Modern and Contemporary African Architecture: Individual Agency in the Construction of Santeria Alters

Haydee's La Caridad del Cobre altar

    For the purpose of this blog post, we will focus on the altar home of Haydee, a Puerto Rican Santera. Haydee constructed a small shrine in her living room dedicated to La Caridad del Cobre, otherwise known as Oshun (orisha of fresh water, purity, and fertility), that precisely emulated a shrine that she saw within a vision. The actual construction of the altar was catalyzed by a series of signs interpreted by Haydee to signal the apropos temporal considerations for the exact replication of her apparition. The altar was comprised of a series of models that depict La Caridad, spatially arranged depending on their relative size. Around these icons, yellow velones (tall glass candles) and fresh flowers are placed for adornment, an ode to La Caridad’s associated colors. Markedly, all the icons are placed directly on the floor, alluding to the African ritual practices of orisha worship and to the African “faces” of saints. 

    This shrine illustrates the principle that guidelines concerning altar construction impose relatively few restrictions on the architectural form of an altar – allowing Santeros such as Haydee to build shrines that fit their imagination. Restrictions do govern whether an altar is built inside or outside, and an Orisha must be correctly matched with the proper colors, position within the throne, and symbols. Still, relatively few restrictions govern technique and design. The choice of materials, shape, and overall appearance belongs to the builder. Though shrines tend to use a corner space as well as the flat wall in a room, no absolute rules exist for a specific area of a room or even the basic shape of an altar, which is why many altars can be seen in a variety of places – from rooms, to places of business, to even on the dashboard of vehicles. Altar makers often copy designs and techniques from different cultural sources; new concepts and procedures may be incorporated at will.

Haydee's freshly painted altar-home

    The internal architecture of these altars often inform and are informed by external considerations. Thus, for example, in many cases the altar maker is preoccupied with the emulation of an orisha’s original spiritual home. Orishas are typically associated with and cosmically connected to geographically distant natural abodes, such as rivers, oceans, rainforests, and cemeteries; as such, when these orishas inhabit their altar-home, they also become “owners” of these proxies for the remote locales within their particular areas of the altar-home. The large aquarium with spiritually significant freshwater fish within Haydee’s altar is reflective of this assertion, as she symbolically recreates within her living room a river, the natural abode of Oshun. The internal architecture can also affect external decorations of a home, as part of the plan to create a place of meditation and communion with La Caridad from Haydee included the repainting of the exterior of the home in white with yellow trimmings; this consecrates Haydee’s claim that “La Caridad is the owner of this house”. 

 

Source:

Romberg, Raquel. 2018. “Ritual Life of an Altar-Home: A Photographic Essay on Transformational Places and Technologies.” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 13 (2): 250–66. https://doi.org/10.1353/mrw.2018.0020.