How the midwives Shiphrah and Puah mock the violence of empire
They use Pharaoh’s tools to dismantle oppression.
When I first picked up a copy of Miguel De La Torre’s The Quest for the Cuban Christ as a seminarian, I was looking forward to reading about Jesus and my foremothers and forefathers. Needless to say, my excitement quickly dissipated when I read the first page: “Women were raped. Children were disemboweled. Men fell prey to the invaders’ swords.”
The story of mi gente involves the story of the native Cubans—the Taínos—being invaded and tortured by Spain. Worse, it involves Spain using their imported “Christ” to justify the greed for gold and glory. Spain exploited and oppressed the so-called heathens they encountered in the name of this “Christ,” who supported the ethnocide and genocide of the Taínos as well as the forced transportation of hundreds of thousands of enslaved African people to the island.
Ethnocide, genocide, slavery, and forced relocation in the name of Christianity aren’t unique to Cuban history; they describe the histories of Native people across the globe. For centuries, scripture has been used and misused to justify such atrocities.
