Mostrando 7545 resultados

Eva Fernández Bravo (1926-1997) was a Cuban spiritual practitioner. She was born into a large family of children and described herself as a “Marasa Twa” or “Marasa Dosa,” which is a term that comes from Haitian Vodou and means that she was the third child after a set of twins and had special spiritual capabilities. Fernández’s spiritism was both “Caridad” and “Cruzado.” Nancy B. Mikelsons, a scholar of Afro-Cuban religions who knew Fernández for many years, writes, “Eva practiced Caridad, usually to protect the health or solve health-related problems of those who asked for help. Practitioners of Spiritism Caridad do not ask for a fee. Whoever comes is assisted freely” (229); she furthers, “Espiritismo Cruzado contains elements of all the historic religious tumultuousness of eastern Cuba” (230), that is, it is a combination of African Yoruba Santería, other Afro-Cuban religions, Catholicism, and Amerindian sources.

Fernández’s connection with spirit began at a young age to her mother’s dismay – she was a devout Catholic and disapproved. Upon the death of an elderly blind man who was her friend, Fernández often visited the cemetery and picked flowers and it was here that she nurtured the presence of spirit. She was unsurprised when the spirits came to her as she knew her grandfather to be a spiritist. Around the same time, Fernández’s sensibilities with regards to charity were formed. She fostered a friendship with an old woman who was a former slave of her grandfather’s; “Eva went with this woman through her hometown of Sagua la Grande begging for money. Her mother disapproved of Eva’s friendship with the ex-slave, but Eva said that this woman loved her and helped her” (Mikelsons 233). For a long time afterwards, Fernández had no further interactions with spirit, but continued to hold Santa (Saint) Barbara close to her heart, describing her as “her friend” (Fernández 18). She married and had six children and when her last son was born – by which time she was twenty-four – spirit returned to her and never left.

In the course of her life, Fernández performed countless ceremonies; she has been commended by the scholars who recorded the details of these ceremonies for her generosity in trying to help others, as Mikelsons relays: “What was truly heroic about Eva was that no one left her ceremonies without the saint/spirit having spoken to them directly and personally. People lined up as if they were going to receive Communion … Through her, the spirit had something personal and significant to say to each individual, however briefly … The coming and going of the Orisha/saints at Eva’s ceremonies were among the quietist and most gentle of all the spirit possessions I have witnessed over the years” (232).

In winter 1996, Fernández left Cuba for North America for the first time and traveled to York University in Toronto, Canada, in order to present a talk, titled “Faith, Hope, and Charity” concerning her spiritual mission, saying to the audience “I came here today because I am driven by the spirits to seek out faith, to unite us, to strengthen the chain because faith, faith is now divided … I am proud to look back, honoring those who brought the orisha to the world of the Caribbean and the Americas” (pp. 17-21). That talk, along with the talks of fellow practitioners Yvonne B. Drakes and Deloris Seiveright, is published in Patrick Taylor’s edited volume Nation Dance: Religion, Identity, and Cultural Difference in the Caribbean under the title, “Across the Waters: Practitioners Speak.” The work as a whole is dedicated to Fernández as, in Taylor’s words, “she is a symbol of the strength of Caribbean spirituality and its ability to reconcile difference without homogenizing the human spirit” (8).

In 1996 she performed her last Santa Barbara ritual (she died in October 1997 in Santiago de Cuba), in which almost 150 people received individual advice, council, and blessing from Santa Barbara through Eva. Even after her “deincarnation,” Fernández’s legacy is safeguarded by her family members who learned from her while she was still alive and continue her work: “When Eva needed ritual assistance, her granddaughter was at her side in an instant. This beautiful young woman was eleven years old when I met her. Lucy had been ‘training’ to share and eventually assume Eva’s spiritual responsibilities since childhood. Eva’s grandson, José, also occasionally assisted her, and he too is developing Espiritismo capabilities” (Mikelsons 231-232). At the time of her death, Fernández had six children, thirteen grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren.

Graciella Cruz-Taura is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Florida Atlantic University. She specializes in the cultural and intellectual history of Latin America, with a specific focus on Cuban and Cuban-American studies. Dr. Cruz-Taura arrived in the U.S. from Cuba in 1962 and completed her PhD in History at the University of Miami in 1978 with a thesis titled: “The Impact of the Castro Revolution on Cuban Historiography.” She has authored, edited, and provided translations for a variety of scholarly works from books to stand-alone articles and chapters. In 1989 she co-edited Outside Cuba/Fuera de Cuba: Contemporary Cuban Visual Artists and in 2009 she published Espejo de paciencia y Silvestre de Balboa en la historia de Cuba. Cruz-Taura also completed an English-language edition of the latter work with the help of a D.F. Schmidt College Scholarly and Creative Activity Fellowship. Topics of her articles have included women’s rights and the Cuban constitution of the mid-twentieth century, education in Cuba, national identity in Cuba, and work on specific individuals such as José Martí. The breadth of Dr. Cruz-Taura’s research and teaching is vast – extending from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the present. Adjacent to her writerly endeavors, Cruz-Taura has curated exhibits devoted to Cuban history and the Cuban diaspora; for example, in 2005 she curated the exhibition: “In Search of Freedom: Cuban Exiles and the U.S. Refugee Program,” which drew from the collection of Cuban Refugee Center Records at the Cuban Heritage Collection and was originally displayed at Miami-Dade County’s Stephen P. Clark Building in 2005 and later, in abridged form, in the Roberto C. Goizueta Pavilion in the Otto G. Richter Library in 2011. From 2003 to 2016, Cruz-Taura served on the Board of the AMIGOS of the Cuban Heritage Collection. She is known as an advocate and authority pertaining to the Cuban-American population and has been recognized for her service to the South Florida community in particular in various capacities.

