One way in which the birth of a child allows the parents and their kin to both expand their social networks and negotiate their earlier connections is via Catholic baptism and ritual kinship.
After the relaxing of the state policy towards ritual practices of various kinds in the 1990s, the popularity of Catholic baptism grew after many years of a more difficult relationship between the state and the church, during which the practice of Catholic rituals was very discreet. In the past, no one who was a member of the Communist mass organisations could be baptised. For example, one of my female informants stated that her grandfather did not
46 I am grateful to Martin Holbraad for suggesting this to me.
permit any of his grandchildren to be baptised because he was a policeman and a member of the Cuban Communist Party. However, at the time of my fieldwork, Catholic baptism was one of the two most popular Catholic life cycle rituals (the other being last rites in funerals). The most popular churches – those associated with the Catholic saints that have a synchronistic counterpart in the Afro-Cuban orishas, such as the church of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre (Virgen de la Caridad de Cobre, Ochún) or the Virgin of Mercy (Virgen de la Merced, Obatalá) – have two or three daily rounds of baptisms on Saturdays and up to 40 children are baptised during each round. The age at which a child is baptised ranges usually from two or three months up to six or seven years.
Catholic baptism allows the parents to create ritual kinship connections to the child’s godparents, to create a spiritual bond between the child and the god(s) as a way to bestow a general blessing and protection on the child, and opens up the possibility for further spiritual connections between the child and the orishas, for Catholic baptism is a pre-requisite for Santería initiation.
The Catholic Church tries to curtail the synchronism and teach Cubans the ‘proper’ interpretation of the ritual’s significance by inviting parents to preparatory meetings before a child’s baptism. In these, a priest teaches the Catholic faith, the meaning of the ritual, and proper conduct during the event. The priest stresses the importance of a continuous commitment with the church that the baptism initiates, by stating that the baptism is like “a gift that [the Catholic Church] gives [to the parents and the child], which includes the commitment to teach [their children the Catholic faith]”
or that the baptism is “like a loan that they are given but have to return, in the same way as in the banks of the capitalist world.” He also tells the parents that when the child is eight or nine years old, the parents have to bring him/her to the church to receive the first communion. This way, the church conceptualises the baptism as a spiritual gift that installs a reciprocal relationship between the parents, the child, and the church. By receiving the gift – accepting baptism – the parents commit to reciprocating it in some way in the future.
Nevertheless, very few parents respect this commitment. For instance, in the church of Regla – a very popular church for baptisms since it syncretises with the most maternal Santería orisha Yemayá – a priest told me that 250 children are baptised annually but only 22 of them undergo First Communion.
Thus, the priests’ efforts to install a lasting, on-going relationship with the Catholic Church show very little success at this life stage. Moreover, most parents emphasise that baptism installs another type of reciprocity instead, that between the child and god and/or orishas, in addition to expanding the
family’s social world via ritual kinship. What becomes emphasised is not an individual’s or a family’s relationship with the Catholic Church as such, but rather the way in which the ritual allows to create and strengthen the parents’
personal social relations, as well as the child’s spiritual connections to gods.
FIG. 4: A MOTHER AND BABY AT A CATHOLIC BAPTISM
The child’s godfather plays a central role in the ritual. As dressing up is very important, he is expected to buy the child a special outfit for the event and the baptism may be put off until the godfather has money to do this. (Sometimes the child’s mother or father is the one who buys the outfit if the godparents cannot fulfil the role that is expected from them.) The child’s godfather should provide money for a party to be celebrated after the baptism, but this happens rarely. Even though the baptism itself is free (although in some churches there is a small payment of 20 pesos at the maximum; less than 1 USD), the acquisition of the outfit and hiring of someone to do the videotaping and/or photographing for the day (as is preferred), raise the cost of the ritual.
