In October, we were contacted by two St. Augustine Beach residents who found something interesting while strolling our local beaches: a message in a bottle!
We invited them to our office to help with finding a date for the bottle as well as opening and conserving the letter. As the bottle came from Havana Club Rum, we thought there could be a Cuban connection. To help us with a literal and cultural translation, we also invited two representatives from the
St. Augustine-Baracoa Friendship Association.
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| The gang's all here! |
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| The moment of un-bottling. |
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| Working to translate the letter. |
We never did decide on an exact date for the bottle, but put it somewhere in the 20th century. While we speculated about all the things the letter could contain (a tale of true love, an epic story of heartbreak, a curse for someone who did the author wrong!), what we found was something a little different altogether.
The letter appears to be part of a Santeria practice - a letter to Yemaya, the goddess of the sea. She has roots in the Yoruba religion and is thought to have been brought to the New World by enslaved peoples as early as the 16th century. We're still working on a full translation, but the letter seems to ask Yamaya to bless the author and send some unpleasantness to those who have done her wrong.
Read more about Yemaya
here.
Words by Emily Jane Murray and images by Robbie Boggs, FPAN Staff.