Julia Dawson is a feminist activist and retired lawyer from Miami, FL. Born and raised in Miami, Dawson has a long history of involvement with the feminist movement, primarily with the National Organization for Women (NOW). She has served on the board of numerous advocacy organizations in her capacity as both a feminist activist and lawyer; for example, she served as President for three Florida NOW chapters. In addition, Dawson has served on the Board of Directors of the Dade County Chapter of the Florida Association for Women Lawyers and the Board of SAVE Dade, which led the fight to successfully pass Miami-Dade County’s LGBTQ-inclusive Human Rights Ordinance and then defeat repeal efforts in 1998. After her retirement, Dawson was awarded a Stanley Milledge Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Civil Liberties Union Miami Chapter (ACLU) and Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava proclaimed June 4, 2019 as “Julia Dawson Day,” stating: “Julia has left an indelible mark on the social justice community in Miami-Dade and we will miss her tremendously … In her honor, we will continue the good fight for equity and justice for all” (qtd. in DeVane).

Dawson began organizing with the feminist movement in the early 1970s, quickly having a dramatic impact. For example, in 1975 during her tenure as President of NOW South Brevard Chapter she established the South Brevard Women’s Center, which remains open today. Later, at age thirty-five, she entered the Antioch School of Law in Washington, DC, graduating in 1979. After graduating, she returned to Miami and has pursued fighting for women’s rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, and civil rights ever since. Her career as an activist has taken various forms including on-the-ground protesting, chairing panels and committees, pushing for legislative reform, and publishing reports related to her endeavors – all in the name of anti-sexism, anti-racism, and anti-homophobia. Her written scholarship largely relates to her role as the vice-chair of the ACLU Miami Chapter’s Police Practices Committee (PPC). Founded in January 2011 after the fatal shooting of seven Black men in seven months by Miami Police officers, the committee sought to investigate and review all police policies that may have contributed to shootings and pushed the Department of Justice (DOJ) to thoroughly investigate the incidences, which eventually led to the release of a 2013 report that stated the MPD used excessive and deadly force against the victims. Dawson conducted interviews and wrote reports on police practices, such as the use of body cameras. While some have received compensation for the unlawful deaths of their family members – for example, Sheila McNeil, whose son Travis McNeil was shot and killed while unarmed by a Miami police officer in 2011, received a settlement in 2015 – the families are as yet all waiting for justice in the form of criminal charges against the offending officers.

In addition to being recognized in the form of community-based honors, Dawson’s work has been recorded in academic scholarship – most notably in relation to women’s reproductive rights advocacy. In 1994 she founded the Miami Clinic Access Project, which organizes pro-choice community activists to defend local abortion clinics, thereby safeguarding women’s autonomy with regards to their reproductive rights. In her ethnographic work relating to pro-choice activism, Beverly Yuen Thompson discusses the problems faced by the “A Choice for Women” clinic in North Miami Beach, which serves women from as far as the Caribbean who sometimes have limited access to abortion clinics as some islands have more restrictive abortion laws than the U.S. Faced with confrontations with pro-life protesters who, in the words of Dawson, “have stated openly that their objective is to close [the] clinic down,” the MCAP attempt to defend the patients. Of one such confrontation that she witnessed, Thompson narrates: “The clinic was experiencing Saturday morning protests at which pro-life activists would approach and harass clinic patients as they entered the property. Dawson was able to organize a

group of committed local activists to defend the clinic each Saturday morning. MCAP members would remain at the clinic until all patients had left the premises, usually leaving before the pro-life prayer circle had ended” (17).

Though she is now officially retired as a lawyer, Dawson continues to remain active on issues pertaining to social justice and remains on the board of organizations such as the Miami Workers Center and Serve the People. She is the mother to a daughter and a son and also a grandmother.

Written by Laura Bass, UGrow Fellow for the Department of Manuscripts and Archives Management, 2019-2020

DeVane, Mia. “Miami-Dade Commission Honors Social Justice Advocate Dawson.” Miami Community Newspapers. 17 June 2019, communitynewspapers.com/featured/miami- dade-commission-honors-social-justice-advocate-dawson/.

Thompson, Beverly Yuen. “Defending a Choice for Women: Feminist Video Ethnography.” Feminist Activism in Academia: Essays on Personal, Political and Professional Change, edited by Ellen C. Mayock and Domnica Radulescu, McFarland and Company, 2010, pp. 11-26.