character development into accepting the cultural and religious Otherness of being a santera. She highlights its critical roles in identity and community, offering variety in what would have been a one-sided, monochrome recollection of Cuban history and its people. With her usage of color to subvert the meaning of blue, and incorporating its antithesis of red, during pivotal, spiritual santero experiences, García upholds an intricate perspective of Cuban identity through Santería’s adaptive communal qualities, reclamation of the body, recording of history, and liberation from pain. Yet, she warns of the ostracization and the damage of seclusion surrounding Santería within a country bordered by blue waters to an individual who sees color differently.

            Felicia del Pino is the “black sheep” of her family—a total deviation from the legacy of del Pinos in which there are few moments of deep connection and experiences between her and the rest of her family. This leaves her in the position of one of the Others living in Cuba due to her fundamental strangeness and ties with Santería. Very quickly after we are introduced to her, she engages with the religion through her friend Herminia, performing in a ritual to make peace with her deceased father’s soul (García 12). The narration is quick to establish her as delusional, describing, “Felicia’s delusions commence suddenly, frequently after heavy rains. She rarely deviates from her original pattern, her hymn of particulars” (García 39). Insights into her backstory are peppered throughout the nonlinear plot, as we learn that she contracted syphilis from her first husband, Hugo, and her revenge of burning his face (García 82); her multiple failed marriages that followed; her assault on the woman, Graciela, who she believed was a spy and burned her in revenge (García 151); Her experience on a Socialist brigade (García 105); and her indoctrination into being a novice santera (García 188). With such a complex journey I cannot do justice in summarizing, García provides us with a peek into the depth of Felicia’s identity. Yet, the throughline connecting her to Santería and the community of practitioners exists, providing a foundation for her character and journey that emphasizes the religion’s crucial role to Cuba and Cubans alike.

            The usage of Santería as a supporting foundation for Felicia’s identity evolves García’s goal of respecting Santería’s foundational role to Cuba to proving that it carries a legacy of the self and community to anyone who wishes to participate. In exploring the role of Santería as a space to resist and express oneself, Amanda Easton credits that “because of Santería’s oral practices and transmissions through a verbal network of non-bureaucratic customs, the Afro-Cuban religion offers a positive milieu and outlet for marginalized voices” (Easton 3). As we learn of Felicia’s traumatic and difficult experiences, Easton begins to form why she becomes dependent on Santería as it offers her a means to make sense of the tribulations she must face and receive positive healing while being a part of a network, a legacy, and a community accepting of her. Herminia, Felicia’s best friend who is Afro-Cuban and a santera, spiritually guides Felicia throughout the novel while embodying Otherness and Santería’s openness. Through their friendship, we see the representation of “empathy and human interconnectedness that is impartial to political lines, social classes, or ethnic heritages… their relationship is then one of borderlessness and true reciprocity, a central tenet of Santerían practices” (Easton 9). Community and healing go together as Herminia is instrumental in healing Felicia, which Celia, Felicia’s mother, recognizes the santera as taking care of her daughter using natural herbs and healing spices (García 90). The usage of natural cures is documented during Socialist Cuba, which Marina Gold’s anthropological analysis observes that “Santería’s concepts of health and well-being exceed those of biomedicine, so that a visit to the santera or oracle reader can complement areas left unattended by biomedicine, such as money, love, and loss” (Gold 54).

            Felicia’s identity takes heavy damage from her failed love life, which guides her need for comfort through Santería. Some of her instrumental experiences occur surrounding her love life: her life-changing extraction of Syphilis was a product of her loveless, unhealthy marriage to Hugo; Her paranoia heightened to vengeance by burning Graciela followed the death of her second husband Ernesto; and her decision to become a santera came directly after she experiences the death of her third husband which she claims she pushed off of a rollercoaster and watched him die (García 185). Despite being far from the only character to suffer from marriage or romance difficulties, Felicia’s journey profoundly delves deep into Santería, unlike the rest of her family with conflicting motifs rising throughout her storyline.

