University of Illinois at Chicago

In their article of 1985, Alúm, Núñez Cedeño, and Nodal proposed that Cuban Abakuá was a pidginized Afro-Spanish language. This conclusion was based on analyses of fairly productive phonological and morphological rules and supported by the fact that Abakuá has no native speakers. The authors also demonstrated that the major source of lexical items was from Efik, a language of the Benue-Congo plateau spoken by the Ibibios⁹⁴. Ultimately, however, the study raised questions concerning the status of Abakuá: was it evolving as a language or was it dead? These questions called for a more thorough investigation to be carried out in situ. This is the precise task I undertook in Havana during the summer of 1984, and whose results I am reporting in this paper⁹⁵. I begin with a brief perspective on the Society that gave rise to the hybrid Cuban vernacular, the Abakuá Secret Society.

A general overview of the situation in Africa around 1700 may serve as point of departure for establishing links between the motherland and the people who were later shipped to Cuba against their will. As is generally known, the most important centers of slave trade in Africa were located in Bonny, Brass, Okrika, Old and New Calabar, in southeastern Nigeria. These slave towns, with populations of as many as ten thousand inhabitants, were ruled by powerful African chiefs or kings. Their influence was exercised mainly through house-canoes which were large vessels equipped with cannons and muskets. These «canoes» ranged up and down the coastal regions and rivers, raiding and assaulting villages, capturing men, women, and children to be sold later into slavery.

The Efik of southern Nigeria directed one of the most efficient and important house-canoes of the region. Their chieftains were extremely instrumental in supplying human merchandise to European and American slave traders. The latter provided logistic support to the Efik chieftains, often granting titles of nobility in exchange for the acquisition of slaves. Prior to the 18th century, however, Efiks were not known chiefly for being slave hunters; instead, they dedicated themselves exclusively to fishing. From that century on they became notorious as monopolizers of the slave trade, excluding other tribes from dealing directly with European ships. Curiously, the patronymic «Efik» itself derives from the Ibibio-Efik verb root fik, which means to oppress (Simmons 1956: 2).

In the Old Calabar region the house-canoes became part and parcel of the Ekpe Secret Society. This Society not only maintained economic control over the population at large but it monopolized as well all cultural and legal institutions of Calabar, capturing thus the political, religious, administrative, judicial and economic power (Sosa Rodríguez 1982: 28).

At this point a caveat is in order. The original goals of the Ekpe Secret Society, and of other secret societies, were not the promotion of slavery. In fact, similar societies existed in countries other than Nigeria, for example, in Sudan. Sosa Rodríguez (84 ff.) reports that they were primarily dedicated to the worship of snakes and water. According to him, their ritual dealing with prosperity, life and death, mountains and waters, served as the cohesive force of their spiritual and social life. Those who were elevated to priesthood, held the power of communicating with the dead, and it was this supernatural contact with ancestors and gods that helped them maintain equilibrium and prosperity among individual families; therefore, the societies' survival was guaranteed. The Ekpe society enjoyed all these privileges and as such it had a unique and important role in the daily affairs of Efik life, serving as the principal vehicle for exercising political control. Only the wealthy, however, were able to become its representatives. They were accorded different ranks, commensurate with their wealth. Naturally, the wealthier kings had access to the inner secrecies and mysteries of the society, a knowledge that gave them great authority   —149→   and sovereignty but also enabled them to transcend temporal matters and penetrate into the spiritual realm of the supernatural. The rulers were believed to possess esoteric powers of divination, clairvoyancy, and metamorphosis.

It is, then, the Ekpe Secret Society, with its rituals and secrets, that would surface in Cuba under the name of the Abakuá Secret Society. The exact origin of the term Abakuá is undetermined although it is highly probable that it comes from a compound formed from two Ibibio names, the abak and the akwa (Sosa Rodríguez 1982: 62 ff., Alúm, et al. 1985: 263).

