Multisensorial Poetic Dramas of Indeterminate Brujería Rituals

Abstract: This article examines the specific poetic dramas that emerge during brujería altar- opening, exorcism, divination, and healing rituals in Puerto Rico. Drawing on performance, poetics, and drama analytical frameworks, it zooms-in ritual dramas that bring together mediums, clients, deities, the dead, and evil spirits in a joint yet indeterminate ritual event. It traces in detail how different voices speak through the bodies of clients and mediums, and the vocal cords of possessed mediums in a conflation of modes of communication, pleads, duels, revelations, negotiations, and assertions. It shows how mediums entice spirits to actively engage in human affairs by offering material gifts, sounds, and emotionally charged poetic forms of cajoling, arguing, testing, and persuading; and how clients, who are one of the objects/addresses of these intense ritual dramas, respond to such multisensory, somatic forms of attention.