Nationalism, Religion, and Diasporic Identity

Even if Manuel and Mercedes also petitioned the Virgin about other personal concerns—about health and family—they told me that they came to pray for Cuba and Cubans. Even if Lucia sang her songs alone on the grass, ladies lounged in lawn chairs by the water, and Oscar circumambulated the shrine for exercise, they also visited the national patroness inside to bring her their concerns about the Cuban community. In that way they had a great deal in common with almost all other Cuban pilgrims to Our Lady of Charity’s Miami shrine. Despite their differences, they are bound together by their sadness and longing, by the disorientation of exile-and by their common devotion to Our Lady of Charity as national symbol. Men come as well as women. Those who hail from both eastern and western provinces visit. Even the most unpious teenagers, who cannot recall the smells and sights of the island, acknowledge that the shrine is a special place for Cuban exiles. There at the Virgin’s shrine the devout reconnect with the homeland. There they re-create the Cuban community—those on the island and in the diaspora—as an imagined nation.

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