Keywords

Rita Indiana represents a growing number of contemporary women authors and public intellectuals that address questions of Caribbean space and time in historically informed and complex ways. From her work in periodicals to her musical productions with her band Los misterios, Indiana is often considered as one of “the most creative and critical voices of her generation” (Horn 2018, 255). Most prominently, she has been an outspoken critic of Dominican racial relations, as well as Dominican views on Haitians and the politics that underwrite geopolitical boundaries since her debut novel La Estrategia de Chochueca (1999).1 Additionally, in her songs, performance pieces, and short stories, Indiana critically explores the temporal and spatial textures of the Dominican Republic, with a palpable interest in the spiritual inhabitance of multiple temporalities that work on and affect change in the present—while paving the way for possible future worlds. This is seen best in Indiana’s critically acclaimed novel, La Mucama de Omicunlé (2015).

Though others have previously touched upon Indiana’s interaction with Caribbean spirit worlds in her works (García-Peña 2016; Ramírez 2018), very little scholarship highlights the ways in which we might reconceptualize island spatial politics and temporalities through the lens of Afro-diasporic spiritual practices, specifically patakis of the Yoruban tradition. I argue that the novel serves as a point of departure for conceptualizing spatio-temporal crossroads, while uncovering painful histories of betrayal in order to conjure visions of social change, resistance, and alternative modes of being.2

In the first section of this chapter, I briefly review the theories paving the way for a spiritual understanding of the text in question. In the second section, I discuss the ways in which Olokun, Yoruba god/dess of the sea, is invoked in the novel, and how this figure is intimately tied to the fate of the protagonist. In the third section, I discuss the pataki story of Iroso as it relates to the function of the text. The last section outlines the fate of Acilde, the betrayal of their mission, and the return to a cycle of violence. This final section also demonstrates how failure to carry through the attempt to repair the present is especially instructive, that is, it demonstrates how the novel itself engages in the pedagogical discourse of the Yoruban pataki to propose an alternative approach to island politics.

Paths of Spirit Conjured

Throughout the novel, Indiana engages with Black Atlantic spiritual systems, particularly as they represent complex systems of patakis, or fables that are meant to aid in the healing process of individuals, communities, as well as the natural world. While other scholars have analyzed the “espiritismo,” “spiritual,” and “yoruba” systems that undergird Indiana’s novel, none have directly addressed the text in terms of a divine pataki. I argue that reading this novel in relation to a pataki tethers the text to a longer history of spiritual liberation. By following in the footsteps of Olokun, the novel engages in the pedagogical teachings of the divine—thus offering an alternative direction and political project that might perhaps work to address and “undo” violent processes of colonization and imperial rule.

This push toward an engagement of religious figures, practices of the African Diaspora, and ghostly presences as a decolonial methodology has been questioned and revised in various ways in the past decade. Recently, Maha Marouan (2013) has laid a fundamental groundwork to think geopolitical space and temporalities from a spiritual locus of enunciation—the ways in which women and other marginalized sectors of society work from a space of spiritual imagination and ancestral connection to make sense of colonial legacy and to articulate a vision of futures untethered from this legacy. For Marouan (2013), African diaspora religious beliefs and practices are used in texts throughout the Americas to preserve historical and cultural links to the past. Specifically, she writes that certain women authors and cultural producers “map African diaspora religions as sites of liberation,” arguing that “the openness offered to women in African diaspora religious systems can be traced to the West and Central African cultures that do not exclude women from the domain of priesthood and spiritual authority” (2013, 12). For this reason, spiritual practices or elements of African-derived religions permeate narratives that call for a radical historical pedagogy in the move toward social change, in which Black women’s bodies are at the center. This becomes especially important when we remember that historically these religious practices were often deemed illegal, particularly in the context of the Atlantic world. Women who had knowledge of healing, herbs, and other non-Western practices were often deemed dangerous, witches, or worshippers of Satan, who could potentially “contaminate” the Hispanic and Catholic project of nation-building with their poisonous beliefs. Thus, the suppression of Black women and the illegality/marginality imposed upon their traditional systems of belief is often at the center of the modernizing project.

