African Roots of the Orisha Religion In Trinidad

[Oju]

African Roots of the Orisha Religion The Orisha religion in Trinidad, like the other African-derived religions of the New World, originated during the colonial period when European colonizers brought in millions of Africans to work on sugar, cotton, and tobacco plantations. From the mid-fifteenth century, when the Portuguese began to colonize certain eastern Atlantic islands (the Azores, Cape Verde, the Madeiras), until 1888, when Brazil abolished slavery, the slave trade greatly affected virtually the entire Western Hemisphere, both socially and culturally. The colonial economies were based on a variety of crops, including cacao, cotton, tobacco, and sugar. It was sugar, however, that would have the biggest impact on the New World colonial ventures: The association of sugar cane, the slavery of transported Africans and the large agricultural estates commonly called "plantations" is both intimate and ancient -- so much so that we need to be reminded how much that association is an artifact of particular historical circumstances. Sugar cane has numerous intrinsic characteristics -- above all, that it must be ground as soon as it is cut,to maximize its yield of sugar -- but nothing says it must be grown only on plantations, or only by slaves. Yet its importance in the expansion of European agro-industry in this hemisphere so set the terms of its production that the triadic image -- plantations, sugar cane and African slaves -- has come to epitomize whole centuries of post-Columbian, Caribbean experience. ( Mintz 1974, ix; cited in Knight 1983, 219) The social and cultural transformation of virtually an entire hemisphere could be accomplished only with an incredible amount of human energy. The many estimates of the total number of Africans shipped to the New World during the slave period range from Philip Curtin's ( 1975, 107-8) estimate of 9.42 million to Paul Lovejoy ( 1983, 19) 11.7 million and Noel Deerr ( 1949-50, 284) 11.77 million.

Publication Information: Book Title: Spirits, Blood, and Drums: The Orisha Religion in Trinidad. Contributors: James T. Houk - author. Publisher: Temple University Press. Place of Publication: Philadelphia. Publication Year: 1995. Page Number: 47.