La Virgen de Regla: a Material Approach to Lived Religious Transformation in Latin America

What is it about?

This paper is follows two religious statues of the same name - the Virgen de Regla in Spain and Cuba - from which to understand how religions have and continue to transform in Latin America. Religious statues are, however, often either overlooked or taken for granted in scholarship. Therefore the paper uses a material approach, which means it focuses on the religious statues as points around which a variety of interesting phenomena takes place. In the case of the Virgen de Regla in Cuba, more than the Virgin Mary, she is also the Santeria Orisha Yamaya, African Goddess of the sea (among other things). More than syncretic, a 'new' religion has formed; and although it has been born from the entanglements of different Yoruban and Catholic traditions, but it, however, neither or. This has resulted in a rich, vibrant creative religious culture in Cuba that can engaged using the material approach outlined in this article.

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