The Sacred Language of the Abakuá

By Lydia Cabrera, Ivor L. Miller and Victor Manfredi

In 1988, Lydia Cabrera (1899–1991) published La lengua sagrada de los Ñáñigos, an Abakuá phrasebook that is to this day the largest work available on any African diaspora community in the Americas. In the early 1800s in Cuba, enslaved Africans from the Cross River region of southeastern Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon created Abakuá societies for protection and mutual aid. Abakuá rites reenact mythic legends of the institution’s history in Africa, using dance, chants, drumming, symbolic writing, herbs, domestic animals, and masked performers to represent African ancestors. Criminalized and scorned in the colonial era, Abakuá members were at the same time contributing to the creation of a unique Cuban culture, including rumba music, now considered a national treasure.

Translated for the first time into English, Cabrera’s lexicon documents phrases vital to the creation of a specific African-derived identity in Cuba and presents the first “insider’s” view of this African heritage. This text presents thoroughly researched commentaries that link hundreds of entries to the context of mythic rites, skilled ritual performance, and the influence of Abakuá in Cuban society and popular music. Generously illustrated with photographs and drawings, the volume includes a new introduction to Cabrera’s writing as well as appendices that situate this important work in Cuba’s history.

With the help of living Abakuá specialists in Cuba and the US, Ivor L. Miller and P. González Gómes-Cásseres have translated Cabrera’s Spanish into English for the first time while keeping her meanings and cultivated style intact, opening this seminal work to new audiences and propelling its legacy in African diaspora studies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Release date: Dec 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781496829450

Lydia Cabrera

Lydia Cabrera (1899–1991) was a Cuban ethnographer, literary activist, and author of numerous books on Afro-Cuban culture, including El Monte.

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INTRODUCTION

—Ivor L. Miller

Lydia Cabrera (1899–1991) published La lengua sagrada de los Ñáñigos in 1988 in Miami, the final obra in her voluminous production. This book had at least three prepublication titles: (1) Inua: The Language of the Abakua; A Vocabulary of the Language of the Secret Society Founded in Cuba by the Efik and Ekoi Slaves from the Calabar¹; (2) Vocabulario Abakuá²; and (3) The Secret Language of the Abakuá, the title on the manuscript from which the final publication was produced.³

The term ñáñigo in Cabrera’s title is not from Abakuá lexicon; instead, it’s a Cuban popular term for the Abakuá institution, which was confused by most Cubans of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with anything black, African, and criminal.⁴ Because members of the Abakuá society past and present perceive ñáñigo as pejorative term, and because Cabrera had several possible titles for her book—the three of four using Abakuá—the translators decided to replace ñáñigo with Abakuá in the title.

Cabrera’s Abakuá phrasebook is the largest work available on any African diaspora community in the Americas, with 530 pages of transcribed terms, phrases, and chants in the Abakuá sacred language, with intuitive interpretations in Spanish. There are more than 6,300 entries, organized alphabetically according to the first word in the passage.⁵

If a dictionary contains information essential to the identity of a language community, Cabrera’s lexicon documents phrases vital to the creation of a specific African-derived identity in Cuba. The Abakuá society was established in Havana by the Carabalí, enslaved migrants from the Cross River region of West Africa with its port city of Calabar; existing within a slave society, Abakuá was hidden from colonial authorities, who barely perceived its existence let alone its meanings. Esteban Pichardo, author of a foundational dictionary of Cuban phrases, first documented the term ñáñigo in 1862: "Diablito [Little devil]—(Singular masculine noun)— The Black dressed ridiculously as a foolish clown or harlequin, who on Three Kings’ day moves through the streets with his Cabildo, leaping and pirouetting, sometimes with a doll of the same figure and name. Also called Ñanguio or Ñánñigo or Ñánguido" (Pichardo y Tapia 1862, 92).⁶ Pichardo presented a Spanish colonial perspective of a public Abakuá performance, where an initiate wears a full bodysuit to represent the presence of ancestors of the group. The association of masked dances and the devil was made in medieval Catholic Europe, where saints’ days processions were mobile performances representing virtue and sin to the public. Catholic clergy and their symbols represented good, while masked dancers represented sin (the bad life).⁷ As Africans arrived in Seville from the fourteenth century onward, their masking practices were incorporated into the processions of the Catholic brotherhoods to represent sin, and the term Diablito was used to refer to them (Miller 2009, 193).⁸ In colonial Cuba, Spaniards and their allies referred to Abakuá masquerades as devils, ignoring the intentions of their creators to represent honored ancestors who were and are an integral part of the community of initiates.

Cabrera’s pioneering documentation of the Abakuá initiation language in the 1940s and 1950s presents the first insider’s view of this African heritage. Her book El monte (The Forest, 1954) used a tripart structure, with one section on the Abakuá use of plants. Her next Abakuá publication, La sociedad secreta Abakuá (The Abakuá Secret Society, 1959) is the first monograph on Abakuá heritage; the present lexicon is based on notes related to this research. One entry allows us to date her research: Efori Nkomó: The oldest Abakuá lodge today in Cuba. It is a century old (located in Los Hornos neighborhood) (Cabrera 1988a, 158). Since the Efóri Komó lodge was founded in 1840, we can date her documentation to the 1940s.⁹

This phrasebook contains terms and phrases used by titleholders to refer to Abakuá history and practice, its African mythology, and its adaptation to Cuba. Cabrera’s teachers shared detailed information, thereby risking their personal safety, since initiates who shared details with outsiders about hidden rites were rejected by the group. Because government authorities repressed Abakuá in the colonial and republican periods as criminal or antisocial, Cabrera’s Abakuá teachers understood her as an ally whose publications could help educate Cubans about their institutional and spiritual legacies from Africa. In the preface to her 1959 monograph, she wrote: The false accusations continually launched against rites imported by slaves fell fully upon the Abakuá … [making] the elder Saibeké and other initiates break their silence and clarify for us their Mysteries (Cabrera 1959a, 11). Cabrera convinced her Abakuá teachers that their culture was integral to Cuban national identity and that her documentation would contribute to educating the nation about its true historical development.

Ékpè as a United Nations of the Cross River Region

In West Africa, the Cross River region of southeastern Nigeria and southwestern Cameroon has long been noted for unparalleled linguistic and cultural diversity. In this context, the Ékpè (leopard) society was developed as the primary institution to enable cross-cultural communication, effectively serving as a united nations forum. Ékpè was the vehicle for community justice throughout the region; by creating a shared system of symbols and values, this club became a model for managing diversity with mutual respect. The presence of this graded initiation society with representative body masks confirmed the autonomy of a principality in the region. Even if its legal functions have been replaced by modern government, Ékpè still exists in hundreds of communities because its universal values encourage cultural continuity, community justice, aesthetic beauty, and insight into a philosophy of birth or creation, of living well, of death and rencarnation.

Ékpè is a repository of knowledge about the ways of life in the Cross River region; therefore, all full male citizens should be initiated by their father if the family has the wealth to do so (while in some communities the first daughter or wife may also be initiated). Young people learn about Ékpè through public cultural displays during funerals, coronations, investitures, and other celebrations. Leading Ékpè titles are Ìyámbà (chairman), Mbókò (creation), Mbàkàrà, Èbònkó (mother), Nyàmkpè (father), and Ǹkàndà (spiritual warrior). Many distinct language communities have local names for other titles.

