When Vilma Espin passed away, one of my male informants stated: “She asked to be buried where she was born.” After death, there is a strong attempt to take a person’s body where s/he is seen to ‘truly belong.’ This is understood as a connection to a place. I heard of many persons born in Eastern Cuba who had been taken back to Oriente for their burial after many years of residing in the capital. Being buried where one is born links the beginning and the end of the life, closing the circle of life.
Nevertheless, most often Cubans are buried in the municipal cemetery of the area where they are officially inscribed as residents (which may be very different from the place where they are actually sleeping their nights). The cheapest option (about 100 MN, 4 USD) is to have the body cremated and place the ashes in a little box inside of a wall at the cemetery. The wall displays a plate inscribed with the name of the deceased. Another, more costly alternative is to pay for a place in a burial vault in the cemetery, where the (un-cremated) body is placed along with an engraved tombstone or a plate. In Colón, there are collective state vaults as well as privately owned vaults that usually contain the rests of several family members. My informant estimated that a spot in the state vault costs about 200 MN (about 8 USD). Since privately owned vaults usually run in the family, there are few possibilities to acquire them and if they come for sale, the price tends to be very high (for instance, an internet advertisement in 2012 was selling a vault that can accommodate 6 coffins and 15 spots in the ossuary for the price of 800 CUC, while another was asking 500 CUC, see Anonymous 2012a; Anonymous 2012b). In Havana, another option (that is cheaper than a private family vault but exclusive in other ways) is to acquire a burial place in one of the pantheons owned by
distinct Spanish societies at the cemetery of Colón.121 In the case of vaults, the kin of the deceased has to go and extract the bones in two years’ time in order to make room for new bodies, but the tombstones remain. Finally, important state personalities are buried in pantheons specifically made for them and the bodies of the most significant state personalities are placed in separate, monumental grave sites set up especially for them, such as Che Guevara’s grave site in Santa Clara or the burial site for several important socialist personalities, including Vilma Espin (and Raúl Castro’s future grave), in el Mausoleo a los Héroes y Mártires del Segundo Frente Oriental Frank País (the Frank País Mausoleum to the Heroes and Martyrs of the Second Oriental Front) close to Santiago de Cuba. As opposed to the official state ideology of egalitarianism, this range of distinct burial sites shows a clear differentiation on the basis of a person’s wealth and socialist accomplishments.
FIG. 10: A MAN’S GRAVESITE: “PAPI, WE REMEMBER YOU WITH LOVE. YOUR SPOUSE AND DAUGHTER.”
The distinct Spanish societies that have functioned in Cuba since the 19th century offer ordinary Cubans a way to pay for a burial plot that is more private than a collective state vault but cheaper than a privately owned family
121 While there are other ‘ethnic societies’ for Cubans tracing their descent to a certain part of the world, such as the Arab Union (Unión Árabe de Cuba) and the Chinese Association (la Casona in Centro Habana), I am only aware of the Spanish Societies owning pantheons at Colón cemetery. However, Cubans who are Chinese descendants have their own ceme-tery in Havana. The cemeceme-tery was built in the 19th century like the cemeceme-tery of Colón (dating from 1854).
vault.122 These societies collect together persons with descent from a certain region of Spain such as Galicia, Asturias, or Andalucía and they demand “a proof of kinship” in order to accept persons as members. (The only one of my informants who knew about these societies was unfortunately unable to tell me on what basis kinship is actually defined for such purposes, as he himself had been admitted without a “proof of kinship”). Most of the members are elderly, and for instance the “Hijos de ayuntamiento de Buján” (Children of the Municipality of Buján) states that out of its 260 members, 102 are Spanish and 9 are migrants from Spain (see anonymous 2012c). The associations charge their members a yearly fee. José paid the yearly amount of 144 MN (about 6,50 USD, out of a maximum yearly income of about 300 USD) to the “Aragonese Charity Association” (Sociedad Aragonesa de Beneficencia). While the sum is not high, Spanish societies differentiate persons on the basis of their known biogenetic kinship connections and ethnicity: whether they can be labelled as descendants of Spaniards to an acceptable degree. They are thus very strongly white associations; persons with a notable Afro-Cuban family background do not have the possibility to be buried in these pantheons. On the other hand, the Yoruba Association (Asociación Cultural Yoruba de Cuba), for instance, does not to my knowledge own any kinds of burial sites.123 Thus, death becomes a moment when ‘ethnic’ and/or ‘racial’ divisions become emphasised. While in life, the official state discourse – as well as, in many ways, everyday practices – stress Cubans’ high degree of “racial mixing,” at death such distinctions emerge again. Death differentiates those that are considered to be distinct, even though they would have been merged in life. Death categorises persons on the basis of wealth, ethnicity, residence or place, socialist achievements, and notions of ‘biogenetic origins.’ In this sense, burial sites come to represent a symbolic map of a specific social order, composed of clear divisions as opposed to the mixing (and creolisation) of practical life, providing the material symbol of the continuity of certain types of divisions (Bloch and Parry 1982: 32-35). Thus the burial site contradicts the tendency that funerals have to downplay such divisions temporarily.
