Just as dogs feel when a storm is approaching, I can recognize the wind that precedes a tornado, the wind that is about to become an unbridled whirlwind. Like the terrible wind of January 2019. It is a sensation I have already incorporated as a kind of ancestral knowledge, of primitive wisdom, acquired after January 27 when the largest tornado known to date in Cuba unexpectedly passed through Havana. That same day, almost at the same hour, my mother died. That tornado became the living image of all the fury and whirlwinds I had repressed in my mind, in my head also full of whirlwinds and black clouds. I felt that nature was an unfolding of myself. With that tornado, a three-month period of my mother’s illness came to an end and a new sensory and mystical dimension of life opened up for me that I had never had before.
Meteorological science conceives cyclones as a combination of high temperatures in the seawater and low atmospheric pressures, and tornadoes as columns of high-velocity air whose lower end comes into contact with the ground and the upper end with a cumulus cloud nimbus. However, the objectivity of meteorology does not rule out the variety and richness of explanations that can be provided by everyday mentality and religious thought. The interaction between the human psyche and these dangerous natural phenomena also contains a great richness.
The wind is known to affect mental balance and mood. It can cause irritability, anxiety, lack of concentration, increased aggressiveness, and nervous excitement, especially in people suffering from psychic disorders. This is largely due to the noises caused by it in its path. We cannot see it, but we hear the rumbling and the thousand disturbing sounds caused by its invisible force: creaking, slamming doors, broken vases, rustling of trees, the rattling of what was loose or badly tied. It is a dark, frightening hum. Both invisibility and noise are an important part of the disasters associated with the force of wind, especially that of storms, tornadoes, and cyclones. The latter is the most common and dangerous of the natural disasters that occur in Cuba.
The cyclone has been the most feared natural phenomenon in Cuba and the other Caribbean islands. The large diameter it sometimes reaches and the relative slowness of its translation makes its damage and devastation affect a large part of the territory and can cause the death of many inhabitants. Hence, its great power has been seen as something supernatural and plays an important role in the different mythical and religious cosmogonies of the region. The Cuban aborigines saw this implacable and mysterious force as a deity. A representation of the god Jurakán, according to the figures analyzed by Fernando Ortiz in his book El Huracán, mitologías y simbolismos, is formed by a human head and two sigmoid arms coming out of it. Ortiz leaves open the hypothesis that this human head could also be a skull, as the representation of a spirit or ghostly entity.
In the Afro-Cuban religion of Santería or Regla de Osha, we also find a powerful association between these meteorological phenomena and death through a female supernatural force: Oyá Yansá, major orisha, owner of the lightning, storms, tornados, and winds in general. Oyá is also the owner of the cemetery, she lives at its door or in the surrounding area. One of the patakíes or sacred stories that collects this tradition of Yoruba origin reworked in Cuba, speaks of the power and fury of the feared Oyá, who, to rescue her lover Changó from prison, broke the grill of his cell with a bolt of lightning and took him to the sky in a fast gust of wind. The best way to represent this hurricane force of Oyá, however, has not been through graphics, but through dance: “This dance is agitated, frenetic, the choreographic action is very fast, vertiginous. It is the bacchante who, in her delirium, would like to set on fire with the purifying flame that blazes in her right hand and forms whirlwinds always turning to the left,” Ortiz writes.
In the dance, the rotating movement of the cyclones is reproduced, in a counterclockwise direction, which is the same movement that Cuban aborigines knew how to represent in their figures of the Hurricane and that mythologically has been associated with the sinister. There is another interesting element in the rituals of Oyá that is also related to the wind, with the sounds provoked by it. The acheré, a kind of maraca used in the ritual to greet and call the orisha, is an elongated pod that contains in its interior the seeds of the flame tree. When the acheré of Oyá is shaken it produces a sound similar to that of the branches and dry pods of the tree when they collide moved by the strong winds. It is the ear that makes us perceive the force of the wind.
Without ritual character but very popular among the practitioners of the Ocha, is the use of the childish pinwheel. To the sons or daughters of Oyá it is recommended to place a pinwheel outside the house to collect or perhaps divert the bad winds. It should be placed in an area where the wind blows, in a garden, balcony, near the window or door.
Other representations in Afro-Cuban religion are also related to the energy of the winds. In Palo Monte, Mariwanga is the equivalent of Kongo origin (African ethnic group of Bantu origin) of the orisha Oyá. The Mariwanga signature, a graphic representation used by Cuban paleros for ritual work, is formed by spiral lines around a central point. In this case, rather than a direct relationship with the wind, it is sometimes a combination of the rotating force of the winds and the presence of the terrible power of lightning. In another signature of Palo Monte, of Engüelle Lubamba, the equivalent of Elegguá, the cyclone appears represented through a circle with four sigmoidal lines that cross in a central point, simulating the rotating movement of this natural phenomenon.
Also, in the Palo, there is a relationship between the spirits and the mysterious sounds provoked by the wind, as it happens with the acheré of Oyá. It is the Oro, an aeritive instrument used ritually in some branches of the Palo Monte to call the Egguns (spirits). It is formed by a piece of oval board or with blunt ends, with a hole in one of the ends and a rope tied to it. To play the sound of the Oro or Kingüénguere (the name by which it is also known in the Palo), the palero makes it spin in circles above his head, producing a buzzing sound similar to that of the wind. Fernando Ortiz compares the effect of the Oro to the slingshot: “When he turns it over his head, the slinger hears a whistling sound of wind that takes hold of the projectile and drives it to its target. There, in the turning of the sling there is a mysterious rotating force, as in the whirlwind, the dust storm, the tornado, and the hurricane.”
