Masculinité et relations de genre dans la société secrète abakuá

• Main Author: Géraldine Morel
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Laboratoire d'Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative 2013-07-01
• Series: Ateliers d'Anthropologie
• Subjects: abakuá; secret society; masculinity; machismo; power; honour
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/ateliers/9392

The abakuá secret society is part of the Afro-Cuban religious world. Emerging in 1836 in the port of Regla across from Old Havana, the male secret society abakuá is an urban religious phenomenon strictly confined to the western part of the island of Cuba, namely the port cities of Matanzas, Cárdenas and Havana. Future Abakuá members are hand-picked according to the criteria in force among the working-class population of Havana: courage in the face of any trial, a sense of duty towards other members, irreproachable sexual practices and an exaggerated and fiercely proclaimed masculinity. Indeed, its organization and its system of recruitment based on individual merit are at odds with that of people practising Santería or Palo Monte because these other Afro-Cuban cults are an exchange between gods and humans (trance, sacrifice or divination) and have an influence on everyday life problems. In fact, being abakuá implies a hyper-masculine, machismo gender construction. This article offers an analysis of the abakuá commitment from the perspective of gender and its representation in a public sphere. Belonging to this secret organization is a source of prestige in deprived Havana neighbourhoods and among an entire fringe of the urban population referred to as ‘the surroundings’ (el ambiente). Power games between individuals based on machismo and honour are a way of dealing with individual strategies for moving in the public space of the ambiente. Machismo as a system of power is legitimised through mythological, ritual and social practices. The construction of masculinity in the abakuá secret society is based on a constant comparison with women and with homosexual men. Women are excluded from the ritual system but are very important socially because they are central to a heterosexual construction of masculinity based on sexuality and family. Obviously, homosexual men represent an antagonistic masculinity and a real danger to the whole group. In this sense, being an abakuá means being a real man who knows how to move and behave in the ambiente of Havana.