Religious Freedom, Brujeria and Child Murder in Cuba, 1898-1933



Document title: Religious Freedom, Brujeria and Child Murder in Cuba, 1898-1933
Journal: El Taller de la Historia
Database: CLASE
System number: 000494713
ISSN: 2382-4794
Authors:
Volumen: 9
Number: 9
Pages: 102-129
Country: Colombia
Language: Inglés
Document type: Artículo
Approach: Analítico, descriptivo
Spanish abstract Sin embargo, similares demandas no tuvieron impacto en la defensa de los creyentes acusados de asesinatos y otros crímenes violentos
English abstract This essay assesses whether the principle of religious freedom worked as a deterrent to state repression against practitioners of Afro-Cuban religions between 1898 and 1933. Focusing on the debates held at the constitutional convention, it argues that the drafters ofthe Constitution of 1901 proclaimed absolute freedom of religious conscience, but allowed for limitations to and for the criminalization of religious practices in the name of Christian morality and public order. The fact that the Penal Code of 1879 did not list a crime of brujería was not a legal obstacle to the prosecution of alleged brujos. Reexamining the criminal case against Domingo Bocourt, this essay argues that racist and religious stereotypes about brujería served to single out Afro-Cuban citizens as criminal suspects and to explain their alleged criminal motivations. However, brujería per se was an insufficient ground for a murder conviction. Absent evidence of an actual crime, courts acquitted brujos. Finally, this essay questions the typicality of Bocourt's case in the repression against brujos and argues that rather than seeking to the validate of a pre-established prosecutorial model to convict so-called negros brujos for child murder, courts convicted religious practitioners when they found evidence of violent crimes. Although practitioners of AfroCuban and other popular religious practices often claimed protection for their religious and of associative rights in criminal cases, were acquitted, and therefore contributed effectively to the legal and social construction of those constitutional rights, similar claims had no impact on the defense of religious practitioners accused of murder and other violent crimes
Disciplines: Historia,
Religión
Keyword: Historia política,
Religión y sociedad,
Afrocubanos,
Libertad religiosa,
Brujería,
Asesinatos,
Racismo,
Cuba,
Siglo XIX,
Siglo XX
Keyword: History,
Religion,
Political history,
Religion and society,
Afro-Cuban,
Religious freedom,
Witchcraft,
Murders,
Racism,
Cuba,
19th Century,
20th Century
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