Consequently, African diaspora women religious figures and nonmaterial entities are often rearticulated as radical agents of decolonial knowledge. For example, Solimar Otero’s Archives of Conjure: Stories of the Dead in Afro-Latinx Cultures (2020) builds upon this emerging scholarship to consider the voices of the departed, the spirits, and the ancestors as active participants in the creation of ephemeral and textual archives that may perhaps speak back to historical power hierarchies. Otero argues that stories about the spirits and divine beings are made more complex by the specters of history that dwell between their lines. In this sense, we are presented with the idea of a “crossing” associated with spiritual space—from “unfinished stories,” the voices of the spirit realm recall and remap the present in a journey through the ebb and flow of palimpsestic history, often to teach a lesson or proclaim a warning. These stories, songs, and other related teachings of African diaspora religious systems thus serve as a rigorous and necessary theoretical and temporal approximation with immediate and urgent political, social, and cultural knowledge that may, perhaps, be used to create a new and more hospitable future. In this sense, they pertain to the concept of the chronotropics invoked in the Introduction to this volume.

My chapter follows these divergent crossroads of spirit to center the figure of Olokun as described by Cuban ethnologist Lydia Cabrera. I engage with Cabrera throughout as an ancestor herself, weaving the patakis of Yemaya-Olokun through time and space in order to communicate their revolutionary insight into Caribbean women’s subjectivity. A woman of the border and crossroad, Cabrera was a “daughter of Yemaya herself [not unlike our protagonist] whose ties to the ocean make her an ambivalent sojourner who never felt entirely at home in one place” (Otero 2020, 5). Her own experience with sexual exile (sexile) as well as her recurrence to “secrecy, coding, and layering” in her scholarly work demonstrate the many ways that she has wielded her power to subvert patriarchal systems of knowing in order to communicate other knowledges that bleed through and beyond the borders of Cuba—gesturing toward a spiritual understanding of Caribbean spacetime that is not bound to any one nation. Here, Cabrera will act as a santera who will wade with us in the waters of time and guide our understanding of the novel.

While the story addresses the space of the Dominican Republic, due to the diasporic nature of the religious ritual invoked throughout, the text urges the reader to consider a pan-Caribbean approach. As Indiana demonstrates (through intra-Caribbean travel and engagement with Cuban santería outside of Cuba), the urgency to engage in a decolonial methodology is one that is not bound to national borders. Upon opening the pages of La Mucama, one enters into a mystical space in which a new type of consciousness emerges—a sacred space imbued by the memories of the Atlantic and marked by the rituals of the oppressed. As the reader follows the pataki and the teachings of the archive of spiritual voices conjured in Acilde’s path through time, they are also on a quest of transformation. Olokun shares their secrets in this space through her transcorporeality of being, that is, the ways in which her spirit becomes multiple, a receptacle that is filled with urgent messages of death and rebirth.

An Invocation of Spirit

The first chapter presents a dystopian landscape. The island is broken, driven apart by a virus found in the Blackness of the “other side.” The eastern side is quarantined, and futuristic guard-towers hurl noxious gas at those dark invaders who try to escape west of the border. Once identified and exterminated, Haitian bodies are taken away and “disintegrated” by protectors of the Republic to rid the Western side of potential contamination (Indiana 2015, 12). This futuristic scene conjures an image of the 1937 Parsley Massacre, a time when those bodies caught between the borders of both island nations were actively exterminated in Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s attempt to consolidate a “Dominican” identity (Derby 2009, 25). Acilde, the protagonist, watches the scene unfold with disinterest, looking away to continue with the mundane task of cleaning her employer’s windows. PriceSpy, an application embedded in the protagonist’s eye, informs the reader that the Caribbean is facing destruction. It is not surprising, then, that amid the ecological/political chaos in which the protagonist finds herself, the reader is immediately immersed in a world where the spiritual practices and mystical healing rituals of the African diaspora take center stage.