The introduction of slaves into the Antilles began quite early. In Santo Domingo, by 1501 the Governor Nicolás de Ovando had ordered the import of slaves to the islands. He insisted, however, that those shipped be born under Christian rule, the so-called bozales. In 1517, Carlos I, King of Spain, authorized a direct slave trade from Africa. Slaves were brought to Cuba mainly by English and Portuguese traders and, to some extent, by Spanish merchants. Their ethnic background was diverse, for the African slave hunters, including the Efik, captured indiscriminately human beings from markedly different cultures and languages. This mixture may help to explain the obscurity of many of the words comprising the Abakuá vernacular.

Notwithstanding this ethnic diversity, the Carabalí (this adjective shows that the noun Calabar has undergone a long distance metathesis between the [r] and [l] sounds) was the largest group of slaves brought to Cuba. Their arrival is documented as early as 1526 (Quesada 1973: 146). The Carabalí, like other slaves brought forcefully to strange lands, were in the beginning unable to communicate among themselves. Yet, they were a key factor of transculturation. As succinctly put by Sosa Rodríguez (1982), the slaves not only influenced each other interculturally but they transformed the culture and lifestyle of their masters as well. Shortly after their resettlement, and as early as 1753, blacks were allowed to form cabildos which were units grouping people of common tribal origins that came together for mutual aid and social purposes. At first the cabildos were tolerated for apparent humanitarian reasons, i.e., to soothe the slaves' loneliness and estrangement from their land. These short-lived humanitarian concerns gave way to political conniving and laws were enacted that enforced the separation of cabildos; if there were too many members, the cabildos were divided into free negroes and slaves. The separation was apparently intended to suppress their desire to rebel against local authorities, according to documentation found in Santiago, Cuba, in 1843 (Sosa Rodríguez 1982: 36).

1836 saw the birth, under the protection of the Carabalí-Appapá Efor or Efik, of the all-male Abakuá Secret Society. The event probably occurred in the town of Regla, across the bay from the port of Havana⁹⁶. The Society's main objective was to promote a spirit of mutual aid among its members⁹⁷. The practitioners are also known in Cuban folklore as ñáñigos, a term that comes from the Efik nyan-nyan (ñan-ñan) with the meaning of «a man impersonator» and -ngo 'leopard'. Its full literal meaning is «the leopard man», so-called because in the original African ritual the impersonator would crawl like a leopard before jumping on its prey. The essence of the Society stems from a myth that refers to the capture of a fish which gives prosperity to the individual who catches it. A newcomer wanting to become a member would go through a plante, a complex ceremony of initiation lasting from midnight till dawn; or if the creation of a new potencia or nation was sought, the member would go through a promotion ceremony. Both ceremonies, collective in nature, were strictly regulated. The neophyte was then administered an oath of seven commandments. In general, five of these call for respecting the ritual and women, obeying the «potencia», and helping the ecobio or friend in need. Two commandments emphasize machismo and vengeance, traits which perhaps might have contributed to create the violent atmosphere that historically surrounded this fraternity (Roche y Monteagudo 1925). The following Abakuá proverb captures the machismo spirit:

To be a man meant to be heroic, manly, not effeminate. A man has to prove himself, that is, he must be a chévere, a man unafraid and undeterred by nothing. This characteristic, along with the sensationalism of the news media much tainted by racial prejudice (Sosa Rodríguez 1982: 318 ff.), gave the term ñáñigo a derogatory connotation. The Abakuá adepts were portrayed as bloodthirsty criminals   —150→   whose principal aim was to persecute and kill whites. This, however, was not the case. There was some bloodshed caused by the split of some «potencias» and by the necessity of securing employment in a tight job market. The fact was, however, that the ñáñigo did good to his fellow men. This has been widely documented by Abakuá researchers, although Sosa Rodríguez points out that the social-economic conditions in Cuba in the 50's created considerable alienation and hostility in the Society. He then suggests that if conditions permitted job security and the elimination of racism, the Society would be able to live according to its own laws and could operate within the confine of official laws⁹⁸.