Baptisms are usually not very large-scale events in terms of participants, even though sometimes quite a few people from the child’s extended family may be present (from the matrilateral, patrilateral, or both sides). The Catholic Church strongly expects the child’s mother to be present in both the preparation for the baptism as well as in the actual baptism and this is
practically always the case. However, the child’s father – who has a general tendency to be ‘missing’ in the kinship system – is often equally present in both occasions. Other persons who usually participate in the baptism include the child’s (matrilateral, sometimes also patrilateral) grandmother and aunts.
In other words, the most important persons participating in the baptism are the child’s parents as well as their close female kin.
However, even though baptism thereby presents an occasion with the potential to create and/or maintain the affine relation between the mother’s and the father’s family, this is not always the case. For instance, when Ixis was angry with the father of her son because he did not want to maintain a love relationship with her, she baptised her son without telling the baby’s father and chose the child’s godparents without consulting him. This way, baptism may become the mother’s statement on her social relations; a way for the child’s mother to take agency in relation to the baby’s father. In this case Ixis evaluated her relationship with her son’s father in terms of the central value of reciprocity. Since he had offended her by not granting her the intimate role she wanted in his life – and she was also rejected by his family to a certain degree – she, in turn, did not let them participate in the pleasurable occasions connected to the birth of a child. The baby’s father, along with his mother and sisters, was deeply offended by Ixis’ act of baptising the child without their presence. However, when the situation calmed down after some time, the balance was restored so that the baby’s first birthday party was celebrated at the father’s work place. Like the gendered dialectics of care taking place during pregnancy, baptism allows parents and their kin to (re-) negotiate their social relations. Baptism carries the potential to affirm affine links and refashion relationships, but it also exemplifies the way in which motherhood grants agency to a woman.
Godparents
The child’s mother is usually the one to choose the godparents for the child.
The father may also pick one and the mother the other godparent. Sometimes this may result in a conflict between the child’s parents and their families over whom to choose. Teresa was very worried about her son’s ex-girlfriend Ixis picking up the godparents to their child because Ixis had many male friends who were gay and the whole father’s side of the family was very preoccupied that this might have a bad influence on the child’s later development (i.e. he might become gay). However, in the end, it is usually the child’s mother who gets the last word in the issue and this is what happened in this case as well.
Cuban godparent relationships differ in some ways from the pan-Latin
American compadrazgo relationships. My informants’ godparent relationships tended to be less formal, less lasting, less asymmetrical, and often less important than the compadrazgo relationships in Central America (Foster 1961, 1963; Crandon-Malmud 1993: 575, 585, 591 ff. 5; Danziger 1996: 69, 77, 79 ff.
5; Rothstein 1999: 585, 587; see also Smith 1988: 45). The term compadrazgo itself was never used by my informants. However, godparent-kin terms (godmother, godfather, godson, and goddaughter – madrina, padrino, ahijado, ahijada) are in frequent use and people have various different types of godparent relationships, not all of which are religious.47 However, most frequently godparent-relationships relate to the Catholic baptism or to Afro-Cuban ritual kinship relations.48
Godparenthood is a commitment that installs certain responsibilities and rights between the child, the parents, and the godparents. While these are not rigid or necessarily (very) binding, they are serious enough to make some my informants refuse godparent relations suggested to them. In such cases, my informants stated that the reason for their refusal was that they were not close to the child’s parents and that the child was “very bad-mannered” (muy malcriado/a). Therefore, the child’s qualities may also influence the forming of a godparent relationship, not just the relationship between the possible co-parents. Unlike in other parts of Latin America, the relationship between the godparent and the godchild is emphasised over the relationship between the co-parents (cf. Foster 1961, 1963; Mintz and Wolf 1950: 355; Rothstein 1999: 590 ff. 22; Danziger 1996: 79 ff. 5; Crandon-Malmud 1993: 591 ff. 5).