The tales of Yemaya-Olokun are rooted in a fluid metaphysical crossing of multiple boundaries, sexual, temporal, and geophysical. That is, Olokun’s secrets flow deep and the epistemic currents that they traverse carry multiple meanings and messages. Perhaps submerging oneself into these waters sheds a new (or very old) light on the ways that we understand the borders of certain spatio-temporal boundaries, the limits of the present, and the shaping of history itself. In her Yemaya y Ochun, Cabrera details the stories of Yemaya-Olokun, la hija de las dos aguas, as a powerful but also compassionate deity, who lives in the depths of the sea: “En el más profundo nació Olokun, el oceano. Olokun, la yemaya más vieja—yemaya masculino, raiz” (1996, 21) [Olokun, the ocean, was born in the most profound depths. Olokun, the ancient Yemaya—masculine Yemaya, root]. This androgynous being is the root from which all other life emerges, the origin of the rhizomatic nature of diasporic complexity forged in the violent crossing of the Middle Passage. However, the deity instills fear and respect in those who know her and the many caminos that she travels: “Bamboche [an interlocutor of Cabrera] me confesaba que a él le inspiraba el mar un temor inmenso, y era de parecer que de Olokun, abismo insondable y soledad infinita, debía de hablarse lo menos posible” (1996, 25) [Bamboche confessed to me that the sea inspired in him a great fear, and it seemed like Olokun, that unfathomable abyss and infinite solitude, should be spoken about as little as possible]. Thus, Olokun rarely possesses her children, for fear that they would not resist her power. Instead, she makes herself known through her stories, encrypted and shrouded in mystery.

Most teachings from/by Olokun represent tales of destruction, of warning, and of transformational healing. These stories, meant to instruct and impart knowledge as well as the power for change, take the form of patakis:

The etymology of the term pataki comes from the standard yoruba word pataki, meaning important. In Cuba, patakis are the stories of the orichas told in formal ritual circumstances and in informal conversation. At the heart of the meaning of the term pataki is the importance of creating a pedagogy for living in complex and shifting circumstances through story. The tales conjure the deities into our imaginations and invoke instruction and reflection that is both communal and deeply personal. (Otero 2020, 104)

This quote is triply significant. First, it outlines the gravity of the stories (both oral and written) that come from or are inspired by the oricha in regla, espiritismo, palo, and similar traditions. By conflating the formal ritual conjurings of these stories as well as “informal conversations,” Otero also underscores the importance and sacredness of these tellings—where their power can transform the mundane and quotidian, high and low cultural productions, into sacred spaces of knowledge detached from Westernized understandings of reality. Second, the quote underscores the function of the pataki as pedagogy. Here, I understand pedagogy as the radical relationship between imagination, language, and personal/collective engagement in the wider community (Freire 1970; Alexander 2006). The complex relationship between the oricha, the storyteller, and the receptor creates a network of knowledge production and divine epistemic interventions that seeks to uncover a hidden truth in order to effect action in the present—a learning that, to borrow from Gloria Anzaldúa, takes place in the crossings of spirit and story, in the travesia of time and space.3 Walter Mignolo, among others, comments on this temporal rupture—drawing from Chicana feminist and queer theorist, Anzaldúa: “Modernity is a fiction that carries in it the seed of Western pretense to universality ... decolonial thinkers are interested in uncovering hidden connections and relations between events, processes, and entities in the colonial matrix of power” (Mignolo 2012, 113–114). This network, brought together by divine story, must work4 to understand how the past has given shape to the present and how they may use this knowledge to heal past transgressions and conjure new futures—not seeking salvation, as in the Judeo-Christian tradition, but actively working toward self-empowerment and communal benefit. Third, the reference to a political praxis that lies within these stories that is both “communal and deeply personal” reflects the multiple levels at which these patakis communicate their knowledge. It is at once a story about personal growth, which may perhaps also be interpreted as a story of historical/cultural growth, a story that heals the community, the island, as well as the self.

Commenting on this pedagogical/healing aspect of the pataki, Alai Reyes-Santos (forthcoming), in a forthcoming chapter,5 specifically addresses the patakis of Olokun:

her stories illuminate a path of justice and kinship as we travel with Olokun through time and space to decipher the mysteries she is now letting come up to the surface, the mysteries of how we easily betray ourselves, our own, and those who seem to be another kind of being…[they] reveal the wounds our betrayals have left for us to heal as we build necessary kinship. (2)

Here, Reyes-Santos connects the pedagogy of the pataki and the urgency of healing to the building of (forgotten) kinship relations in terms of fragmented community. It is through divine storytelling that “we” might be brought together in solidarity to fight for the present, but also brought closer to those that have come before us—the line of ancestors whose knowledge lights the path forward. The stories connect us to both the past and the present, and offer multiple visions of the future as they circulate and are shared among the community of receptors.

