Indigenous Ancestors and Healing Landscapes

This book presents new interpretations of current healing practices in Cuba and the Dominican Republic juxtaposed against the European colonization of the Caribbean after 1492. By combining data from critical historical analyses and ethnographic fieldwork, this research examines current healing landscapes and their historical background in both countries.

This dissertation situates the continuous importance of non-institutional healing practices within the rich symbolism of Cuban and Dominican landscapes. More specifically, the study focuses on practices promoting physical, mental and spiritual healing of individuals and communities. It provides various examples that illustrate human interactions with divine and ancestral beings residing in places such as water sources, caverns, or manifested in plants and other natural phenomena. Data presented in this work guides our understanding of how local cultural memory plays a key role in our construction of medicinal histories, and the profound demographic and landscape transformations which shaped the healing landscapes after European conquest. Healing landscapes are also testimonies of the Cuban and Dominican ancestors' creativity, resilience, capacity to heal and find unity in the dehumanizing and alienating atmosphere of colonial violence and exploitation. This book is not aimed solely for academic public, but also those interested in Caribbean cultures, and the history of medicinal practices.

Contents:

1. Rhizomes of Healing Landscapes

Colonial discourse and the question of cultural continuity

Forgetting indigenous peoples of the Greater Antilles

Approaching Healing Landscapes

Data collection and fieldwork methodology

Ethics

Outline of the dissertation

PART I: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL DIMENSIONS OF CARIBBEAN LANDSCAPES

2. Healing Landscapes from a theoretical perspective

Introduction to landscape studies

Memory landscapes

Healing Landscapes

3. Natural Man in the Caribbean Paradise: the origins of colonial discourse

The noble savage idea in Lesser Antilles

Indigenous past as the beginning of the Dominican nation

Indigenous ancestors during the formation of the Cuban nation

The indigenous past in Dominican and Cuban History textbooks

The Alienation from Natural Man in the collective memory

4. Empty Pages in the Biography of Healing Landscapes

Indigenous ancestors transforming Caribbean Landscapes

West African ancestors shaping Caribbean landscapes

European ancestors reshaping Caribbean landscapes

The multidirectional circulation of the medicinal knowledge in the Greater Antilles

Concluding remarks

5. Crossroads of Cultural landscapes: the indigenous base of demographic changes

Brief account of indigenous ancestors in colonial Hispaniola

African ancestors in Dominican demographic history

The interactions among the colonized strata

The subsequent historical development of Dominican society

A brief overview of demographic background of selected Dominican sites

Major tendencies in Cuban ethnogenesis

Colonial history of Indigenous Cuban ancestors

African ancestors in Cuban ethnogenesis

Distinctive character of the demographic history of the eastern Cuba

A brief overview of demographic background of selected Cuban sites

Revising the indigenous component in demographic histories

PART II: CONTEMPORARY TRADITIONS

6. Qualities of the landscape in daily life

Flora as a source of alimentation

Concluding remarks

7. Healing in sacred and animated landscapes

Other spiritual beings in Cuban and Dominican landscapes

Illness and cure

Healing specialists

Healing Plants

Ancestral roots and rhizomes

Concluding remarks

8. The subaquatic realm of ancestors and other beings

Dominican Ancestral Subaquatic Dwellings

Caribbean waterbodies as reservoirs of indigenous past

Concluding remarks

Mana Landscape

Cave of La Mancha: Healing with Indigenous Lwas

The Cave of Saint Francis as a Healing and Memory Place of Bánica

Healing among Spiritists, Managuaco cavern, Holguín, Cuba

Cueva De los Santos Gibara, Cuba

Cuban and Dominican caverns as memory places of indigenous past

Concluding remarks

10. Synthesis and Conclusions. At the Crossroads of Healing Landscapes

Remembrance and Oblivion

Historical formation of Cuban and Dominican Medicinal Cultures

Constituents of healing landscapes

Memory of indigenous ancestors

Water sources and caves as ancestral places

Healing landscapes as expressions of cultural memories of indigenous past

Continuities and heritage loss

Healing landscapes within landscape theories

Future directions of research

Bibliography

Abstract

The research and its objectives

Acknowledgments

Attachment