            García excels at making each character unique despite a host of symbols that blend between characters; one of the most prominent being that of the color blue. Though García is careful to incorporate other colors, blue stands out as the frequent descriptor of objects and characteristics within the novel. With an influx of one-sided, monochromatic interpretations of history, Felicia’s relationship to colors offers a vivid departure and subversion of that singularity. The narration describes Felicia’s intense delusions of colors, explaining, “The colors, too, escape their objects. The red floats above the carnations on her windowsill. The blues rise from the chipped tiles in the kitchen. Even the greens, her favorite shades of greens, flee the trees and assault her with luminosity” (García 75). This escape of colors compliments what Easton establishes as Santería’s borderlessness, which García implements through Felicia’s delusions—or her interpretations of the environment that directly affects her. While investigating Felicia’s relationship with color, I stumbled upon her unique relationship with blue—one of the most paramount relationships considering the prevalence of blue in the novel. In this same scene, she feels everything in the world and beyond as if it were “[calling] to her all at once, grasping here and there for parts of her, hatching blue flames in her brain” (García 75). Another instance of blue flames exists during the flashback to when Felicia enacts vengeance on her first husband, carrying the blue flame to burn his face and hands (García 82). Rocío G. Davis, in writing for World Literature Today, offers a concise rundown of García’s usage of blue, highlighting it as “the primary motif for the representation of Cuba and its powerful link with characters” (Davis 66). Davis ends with the example of Pilar’s portrait of Celia, claiming that “Her painting will become another metafictional device that will freeze the experience of her Cuban visit and capture her grandmother’s last moments” (Davis 66).

            Davis’ interpretation of blue as the representation of Cuba and its link with the del Pinos, and the description of its freezing capabilities, develops an interesting paradox in Felicia’s story as she uses the blue flame to burn Hugo. Burning being the contrast of freezing, and as she actively burns the toxic connection she had to her ex-husband, shows Felicia using blue in an unorthodox, violent way, unlike the rest of her family. She breaks the boundary of blue and uses it to tear up her family, to hurt others, as well as to describe her pain. Not only does her subversion of blue assist in breaking uniformity among the del Pinos, but Felicia’s proximity to red during her involvement with santero rituals highlights her identity as the Other and what it means to embrace it.

            Instead of red flames guiding her direct actions against people, we see red implemented during rituals that involve sacrifice or blood. The very first ritual of the novel involves the sacrifice of a goat, where the guiding santero “[directs] the stream of blood onto the clay eggs” (García 15). Blood is later paramount during Felicia’s asiento, or the ritual for her to become a novice santera. During Herminia’s chapter, the santera relays Felicia’s final initiation to readers by describing:

Once more Felicia was led to the throne. The goats to be sacrificed were marched in one by one, arrayed in silks and gold braids. Felicia smeared their eyes, ears, and foreheads with the coconut and pepper she chewed before the babalawo slit their throats. She tasted the goats’ blood and spit it toward the ceiling, then she sampled the blood of many more creatures. (García 187)

This intense ritual gives us a visual of Felicia combining integral elements of nature, fruits, and animals, involved in Santería. She samples the blood of sacrificed animals, ingesting and manipulating it as she spits toward the ceiling. This ritual harkens to when Felicia was seven months pregnant and working at the butcher shop as the narration described the carcasses of red meat all around, with Felicia recognizing, “I’m red meat” (García 81). The parallels of an assortment of dead—butchered—animals and the realization of her own red meat provide a sense of hyperawareness of herself and the humbling actualization of her own body.

            By García establishing the connectivity of blue and subverting it with the importance of red during Felicia’s sacrificial rituals, she highlights Santería’s multifaceted underpinning of Cuba’s history and the deep-rooted violence through a personal, bodily way. She enforces this with the deep focus on the body and performance that santero rituals evoke. As Santería “is flexible and unorthodox, it allows worshippers to adapt to new situations and life conditions” (Kirby 42). Thus, anthropological investigations on different factions of Santería only begin to elucidate on how different factions practice, but also how they capture critical values and traditions toward the same goals. Despite being a work of fiction, Dreaming in Cuban incorporates central aspects of Santería found globally. García devotes sections of santero evocation to the fundamental use of body and performance alongside her clever usage of colors, natural objects, and Cuban references. In terms of sacrifice, it offers an opportunity for a prospective santero/a to experience “the manipulation of physical objects—those used on altars and in sacrifices, as well as bodies—[that] produce the elusive but beautiful ceremony” (Mason 26). According to Mary Ann Clark who investigates the biased Indo-European ethnocentric issues of religion, sacrifice, and violence, “When one’s life is at stake or the community is celebrating an initiation, the sacrifice also includes the blood of animals. All types of sacrifice, but particularly animal sacrifice, serve to remind the participants of the delicate balance of the universe” (Clark 140). Sacrifice therefore enables Felicia to feel a part of not only the Santero community but of the whole balance between the physical and spiritual world. The physical proximity to the body and blood invites the spirits of the Saints to the practitioner, which Aisha Beliso-De Jesús coins as “copresences” and notes that:

Copresences emerged historically in enslaved black people’s pragmatic everyday negotiations with Cuban colonialism and racial violence. They embody the physical endurance of black enslaved Africans in the Americas under colonialism and imperialism, as well as contemporary forms of racial feeling and marginalization. Spirits and Orisha engage in warfare; these copresences liberate those enslaved in problematic situations and infiltrate enemies. (Beliso-De Jesús 504).

By highlighting the bondage of the body of enslaved Africans and the atrocities they faced during slavery, Beliso-De Jesús shares how, through the santero performance of the body, “tensed muscles of embodied racial space are loosened and flexed, even if only tenuously. Historical sobs might be released, streamlining out and down the face” (Beliso-De Jesús 520).

            Given García’s respect for the history encapsulated by Santería through a character like Herminia as an Afro-Cubana descendant of a lineage of santeros, Felicia’s attraction to Santería comes at the cost of her life as she does not share this experience. Despite the religion’s borderlessness, Felicia’s ultimate goal was to reunite with her family—to have their love and acceptance. Thus, she does not have much of a connection to the history of African enslavement central to Santería and Cuba’s intertwined legacy. After her asiento, she asks Herminia, her only supporter, if she has spoken to her family who remain afraid of Felicia. From there she covers her face, in which Herminia observes, “I noticed the imprint her fingers made on her forehead, the delicate chain of bloodless flesh” (García 189). At the end of her story, Felicia has lost all her colors. She’s only dressed in white with no makeup or hair, refusing to eat forbidden foods like coconuts, corn, or anything red (García 188). She begins to crumble. Her body and her identity decay from the ostracization that comes with committing to be an Other. The tragedy is cemented with the omen of Ikú, or death, over Felicia. Her final moment is with her mother, which Herminia witnesses, “Celia lay with her torn, bleeding feet beside her daughter and held her, rocking and rocking her in the blue gypsy dusk until she died” (García 190). Felicia’s journey ended with the colors escaping her, with her mother now physically carrying the burden of Felicia’s journey into Santería, into her identity, and must now reinforce the memory of her daughter within her living history.

            Cristina García’s talent cannot be understated as she tackles the complexities of Cuba during an era of socialism. She is one of many writers, many Cubans, who focus on not only the political impacts of such an extraordinary time in history, but also the experiences of the individual, families, and communities. Felicia is a character whose unique journey blends herself, the del Pinos, and a community of Afro-Cuban santeros, together as she explores her spirituality and identity. With her clever usage of color and even the lack thereof, García combines the healing, physical, and inward properties of the unique religion with the massive undertaking and burdens of what it means to be a santera. She not only pays her respects to the religion that has been a stalwart pillar of Cuba but treats the importance and severity of Santería with a critical, personal role to an individual like Felicia. García is subtle but effective in valuing the legacy Santería carries. With her master usage of colors, she proves how interconnected the layers of Cuba and its people are and cements the critical, life-altering—or shattering—impact of Santería.

Works Cited

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Clark, Mary Ann. “Santería Sacrificial Rituals: A Reconsideration of Religious Violence.” The

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García, Cristina. Dreaming in Cuban. Ballantine Books, 2017.

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Kirby, Diana H. Gonzalez. “Santeria: African Influences On Religion in Cuba.” Negro History

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Mason, Michael Atwood. “‘I Bow My Head to the Ground’: The Creation of Bodily Experience

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