Priestess of the ancestors – Yanique Caudra

For 32 year-old Yanique Cuadra, a Santeria high priestess, religion is everything – her roots, philosophy, identity and even the answer to national problems.

“We are mostly African descendants, but we’ve neglected the ancestors in our lives. So now there is great imbalance,” says Cuadra of Jamaica’s escalating crime.

For her, Jamaicans have bastardised their ancestors into ‘duppies’ and thus distanced themselves.

“We have forgotten ourselves. Our Jamaican folklore calls the ancestors ‘duppies’. When we bury our dead, we forget them.

We don’t have sciences or misas, as they call it in Cuba, where we call up the ancestors and talk to them,” says Cuadra. According to her, Santeria builds community.

“Santeria encourages kinship, because there are many god-parents and god-children. Crime would diminish because we see ourselves as part of the other and we realise the importance of each life form and the right they have to be here,” says Cuadra. One of Santeria’s main focus, she adds, is the balance between positive and negative energies.

“In the Santeria or Yoruban worldview, there is no good or evil, it’s positive and negative and they have to co-exist. Some are destined to be murderers, some doctors and some to have menial jobs. So when there’s too much of either positive or negative, something like the December quake-tsunami that destroyed much of Indonesia, will happen,” she says.

Cuadra has been in the Santeria religion for 18 years now. But, how did Yanique get involved in it?

At ten years old she migrated to the United States from Jamaica. Her mother was a paralegal and her father an architect. At fifteen, she lived in a New York apartment complex with her family.

Puerto Rican emigrant Lola Vega was her next-door neighbour. Vega who practised Santeria, a derivative of Yoruba; an African religion, had what the curious 15 year-old thought was the most beautiful shrine she had ever seen. Gradually, she began learning about the religion from Vega and at 18 years old she had her first reading.

As her readings continued she was instructed that she was destined to be a priestess. They grew close. Vega was also a devout Catholic. And so was Yanique.

“There’s not much of a difference between them. Many of the Catholic saints are the same as the Orishas,” explains Yanique.

Her academic and physical interests became intertwined with her new and evolving philosophy. Yanique, who ideally wants to lecture and write books, has a first degree in comparative religion, from the University of Vermont.

She studied dance and theatre production at the Edna Manley College for the Visual & Performing Arts, has two masters in History and cultural studies and is now pursuing a PhD at Emory University, in Atlanta in which she examines nationalism, tourism and culture in Cuba. She should be finished studying by December.

Cuadra lives in Cuba with her husband, Francisco, a Santeria high priest, and 7 month-old daughter Naia Nzinga. But she’s now in Jamaica, where she says there will be less distractions to keep her from completing her thesis.

She makes part-time money as a free-lance choreographer and guest lectures in Afro Creole Religion, primarily in Cuba and Haiti at Edna Manley.

Her husband makes a living as a high priest in Cuba.

Dancing was, and still is, a main interest. She was enrolled at the Jamaica School of Dance for five years before she left the island. And in New York, she was tutored by Richard Gonzales, from age 15-20. He taught Bailesde Oche, which means Dances for the Orishas.

For Cuadra also, her religion, which embraces reincarnation, represents justice in its organic employment of karma. “What you do in this life determines what happens to you and your children in your next life or theirs. Also, what you don’t learn in this life, you learn in the next.”

“My religion has given me the greatest respect for life and living things. It has connected me with my environment. Santeria allows me to be a Caribbean person, because it is Afro-Caribbean,” says Cuadra.

Santeria is an African religion that survived the Middle Passage, and is practiced in Puerto Rico and Cuba.

It is a derivative of Yoruba – an African religion practised in Caribbean and Latin American countries such as Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Brazil that finds harmony in the balance between God, the ancestors, the forces of nature, called Orishas and humans.

Today, Yoruba is still practised in Nigeria, its country of origin.

There are over 17,000 Orishas in Santeria. There’s a belief in one main God, called Olodumare or Olofin. Next in the hierarchy comes the ancestors or eggun. And the Orishas follow them.

“Each person has a particular Orisha that guards their head. Christians would call it a guardian angel. My Orisha is Yemaya – the Orisha of the sea,” explains Cuadra. Those who practice Santeria or Yoruba, make offerings to their specific Orishas. The offerings can be fruit or animal.

It’s Ash Wednesday when we visit Cuadra and she’s about to go to the sea to offer a cooked fish and fruits to Yamaha.

Mutton is Yamaha’s (goddess of the sea) preferred meat, but Cuadra will stick to the cooked fish offering this time.

And since mutton is the meat of choice for her Orisha, Cuadra doesn’t eat the meat. “Usually you don’t eat the food that is your Orisha’s favourite,” Cuadra explains.

The practice of animal sacrifice has given them the label barbaric in some circles. But this label has not deterred the eight or nine practising Yorubans/Santerias in Jamaica. They still make their sacrifices, which they see as a primary component in the relationship between god, ancestors, Orishas and man.

“In Santeria and Yoruba, the relationship between humans and Orisha is reciprocal. For example, Ochun, the goddess of fertility and love, gives you a fertile womb, so you give her sacrifices,” says Cuadra.

There are different shrines for the Orishas in the home of someone who practices Santeria or Yoruba.

In the same way that Cuadra cannot eat meat, she cannot use the sea for recreational purposes. “I love the sea, but because it is my mother’s home, I don’t use it for recreation. In fact, I was prohibited from swimming in it at initiation,” says Cuadra. Initiation is almost like a new birth. It is very symbolic, since the dress in which you are initiated is the same dress in which you are buried.

But, how do you know what Orisha is yours?

According to Cuadra, elders in the religion who become your god-parents do a reading with cowrie shells to determine this.

“One of the first steps in Yoruba/Santeria, is getting a reading done. This tells you what Orisha guards your head,” says Cuadra.

After the Orisha is identified with you, you are given an eleke or collares, which is a bracelet whose numerology and colour code identifies you with the specific Orisha.

Aside from her blue and transparent bracelet or eleke, Yanique wears seven silver bangles. Seven is the number associated with Yamaha and she’s known for wearing seven silver bracelets.

So while you can wear necklaces that signify other Orishas, the one that identifies your main Orisha is the bracelet on your wrist.

“The eleke is always worn on the left hand, because the left side of the body signifies the source of life,” says Cuadra, while explaining that everyone who practices Yoruba or Santeria has to have fresh coconuts at their home since it is these coconuts that the Orishas speaks through.

In the same way that Christians pray for guidance or approach God with specific issues Cuadra, for example, asks the Orishas their advice on a daily basis.

“The questions must be simply worded to get a yes or no answer. You ask the question then you throw four coconut pieces on the ground. A perfect yes would be when two dark sides (the skin) are up and two white sides (the meat) are up. Three dark sides up means maybe, so you throw again to get a definite answer,” she explains.

Dancing is very much a part of Santeria. There are often dance vigils, and each Orisha has his specific moves. Often the Orisha possesses a dancer or some dancers. Drumming is also an integral part of Santeria and Yoruba.

The sacred drums called the Bata are played only by men. Cuadra explains why. “The spirit of the drum is female, so for harmony, only the males can awaken the spirit of the drum found in the Bata,” she says.