ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the feminine nature of santeria along with other concepts such as alternative kinship, secrecy, deviance, and marginalization, that nurture and facilitate its gay connection in spite of taboos of different aspects of the practice toward homosexuals. It looks specifically at the performative/musical aspect of cross-gender association and shows how santeria rituals involving religious music and dance have become a space for gay identity and interaction in Special Period Cuba. The chapter evaluates and critiques the conceptualization of homosexuality in santeria in the existing literature and introduces a more specific term, effeminate penetrated homosexual (EPH). Since the early 1990s Chango has become a gay icon. The issues that gay Chango fans delighted in and kept emphasizing in the course of conversations was that in the process of syncretism, Chango has been syncretized with a female saint, Santa Barbara. The gays love the fact that the song starts with Santa Barbara, as if claiming 'Chango' is a 'queen'.