What is, then, the Abakuá Secret Society? The most eloquent summary of what this society is and represents is given by Sosa Rodríguez, one of its foremost researchers⁹⁹ and winner of the Casa de las Américas Award, 1982. He says:

In short, the Abakuá Secret Society is an excellent source for studying certain aspects of the history of Cuba, its national culture, language, and its literature, particularly the Afro-Cuban elements of the Spanish American avant-garde movement between 1924-1954 (Miller-Bergh 1986). Since it is undeniable that the linguistic influence is felt in Cuban literature, music¹⁰⁰, vocabulary, and proverbs, let us return now to our original question: is Abakuá a rule-governed vernacular? Is it a pidgin? Or, is it something else?

For years Abakuá has attracted the attention of anthropologists, folklorists, and linguists. The interest has focused on trying to penetrate the secrecy of the «language». Yet, most of these attempts have failed because the great majority of these studies have been based primarily on isolated lexical items, usually extracted from written sources. Linguistic structure remained largely unstudied. Furthermore, no attempts have been made to study actual use of Abakuá by its speakers. The study by Alúm, Núñez Cedeño and Nodal provided a first attempt at explaining linguistic structures. It was discovered that Abakuá was greatly influenced by the Spanish phonological system. For instance, words showed that initial consonantal clusters nC (perfectly acceptable in Efik) were broken off by e- epenthesis in the same manner that Spanish sC initial clusters receive an epenthetic e-. Thus Abakuá seems to obey the sequential constraints of initial consonantal clusters in Spanish. It was further observed that an Efik word without a final vowel would be inherited in Abakuá with a final vowel. Normally such a segment was either -e, or -o; no word would occur with a high vowel. It was suggested that this choice was attributable to Spanish influence since the latter high vowels normally do not occur in final position.

Spanish influence in the Efik morphological system was also evident. For example, Efik calls for prefixation of an assimilative nasal to a singular base in order to form a plural. The singular obon 'king' is pluralized as mbon 'kings'. Abakuá, then, opted for adding -es to the base thus creating obones which is glaringly of Spanish influence. In Abakuá there are few verbs ending in -ear, such as ñampear 'to kill' or ñampearse 'to die'. It is obvious that this is a Spanish verbal ending. Efik or any of the languages of the Calabar region simply do not derive their verbs in this way.

Out of the contact between Efik (and a few other languages, especially from the Bantu family) and Spanish emerged Abakuá. But did this vernacular serve as a vehicle of communication at any time? This is one of the criteria, albeit limited, to be satisfied if indeed Abakuá is to fit the definition of a pidgin. Speakers who have no language in common and who come into contact as slaves did in Cuba still have a need to establish among themselves some sort of linguistic communication. This communication must have some systematic coherence, otherwise linguistic exchanges could not take place. Such a systematization cannot be passed from one generation   —151→   to another because in doing so a natural grammar is constructed and we would not be speaking of a pidgin but of a creole (cf. Naro 1978, see Sankoff [1980] for opposing arguments). Now, supposing that speakers wanted to preserve the secrecy of the Abakuá rites from outsiders, linguistic communication could be ensured by adults passing on their Abakuá version to other speakers, albeit with much variation. Given that there are recorded testimonies (Cabrera 1958), that it has survived in purely oral form, that it resulted from a multilingual contact, and that it is nobody's native language, may suggest that Abakuá is a pidgin. This was the hypothesis given in 1985. The next step is to evaluate the evidence in support of this hypothesis.

A questionnaire (see the appendix) was constructed with items in Spanish to be elicited from speakers in Abakuá. The intended goal of the questionnaire was to determine Abakuá grammatical structure. Three speakers were interviewed, all black male informants (roughly between 60 to 70 years old). The questionnaire contained simple declarative and negative sentences in all tenses. There were yes-no as well as different types of wh-questions followed by possible logical answers emphasizing the accusative or the dative abstract case. In addition, the informants were asked to render into Spanish embedded sentences that emphasized structural characteristics of African languages from Nigeria¹⁰¹ such as of the associative, conjunctive, benefactive, and temporal types. Clefting sentences and sentences with complementizers were also administered.