This circular/relational space is a type of radical space of “crossing” that allows us to consider disparate moments of the past, present, and future without flattening them into sameness, a chronological tease. Both Alexandra Perisic and M. Jacqui Alexander comment on the idea of nonlinear crossings that are opened through the practice of stories, narratives, and beliefs. Perisic (2019) addresses the need to explore connections (in her case, global connections of precarious lives) without conflating them into “yet another false universal model” (175), while Alexander (2006) details historical processes of oppression across time and space to argue that intergenerational memory and spiritual knowledge is a central element to countering colonial and imperial narratives for women of color—maps of crossings that offer a glimpse into alternative histories and new knowledge from which to give form to alternative lives. These crossings in the spiritual stories of the oricha give voice to the epistemologies of the colonized in order to rechart an-other understanding of history.

The book’s opening pages serve as a type of mystical incantation to the sea itself, celebrating its sensual, healing, and transformative qualities: “En la colección de la vieja predominan los motivos marinos, peces, barcos, sirenas y caracoles, regalos de los clientes, ahijados y enfermos terminales” (13) [In the collection of the old woman, there was a sea motif that took over, fish, boats, mermaids, and shells, all gifts from clients and the terminally ill]. The collection of materials is ritualistically prepared—altar-like—and kept by Acilde in her housework, creating a visual and tactile link to the ocean that also includes mythological references to the many paths of Yemaya. Each object connects Acilde to fish, mermaids, and the secretive powers of the cowrie. The residual connection vested in the otherwise mundane duties of Acilde as housekeeper tempts the reader to weave an interlaced mythological network—that is, to conjure up connections between the sea, healing, transformation, and the oricha herself. After this invocation, the reader learns how Acilde has broken one of the figures, a pastel-colored pirate. Esther responds: “algo malo se fue por ahí” (13) [something bad moved there]. Later in the novel, Acilde will take as an avatar the pirate Roque while working toward securing herself a comfortable place in the past—an eventual “betrayal” that shows this “something bad” has never fully left the stage. These references open a space to consider how the traditional stories of Yemaya influence the novel and guide our understanding of Acilde’s narrative.

“Olokun, la Yemaya Más Vieja”

One of the most recounted patakis of Olokun is that of Iroso. This particular pataki illustrates Yemaya-Olokun’s power and mercy, through a story of betrayal. Iroso, as Cabrera lays out, was the youngest of a powerful king’s three boys: “estos lo envidiaban porque el rey lo prefería, y llenos de odio, decidieron perderlo” (1996, 50) [these envied him because he was the king’s favorite, and filled with hate they decided to make him disappear]. The brother, betrayed by his own kin, was tricked into a large wooden box and thrown into the sea. However, Yemaya-Olokun observes their actions and takes mercy on the boy. Instead of sinking, the box floats to a kingdom where Yemaya-Olokun has arranged for him to inherit the throne. In the multiple tellings of this pataki, there always exists an element of betrayal and of unknowing. The story warns the receptor to open their eyes and look more closely into the world surrounding them. There exists a danger to heed the teachings of Olokun, as those who receive the sign of Iroso may lose their way, get lost, and live too much in the past—which blinds them to the urgencies of the present and the transformations of the future. In the same way, they may take too much pride in themselves and fail to consider the needs of their community, becoming lost in lies and deception. These dangers do not only pose a personal threat, but the inability to recognize one’s duty to community may lead to cycles of violence and the perpetuation of colonial patterns.

The pataki and sign of Iroso plays a central role as the novel begins. We learn that Esther Escudero, ewo of Yemaya herself, was initiated into the Palo tradition in Cuba. Esther had fallen in love with her jefa (boss), whose husband grew suspicious: “Al parecer, el tipo pagó para que me hicieran un trabajo, brujería mala, y la menstruación no se me quitaba. Yo pensaba que me iba a morir” (22) [It seems like the man paid for them to curse me, dark magic, and the menstrual blood would not stop. I thought I would die]. In an effort to save Esther’s life, the two women escape to Cuba where, in Matanzas, she meets Belarminio Brito, or Omidina, a babalawo and child of Yemaya who eventually saves her. After initiation, Esther is given the name Omicunlé and told that she and her children will be protectors of Yemaya’s house. Here, Omicunlé refers to the starry mantle worn by Yemaya, which covers the sea and protects its inhabitants—it is a symbol of motherly care, healing, and power. The scene effectively foreshadows Esther’s divine connection to Acilde, as Acilde is said to be the true daughter of Olokun.

