A Party for Lazarus: Six Generations of Ancestral Devotion in a Cuban Town

by Todd Ramón Ochoa

Overview

A Party for Lazarus is the story of a Cuban family, six generations removed from slavery, struggling to honor its ancestors amid changing fortunes and a crumbling state. This intimate intergenerational account centers on an annual feast celebrating ancestors and orisás—the life-changing spirits at the heart of Black Atlantic religious life. Based on twenty years of fieldwork, Todd Ramón Ochoa’s masterful ethnography shows how orisá praise and everyday life have changed in revolutionary Cuba over two decades of economic hardship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520974111
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	05/19/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Todd Ramón Ochoa is a cultural anthropologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is the author of Society of the Dead: Quita Manaquita and Palo Praise in Cuba.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface

PART ONE
1 • The Ring and the Altar
2 • La Sociedad Africana, 1880–1940: Chacha Cairo
among the Dead and the Santos-Orisás
3 • Cucusa Sáez and Her Children

PART TWO
4 • 1999: Return
5 • A Meal for the Dead
6 • Opening
7 • Slaughter
8 • A Bembé for San Lázaro–Babalú Ayé

PART THREE
9 • 2005: Loss
10 • A Hole to Fill
11 • Dear Elégua
12 • 2006: Decay
13 • Oyá

PART FOUR
14 • 2009: Deceit
15 • Voices of the Dead
16 • 2012: Prohibition
17 • Lázaro M.
18 • Two Bembés

PART FIVE
19 • 2014: Despair
20 • Sovereigns of Affliction
Epilogue • 2018: Recovery

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Much more than a traditional ethnography, this work is an affective journey, one that marks the rhythms and sensations of everyday life in a home where Catholic saints, African gods, and the Cuban dead comingle with family, friends, and neighbors."

Journal of the American Academy of Religion