However, death not only differentiates, it also joins persons together; unites those who are considered to belong together, even if they would have been apart in life. For José, it is important to be buried with his loved ones in the Aragonese Charity Association pantheon, where are buried his mother, his
122 Spanish societies seem to be comparable to the Jamaican “friendly societies” described by Jean Besson (2002: 237).
Besson notes that these emerged in various parts of the Caribbean after the emancipation as mutual aid societies for all kinds of misfortunes. These operate by collecting membership fees and a significant purpose is to fund the mem-bers’ funerals, which are expensive in Jamaica. (Besson 2002: 231-235). However, the friendly societies do not include a similar ‘ethnic’ differentiation as the Spanish societies in Cuba (although the Jamaican friendly societies are predom-inantly Afro-Caribbean), even though they do have connections to kinship through their functioning as regional or village-based associations in a context where many persons own bilaterally inherited family land.
123 However, distinct Afro-Cuban religions have a rich tradition of mortuary rituals so there are other ways in which Cubans may cherish these family connections.
two brothers, and his ex-partner.124 Moreover, it is central for him that the remains can stay indefinitely in the Spanish societies’ ossuary, creating a unified final resting place for kin and partners. The family tomb thereby unites persons irrespective of their gender. The burial site is a way to integrate a man to his kin; the family tomb becomes the ultimate way to unite a man to his family after death.
In José’s case, the family tomb is also a place that merges matrilateral, patrilateral, and affine kin. Joining together spouses, death carries a strong potential to abolish affine divisions in particular. When Vilma Espin passed away, Raúl Castro ordered a massive rock to be made for her in the Segundo Frente Oriental and next to it, another rock where his body will be buried when he dies. While affine relations are conflict-ridden and difficult throughout the life cycle and affinity emerges only in momentary connections – even in funerals, affines become “family” only temporarily – burial in the family tomb abolishes such divisions, turning ‘affines’ in ‘consanguines’ (Turner 1979b:
184). Death merges family members, regardless of whether the bonds that connect them are matrilateral, patrilateral, or affinal. Certain distinctions that are significant in life cease to be so at death; the family tomb abolishes earlier divisions and fuses all kin together. Via the family tomb, death creates lasting kinship.
While affines are not always buried together,125 this, however, suggests that death carries the potential to become a moment of transformation where previous divisions are undermined in favour of kinship unity. This proposes that sexuality is a force that has the potential to unite persons permanently, both via the birth of children as well as via a couple’s burial into the shared family tomb. This is a way to recognise the significance of sexuality and affinity/affines as crucial to the creation of fertility (cf. Bloch and Parry 1982:
21) and the new relationships that it brings, despite the strongly matrilateral tendencies in Cuban kinship. In this sense, death creates a similar moment of affinity in the life cycle as the birth of a child.
In José’s case, the connection to his kin and to an ‘ethnicity’ via the Aragonese pantheon is also a link to a symbolic place of origin – a bond to Aragón in Spain from where his kin once set foot to the Caribbean. This gives a symbolic
124 Since all these people were white and his current wife is not, it remained unclear to me how strongly the policy of ‘Spanish roots’ is imposed and whether José’s current wife will possibly be buried in the same pantheon with him when she dies. Since José adores his current wife, it is obvious that he would want to be together with her also in death. At the same time, it is unlikely that he would have looked into the subject since the mere thought of losing her is too unbearable for him.
125 Sometimes the primacy of matrilateral kin connections holds also in death. Yusisley, a black woman in her late twenties, told me that both her mother and her father have their own family tombs where they will someday be buried. However, both her matrilateral grandparents were buried in her matrilateral family tomb, merging the initial affinal link.
continuity to his family history despite the shallow genealogical knowledge he has of his kin. Via the family tomb, family continuity becomes merged with locality (Bloch and Parry 1982: 32-34). As the Caribbean is a region particularly marked by historical disjuncture and Cuba even more so, in a context where land possession and inheritance were supposed to play no role, this allows creating a symbolic notion of a historical connection to a place. Tombs provide the material symbol for the continuity of kinship groups (Bloch and Parry 1982:
32-33).
At the same time, such unity at death abolishes exchange, for the internal divisions between the persons amongst who exchanges are performed, collapse or fuse together (Bloch and Parry 1982: 38). Transmission and memory thus become emphasised over exchange (Godelier 1998: 408-410). Nevertheless, the dialectics of reciprocal care that centrally define social relations continue in another form between the living and the dead.