In each of the above categories, informants consistently failed to produce equivalent sentences in Abakuá. In most cases the researcher was unable to complete all items of each set; informants hesitated and attempted to construct some sentences while simultaneously posing questions to the investigator who was expected to verify the correctness of their statements. It became obvious that they were incapable of completing the translation tasks. However, all three informants were able to identify words in isolation, among them, lagarto, hombre, brujo and others. One of the speakers advanced some definitions and expressions of his own. For him, the word obonekue meant an initiated neophyte without much authority, and the expression fietete manañongo ntombre meant a person who shoots with cannon. However, when asked to identify the word «cannon» or «shoot» he could not do so. The investigator thought that perhaps the informant did not want to reveal its real meaning, since he was expected by oath not to reveal the inner secrets of the Society. Additional sentences were provided by the informant in which he volunteered their partial meanings, as in the expression juriabón masongo, meaning 'the land where roasted peanut is eaten'. He explained that masongo meant both «peanut» and «land». I have not been able to confirm this independently.

As the interview continued, it became apparent that informants could not render into Abakuá any of the cue sentences provided, in spite of their expressed willingness to cooperate with the researcher. The experiment did not yield positive results; it did not confirm, for instance, our original hypothesis of Abakuá being a pidgin, not even in its most rudimentary form. Informants could not minimally construe (except for the above) the sintactic elements forming the expressions they produced. Abakuá, therefore, is not a pidgin, much less a creole. It is simply an argot, with a set of fixed expressions, used for ritualistic purposes. For anthropologists these findings are hardly surprising, for it is the case that many religions and cults use an esoteric, magic language for communicating with supernatural entities. López Valdés (ms.) reports that Fa priests in Dahomey employ a language unknown to the rest of the population. Similarly, Chorti priests in Guatemala invoke magic formulae and words in their rituals. Since the expressions used in Abakuá are not rule-governed, they cannot have recursive properties. It seems that they are memorized and assigned a meaning which may vary through time and then are transmitted via oral tradition from one generation to the next or are learned from old notebooks of Abakuá priests, still with much variation. This is exactly what happens with the Ocha-Ifá religious sect (also known in Cuba by the name of santería) whose priests and neophytes are expected to learn from memory, formulae and songs in the Yoruba language¹⁰². As in Abakuá, speakers can only distinguish a few isolated words; in most instances they cannot identify   —152→   words or analyze them into constituents. According to López Valdés, he has not been able to find a single adept who could understand or speak the language used in santería rituals, except from the formulae. These memorized expressions may be short, like the one presented above, or longer, as shown in the following Abakuá examples taken from a story by Gerardo del Valle and quoted by Sosa Rodríguez (1982: 430-32):

Finally, though an argot, Abakuá has left an indelible stamp on Cuban Spanish and culture. One can speak of an ecobio or a friend, or just may get into trouble, buscarse un queque or one may try to make a living, buscar la butuba. It is yet to be demonstrated how Abakuá has affected the phonemic status of Cuban Spanish as claimed above by Sosa Rodríguez, or the other way around as has been shown in Alúm et al. (1985). The influence is also felt in popular sayings as in solo una vez se castra el chivo meaning one must take advantage of opportunities, or un palo no hace monte meaning there is strength in unity (Valdés Bernal 1976: 321-28).

The formulaic characteristic of Abakuá expressions and its literary impact on Cuban literature can best be captured in an excerpt from the novel ¡Ecue Yamba-O! (which has been translated into English as Blessed be Jesus Christ) by Alejo Carpentier, and adapted to Abakuá by Valdés Bernal (323). This passage illustrates the initiation rites of a neophyte:

Since Abakuá seems to be a simple, ritualistic, structureless argot, perhaps the next task for folklorists and linguists is to determine the origin of its many non-Efik words. We already know that some items exhibit certain phonological characteristics not found in Efik such as the presence of word-initial [p] or [h]. Many other words are obvious loans, for instance, the word moropo 'head' is also found as molopo which may be originally from Kafir, a southern language in Africa (cf. Alúm et al. 1985: 273 n. 9). Etymogical studies or studies on Abakuá use in Cuban society may be the most fruitful avenues, and perhaps the only ones, of future linguistic research on Abakuá.