Ékpè is the primary symbol of cultural heritage and public participation in a large number of communities of the Cross River region. Being a member symbolizes full citizenship in a given locality. The performance of Ékpè masks and music intends to teach values and philosophies about each individual’s responsibilities as he or she advances through stages of life.

Through the dispersion of the transatlantic slave trade, historically related variants of Ékpè practice were created in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, as well as in Havana and Matanzas, Cuba. Being a system to defend the civic and economic rights of its members and holding communities, Ékpè was re-created in Cuba to organize and defend forced migrants from the Calabar region.

The Ékpè culture of the Cross River region has been misrepresented in the literature, starting with the early merchants, missionaries, and colonists, who caricatured Ékpè as witchcraft and superstition. It’s a historical irony that Ékpè leaders in Calabar, seeking economic development, invited the first missionaries and Western educators into their communities in the 1840s. But once the Scottish Presbyterians settled in, instead of teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic or trade skills, they taught the Bible only. These first missionaries worked with Ékpè leaders to reform local practices through Ékpè law, for example the killing of twins or the killing of slaves at the death of an important patriarch, but it was not long before they began to contain and attack Ékpè itself as anti-Christian (cf. Waddell 1863). During the Christianization of coastal West Africa as part of the colonial process, indigenes were compelled to internalize colonial perspectives of their own heritage, leading to large-scale rejection of indigenous thought and practice as well as confusion about its functions and meanings.

Abakuá Narratives Reflect Cross River Region Cultural History

Serving as an antidote to colonial interpretations of Ékpè and Abakuá heritage, Cabrera’s documentation of Abakuá texts expresses the governmental functions of Ékpè in its West African context. Cabrera wrote: Okobio: Land, party, lodge, nation and individuals that form their own government (1988a, 454). This interpretation clarifies why the Abakuá brotherhood was perceived as a dangerous tendency by Cuban governments, whether colonial, republican, or revolutionary. Another entry reinforces the idea of Abakuá as government, referring to the flag symbolizing the warriors of the nation that Mokongo incarnates and represents (1988a, 94).

Cabrera’s entries refer to tratados, long passages in the Abakuá language describing foundational rites in Africa; many of these refer to pacts between neighboring regions to unite for trade and defense.¹⁰ For example Cabrera wrote: Abakuá was constituted as a league of nations. Mosongo was from Efik, Isué from Orú, Iyamba from Efor, etc.¹¹ In each of these ceremonial pacts, cultural artifacts and performances were shared to represent mutual bonds between distinct communities. Tratado could be correctly translated as treatise, meaning a lengthy formal discourse, but I have chosen to use the more specific term treaty, given that Abakuá legends, like the Homeric epics, were understood as historical events by many who performed them (Lattimore [1951] 1961, 12).

Cabrera’s entries refer piecemeal to a foundational ceremony in Usagaré called the baróko of the four kings, known in Abakuá as Obón Síro baróko niyáo.¹² Considered the greatest of all Abakuá ceremonies, this event was directed by the magus Nasakó in Awana Bekúra Mendó, or Usagaré, with performances by the Nkóboro and Eribangandó Íremes (masquerades) as ancestral representatives. Each of the four kings—Mokóngo, Iyámba, Isué, and Isunékue—came from a different region to create a pact of unity.¹³ In unison they used their teeth to lift up the severed head of the sacrificial goat, an act symbolizing four persons and only one thought, meaning that for complete success, the four leaders must be united in their intentions. In Cuba, this ceremony is re-created each time a new lodge is founded, because the Eribó drum symbolizes this enduring pact in Abakuá practice.

Cuban Abakuá practice is legitimized through a series of narratives that memorialize accords between various communities in the Cross River region. The narratives describe Ékpè’s function as a forum for intercommunity or internation dialog, offering insights into the cultural life of the Cross River region in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For example, the treaty of Abasóngo is based on a mythical story of a war between the Efó and Efí, which arose because the Efí wanted to possess Ékue, the Voice, which belonged to the Efó. To end the conflict, a ceremonial pact was performed to unite both groups: the Efó initiated the son of an Efí leader and shared Ékue, the Voice, with them. Abasóngo and his staff remain in Abakuá tradition to memorialize this pact.¹⁴ Meanwhile, in Calabar, bàsònkò is a core Ékpè term; it seems that the Cuban treaty was used to narrate the historical diffusion of Ékpè in West Africa (see Abasonga in appendix 1). The ideas documented in Cuban treaties are generally reflected in the history of the diffusion of Ékpè in the Cross River region, where contemporary lineage leaders describe how, centuries ago, Ékpè was shared by Èfúùt (Efut) (BáLóndó) with the Èfìk, and also with the Èkóí (Éjághám speakers).¹⁵ Although rarely documented, similar treaties are found in the history of West Africa’s Cross River region.¹⁶ Nigerian historian Otu Ubi documented intergroup treaties from the early 1700s in the middle Cross River region in a community known today as Yakurr:¹⁷

At the end of the war a treaty was made with the defeated non-Yakurr neighbours over boundaries and cessation of further hostilities, perhaps to ensure a steady flow of trade and passage of traders to Yakurr markets. For instance, the history of Ekoi dance is the history of the peace-treaty between Ugep and Egai. Similarly, the end of the Ekori-Anong war witnessed the erection of two shrines variously called Atew and Akwo Ateba by the Yakurr and Bahumono respectively. These shrines were symbols of the treaties made to end the Ekori-Anong war.

Treaty-making was one of the familiar ways by which the politically independent settlements of the Yakurr and other non-Yakurr villages settled their differences or inter-village disputes and thus ensured amicable and enduring relations. (Ubi 2004, 154–55)

Into the present, Yakurr communities perform the Èkóí dance in memory of the intercommunal treaty establishing diplomatic ties with other communities. Èkóí, being an Èfìk term for the hinterland communities of the forested hills northeast of Calabar, encompasses many distinct groups (Talbot 1912, 153). In Cuba, the term Ekoi is prevalent in Abakuá treaties; Cabrera reports: The Ekoi, ‘the ancestors,’ are known in Cuba as the creators of Abakuá, those who as ‘owners of the secret’ of Ékue then gave it to the other tribes (Cabrera 1988a, introduction).

In another example from the Úrúán kingdom in the lower Cross River region, a centuries-old treaty to establish peace and alliance after intercommunity conflicts led to long-term coexistence. In preparation, one of the parties assembled at the Àtáàkpó lodge at Íbíàkù Úrúán, a lodge named after the supreme deity of the Úrúán people, known in Cuba as Tacho.¹⁸

The subsequent rite performed was úbúk úròng, meaning bury the mortar.¹⁹ Representatives of each party brought a white ram, a goat, and chickens, and the treaty conditions were invoked twice: first at the foot of a palm tree by a member of one party, and again at its crown by a member of the other:

After that he came down and the two officiating persons cut their veins and put blood into palm wine which everybody drank. The ram and the goat were slaughtered and the meats cooked and eaten by all standing. A special root was buried crosswise in the ground of the road on which the ceremony was performed. Oboti (Itimmo), udukpang, and ukana trees were planted on the spot to mark the incident. (Ekereke 1954, 45)²⁰