As Esther tells Acilde about her introduction to the world of the Oricha, she performs a diloggun divination, interpreting16 cowrie shells to read the energies surrounding the protagonist. As the shells scatter around the women, Esther observes “Iroso,” the number four, emerge from the shells: “nadie sabe lo que hay en el fondo del mar” (25) [No one knows what lies at the bottom of the sea]. Esther’s utterance seems filled with foreboding, but hopeful that she has found the daughter of Olokun. After hearing her fate, Acilde is adorned by Esther with an ileke, a chain of blue glass beads dedicated to Yemaya-Olokun: “Llévalo siempre porque aunque no creas te protegerá. Un día vas a heredar mi casa. Esto ahora no entiendes, pero con el tiempo lo verás” (28) [Wear it always because it will protect you. One day you will inherit my house. You do not understand this yet, but with time you shall see]. Here, Acilde is marked by Yemaya’s presence, as these ileke are used as in the path toward initiation: “Los ileke son para quienes los reciben ‘un paso adelante en el camino que lleva el Santo’—a la iniciación—un reconocimiento de su nexo con la divinidad” (Cabrera 1996, 121) [The ileke are for those who receive them “a step forward in the path that leads them to their saint”—to initiation—a recognition of their connection to the divine]. As Cabrera notes, Acilde’s fate is now interwoven with the divinity, and, without knowing, has been set on the path toward spiritual initiation.

Furthermore, Acilde, in her sexual transactions on the periphery of her city, yearns to exert her power and control through corporeal ambiguity, one that also places her on the periphery of her society and make her vulnerable to her family’s violent prejudices: “A Acilde le daban golpes por gusto, por marimacho … Tenía manos de hombre y no se conformaba: quería todo lo demás … hasta las viejas aborrecían sus aires masculinos” (18–19) [They beat Acilde for pleasure, for being a tomboy … she had the hands of a man and she would not conform: she wanted everything … even the old women hated her masculine traits]. She is abused by those who consider her an abomination as “marimacho,” a display of female masculinity that seems to threaten the order of family life. Acilde attempts to use this ambiguity to her economic advantage, often feigning manhood to gain sexual clients: “Antes de trabajar en casa de Esther, Acilde mamaba güevos en el Mirador, sin quitarse la ropa, bajo la que su cuerpo—de diminutos pechos y caderas estrechas—pasaba por el de un chico de quince años. Tenía clientela fija, en su mayoría hombres casados, sesentones cuyas vergas solo venían a linda en la boca de un niño bonito” (14) [Before working in Esther’s house, Acilde sucked men off in Mirador, without taking off her clothes, under which her body—of small chest and skinny hips—passed for that of a fifteen-year-old boy. She had steady clients, mostly older married men, sixty-year-olds whose dicks only came in the mouth of a pretty boy]. She poses as a 15-year-old boy to take advantage of society’s perversions, seducing old men who seek the sexual services of underaged boys. Acilde inhabits these sexual crossroads in an effort to gain control of her life and wield her body on her own terms. This defiance of gender and sexual norms is also an economic endeavor that helps her to save toward a sex change through the expensive injection, RainbowBright.

Similarly, Cabrera, more than once, reminds us of those times when Yemaya is also gender fluid: She writes: “A Yemaya le gustaba cazar, chapear, manejar el machete. En este camino es marimacho y viste de hombre … Yemaya es a veces varonil, hasta volverse hombre” (1996, 45–46) [Yemaya loved to hunt, ride, and wield the machete. In this path, she is masculine and dresses like a man … Yemaya is manly, until she becomes a man]. Yemaya as a rebellious and defiant deity is made clear in Cabrera’s documentation. In similar ways, both Acilde in her desire for control and Yemaya-Olokun in Cabrera’s pataki display a range of “female masculinities,” putting into question our understanding of traditional corporal boundaries. Thus, in presenting herself with both masculine and feminine traits, Olokun/Acilde ritualistically opens a space of metaphysical crossings in order to reorganize the energies of the universe and conjure the forces necessary to pave a new road of possibilities—for it is in the connections forged through her sex work that she ends up working for Esther Escudero, that “vieja santera,” and stumbling into possession of Olokun’s secrets—a fate that may perhaps transform her physically and spiritually, while opening the reader’s eyes to what lies hidden in the murky waters of the present.

