Sacred Swagger and Its Social Order

Chapter 3 explores how sacred choreographies of Black masculinity and conceptualizations of sovereign territory coded during slavery are conjured and linked in rumba. The way rumba groups showcase the genre’s Abakuá heritage, and the controversary of its simultaneous popular appeal for Black male youth and rejection by dominant white society, highlights the politics of virtuous manhood and social order in Cuba. The chapter presents key local terms to describe the gendered discourses that signal, protect, and deflect forms of racialized economic exclusion. The swagger of Abakuá sacred fraternities is theorized as repositioning Black male youth vis-à-vis structural economic barriers and their essentialized association with social danger.