Such a treaty binds the communities physically and spiritually, in the present and into the future up to seven generations.²¹ When preparing the communal meal, edibles are placed in the mortar and pounded; then grandchildren from both parties will come to share the food, and the elders and chiefs dig into the ground to plant the trees to denote where the mortar is buried. The ùdùkpáng tree is used for the demarcation of boundaries.²² The ùkánà tree symbolizes longevity and multiplicity, because as the sun warms a mature tree, its seedpod explodes to scatter seeds in all directions. For this reason, the ùkánà is planted in the center of markets in Ìbìbìò territories. In Cuba, Abakuá refer to trees as ukano, and plant a palm and ceiba tree on the patio of every lodge.²³ For Ékpè members, the leaf of the òbòtì tree (Newbouldia laevis), as it is known in Èfìk, or ogirisi in lgbó, is used as a symbol of their supreme authority.²⁴ Oböti trees are planted at the front of Ékpè lodges throughout the region (Keay, Onochie, and Stanfield 1964, 428–30; Miller 2009, 226n64).²⁵

Intercommunity treaties are an important historical theme shared between the Cross River region and Cuban Abakuá; indigenous concepts of gender are another central theme. Although Abakuá is an initiation society for males, the presence of women and gendered symbols weighs heavily in the founding treaties. Sikanekue: ‘Sikán after she found Ekue’ is the title of the woman who discovered the Voice in the river (Cabrera 1988a, 486). According to the Cuban treaties, Sikán was a royal personage, either from an Efik or an Efúút (Efut) community, depending on the version of the myth retold. Either way, she would have been associated with Mme Ndém spirits, the leading deities of the Efik and Efúút (Efut) communities of Calabar, known as Nimm by the neighboring Kúos (Quas). Ndém is often described as a society led by women, and an Ndém priestess must be present during the investiture of the O! bóñ (Obong) of Calabar. As such, Ndém is a source for the authority of both Ékpè and the paramount ruler of a Calabar community.²⁶ In short, the Ndém spirit and the Ékpè leopard society are interrelated. Cabrera’s phrasebook contains at least forty-five separate entries with the term NDEM (ndeme, endeme, endemefí), used multiply in many entries.²⁷ Many Cuban phrases using Ndém are easily understood by Èfìḳ speakers, for example abasi akamba ndeme Efik (great Ńdèm gods of the Efiks) (Cabrera 1988a, 74).²⁸ Another phrase refers to the spirit of Sikán represented as an íreme to unify two communities: Ndeme Efia ayereká okobio (the spirit of Sikán unites us as children of the same mother) (Cabrera 1988a, 387). These references underscore the role of Ndém in the foundation of the Abakuá society in Cuba. The presence of Sikán as a spiritual entity remains fundamental to Abakuá theory and practice, but knowledge of Ndém is lost to contemporary Abakuá specialists, who may interpret the term as reverent gesture (see the Abasí ndeme entry).

Other powerful West African women are represented in Abakuá treaties. Cabrera wrote of the stories told by the Abakuá of Orúmiga and the Akuarenya Apapa. Abakuá maintain abundant references to ‘great’ women, powerful Nasakolas, who possessed the Secret; ‘they had ju-ju’ (Cabrera 1988a, introduction). Orúmiga, a healer and diviner from Orú territory who possessed the Sése Eribó drum, represents the memory of women’s power in indigenous society.²⁹ Akurina Makuá was another mythic woman in the foundation of Abakuá in Africa. Cabrera wrote: Akurina makuá: Female priest who predicted wars and calamities (1988a, 45).³⁰ Such references to mythic women in Cross River region communities underscore the insights of Abakuá tradition into West African history.³¹ Other entries in Cabrera refer to coastal African traders, for example: Batanga: Trader who captured people to sell them to slave merchants on the coast. The elders used to say: ‘If not for Batanga and others like him, we wouldn’t be here’ (Cabrera 1988a, 102). In fact, in 1845 in what is today Cameroon, Batanga signed a treaty with French representatives for slave trade abolition and legitimate trade protection, signed by 3 Banoko or Batanka chiefs (Austen and Derrick 1999, 50, table 3). In 1847, Batanga signed another treaty with the British to end the slave trade in their jurisdiction. The signatories were King William, alias Ymalia, and the Chiefs of Batanga (Hertslet 1851, 17–18). In Calabar, the Efúút (Efut) communities claim that their migration from Cameroon was a result of a Batanga war in the distant past. The first documented reference seems to be: The Efut … themselves claim to be of Bantu origin, having come from the Cameroons and migrated to the neighbourhood of Calabar because of constant fighting with the Batanga people (Forde and Jones 1950, 90).

Other Cabrera entries refer to Briche, either as a language or a community. In 1799, a Havana newspaper referred to a Caraball Briche slave (Ortiz 1924, 66). In 1836 in Havana, Briche was described as a black man or woman originally from the Carabalí region, often distinguished by their prominently marked foreheads (Pich-ardo y Tapia 1836, 39). In southeastern Nigeria, íchí were forehead incisions used by ózó initiates of the northern lgbó kingdom of Nri (see appendix 1). In the same region, archaeologist Thurstan Shaw excavated a bronze pendant at the lgbó Ukwú site with representative íchí marks, dating from the ninth century. Meanwhile, íchí incisions were continued through the twentieth century, although with diminishing numbers of bearers. (See figures 1A-C.).

The Cuban documentation shows that a core Nri-lg-bó-related feature of body modification connected to ózó title status was interpreted by some Cubans as typical or characteristic of Caraball blacks. This demonstrates that the ethnolinguistic identity of some of the founders of Abakuá culture in Cuba was different from the ethnolinguistic identity of the Efik, Efúút (Efut), and Kúo (Qua) communities of the Calabar slaving port, from where the Ékpè institution was transmitted to Cuba (cf. Manfredi 2004). This finding is interesting because in Nigeria, places within the Nri sphere of influence are prone to ózó (i.e., íchí bearers alias briche) practice, whereas places within the Árú (Arochukwu) sphere of influence are prone to Ékpè, which was earlier received from the Cross River region (Abalogu 1978; Bentor 2002).

Abakuá Treaties Depict Historical Figures in Calabar

Cabrera’s entries document other historical figures in Calabar, including wealthy merchants who were Ékpè titleholders, in one case a [r]ich Efik king who sold many slaves.³² The Abakuá title Eflméremo refers to an Iyámba from Efik territory. Cabrera documents Efik Efiméremo as the king of Efik; Efiméremo yamba … chief of the Efik lodge; Efiméremo Obón Iyamba; Efiméremo: the first king in Efik land; and Efiméremo Bakondondó Abakuá. This Efik king … began the religion of Ekue among the Efik (Cabrera 1988a, 29, 88, 115, 144, 150). Efik speakers in Calabar identify this name as Efióm Édém, a historical figure of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries who was known as Eyamba IV, the leader of Ékpè, as well as a wealthy merchant of Atákpá (Duke Town) (Miller 2009, 188–89, 212; Miller 2005, 39).³³

B

B

C

Figures iA, iB, iC Íchí forehead incisions represented on a bronze pendant and on an ozo initiate of the northern lgbó kingdom of Nri (Shaw 1970; used with permission).

Abakuá treaties report Bonerón as another historical figure from Calabar. Cabrera documents Bonerón on the one hand as a slave merchant, an intermediary between the Efik king and European slave merchants, and on the other as a wise, learned man (Cabrera 1988a, 116–17). Treaties

Map i Port of Old Calabar and the Bakassi region of the lower Cross River and Rio del Rey, 1878 (Langhans 1902). This map identifies many locations fundamental to the myths of Cuban Abakuá as well as source communities for groups that migrated to Old Calabar. What follows is a brief list of key place-names that resonate with Cabrera’s entries. The place-names are identified starting in the west and moving eastward.