Abakuá. Cuestionario.

¿Cómo se dice?

1. el rey mata la lagartija

2. yo no hablo con el rico

3. todos los días el pordiosero habla con un rico

4. ellos siempre hablan con una persona honesta

5. nosotros no hablamos del brujo

6. la mala mujer está robándose las ropas

7. ella roba la ropa

8. tú comes arenque cuando quieres

9. si ellos llegan ellas comen bacalao en casa

10. cada día el brujo habla con el muerto

11. el hombre está agarrando la rana por la pata

12. el doctor le agarra los testículos al hombre

13. nosotros buscamos la pistola

14. Uds. no nos buscan el cuaderno a nosotros

15. los niñas están buscando el tigre del parque

16. el amigo le lleva el ñame a la mujer

17. el amigo lo lleva (el ñame)

18. la mujer la trae (la ropa)

19. el jefe siempre lamenta la muerte del brujo

20. nosotros vamos al baquiné

21. yo no voy al baquiné porque estoy cansado

22. ellos murieron en la guerra

23. siempre le revelo mi secreto a las mujeres

24. cuando tu estás triste no terminas el trabajo

25. estás loco

26. estamos muy cansados

27. están alegres porque la mujer no vino

28. el hermano trabaja para el médico

29. ellos no quieren tomar agua

30. no queremos traer la lechuga

31. Le trae el gato a la mujer

32. ellos están durmiendo

Abakuá (pretérito y reflexivos, etc.)

1. el rey mató la lagartija porque quería comérsela

2. yo hablé con el rico cuando entró en la casa

3. ellos hablaron con una persona honesta

4. ella no se robó las ropas del hombre

5. nosotros siempre comíamos arenque

6. el brujo no habló con el muerto

7. tú lamentaste la muerte del brujo

8. ella agarró unas ranas para el doctor

9. nosotros le trajimos la piedra al hombre

10. yo fui a buscar la escoba

11. ella siempre iba al cementerio para hablar

12. yo siempre comía en la cocina de mi casa

13. el rey entrará en el pueblecito

14. me callaré porque va a hablar el brujo

15. ellos hablarán de una persona honesta

16. ella irá al cementerio

17. el hermano quiere que ella trabaje para el médico

18. ellos quieren que tomemos agua

19. ella le dice que traiga el pavo

20. tú prohíbes que yo mate la cucaracha

21. siempre me levanto temprano

22. tú te acuestas tarde todos los días

23. ella se acuesta temprano todas las noches

24. nosotros nos bañamos en el baño

25. cada día nos vestimos antes de salir

26. los hombres siempre se peinaban el pelo

27. a ellos no les gustaba peinarse

28. quieren desayunarse antes de salir

Abakuá (imperativos y pasivas)

1. mira al hombre

2. no busquen el doctor

3. no lo busquen

4. corta el boniato

5. córtalo

6. escucha a la mala mujer

7. no la escuche

8. busquen el plátano

9. hablemos con los brujos

10. la lagartija es matada por el rey

11. las mujeres fueron matadas por el brujo

12. la ropa son robadas por los hombres

13. la muerte del brujo fue lamentada por la mujer

14. la pata de la rana será cortada por el niño

15. nosotros seremos juzgados por el brujo

Preguntas, sí-no

1. ¿ya comiste?

2. ¿ellos vinieron anoche?

3. ¿hiciste el trabajo?

4. ¿trabajó ella con los muchachos?

5. ¿desayunó Ud. temprano?

Preguntas con pronombres interrogativos

1. ¿Quién fue al cine?

María fue al cine/María fue la mujer que fue al mercado.

2. ¿Quién se comió el pescado?

El animal que comió el pescado fue el tiburón

El tiburón fue el que se comió el pescado

Objecto directo

3. ¿A quién viste?

Fue a Juan a quien vi

Juan fue a quien vi

4. ¿Qué hiciste?

Lo que hice fue vender el carro

Vender el carro fue lo que hice

Objecto indirecto

5. ¿A quién le enviaste el dinero?