Acilde’s embodiment of Olokun is cemented in a ritualistic scene of initiation, in which she is symbolically crowned as a daughter of Yemaya-Olokun. There are several markers of this ceremony that are easily missed if one is not attuned to the “hidden” messages that are transmitted as Acilde dons the thorny crown of the anemone, thus claimed by the deity. The ritual begins when Acilde is made to cleanse her body, shaving herself from head to toe. Her companion Eric places a bowl of raw rice under her bed as an offering and constructs a rudimentary “tent” made of white linen over her body. The body is prepared to be reborn into its new form and altered reality. While readying the ritual, Eric is metaphorically transformed into a symbolic Osain. Described as a type of médico, knowledgeable about herbs and healing, he becomes the one that prepares the body, offers the sacrifice, and cleanses the ritual space. Osain is often essential in the consecration of new initiates into the Palo tradition as they are chosen by their Oricha, preparing the ewe (herbs) and haciendo Osain in order to receive their spirit: “Se hace Osain para componer el Omiero, ‘agua sagrada’ que purifica, regenera y cura, pues en ella se concentran … las influencias de los Orichas que les infunden sus energías” (Cabrera 1996, 156) [Osain is made to ready the Omiero, holy water that purifies, regenerates, and cures … In this, the influences of the Oricha are concentrated and give their energy]. As Eric positions the body and uses his “medicinal knowledge” to administer the RainbowBright,6 and thus the proper dosage to transform the body, we witness the ritual that opens space and time to the will of the divine. This ritual provides us with insight into the past and future, at the crossroads of spiritual space, for Olokun is given passage to “infuse her energies” into the narrative.

To close the ritual, Eric crowns Acilde with the tentacles of the anemone. Many have commented on the symbolic act of crowning in establishing alternative sovereign imaginaries and in elevating the marginal body to the level of mythic royalty, specifically in terms of Black diasporic bodies as they wield an alternative sovereign agency (Negrón-Muntaner, Ramirez, Jaime). However, here I argue that the scene of crowning represents a breach in the temporal fabric of Caribbean imaginaries, the gift of a new set of “eyes” with which we might freely travel to disparate moments in time, connected by the sacred presence of the oricha. This kari-ocha, coronation of the oricha, alters reality. After coming to her senses, the newly initiated truly awaken from another world: “tiene la sensación de llegar de muy lejos … le zumban los oídos, todo es extraño y nuevo para ella, diríase que regresa de otro mundo” (Cabrera 1996, 165) [she seems as if she is arriving from far away … her ears buzz, everything is strange and new for her, it could be said that she is returning from another world]. As Acilde begins her transformation, her mind retreats and divine intervention bends the biological framework of the world. The Babalosha completes his duties; Eric chants to Olokun, marks the space surrounding the confused Acilde, newly awoken in a male body, and finally crowns him with the mysteries of Yemaya-Olokun.

From this moment, Acilde is crowned as ewo of Olokun. Time is fractured in the text and the reader is transported to forgotten moments of history, all marked by the same self-serving “betrayals” as we enter Iroso. The body is transported into the past and is found by a fisherman amongst the coral in yola. In a type of oceanic womb, the body is pulled from the sea and hidden away to be examined: “Te estábamos esperando, viniste de muy lejos a salvarnos, lucero del agua” (107) [we were waiting for you, you came to save us from afar, shining star of the sea]. Once Acilde, now a man, removes the escamas from his eyes, the reader is simultaneously gifted a new vision capable of inhabiting the scars that a history and present of coloniality have left to fester. He is also able to heal those moments through a recognition of the sacred mysteries and life-giving force of the sea that has woken inside of him.

Into the Pluriverse

Through the spiritual archive of Olokun, then, the reader is offered a view from the margins of time, subverting colonial-linear notions of past, present, and future in a fiction that reveals the true nature of historically engineered disaster. Olokun teases open this “colonial matrix of power” to question the ways in which the universe is organized, proposing a type of relational pluriverse. Here, the new “sight” provided by the Oricha begs the question of how “we” can create another mode of knowing the world which presupposes a process of relation between body, space, and time; and where “we” might perhaps unveil how the violence of the past exists in an unbroken cycle, affecting the structures of the present while propelling the archipelago toward a broken future of crisis—that has, in many cases, already arrived.7