The Èfik communities of Obútóng and Atákpá are on the east bank of the Old Calabar River. In Cabrera, these relate to the Efik Butón, Natakua, Efiméremo Natakua, and other entries. Directly to the east is Qua Town, while Qua territory extends to the east, the likely source of the term Abakuá.

Jambeke Creek is identified at the north of Backasey Island. This is a source for the Cuban title Yambeke (see the Iyagara and Yambeke entries).

Usaharet (a.k.a. Issangilli) is the epicenter of Cuban myths of Usagaré. Usaharet Creek flows directly to the south.

Meta is a large channel of water related to the Cuban myth of Tanse Bongó meta, the apparition of the Voice in the rivers of Usagaré (see the Bongó mbarini entry).

At the head of Meta is Ibunda Creek, named after the Ibunda community to the northeast. Ibunda was memorialized in Havana through the Ibondá Efó lodge created in 1871 (see the Asoiro Ibondá and Ibondá Usagaré entries).

This entire region is identified as Efut territory, Efüt being the Efik name for the BáLóndó peoples from Southwest Cameroon who migrated to Old Calabar centuries ago.

Ndian Creek runs just west of Ibunda, emptying into the Rio del Rey. Ndian was transformed to Odán in Cuban narratives (see the Akuekirl entry).

Uruanie Ekpe Creek and Uruanie Ekpe town are at the southeast corner of this map. The Úrúán people of contemporary Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria, are thought to have migrated from here centuries ago (Essien 1993, 17–18). They participated in the Ékpè culture of the region and are the likely source of the Orú lineage in Cuban Abakuá (see the Akari, Erón Ekoi, Irondó ntá, Urua ápapa, Uruana, and Uruápaoa entries).

The town of Bekura is to the north of Uruanie Ekpe. Bekura is central to the Cuban myth of Usagaré (see the Awana bekura mendó, Bakokó, Bakura, and Bakurandió Bakura entries). depict Bonerón as a king from Ibiabánga territory who was consecrated as Iyamba; Bonerón Tlnde means consecrated king (tínde, consecration).³⁴ In a different example, Cabrera reports Sieron mpoto amana Ekoi as a [g]over-nor or chief who introduced the religion in Bibl territory (Cabrera 1988a, 483). An anonymous Abakuá specialist responded that Sierón was a river where slaves were sold, and the merchants had canoe-houses. According to the treaty of Mosóngo, the merchants received cannons from the British. Sieron Mpóto was a slave merchant and governor, named Íbio Kóndo Orú, who became the Mosóngo of Orú territory.

Some entries provide alternative narratives for the forced migration of Africans to the Caribbean, through the perspectives of Africans and their descendants. Most Carabalí arrived in Cuba enslaved, but Abakuá treaties portray them as enlightened beings with profound knowledge and skills for self-organization. For example, African slaves who came to Cuba brought the memory and knowledge of Ekue. The Obóns among them gathered and re-created their religion here (Cabrera 1988a, 451).³⁵ Far from the victimization and humiliation portrayed in popular British and American antislavery narratives, Abakuá treaties portray reverence toward consecrated Africans who came to Cuba as culture bearers and community founders, praising them as wise elders whose foundational acts reverberate into the present. Instead of focusing on the inhuman context, they focus on the ability of knowledgeable initiates to forge ahead as leaders. One entry asks: How did Ekue arrive to the land of the whites, Cuba, and how was it consecrated here? Reply: In the land of the whites, the slaves remembered Ekue. ‘The Voice of Ekue was in their heads,’ and they gathered in Havana (Cabrera 1988a, 182).

Many entries praise the wisdom and achievements of African titleholders who arrived in Cuba and founded Abakuá. In Calabar, such praise is a common strategy to urge nonmembers to initiate, and for initiates to raise their status through study and solidarity and become titleholders. Cabrera wrote: "Iñángaripó: Title of an Iyamba. ‘It is given to those abanekues with great knowledge.’ It could be a synonym for wise men, like Saibeké, Bonerón" (Cabrera 1988a, 239). In response, an Abakuá specialist offered a chant praising the African initiates who founded the first Cuban lodge:

The place called Natakuá is clearly Atákpá, the leading community of Efik merchants of Old Calabar in the nineteenth century (see appendix 1).

A map of the Old Calabar and Bakassi region identifies Atákpá and other key places mentioned in the Cuban treaties, including Usaharet (Usagaré) and Obútóng, source of Efik Ebutón, the name of the Havana lodge created by African Carabalí for their Cuban creole children in the early 1800s.

While the treaties praise the initiates who arrived in Cuba, they also speak to the founders of the society in Africa and their great sacrifices. One of the founders is described as a king who renounced his title to become a slave to Ékue. In a West African context, to be the slave of a shrine meant complete dedication to serving a sacred place, protecting and caring for it. This interpretation of slavery is represented in entries about Ekuenyón:

Ekuenyón: He was the King of a Kongo land [who] abdicated his Crown to enter the religion. Ekuenyón says: … I am an enslaved man, I am here to obey whatever my master—Iyamba—orders. To feed Ekue and Eribó. Ekuenyón, friend of Ekue. Slave of Ekue. (Cabrera 1988a, 183)³⁷

Ekuenyón was a king who humbled himself to strengthen his community. Ekuenyón says: I am slave of Iyamba, but without me Iyamba cannot do anything (Cabrera 1988a, 185). The wisdom is that in serving a community, the slave becomes great because the group is stronger.

Outline of a Calabar Diaspora in the Western Hemisphere

Commencing with the first British and Dutch slaving expeditions on the lower Cross River in the 1600s, the West African estuary and riverside fishing villages that became Calabar developed into a vibrant Atlantic entrepot where Europeans traded with coastal merchants, exchanging copper rods for enslaved people and raw materials for transport across the Atlantic (Jones 1958, 47). Nigerian historian Onwuka Dike attributed the rise of Lagos, Accra, Dahomey, and the Delta states … to the development of maritime commerce. The seaboard trading communities which emerged with this commerce transcended tribal boundaries; their history belongs both to Atlantic and to tribal history (Dike 1956, 20). Dike’s description includes the Cross River region’s multiethnic Ékpè institution. In Calabar, both the historical literature and contemporary Ékpè titleholders narrate how Ékpè emerged as a regional institution through traveling Efik and Efúút (Efut) traders in Usák-édét (Usághádét/ Isangele/Usagaré in Cuba), an early Portuguese trading post currently located in southwestern Cameroon. From Usák-édét, Ékpè spread westward through Calabar into lbibió- and lgbó-speaking trading centers, and northward through BáLóndó-, Ngóló-, and Éjághám-speaking communities, eventually to Mamfe (Röschenthaler 2011). Like other living popular traditions, Ékpè practice maintained a fundamental initiation protocol, aesthetic patterns, and coded language while simultaneously adapting in superficial ways to each community that acquired the rights to practice it. In Cuba, Abakuá treaties narrate how Ékpè developed through exchanges between Efik and Efó (Efúút), where Efik contributed cloth obtained through trade with Europeans, and Efó exchanged cultural knowledge. An Abakuá specialist reported: "To speak of the ceremony in Usagaré where the Efó gave the Fundamento to Efí, and the Efí gave the Efó cloth for the íremes as well as food as ritual fees, we chant: Urá kóndo Efó Íremó mbára kóndo akanawán Efí kondó Iremó. Urá, ‘to initiate’; mbára, ‘hand’; akanawán, ‘suit.’³⁸ Throughout West Africa, the flow of goods and ideas led to innovations in communication, the arts, and family organization, most famously in the coastal canoe-house trading enterprises that incorporated talented members from outside the indigenous family or community. As Dike reported, the coastal communities united in their blood and institutions elements of the Atlantic and tribal societies which fashioned them (Dike 1956, 20). In Calabar, the great Efik families emerged as canoe houses, each with a patriarch called Etúbóm, or head of canoe."³⁹ Many Efik families have a distinct masking tradition, as do royal Kúó (Qua) and Efúút (Efut) families. Such regional innovations explain why the Ékpè institution is dynamic and distinct in each community practicing it, whether in Nigeria, Cameroon, or Malabo (Fernando Po) in West Africa; or in western Cuba, where it was re-created by Cross River migrants.

