Syncretism: The Dark Side

First off, apologies for posting this later than expected. Life, my work situation, and technical difficulties all played a part.

So, what exactly is “syncretism”? You’ve read the article, and you may have heard some definitions already from my group-mates. But since our presentations have been split up by the circumstances, you’ll have to hear a little more from me. Sorry, bear with me here.

Basically, syncretism seems to be a blending of different points of view. Different cultures, languages or religions meet, and as they influence each other, a sort of hybrid is born. For anthropologists, the word can have a lot of baggage and different connotations - see the assigned article by Charles Stewart for a detailed breakdown of all this.

But there are two main interpretations that I took away from that article: syncretism can either be

1. “a term of abuse applied to castigate,” for instance, colonial churches who allowed their Christianity to be “indigenized” rather than kept pure; or

2. a celebration of cultural blending, “a love song to our mongrel selves.”

In the classroom, I would invite your participation here. What has your experience with cultural blending been? Glorious chaos? Racism and cultural purity testing? A celebration of our unique differences? The great American “melting pot?”

Personally, I feel like I’ve heard this “love song to our mongrel selves” over and over, as long as I can remember. I have fuzzy memories of my elementary-school teachers emphasizing how cool it is that we all come from different backgrounds, and inviting us to bring pieces of our home cultures in to discuss and share. (This caused me a great deal of stress, as a white American kid, seven generations away from my distant European ancestors. I guess I’m... Irish? I could try to make some soda bread, even though I’ve never tasted it and it’s not really a piece of my “home culture,” whatever that means? Potatoes??? This worked better on the Latinx kids who could just bring in enchiladas.)

So I would say my experience of syncretism is heavily on the side of #2, rejoicing in mongrelization, what Stewart classifies as the New-World approach to embrace cultural mixing. I have seen some of the other aspects, of dogmatism and absolutism - “you’re not the right kind of Christian, you’re not American enough,” etc. - but as an able-bodied white man, I’m usually not the target. (I don’t mean that those attitudes are any less acceptable to me, but I also don’t want to pretend I’ve felt them as harshly as more marginalized folks.)

But there’s another aspect of syncretism that I really want to talk about here. The “dark side,” other than castigation and purity testing. What bothers me about this glorious melting pot is that cultures don’t really meet as equals; most often, it seems like syncretism is a forced result of cultural domination.

For instance... let’s take a look at another example that’s probably familiar to most of us.

Easter! Depending on how you were raised, you might think of it as a day to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus after his crucifixion. Holy day, end of Lent, special mass and service in church, and so on.
Except... what’s up with the bunnies and eggs?
It turns out, Easter gets its name from Eostre, a Germanic goddess of springtime, growth and fertility.

Reports vary about exactly what Easter traditions were celebrated, and when they were invented. But it seems generally agreed that “Easter” was a pagan tradition long before it became a Christian one, and the resurrection of Christ was stapled on top of a pre-existing festival.

 In fact, something similar happened with the birth of Christ.

 It’s impossible to tell exactly when (if?) Jesus was really born, but it most likely wasn’t on December 25^th. That was the date of the winter solstice in the Roman calendar (in ours, it’s December 22^nd), and a corresponding pagan festival called Saturnalia. And later, a Roman celebration of the sun god Sol Invictus. Christmas trees, lights and ornaments have nothing to do with the birth of Jesus, and are actually much older symbols concerning the turning of the seasons, new growth, fruiting, etc. Again, Christianity was stapled on top of a holiday that was already being celebrated.

In the case of these two holidays, they managed to become mostly Christian, but still retain some of their previous symbols and meanings. It’s an interesting blend - the holidays went on as usual, but with a new group of people insisting that “if you’re celebrating now, you must be celebrating THE LORD.” And as the popularity of Christianity grew, eventually most (all?) of the holiday participants agreed.

If you’re a Christian and I’ve offended you, I sincerely apologize. I’m bringing up the history of these two events because I find it fascinating, but not too weighed down by recent historical baggage. That is, there are no people currently suffering from having Saturnalia replaced by Nativity.

But here’s where it gets kind of heavy: I think Peru is a different story. We’ve heard a little in this class, and from reading Allen, about how colonization has affected the native peoples of Peru. How old ways are disappearing, Quechua speakers are becoming rarer, “no somos Indios ahora.” This is pretty typical of any colonized region, for better or worse. But what really bothers me in Peru is the undercurrent of Catholic shame.

I’ve been reading a book by anthropologist Michael J Horswell, called Decolonizing the Sodomite: Queer Tropes of Sexuality in Colonial Andean Culture. And I’ve been surprised to learn that, before colonization, gender and sexuality were rich and diverse in Andean cultures. Homosexuality was not uncommon. People of multiple genders (quariwarmi, transgender, intersex, hermaphrodite, transvestite, etc) were specifically celebrated, and had their own particular Apu (deity) called chuqui chinchay, a rainbow-colored jaguar who protected and guided them (Horswell 1-2).
Kind of shocking. Especially when we compare it to modern, Misti-style Peru: deeply homophobic, strictly binary, and flooded with Catholic shame and insecurity. What happened to accomplish this change? No joke: vicious persecution. Public flogging for offenses such as crossdressing or homosexuality; or even castration as an extreme punishment (Horswell 31).

Luckily, these barbaric physical punishments have not been used since the colonial era. But I would argue that the emotional scars remain. This was not a glorious blending of cultures resulting in a loveable mongrel. It was an extremely violent takeover: one culture attempting to obliterate another in order to satisfy its own insecurities. And because these two cultures clashed on such different footing, the obliteration was largely successful.

One last story before we wrap up:

To my knowledge, there is exactly one restaurant in Cusco run by an openly gay man: Fallen Angel. Despite its close proximity to the main plaza, and

its absolutely incredible food, it seemed unpopular. One of the nights I went, I saw one other group of

diners; the other night, none.

Parts of the restaurant were elegant and luxurious: white napkins, rose petals, goldfish swimming under glass tabletops. And parts were hellish. Literally.

The back room of the restaurant is painted with

hellfire and demons, and some of the most deeply troubling paintings I have ever seen. See below.

Fallen Angel comes to my mind a lot, when considering topics like syncretism. Sure, I enjoyed

my classmates’ enchiladas in elementary school, and learning to sing Feliz Navidad for our Christmas pageant. But sometimes the mongrel-love-song theory seems painfully naive: cultures blend, inevitably, but they do not meet as equals. The story of syncretism is also soaked in blood, and marked with human suffering that, for centuries, has been struggling to find a way to heal.

Some References

Christmas & Paganism https://www.history.co.uk/article/the-pagan-roots-of-christmas

Easter / Eostre / etc https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2016/04/ostara-and-the-hare/

Syncretism etymology https://www.etymonline.com/word/syncretism

Books: The Hold Life Has, by Catherine Allen;

Decolonizing the Sodomite, by Michael J Horswell.