{"id":16858,"date":"2017-03-10T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-hakamagwp.pantheonsite.io\/news\/goddess-who-moves-waves"},"modified":"2018-06-19T10:50:34","modified_gmt":"2018-06-19T17:50:34","slug":"goddess-who-moves-waves","status":"publish","type":"custom_quick","link":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/article-short\/goddess-who-moves-waves\/","title":{"rendered":"The Goddess Who Moves Like the Waves"},"content":{"rendered":"

Postage stamps are lessons in history, politics, science, or geography packed onto a small piece of gummed paper. They\u2019re also beautiful works of art. In <\/em>Stamped we\u2019re going coastal, with postal.<\/em><\/p>\n

When Fidel Castro and his band of guerrillas came riding into the Cuban capital of Havana on January 8, 1959, heralding the triumph of the revolution, many changes followed in their wake. Some, like the government\u2019s ambitious, successful literacy campaign, were well publicized on the island and abroad, but others were more subtle, barely noted by cultural critics and historians.<\/p>\n

Cuban stamps changed noticeably after 1959, says Ernesto Menendez-Conde, an avid collector and assistant professor of modern languages at New York\u2019s LaGuardia Community College. He points out that the size of stamps and the number issued in a series, as well as the colors and themes, were much more varied after the Cuban Revolution. One especially noteworthy development was the more frequent inclusion of black Cubans and symbols of Afro-Cuban culture in philatelic iconography. In 2012, Correos de Cuba issued a particularly interesting series of stamps, each depicting an Afro-Cuban deity, including Yemay\u00e1.<\/p>\n

\u201cYemay\u00e1,\u201d explains Odette Casamayor-Cisneros, associate professor of Latin American and Caribbean cultural studies at the University of Connecticut, \u201cis one of the most important deities, or Orishas, in Santeria,\u201d a religion of African origin that\u2019s widespread in Cuba. For an island surrounded on all sides by the Caribbean Sea, Yemay\u00e1 is especially significant: \u201cShe represents the waters of the sea and maternity,\u201d Casamayor-Cisneros says, adding that her \u201csymbolic color is blue.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the stamp, Yemay\u00e1 is shown in a flowing cerulean dress with undulating white lines that suggest waves. It\u2019s a simple but evocative depiction of one of the most powerful deities in Santeria. Yemay\u00e1 traditionally appears in a Santeria ceremony, descending upon and \u201cinhabiting\u201d the body of her \u201cchild.\u201d The inhabited individual will dance in sweeping circular motions, gathering up the folds of the dress and swaying like a tide, undulating her torso like a wave cresting a reef, and dipping like a duck diving beneath the water.<\/p>\n

The stamp series was issued in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Conjunto Folkl\u00f3rico Nacional de Cuba, a national arts collective that performs Orisha-inspired dances. The words \u201cBailes afrocubanos,\u201d or Afro-Cuban dances, appears at the bottom of each stamp, but Cuban philately blogger Oreidis Pimentel points out an incongruity: while dancing may be part of the Santeria ceremony, Yemay\u00e1 is not a dance. Today, that conflation has spread beyond the stamp: Santeria has become commercialized, with some people even offering Yemay\u00e1 dance classes or the promise of currying the deity\u2019s favor with a bit of money paid to an intercessor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Afro-Cuban deity Yemay\u00e1 dances like the tide in Santeria ceremonies, but replicating her movements for commercial purposes has invited critique.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13219,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"acf":{"hero_video_url":null,"hero_video_caption":"","deck":"Afro-Cuban deity Yemay\u00e1 dances like the tide in Santeria ceremonies, but replicating her movements for commercial purposes has invited critique.","authors_group":[{"by_group":"by","contributors_group":[15601]}],"word_count_override":"","podbean1":"","podbean2":"","redirect":"","geolocation":{"address":"21.521757, -77.78116","lat":21.521757,"lng":-77.78116},"related":[16859,16733],"twitterimage":14792,"facebookimage":14292,"twitterdescription":"","edited":"","factchecked":"","code":"","no_old_story_flag":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-short\/16858"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-short"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/custom_quick"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-short\/16858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24124,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-short\/16858\/revisions\/24124"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article-short\/16733"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/16859"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}