The re-creation of the Ékpè institution in Cuba as a covert operation seems to be unique in the Americas, yet Cross River peoples from the Bight of Biafra were dispersed throughout the Atlantic seaboard, into Sierra Leone, as well as to the entire Western Hemisphere, a phenomenon yet to be systematically studied. Historians of the Atlantic slave trade report the known statistics: Almost 900,000 slaves left the Bight of Biafra in the period 17401807, very largely through Bonny in the Niger Delta and Calabar on the Cross River, with Elem Kalabari, Gabon, and Cameroons reaching some importance in certain years in the second half of the eighteenth century (Love-joy 2017, 24; Lovejoy and Richardson 2001, 92). Into the 1860s—decades after the trade ceased in Haiti, the United States, and independent Latin American nations—the sugar plantation zones of Brazil and Cuba continued human imports. Historian David Northrup wrote: [D]espite the [British] patrols and other [anti-slave trade] measures there was no abrupt drop in the over-all volume of the Atlantic slave trade until after 1850. In the Bight of Biafra French traders were rejoined by Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian and Dutch, who frequented this coast in large numbers with Sao Tomé again becoming a collection point (1978, 55). Paul Lovejoy reports that Cuba was a focal point for Caraball arrivals:

[T]he figures demonstrate that after 1820 virtually all of the enslaved from the Bight of Biafra reaching the Caribbean went to Cuba. For the offshore islands during the period 1821–1840, there were 34,123 arrivals in the Caribbean, virtually all in Cuba, with 5,100 arrivals in Brazil, and only 315 in Sierra Leone, for a total of 39,538. That is, 86 percent went to Cuba. (2017, 39)

The later arrivals to Cuba reflect in the Caraball cultural presence on this island. Meanwhile, traces of Cross River region cultural heritage are found throughout the Caribbean, in both colonial documents and enduring cultural habits; for example, Carabalí is a common family name in Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela; Carabalí is a place name in Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela; and Carabalí was the name of a carnival ensemble in Palenque, Colombia.⁴⁰ Being unstudied, they remain fragmentary, like the remains of a huge shipwreck, as described by Derek Walcott.⁴¹ A major challenge in understanding a Caraball diaspora is that the term itself is vague, and not exclusive to the port of Calabar. The Bight of Biafra, a large coastal region from the Niger Delta to Gabon, was the departure source for people called Caraball in the early European records.⁴² Some of them were Kalahari from Elem Kalabari (New Calabar on European maps) in the Niger Delta, while others were from the port of Old Calabar (the present-day Nigerian city of Calabar) (Northrup 2000, 9; Jones 1963, 34). After the British government started sending recaptive Africans to Freetown, Sierra Leone, in 1807, the term Kalabarl was used there with reference to people from both origins (Fyfe 1960, 110, 113).⁴³ A 1978 map of Greater Freetown identifies a section called Calaba Town, pronounced without the final r as practiced in Calabar itself, a legacy of relocated Calabar people in the 1800s (Blyden 2000).

Due to cartographic errors, the name Calabar derives from Kalahari, an ethnic name for communities on the Niger Delta 120 miles (193 kilometers) to the west of Calabar. In the mid-1600s, Dr. Olfert Dapper—a Dutch cartographer who had not traveled to West Africa—produced his Description de l’Afrique, erroneously placing Old Calabar on the Cross River, calling the coastal town Old Kalabarien and Old Kalorgh (Dapper 1686).⁴⁴ Dapper’s map became the basis for later maps that identified the coastal Cross River town as Old Calabar, then translated into many European languages, leading to confusion both in the literature and in the local communities. Once Dapper and other cartographers displaced the term Calabar to the Cross River, it became a permanent fixture, even though its origin was a mystery to all.⁴⁵

An early European slaving vessel in the Cross River region was The Portuguese slaver Candelaria, which disembarked 114 enslaved Africans from ‘Calabar’ in Veracruz on 25 June 1625 (Behrendt and Graham 2003, 41). From this period onward, Calabarl presence was documented throughout the Atlantic and Caribbean seaboard of the Western Hemisphere, from Cartagena de Indias (Splendiani et al. 1997),⁴⁶ Santo Domingo,⁴⁷ Bermuda,⁴⁸ Florida (Landers 1999, 48–49), Jamaica,⁴⁹ Louisiana (Hall 1992, 299), South Carolina (Wood 1974, 339), and the Virgin Islands to the Calabar neighborhood of San Salvador, Brazil.⁵⁰ On the Pacific coast of Peru, 682 Biafra and Caravali were documented between 1560 and 1650 among thousands of other Africans (Bowser 1974, 40–41). In the Virgin Islands in the late 1700s, the ethnic names Ibo, Karabari, and Mokko were documented, corresponing to the Caraball designation of people from the Cross River region.⁵¹

In Barbados, Calamale Negros were identified in the decade of 1710 by a British colonist, in reference to the practice of obeah (see appendix 1, obia).⁵²

Caraball is considered an ethnic component inside the Vodún rites of northern Haiti, and members call themselves Haitiano-Caraball.⁵³ According to a Haitian participant, ‘Caraball’ rites are performed every August 15, on the anniversary of the Haitian Revolution, considered a sacred date. ‘Carabalí’ identity is protected deep inside Vodún tradition, out of the reach of non-initiates.⁵⁴

In Santiago de Cuba, a Caraball cabildo named Ososo was documented in 1867, while the carnival groups Caraball Isuama and Caraball Oluggo were documented in 1894 (Pérez-Rodríguez 1988, 137–38). In 1909 and 1911, three carnival groups were documented as Carabalí de los Hoyos, Carabalí de la Plaza de Marte, and Carabalí del Tivolí (Pérez-Rodríguez 1988, 379).

The use of vague and erroneous ethnic terms invented by Europeans to understand details of African presence is deeply problematic. The scholar must also observe cultural features from the Calabar region in the Americas. Some clues are found in the material culture re-created by Africans, particularly methods of drum construction, that continue to be reproduced in the Caribbean. Musicologist Andreas Meyers identified the wedge and ring method used to tighten drumheads in Calabar as produced in a large region coinciding with the Bight of Biafra, encompassing southeastern Nigeria, southwestern and southern Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, northern Gabon, and northwestern Republic of the Congo (Meyer 1997, 153–78). In Spanish American colonies, such drums were known as tambores de cuña; in Cuba, they are used by Abakuá and by at least one Kongo cabildo.⁵⁵ Along the Caribbean coast of Colombia, they have been played in traditional festivities from the colonial period to the present.⁵⁶ In Panama (formerly northern Colombia), they are used in the tamborito dance (Zárate 1968).