After entering the new spatio-temporal alignment allowed by Olokun, Acilde weaves together (1) a dystopian future, (2) a “past” that is eerily similar to this reader’s own timeline, and (3) an even more remote past filled with a group of seventeenth-century pirates. Acilde inhabits a new avatar in each of these timelines as herself, Giorgio Menicucci, and Roque (Acilde-Giorgio-Roque). Each of these visions relate a history of plunder and disaster that befalls the island space over and over again. Acilde quickly uses their newly acquired “powers” of sight and other-worldly knowledge to further their own status in the new time frames, where they take on the aliases of Roque, the pirate, and Giorgio, the wealthy benefactor of the Sosúa Project (an art collective that strives to save the Dominican coastline) set in the 2000s. They are also quick to use a new acquaintance, Argenis—the misogynist Dominican artist, accidentally stung by the same anemone in the 2000s—to amass wealth and secure a space for themself. Not a true child of Olokun, Argenis cannot control his visions, becoming stuck between the seventeenth century and his own life. In Argenis’ timeline (early 2000s), Acilde surrounds themself with a group of international, self-serving artists and intellectuals who “sell” their “artivism” while profiting from the very land they claim to save. As the sign of Iroso has warned, Acilde has ignored her calling, and thus the “misterios del fondo del mar” that Esther had foretold—betraying the desires of Olokun. In her transformation, she has not become the protector/healer that her nation and community needed. It is worth noting that Olokun does not continue to manifest itself through her child, once the passage/crossing has been completed, the child must learn from it. It is up to Olokun’s child to take the lesson and pursue change, something that Acilde has failed to do.

In this way, her avatar in the 2000s is not unlike those pirates that are quick to disavow the rules of the crown in their colonizing missions of “discovery” to claim their own riches and fame. As Roque, she seeks to hide a treasure in the past so that she may uncover it as Giorgio, securing her wealth. Interestingly, Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel comments on the narrative of pirates, buccaneers, and filibusteros in seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century Caribbean networks, as they offer “other” visions of colonial expansion that exist beyond official “national” and “imperial” archives. In this sense, pirates are also a people of the crossroads—defiant figures who do not follow the rules laid out for them, or rather figures who conjure ways to forge their own paths outside of official judicial/imperial order:

They are protagonists that falter in the context of epic and imperial narratives, yet they flourish in the fascination with uncontrolled richness and freedom... Their narratives become foundational fictions for the coloniality of diasporas in the Caribbean… [they] represent protagonists who lose themselves in the process of trying to achieve a leading role in protonationalist narratives. (Martínez-San Miguel 2014, 36–71)

We can thus see how Acilde, just like the repeated history of pirates, buccaneers, and imperial landgrabs, begins to “lose herself” in her own “leading role” in an emerging narrative of healing. Just as Roque betrays his mission to the king, so does Giorgio betray his mission to save the reef, and Acilde her mission to Esther/Olokun. Each character becomes fragmented, giving into a desire to dominate and work from a space of self-importance and self-preservation. While this may at first seem like a bold and radical move for Acilde, who personally seeks liberation and self-actualization, her path ultimately leads her to self-destruction—and toward the same dystopian future that she set out to deter. For, it is in betraying her community for her own benefit that she denies her new complex reality and condemns the world, yet again.

After using her/his wealth, influence, and power to get close enough to the politicians that initiated the Caribbean’s decay, her/his plan falls through. With gun in hand and intentions of exterminating the president culpable for the economic/ecological disasters of the future, thus “cleansing the waters,” Acilde/Giorgio falters and fails to act. In a moment of self-defence she/he chooses her new life over the salvation of her region: “Podía sacrificarlo todo menos esta vida, la vida de Giorgio Menicucci, la compañía de su mujer, la galería, el laboratorio … En poco tiempo se olvidará de Acilde, de Roque, incluso de lo que vive en un hueco allá abajo en el arrecife” (180–181) [She/he could sacrifice everything except this life, Giorgio Menicucci’s life, the company of his woman, the gallery, the lab … soon, she/he will forget about Acilde, Roque, even about what lives in the depths of the sea]. Acilde effectively decides to end her life and her life as Roque, choosing to fully inhabit Giorgio’s reality. By giving up her “complex truth” of crossing and diaspora, her identity as a Black transman of the Dominican Republic, she chooses to forget the teachings of Olokun in favor of her new life as the Italian Giorgio, his laboratory in Sosúa, his wealth, and his wife. As a fragmented whole, Giorgio cannot face himself and gives up his history (future), breaking the bonds of community that tied them together. He cannot love or accept his past and therefore cuts it away, knowing that in doing so he risks the same ecologic/economic collapse that she/he had set out to prevent: the ecological disaster, the virus, and the rampant racial disparity that marked her past/future. In fully “becoming man,” Acilde is quick to replicate the patriarchal order of the world.