The difference of the cyclone in Cuba with respect to other natural disasters is that it involves three phases: waiting for the cyclone, passing the cyclone, and recovering. In the preparation phase, everyone goes out to buy bread and candles, lots of candles, because you never know how many days the power cut will last (last time there was a power cut that affected the whole island). All the objects accumulated in people’s homes to deal with a disaster are now put into use: plastic bottles to store water, blocks used as a platform to separate the refrigerators from the floor in case of flooding, wooden strips to seal the shutters, nails to fix what is not safe. The house is reinforced, X-shaped crosses made of adhesive tape protect glass windows, the windows are propped up, all the objects that could be blown away by the wind are stored inside. And you wait. People hope the cyclone will pass quickly, that the almost loose blinds will hold, that the roof will not leak, that the food will not spoil due to the lack of electricity. Each family keeps an eye on the weather reports. They follow the path of the cyclone through the radio.
Eladio Secades said in his popular scenes about the 1944 cyclone: “Cubans believe that for Christmas Eve and the transit of a cyclone, the whole family must be together […] A cyclone is an accumulation of provisions and an urgent barracking of surnames. There are those who dress as if it were cold. Without anyone ever knowing why. And those who have been careful to keep a lantern go up in the esteem of others. The night of the cyclone feels a lot like a wake. Because there is always an old woman brewing coffee. And an old maid aunt who goes to bed without taking off her clothes.”
Every family has its own stories about cyclones. An accumulation of tales and experiences transmitted orally from generation to generation. We grow up listening to the bitter stories of the ravages of the Storm of the Century, the losses caused by the Cyclone of ‘44, and the unpredictable and disastrous path of the Flora.
A series of superstitions and popular beliefs were also generated around the cyclones, mainly in the rural areas of the country. It was thought, for example, that having a thunderstone in the house protected its inhabitants from lightning and storms. Some had the custom of covering mirrors with cloth because it was believed that mirrors attracted lightning. Another of the most common practices to keep the storm away was the burning of palm fronds distributed by the Church on Palm Sunday called guano bendito. In the article “Los fabulosos remedios cubanos contra rabos de nubes, trombas y mangas de viento,” published in Signos magazine in 1977, Samuel Feijóo together with cartoonist Adalberto Suárez, compiled numerous testimonies about this type of beliefs and popular practices among the inhabitants of the province of Villa Clara. Among the most common “remedies” known to this day, and we do not know if any are still practiced, are: making crosses in the air with a machete or a blade to break the tornado, cutting the wind with scissors while saying a prayer, and making crosses of ashes in the courtyard and sticking a machete in the center of the cross.
Related to the popular beliefs and customs around the tornados and whirlwinds, I would like to mention three works by Cuban artist Marta María Pérez Bravo. The first two, belonging to the same series Dolores (Pains), from 1983, show a photographic documentation of a solo performance (without an audience) in the middle of a rural wasteland. Marta recreates the crosses of ashes used to dissipate the tornados. In Dolores I, the artist includes at the bottom of the photographs the prayer that was part of the peasant ritual of the crosses: “I cut you cloud / without a knife and without a dagger / with the nine words / sacrament of the altar”. For the images that make up the piece Dolores II, Marta uses one of the testimonies compiled by Samuel Feijóo in the aforementioned article in Signos magazine. Regarding the latter, it is important to point out that contemporary Cuban art made by artists of the 1980s generation (Marta María Pérez, Leandro Soto, among others) took into account the presence of popular culture compiled by Samuel Feijóo in the magazines Islas and Signos.
The third work by Marta María Pérez Bravo that I would like to show is entitled Rabo de Nube. It is not a photograph, but an installation made up of a tornado made of paper and red cloth with details and phrases elaborated with sequins. This piece, made in 1984, refers to the rite of the Cuban paleros to hunt whirlwinds. According to the testimonies of mayomberos compiled by Lydia Cabrera in her book El Monte, the whirlwinds were hunted using a cauldron or a hat.
Could it be that, because we live on an island, on this tropical island, we are more prone to dream of floods, whirlwinds, and storms that sweep everything away? Dreaming of disasters is associated with having fears. It is precisely fear that has been the great creator. What unifies all scientific, photographic, artistic, mythical, and religious representations and explanations related to natural disasters throughout time is none other than fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of death.
Childhood is different. Going back to my memories, the arrival of a cyclone was always associated with the joy of staying at home with my parents, as classes and work were suspended until the storm passed. My mom would build a small tent with sheets and set it up in the middle of the living room of our apartment in La Víbora. It was not something we did only during the cyclone, but I have the exact image as if it were a real picture, of the two of us under that fragile roof of sheets tied to the chairs and a candle lit due to the power cut.
* This text was part of the catalog of the exhibition La furia del viento, on display last spring at the Fototeca de Cuba. The exhibition was curated by Luis Duno-Gottberg and Claudia Arcos Ponce, and included the creators Moisés Hernández, Ernesto Ocaña, Santiago Álvarez, Samuel Feijóo, Marta María Pérez, Raúl Cañibano, Armando Capó, Alfredo Sarabia Fajardo and Manuel Almenares.