Another aspect of the Caraball diaspora is the farruco, a musical instrument of Venezuela. Fernando Ortiz published a photograph of the [f]arruco and other popular instruments of Venezuela, writing: "In Venezuela the ‘zambomba’ is called ‘furruco,’ probably an onomatopoeia. The furruco is a type of small cucuro drum with a waxed-stick attached to the center that makes it resound. It is used only during Christmas festivities" (Ortiz 1955, 5:176, 5:177, fig. 441). Constructed by covering a barrel with a skin drumhead and attaching a stick to the center of the skin, this type of friction drum has been documented in the Grasslands of Cameroon (cf. Koloss 2012, 51, fig. 59). Ortiz wrote about the farruco within a larger discussion of friction drums around the planet, used in many diverse contexts and with different methods.⁵⁷

The Abakuá language as documented by Cabrera links the Venezuelan drum to Cuba. Faruká or Afaruká is an Abakuá term for "to work, fragayar"; [t]o rub the Castil-ian Cane that produces the sound (Cabrera 1988a, 28, 226). The relationship between the terms farruco and fraga-yar is unknown, but it implies an old tradition. An anonymous Abakuá specialist reported: Fragayar means ‘to do something’ and is used in many contexts. Fragayar erúme, ‘to work with the spirits’ in the funerary rites; Fragayar iriámpo, ‘to give food to the Fundamento.’

The drum structures and vocabularies that are common between Cameroon, Colombia, Cuba, and Venezuela indicate historical relationships. Yet the Carabalí diaspora remains obscure because it was first hidden in secrecy, then maintained underground as in the case of the Abakuá society. Cabrera’s skillful documentation has fortuitously presented evidence that future scholars may use for comparative transatlantic studies. To paraphrase a proverb rendered into Abakuá: Where there’s smoke, there’s fire (Cabrera 1988a, 521); in other words, the available evidence indicates the presence of an immense historical diaspora between the Bight of Biafra and the Western Hemisphere yet to be fully articulated.

Adapting African Traditions to the Americas

African captives arriving in the Western Hemisphere adapted their lifeways to new environments. If arriving in large numbers into an urban environment, they created associations, as was the case in Cartagena, Havana, Matanzas, Montevideo, New Orleans, San Salvador de Bahia, Santiago de Cuba, and so on. In the process of creating social spaces for themselves in hostile environments, Africans operated covertly and with great caution, adapting to local political and economic realities through a dialectical process.

Conservation

The first tendency in this process was the conservation of homeland traditions, in language, group structure, and aesthetics. The impulse for conservation is evident, for example in the Yorúbá-derived Orisá culture common between the Republic of Benin, Nigeria, Brazil, Cuba, Trinidad, and more recently the United States. Pierre Verger’s pioneering work documents a fundamental base with many regional transformations. In the Caraball diaspora, the use of wedge and ring drums is an example of conservation that evidences a common regional source for these drums found in the circum-Caribbean. Other examples are the Abakuá treaties that conserve the names of important places and people in West African Ékpè history, as discussed above.

Conserving inherited tradition in a new context is necessarily a selective process because not everything can be reproduced. An Abakuá phrase documented by Cabrera speaks to this: Moto brlkamo: I speak Brlkamo (Cabrera 1988a, 361). Bríkamo is the Abakuá term for the correct ritual language, implying a selection of Bríkamo over other possible options. An anonymous Abakuá specialist explained: Móto Brlkamo, manyón Usagaré, ‘authorization to speak Bríkamo in the Abakuá rites.’ This occurred in Cuba, when the Isuáma language was replaced by the Bríkamo language for Abakuá rites. The elders said that: ‘Isuáma has no fish,’ meaning that [the sacred Fish] Tánse was from the Brlkamo region, not Isuáma. Isuáma identifies lgbó, one of the Cross River groups participating in the Ékpè tradition (see Suama in appendix 1). But historically, lgbó received Ékpè from Efik, and also from Ekoi (Ejagham-related groups).⁵⁸ Thus when re-creating Ékpè in Cuba as Abakuá, African leaders selected the Bríkamo vocabulary that represents Usagaré, the source for Ékpè, instead of the language of a receiving group.

Re-Creation

A second tendency in the dialectical process of adaptation is the re-creation of inherited tradition, made possible only after the earlier conservation of information. An interesting example is the organization of the first Cuban lodge, called Efik Ebúton, in a series of rites involving both conservation and re-creation. This is an example of conservation because the name of a Calabar community, Efik Obútóng, was used to identify the pioneering Cuban lodge, implying continuity with, or an extension of, the homeland. The choice of Obútóng is doubly intriguing because in Calabar, Ékpè leaders of the Obútóng community claim that their ancestors received Ékpè directly from Usák-édét (Usagaré) (Miller 2009, 46). Cabrera documents a reference to this African narrative: Efike Butón ñampán Abasí Usagaré: Efik received the Voice from Usagaré (Cabrera 1988a, 147). This universally accepted history of Ékpè in Calabar was reproduced in Cuba, because representatives of Usagaré, in a group called Ápapa Efó, authorized the creation of Efik Ebutón in Regla, as documented by Cabrera in 1959.⁵⁹ In The Sacred Language, Cabrera documented many phrases about the creation of the first Cuban lodge, including: Efike Butón Ekue Uyo usankemio ororó aman-isón: The Ekue of Efik Butón was the first to resound in Cuba (Cabrera 1988a, 146). The foundation of Obútóng in Regla therefore seems to have been a symbolic re-creation of the foundation of the Obútóng lodge in Calabar through the authority of Usagaré Ékpè!

Re-creation was also involved in the selection of Cuban fauna and flora to represent the animals and herbs used in the ceremonies of West Africa. One of Cabrera’s entries lists several of these Cuban herbs: basil, thistle, incienso de costa [incense from the coast], escoba amarga [bitter broom].⁶⁰

Another aspect of re-creation is the creative use of ritual language to legitimate one’s authority in the present. In 1920, the following chant was composed during a ceremony to found a lodge in Guanabacoa:⁶¹

Índia Abakuá, makaniká, ayagasí gamá, erendió Iyámba, eríete Morua, enyenegúbia, akamá Eribó eee. Heyéy embán, nyóngo béko maná ooo, komó bayíran, un bayíran eee. Umbayirán otéte ayére póndo, o yayó yayó.⁶²

This chant narrates the birth of Abakuá through the Voice of Tánse in the Usagaré River in Africa, a mythic event re-created each time a new lodge is established. Cabrera documented this chant as narrating an event in Africa involving the historical figure Bonerón, giving it the appearance of being created by African founders.⁶³ But in fact this chant was created by a white Abakuá specialist in the early twentieth century to demonstrate his knowledge of Abakuá history and practice, making it another example of the re-creation of inherited tradition.

Innovation

A third tendency in the adaptation of a migrant tradition to a new context is innovation, a powerful example of which occurred in the mid-1800s in Guanabacoa, when Andrés Petit, the Isué of Bakokó, and his unnamed supporters transformed Abakuá from an underground African-derived practice into a wider Cuban phenomenon.⁶⁴ A laic in the Franciscan order and a Mayombe (Kongo) initiate, Petit consciously fused aspects of all three traditions, resulting in a new form of Sése Eribó drum. Petit did this in the 1860s while creating a lodge specifically for white men who identified themselves as Cuban and who wanted a secret association to organize against the colonial regime.