“Nadie Sabe Lo Que Hay en El Fondo Del Mar”

Reyes-Santos writes: “Olokun keeps beckoning us to face how we betray ourselves and each other; to face water crossings as moments of deep pain, deep loss, and deep transformation; to find out who we can be on the other side, what kind of futures we create, if we just dare to live our complex truths” (27). While Acilde may not have literally and metaphorically “pulled the trigger,” in failing to act the future is thrust back into uncertainty. As Iroso tells, we must be careful to not “lose sight,” to squander the knowledge bestowed by the Oricha, or the way forward is lost and we betray ourselves, our community, and the direction of the world.

Here, we see how Olokun has become a channel through which we are shown several possible worlds that have fallen due to various forms of betrayal. When our protagonist finds herself in the salty womb of the sea for the first time, we are in the presence of a pataki of rebirth and caution. This pataki is meant to motivate the reader to break the cycle of violence that emerges from the past and act upon the present in order to move ahead in solidarity. We must learn from the mistakes of Acilde-Giorgio-Roque, learn from their search for salvation that it is not possible nor profitable to make the same mistakes again and again. The pataki that Olokun weaves reminds “us” that in order to “heal” Haiti and the Dominican Republic from certain disaster, we must understand the ways in which a history of economic mismanagement and racial exclusion is always present and acting upon current realities. Once recognized, we may perhaps make the courageous decision that Acilde cannot: the decision to sacrifice what is comfortable to move against a colonial patriarchal system that turns bodies/geographies into exploited and dying spaces of historical amnesia.

Notes

  1. 1.

    However, her activism is not solely anchored to Quisqueya. Indiana has also been a vocal advocate for the LGBTQIA+ communities throughout the Caribbean and beyond, speaking out against the Código Civil in Puerto Rico. In a 2020 tweet that appears in a variety of popular and academic news articles, she attacks the Puerto Rican senate for pushing the bill through in the midst of a global health crisis: “Mientras estamos encerrados el senado de #Puerto Rico aprueba un código civil que pone en peligro todos los logros de la comunidad #LGBTQ en la isla. No me casé por romanticismo, si no para que la ley protegiese a mi familia como a cualquier otra. #WandaMisDerechos #CodigoCivil” (May 12, 2020).

  2. 2.

    This line of research follows recent publications on La mucama …, including Rosana Herrero-Martín’s “Olokun or the Caribbean Quantum Mind: An Analysis of Transculturated Metaphysical Elements within Rita Indiana’s Novel Tentacle.” In this article, Herrero-Martín (2019) relates Caribbean fractality and the spiritual spacetime of the orisha to the top quantum theories and notions of universal interconnectivity.

  3. 3.

    This dialogue is not unlike the creative process of border knowledge as Anzaldúa lays out in her work, something that I will touch upon toward the end of this chapter.

  4. 4.

    I use the term “work” as Joseph M. Murphy has outlined in his text Working the Spirit, which underscores the communal solidarity of worship, as well as the physical, intellectual, and psychological growth that must take place to “conjure” the deities in question.

  5. 5.

    Forthcoming in the collection Oxala, edited by Alline Torres, Victor Miguel Castillo de Macedo, and Joshua Deckman.

  6. 6.

    Here, it is important to mention that RainbowBright is reminiscent of Rainbow Brite, an animated series introduced by Hallmark and Mattel in the early 1980s. The show featured a host of characters who inhabit a desolate world devoid of color. It is their mission to combat the forces of evil and return their reality to its “bright” and happy existence, filled with a spectrum of lucid colors. Recalling this connection adds another understanding to the importance of this “miracle drug,” as yet an additional reference to the opening of a portal to heal a desolate world, unveiling what has been lost and yet to be recovered.

  7. 7.

    I write this chapter from quarantine during the Covid-19 pandemic. One only has to take a brief look at the Listín Diario and other news outlets to see how a global pandemic is exacerbated by the colonial/imperial baggage of the island. While Haiti has closed its border for fear of disease, many Haitians are also forced to the streets to continue protesting and fighting for social dignity in the shadow of contagion. Perhaps Olokun will send someone to “cleanse our waters.”