Performing Marronage: The Cocorícamo from Cuba to Elias Piña, Dominican Republic

This essay traces the carnival masquerade called the Cocorícamo from Cuba, where it was analyzed by Cuban folklorist Fernando Ortiz, to the Dominican border town of Elias Piña where today it forms part of Maroon Carnival which processes on Good Friday. The Cocorícamo may have traveled through maritime marronage during the nineteenth century when slaves fled Cuba for sanctuary on Hispaniola where slavery had been abolished, ending up in the central frontier which has served as a haven for runaway slaves since the sixteenth century. The Dominican Republic is often said to lack a black consciousness, yet this carnival figure links to marronage in more ways than one since it bears an uncanny resemblance to the costume worn by Dominican maroons within the eighteenth century community of El Maniel who wore horns to fashion a fierce underdog masculine profile. I wish to argue that the fascination with predatory animals within Dominican popular culture should be seen as one of the afterlives of slavery, since “underground” storytelling through animal trickster tales and double voicing is a common feature of black Atlantic vernacular speech. If anti-black racism sought to animalize black folk, nonhuman animals offered an alternative model of personhood based on care which might explain how former slaves seem to have found a model of “becoming human” though becoming animal.