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The data described and analyzed in this book derive from ethnographic fieldwork carried out for the duration of twenty months between 2005 and 2013, with the bulk executed consecutively between August 2005 and December 2006, followed by month-long trips in 2008, 2009, 2011, and 2013. Having carried out neither a pilot project nor a field reconnaissance trip prior to my arrival, I was relatively “green” on the ground from the outset. Most of the sparse existing literature on Cuban espiritismo was in Spanish—and archived in Cuba, which made preparing the project a difficult, even speculative, affair. As a result of this gap, I read extensively on Brazilian and Puerto Rican spiritism and any literature I could find on Afro-Cuban religious practices and their history, searching for clues in this fascinating body of work that pointed to the role of espiritistas in Cuba’s religious complex. While I had initially applied to the doctoral program at University College London with a proposal to research Portuguese spiritist societies, a task I had already informally begun prior to my application, I had a change of heart early on, in great part due to my exposure to the engrossing ethnographic descriptions and analytical insights of my co-supervisor, Martin Holbraad, on the Afro-Cuban divination cult of Ifá. Intriguingly, Martin insisted that espiritismo was everywhere in Cuba, that the muerto, the spirit of the dead, was an essential “grease” in the Afro-Cuban religious machinery, and that espiritistas wielded enormous, under-recognized influence, yet he could tell me very little further. However, the ethnographic vagueness which surrounded contemporary espiritismo suggested that a challenge was at hand.
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