Baba Who? Babalú!

 + I  I I  I O O I  I Pedro Abreu—Asonyanye uses signs under the awán basket and includes Irete Meyi. He glosses the sign as the spirituality of Asojano, and I have heard other babalawos say the same thing. Some people add that this sign is Babalú-Ayé in person. Nothing else gets said; apparently it is not necessary in the laconic style of the religion. Other things also appear in this sign: it is the birthplace of the bubonic plague, pleurisy, pestilent fevers, syphilis, leukemia, and leprosy. It speaks of illnesses in the legs and even paralysis. It also seems to rule skin diseases: it is the birthplace of eczema, abscesses, and furuncles. Some people say that smallpox was born here, but others insist it was born in Odí-Eyeunle. The sign also rules pimples on the skin. In Cuban Spanish, the word granos means both “pimples” and “grains.” So in some way, the universal offering to Babalú, the gourd filled with grains and beans, can be thought of a gathering ...

Every year on December 16th, thousands of people descend on the town of Rincón to wait for San Lázaro at his namesake church. Fidel never cracked down hard on the San Lázaro festival, and like so many other strange anomalies of the Cuban Revolution, no one really knows why. Called miraculous, mysterious, and good, San Lázaro is known for healing the sick and rewarding the humble. Every year on December 16th, thousands of people travel past the AIDS sanitarium Fidel built to the little church in Rincón, where the leprosarium has sat since 1923. In the maddening crowd—the matazón, some go by horse cart, some walk, some have push-cart altars for San Lázaro. Some go on their knees, and a few extremists drag themselves. All of them seek transcendence of some kind—or at least a break in the monotony of life under the Revolution. Everywhere people display the image of the saint on estampillas, prayer cards, posters, and statues. Everywhere people are imitating the saint in one way or anot...