No conozco a la mujer a quien le envié el dinero

6. ¿A cuál dios le rezaste?

El dios al que le recé fue Alá

Alá fue el dios al que le recé

Genitivo

7. ¿De quién era el carro que manejaste?

El hombre, cuyo carro yo manejé, se murió ayer

Locativo

8. ¿Adónde fuiste?

Adonde fui era lejos de aquí

Temporal

9. ¿Cuándo llegaste?

El día que llegamos él no estaba en casa

Instrumental

10. Este es el azadón con que aré todo el conuco

Asociativo

11. Este es el hombre con quien trabajo

Conjuntivo

12. Este es el hombre con quien él y yo iremos a África

Benefactivo

13. Este es el hombre para quien trabajo

Subordinación

Propósito

1. Fue al mercado para vender los mangos (razón)

2. Fue al mercado porque quería vender los mangos (condición)

3. Si él vende los mangos comprará arroz

4. Si hubiera vendido los mangos, habría comprado arroz

5. Si vendiera los mangos, compraría arroz

Temporal

5. Después de vender los mangos, compró arroz

6. Una vez que vendió los mangos, compró arroz

Concesivo

7. Aunque el trató de vender los mangos, no pudo

Concesivo-condición

8. Aún si el vendiera los mangos, no habría comprado el arroz

Foco y Énfasis

9. Es Juan quien quiere vender los mangos

Pseudo-hendidas

10. Mango es lo que él quiere vender

Tópico

11. Juan, él quiere vender los mangos

12. En cuanto a Juan, él quiere vender los mangos

Preguntas indirectas

13. No sé quién quiere ir

14. No sé adónde él fue

15. No saben por qué lo dicen

Complementos

16. Me acabo de enterar que ella murió

17. Se me olvidó ir a trabajar

18. Se me olvidó que ella se murió

19. Me sorprende que él haya vendido el carro

20. Que él haya vendido el carro me sorprende

21. Le molesta que su esposa no esté en casa todavía

22. Le dije que fuera al mercado

23. Quiero ir a la Habana

24. Les gusta ir a la Habana

25. Quiero que ella se haga doctor

26. El que Juan haya ido a la Habana a trabajar le molesta a su mamá.

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Carpentier, Alejo. La música en Cuba. Cuba: La Habana, 1961.

Castellanos, Israel. La jerga de los ñáñigos. Habana: Editorial Sol, 1916.

Lewis, Oscar, Ruth Lewis, and Susan Rigdon. Living the Revolution. Urbana, Illinois: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1977-78.

López Valdés, Rafael L. Ms. «Elementos para una caracterización de los cultos populares de origen africano en Cuba».

López Valdés, Rafael. «La sociedad secreta abakuá en un grupo de obreros portuarios». Actas de Etnología y Folklore 2 (1966): 5-25.

Muller-Bergh, Klaus. «Indagación del vanguardismo en las Antillas: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, Haití». Prosa hispánica de vanguardia, ed. Fernando Burgos. Madrid: Edición Orígenes, 1986.

Naro, Anthony. «Pidginization, creolization, and natural change». Revista Brasileira de Linguistica 5.1 (1978): 123-38.

Ortiz, Fernando. Glosario de afronegrismos. Habana: Imprenta El Siglo XX, 1924.

Quesada Miranda, Cándida. «Remanentes de una lengua africana utilizada por la sociedad secreta de los abakuá en Cuba». Islas 45 (1973): 145-246.

Roche y Monteagudo, Rafael. La policía y sus misterios en Cuba. Habana, 1925.

Sankoff, Lillian. The Social Life of Language. Pennsylvania: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1980.

Sosa Rodríguez, Enrique. Los ñáñigos. Cuba: Ediciones Casa de las Américas, 1982.

Simmons, D. The Diary of Antera Duke. Efik Traders of Old Calabar, ed. Darryl Forde. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1956.

Valdés Bernal, Sergio. «Sobre locuciones y refranes afrocubanos». Beitrage zur Romanischen Philologie 15.2 (1976): 321-28.

Hispania [Publicaciones periódicas]. Volume 71, Number 1, March 1988