However, in other ways the Cuban godparent relationships are similar to the Latin American compadrazgo. In Cuba (as elsewhere in Latin America), godparenthood is a relation that is strongly defined by the economic aspects of the bond (e.g. Foster 1961, 1963; Crandon-Malamud 1993: 582-583, 587-588, 591 ff. 5). However, mutual liking, closeness, and the personality features of the possible godparents may sometimes weigh more heavily in the choice.
Nevertheless, usually parents want to find someone with money who will buy things for their child and who will help them financially if needed. For this
47 There are also godparenting relationships that are created outside religious contexts and that are based solely on friendship, trust, and mutual liking. In such relations, usually the younger party chooses someone as his or her godparent and starts employing the kin term padrino or madrina to refer to the person. Sometimes the older person may suggest starting a godparent-relationship, at times even poignantly insist on it, but the younger party usually retains the right to refuse such connections. These types of relations tend to last for as long as the relationship is pleasurable for both partners and they may include similar reciprocal help and care as the more formal godparent relationships.
The use of the kin term is a sufficient indication to strengthen the friendship that previously exists amongst such partners and install the godparenting relationship and giving up the use of the kin term to terminate the bond. Some-times this transforms the relationship to a less intimate form of friendship, but it may also terminate it completely.
Using the term padrino / madrina to refer to strangers is also a way to imply a form of intimacy, usually in a situation where a person wants a favour of some sort from the other.
48 Two of my informants who were born in Eastern Cuba had godparents that had been assigned to them in an “echar agua” (spill water) ritual. I was told that this ritual is performed mostly in Oriente and is the equivalent of baptism even though it is not an institutionalised Catholic ritual. My focus here is on Catholic godparenthood.
reason, many people want to have foreigners or Cubans who have emigrated outside of the island as godparents to their children. This is the only aspect of godparenthood that displays gender differences. Often people have both a godfather and a godmother, but since men are usually the ones who are expected to have money and pay for things, male godparents are preferred to a certain extent. Since material contributions represent a male form of care, this is a way from the child’s parents (mother) to try to ensure the future material security and care for their child. An employee of the Catholic Church even told me that some parents baptise their child several times in distinct churches in order to secure the child several sets of godparents, as well as to get the godparents to pay for several distinct baptism parties. This is a way to expand the social relations installed via baptism as much as possible.
For a childless person in particular, becoming a godparent may provide a way to establish a type of parenthood relationship with a child and this may motivate the godparent to dedicate more time and material resources to create and maintain a relationship with the godchild. On the other hand, a man with very little money and other material resources may struggle to establish godparent relationships and may risk being left completely childless in the context of both ritual and non-ritual parenthood.
The religious criteria of the Catholic Church for choosing baptism godparents is looser in Cuba due to the fairly weak status of institutionalised religions.
Since it would be extremely difficult to find godparents who fill the usual requirements of the Catholic Church (baptised and confirmed Catholic adults), the church tends to accept any godparents chosen by the child’s parent.
However, a Catholic nun told me that the church hopes that godparents are a (catholically) married couple, although in practice they exercise no control over the issue. Moreover, while the church states that godparents should not be kin, in practice godparenthood and kin relations overlap frequently.
Sometimes an existing ‘consanguine’ relationship is strengthened by a ritual kinship bond. Migration, for instance, occasionally creates an incentive to solidify a person’s tie with the kin on the island and a migrated Cuban may pick a godparent for his or her child among his or her (usually matrilateral) consanguine kin. Godparent relationships are often used to strengthen relationships between siblings in particular. Moreover, sometimes people choose their own or their child’s godparents on the basis that the same person is already the godparent of a kin member.
Occasionally a godparent-relationship offers a way to solidify the usually more marginal patrilateral kinship links. A child’s godparents may be the father’s
aunt or sister or a more distant patrilateral relative. Godparent relationships may also reinforce affine relations and sometimes godparent relationships strengthen both patrilateral and affine connections at the same time, for example when a child’s godparents are the father’s sister and her partner.