Existing for centuries in a Catholic colony, African-derived initiation systems inevitably incorporated Catholic icons and actions. Members of José Antonio Aponte’s 1812 movement for abolition and the independence of Cuba selected Catholic images to represent justice and protection alongside African icons used for the same purpose. In the same period, many African sponsors who organized the first Abakuá lodge were slaves of wealthy families inside the walled city, where Catholic images were prominent. ⁶⁵

Figure 2 A member of the Efí Barondina lodge represents the title Abasí while standing at the entrance to the Fambá with a crucifix on his head during an Abakuá procession. Temple of Irianabón BrándiMasóngo, Pogolotti neighborhood, Havana, 2008. Daniel Chatelain photo, 2008. (Used with permission.)

Petit’s radical innovation was a visual and performed dialog between Abakuá and Mayombe thought and practice, and Catholic tradition. Because the whites he initiated into Abakuá were culturally Catholic, Petit made equations between Abakuá and church practice so they could grasp the meaning of Abakuá symbols and use them authoritatively. Some of these ideas were simple and superficial, while others were complex and profound. One was simply to insert a crucifix into Abakuá visual displays. Petit used the Efik-lbibió term Abási (God) and made it represent an Abakuá title. The titleholder’s job was to carry a crucifix on his head during processions so that Catholic leaders could perceive an alliance.⁶⁶

In Abakuá, the Isué titleholder has an important role in the initiation of neophytes using the Sése Eribó drum, which represents (among other things) the head of Sikán, the founding mother of the group. Petit likened the Isué to a Catholic bishop.⁶⁷ The Isué-bishop association led to a tradition of Isué titleholders wearing a colorful cape in Abakuá ceremonies in imitation of Catholic ritual dress.⁶⁸

When a neophyte is initiated by the Isué with the Sése Eribó, he is made to drink a ritual concoction including the blood of a sacrificed rooster or goat, an action likened by Petit to the Catholic communion.⁶⁹

If the above associations were simplistic, Petit’s deeper innovation was the transformation of the Sése Eribó drum, originally a section of tree trunk with an open bottom, into a chalice-shaped instrument with a closed bottom, where medicinal and magic substances from the Mayombe tradition were inserted to protect lodge members from spiritual attacks.⁷⁰ Cabrera refers to substances that constitute the ‘Secret’ or magical ‘charge’ of the Sese Eribó.⁷¹

Figure 3A An embroidered satin cape worn in an Abakuá ceremony, Regla, with the lodge name Enlleguellé Efó (Nyegeyé Efó), and an image of Saint Barbara, patron saint of the lodge, 1990s. Ivor Miller photo.

Figure 3B An embroidered shirt worn in an Abakuá ceremony, Regla, with the lodge name Enlleguellé Efó (Nyegeyé Efó), and an image of Íreme Eribangandó purifying the space with a rooster, 1990s. Ivor Miller photo.

Figure 4A Sése Eribó in a chalice shape. Eribó Sése Moquim-bán (The Sése Eribó charged with magic). Reinaldo Brito del Valle drawing, Havana. (Used with permission.)

Figure 4B Tabernacle of the Jesús María Church, Jesús María neighborhood, Havana. This was the model used by Andrés Petit to create the chalice-shaped Sése Eribó in the 1850s. Ivor Miller photo, 2014.

Petit simultaneously created a new branch of Kongo initiation rites called Kimbisa by inserting a crucifix inside the prenda or iron cauldron used to contain ritual substances. The crucifix symbolized that the prenda was created exclusively for defensive magic (to protect the group) and not offensive magic (to harm others).⁷² With Kimbisa magic inside the Eribó, Petit likened this drum to the communion chalice of the Catholic church. In fact, the tabernacle of the Church of Jesús María in Havana’s Jesús María neighborhood looks strikingly like the Sése Eribó created by Petit. This is no coincidence, because Abakuá tradition reports that Petit first used Catholic icons in an Abakuá procession on Three Kings’ Day (January 6) in front of the Church of Jesús María (Miller 2009, 113–14).

All these innovations were orchestrated in the lodge of whites created by Petit and company in 1863, called Okobio Mukarará (white brothers), and later Akanarán Efó Okóbio Mukarará (Mother lodge of the white brothers).⁷³ In a slave colony structured on racial and gendered categories, the act of bringing whites into an underground Caraball association was bound to upset the orthodox leaders of both the Spanish military and African-derived organizations.

Before Petit’s innovations, the earlier process of transforming the West African Ékpè leopard society into a Cuban practice called Ékue took place over several generations; the African initiates were hesitant to teach their own creole children the secrets of their homeland. Petit’s innovations were therefore viewed as treason by many Abakuá lodge leaders, a controversy documented by Cabrera, who wrote about the famous mixed-blood Andrés Petit, who was considered a traitor by some and venerated by others (Cabrera 1988a, 14). Cabrera documented an Abakuá phrase attributed to Petit, interpreting: Said by Andrés Kimbisa to the Bakokó [lodge] when he initiated the whites, and the blacks tried to punish him, alleging he had betrayed the Secret (Cabrera 1988a, 81). Such phrases exemplify an innovative adaptation of inherited phrases, giving them new meanings for new contexts. Cabrera also documented a phrase created by Petit’s enemies: He sold the Abakuá secret to white men while consecrating the first lodge of whites in Havana.⁷⁴ These accusations were obviously false, because all initiation societies require ritual fees from neophytes. Meanwhile, Petit’s supporters responded that he used the money received to buy the liberty of enslaved African initiates (Ortiz 1952–1955, 4:69; Cabrera 1977, 1–2). Cabrera also documented legends created by Petit’s enemies about the white Abakuá, accusing them of human sacrifice: ‘A fisherman captured by members of the Akanarán Efor lodge, white men as a matter fact’; ‘Only the Bongó of Akanarán Efor received human blood, as it was done in Africa.’⁷⁵ This Cuban legend is obviously modeled on an earlier African treaty, also documented by Cabrera, whereby Efik s sacrificed a Kongo in their quest to evoke the Voice.⁷⁶ Abakuá specialists responded that Petit’s enemies spread this legend to discredit the lineage he had created.

The innovations accredited to Andrés Petit in the Abakuá and Mayombe initiation systems have endured to the present because, by transcending race and class, they expanded outward to create a Cuban system. For example, Petit’s Efó lineage influenced the Efí lineage, which had once rejected the Akanaran Efo whites, as documented by Cabrera: ‘[W]hen whites in Cuba were initiated in the Obani lodge.’ They were initiated in the lodge Obani Mokrl Obane Mbemoró, also known as Efí Mbemoró.⁷⁷ While Abakuá lodges are restricted to the port cities of Havana, Matanzas, and Cárdenas, the Kimbisa system created by Petit is not, and it has expanded into Venezuela, Mexico, the United States, and no doubt other countries.⁷⁸

Petit’s innovations were a psychological victory for promoters of indigenous African heritage, because amid a slave regime constructed upon false racial hierarchies, he dared to compare the ideas of a powerful and dominant universal Catholicism with the primitive African-derived systems of Abakuá and Mayombe, underscoring their common goals of community service/mutual aid, health, and a theory for life after death. By removing the European-created problem of race from the Abakuá and Kimbisa systems, Petit created integrated ritual practices for Cubans of all heritages, thus ensuring their expansion into the future. Petit’s promotion of African indigenous tradition as a vanguard solution for the emerging national consciousness was real progress for the anticolonial struggle, because African descendants made up an estimated 70 percent of the Mambí army for Cuban independence (Miller 2009, 146).

