What futures emerge when “syncretism” is no longer treated as religious impurity but as a decolonial practice of survival and accountability? This paper destabilizes syncretism as a colonial category that presumes purity and Christian normativity, arguing instead that Afro-diasporic traditions such as Santería and Vodou represent insurgent forms of sacred world-building under conditions of enslavement and anti-Black violence. Drawing on Charles Stewart and Michael Pye, and engaging Jacqui Alexander’s concept of “divine self-invention” in Pedagogies of Crossing, I interpret syncretic practice as Sacred labor through which Black and Indigenous women cultivate communal memory and embodied resistance.
Turning inward, the paper confronts anti-Blackness within Latine communities, where Afro-diasporic religions are often marginalized or folklorized. I argue that rethinking syncretism becomes an ethical demand: a call to accountability, restorative memory, and pluriversal futures that refuse to reproduce racial and religious hierarchy.