Sometimes ritual kinship bonds reinforce several types of kinship connections at the same time, for example when a child’s godparent is the father’s brother’s wife’s sister – a relationship that combines patrilateral, matrilateral, and affine links.
There is a tendency to create ritual kinship relations with the persons whom one already considers to be a type of relative and to whom one may refer with a kinship term. Thus, an existing discursive kinship relation is strengthened by turning it into a ritual kinship relation.49 To use my own situation as an example, my Cuban family considered me as a kin member but wanted me to become their youngest son’s baptism godmother.50 In their view, this would make our kin relation “official” and enable me to get a visa to Cuba on the basis of family membership, making kinship a way to tackle state restrictions.
Moreover, many ask their neighbours to become their children’s godparents.
Several aspects relating to socialism make it important for people to be in good terms with their neighbours. Cubans repeatedly need all types of little services and help from their neighbours; water, domestic appliances, or sugar may be borrowed in a reciprocal cycle of exchanges (see Rosendahl 2010). In addition, since almost everyone is in one way or another involved in some type of illegal activities (or at least in the informal economy), it is important to have good relations with one’s neighbours in order to prevent problems with the police or the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (Comités de Defensa de la Revolución, CDR). Due to neighbours’ physical proximity and frequent interaction, a ritual kinship bond is seen as reinforcing a relationship that is already a close relation and making it more reliable. In this sense, physical proximity carries in itself the potential to develop into a kinship bond.
Ideally, the godgodchild relationship is modelled after the parent-child bond so that the godparents form a second set of parents for the parent-child, thus expanding the child’s social relations. At its best, godparenthood creates a relationship of reciprocity and mutual aid between the child, the child’s parents, and the godparents. The most important issue is to maintain the relationship and practice mutual visiting or at least talk on the phone, as stated by a male informant: “My mother and my godmother have not stopped
49 I call this discursive kinship because I reject the use of the term “fictive kinship,” as if such ways of creating kinship connections would be somehow ‘less real’ than others.
50 For another example of incorporating the anthropologist to the kin network through godparenthood, see Weis-mantel 1995: 689.
seeing each other even though they live very far from each other and spent years without meeting each other. It is an obligation.” Some informants’
godparents had been a great help to their mother in their childhood. An elderly female informant had lived at her godmother’s place from the age of five until the age of 13 because her own mother could not take care of her.
During pregnancy and a child’s infancy in particular, godparent relationships may become highlighted in various ways. A pregnant woman may receive the type of help that is supposed to be provided by the child’s father from the child’s godfather or from her own godfather. In such a case, she may sometimes have a child without expectations of material contributions from the child’s father “because she has a godfather” who gives her money or she may stay at the child’s godfather’s home for some time after giving birth if needed – as stated by a male informant on his godson and the child’s mother:
“Their house was under construction and the father did not take care of him.”
The godfather may thereby step in to provide the mother(-to-be) with the care that the child’s father fails to provide. However, the birth of a child may activate also a father-to-be’s relationship with his own godparent. A male informant stated that his godfather was “the person who most rejoiced” about his partner’s pregnancy when he was about to have his first child. Thus, like in the context of affinity and patrilateral bonds, to the new-born’s parents and godparents alike, the birth of a child represents an opportunity to strengthen relationships also in the context of ritual kinship.
However, all godparent-relations do not exhibit close connections. Neglecting ritual kinship bonds usually intertwines with the material contributions that the godparent is supposed to make to the godchild. However, if the godparent does not fulfil these expectations, not much happens. Many informants told me that their children’s godparents had forgotten about their godchildren
However, all godparent-relations do not exhibit close connections. Neglecting ritual kinship bonds usually intertwines with the material contributions that the godparent is supposed to make to the godchild. However, if the godparent does not fulfil these expectations, not much happens. Many informants told me that their children’s godparents had forgotten about their godchildren