Presenting cultural adaptation as a dialectical process intends to stimulate research into the agency of Africans and their descendants in the Caribbean region, emphasizing their active roles in each step of the process. Because the official archives created by Europeans and their descendants preserved a very different perspective, the scholar is faced with identifying alternative sources (cf. Miller 2018). Fernando Ortiz identified such sources in the ritual theater enacted during initiation and burial rites of African-derived systems, performances that embody the concepts and voices of African and Afro-Cuban actors.⁷⁹ The tendencies for conservation, re-creation, and innovation sometimes overlapped in historical periods and were complementary in promoting a living tradition. Other factors were also involved, like the loss of information about the meanings of inherited phrases or of a musical tradition. Such cultural losses were innovatively dealt with by inventing new meanings or using other related practices to fill in the gaps. An example would be the term ndem, mentioned above, which Abakuá speakers reinterpreted as its original meaing was lost. Another example is the tradition of consecrated batá drums, which replaced other Lukumí drum traditions that were lost or failed to arrive in Cuba. Originally a drum for Sángó and Egúngún in the Oy ó tradition, in Cuba the batá came to be played for all Orisá (Orishás).

Cabrera’s Teachers and Guides in the Abakuá System

Cabrera’s Abakuá phrasebook was created thanks to the support of several Abakuá specialists of her generation, whose commentaries she documented to compose this extraordinary text. To safeguard their identities, Cabrera mentioned the Spanish names of some but used only the initiation names of others. Through the process of our translation and analysis, we have learned more about Cabrera’s teachers, contributing to a social history of Abakuá culture.

Celestino Gaytán Saibeke: Memory as Resistance

In her introduction to the present volume, Cabrera thanked those who were my collaborators… . First and foremost, … the late elder Saibeke. An Abakuá term for wise elder, Saibeké is Cabrera’s praise name for a teacher whom contemporary Abakuá intellectuals believe to have been Celestino Gaytán, Isunékue of the Efí Etéte lodge of Matanzas. ⁸⁰ Carabalí descendant Andrés Flores remembered Celestino Gaytán as the grandchild of Africans, a foreman of the docks of Matanzas, and a founder of Abakuá lodges in Matanzas and Cárdenas. ⁸¹

Gaytán was identified because a photograph in Cabrera’s book La sociedad secreta Abakuá (1959a) shows a hand with a ring believed to be that of Gaytán. ⁸² Cabrera referred to her teacher in various publications as the encyclopedic Celestino Gaytán (Cabrera [1974] 1996, 21), or as the old and respected Gaytán (Cabrera 1975, 12). ⁸³ Gaytán was also a Babaloricha, and Cabrera referred to him as a source in her publications on Lukumí practice. ⁸⁴ Contemporary Abakuá specialists believe that Gaytán gave Cabrera information on the condition that she would not publish it until after he died. Cabrera apparently followed this agreement because La sociedad secreta Abakuá, her first book on Abakuá, published in 1959, was dedicated to the memory of Saibeké.⁸⁵

Evaluating the content of Abakuá phrases is another method of identifying the living sources in Cabrera’s lexicon. Some are linked to the Efí Etéte lodge of Matanzas, further indicating Gaytán’s input. Cabrera wrote: ‘The Efíetéte’—members of this lodge from the Efik lineage— say: Efíetéte Nankúko inuá keaborobuto inuá Efiónkeml: Some speak what they know, and others what they learn. I speak what I heard [from the elders], and I know what I say (Cabrera 1959a, 137n).⁸⁶ Another phrase Cabrera documented refers to a rite exclusively practiced by the Efí Etéte lodge of Matanzas: Ekue tombre … Gunpowder produces the cannon sound (Cabrera 1988a, 193).⁸⁷ Efí Etéte leaders ignited a cannon each time they performed a baróko, the only Cuban lodge known to do so. Gaytán’s input is further indicated in another of Cabrera’s entries: Wanañongo ekombre: Secret name given to the first Efik beachhead (Efi-etete wanañongo ekombre) (Cabrera 1988a, 522). A Maestro Okobio responded: Celestino Gaitán told Cabrera that ‘Awána nyóngo ekómbre’ was the beachhead of Efí Etéte. He would know best. But ‘etómbre’ is ‘the cannon of Efí Etéte,’ ignited by Efí Etéte leaders in their ceremonies.

The Efí Etéte entries about cannon shots are from twentieth-century Cuba, but they refer to events in Calabar in the 1800s because, in the Efik language, etete is grandfather, while etombe is cannon (see appendix 1). In Calabar and hinterland zones, cannons were common gifts from British traders to indigenous merchants, for their protection and also as symbols of power and status (Miller 2009, 190–91). These entries therefore are examples of the resistance against forgetting the origins of a community under siege. What better way to document the memory of one’s community than to share it with an internationally known writer like Cabrera?

José de Jesús Capaz-Capaz, Chuchu: Manipulation of Tradition for Power

Celestino Gaitán was a close friend of José de Jesús Capaz-Capaz, known as Chuchú, a white captain of dockworkers in Regla and Iyámba of the Nyegeyé Efó lodge from the Okóbio Mukarará lineage.⁸⁸ During research on Abakuá in Regla, David Brown learned that Chuchú is believed by some Abakuá to have been one of Lydia Cabrera’s most important ‘informants’ (Brown 2003, 33, 230). Cabrera makes several references to Capaz’s imprint in Abakuá culture, but these could have also come from Gaytán. For example, Capaz founded seven lodges, and he insisted that they could not be fully independent until they received the staff of Abasóngo from him, seven years after their foundation! He based this law on his interpretion of an African treaty about how a man who received the title of Abasóngo was lost in the forest in Usagaré for a period of seven days, months, or years. Cabrera’s entries refer to Capaz’s interpretation of the staff of Abasóngo; for example: Abasongo Inuá Itón: Abasonga’s scepter. The Itón, an attribute of the lodge’s maturity, is a sign of recognition and independence. A lodge is not mature until it is at least twenty-five years old (Cabrera 1988a, 22).⁸⁹ An anonymous Abakuá specialist responded: Until today, the Orú lodges of Guanabacoa wait several years before delivering the staff of Abasóngo to the lodges they created. These lodges were not created by ‘Chuchú,’ but they follow the same idea. Several Maestro Okobios (as they are referred to in the commentaries within our translation) reported that as a wharf boss, Capaz learned many African treaties from Africans working on the docks of Regla, in exchange for giving them work.⁹⁰ He therefore contributed to popularizing knowledge of treaties but in the process also manipulated some of them to accumulate power.

Figure 5 Invitation to the funerary rites of José de Jesús Capaz-Capaz, known as Chuchú. Mr. Mókongo of Sése Ekoi Beromo. We invite you and your worthy institution to the funerary rites for the brother José de Jesus (Chuchu Capá), Iyámba Yambeke, to be held on December 17, 1972, in the temple of Muñongo Efó, Regla. We hope to see you in this religious act. Fraternally, Isunékue of Inyiguiyi Efó, S. Rodriguez. (Archives of Alfredo Sánchez-Osuna, 2017;