Santería

Santería, the Spanish name for a system of religious practices of African origin brought to Cuba in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In that period hundreds of thousands of Africans were enslaved to work in the thriving sugar industries of the island. A plurality of these arrivals shared a similar culture and language called Yoruba by English ethnographers and Lucumí in Cuba. Since they came in such large numbers in such a short period of time, the Lucumí were able to maintain and adapt many of their cultural institutions, not the least of which were the complex theology and liturgies for a pantheon of spirits called orishas (Orixás). The Lucumí found correspondences between their orishas and the saints of popular Cuban Catholic piety, often masking their secret and suppressed traditions with the public faces of the saints. Thus, the tradition came to be known as Santería, the way of the saints.

The name Santería is not always acceptable to many present-day practitioners, since it has so long borne, like the North American use of "voodoo," the misrepresentations of outsiders. By its reference to the Catholic saints, the name also implies an admixture of Catholic elements to African traditions that present-day practitioners would argue are purely African. Alternatives such as la regla de ocha (the order of the orishas), la religión Lucumí, or simply "Lucumí" or "Orisha" are used.

The core of the Cuban orisha tradition is the development of an intimate relationship between a human being and his or her patron spirit, or orisha. The relationship often begins when an individual is so troubled by problems such as ill health or lack of money that he or she will consult a priest or priestess of the orishas. The priest and priestess will have been trained as diviners and, depending on their rank, they will utilize a variety of means to determine the spiritual source of and solutions to the seeker's problem. All priests and priestesses are empowered to divine solutions with sixteen cowrie shells called dilogun. The heads-or-tails patterns that result from the fall of the shells reveal the path of action for the seeker to take to resolve his or her problem. A related but more complex system of divination called ifa is reserved for a special male priest called the babalawo, the "father of the mystery." In either system the diagnosis of the problem will lie in the seeker's neglect of his or her patron orisha. The divination will tentatively determine the orisha's identity, and a resolution of the problem will be found in a series of ritual actions culminating in a sacrifice to the orisha.

This opening sacrifice leads toward a growing, reciprocal relationship with the orisha as a human being offers respect, praise, and ritual food while the orisha reciprocates with gifts of power, blessings, and wisdom. As the relationship matures, divination will determine that the orisha seeks a permanent relationship, a kind of marriage in which the human being will become an iyawo, a bride to the spirit. In a lengthy and costly series of ceremonies, the initiate will have the orisha "seated" in his or her "head," thus marking the permanent presence of the spirit within the consciousness of the human being. This asiento (seating) initiation marks the entry of the individual into the orisha priesthood, and he or she is to be called a babalorisha (father in the orisha) or iyalorisha (mother in the orisha). Often enough the Spanish terms santero and santera are applied to this level of priesthood.

The most dramatic encounters with the orishas are found in communal drum and dance ceremonies called bembés. Here, amid elaborate polyrhythms and complex choreography, certain orishas are called to "mount" the heads of their initiates so that they lose consciousness while the orishas use their bodies to join in the ceremony. Manifested in the bodies of their "horses," the orishas sing and dance with the community, offer advice and warnings, and gladden the hearts of their devotees.

Since the Cuban Revolution of 1959, nearly 1 million Cubans have left the island to form communities, primarily on the U.S. mainland and in Puerto Rico and Venezuela. Carried by Cuban babalorishas and iyalorishas, the orisha tradition has undergone a second diaspora, adapting itself to these new environments. Just as it is likely that there are more orisha devotees in the New World than in the Old, so there are probably more in the Cuban diaspora than in Cuba itself. Since every community is autonomous, it is impossible to determine the numbers of practitioners of the tradition. It has grown well beyond its original Cuban community to include Latin Americans of all nationalities and ethnicities, as well as North American blacks and whites.

See alsoAfrican-Latin American Religions: Overview; Syncretism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

William R. Bascom, "The Focus of Cuban Santería," in Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 6, no. 1 (1950): 64-68.

Fernando Ortíz, Los bailes y el teatro de los negros en el folklore de Cuba (1951).

Mercedes Cros Sandoval, La religión afrocubana (1975).

Julio Sánchez, La religión de los orichas (Hato Rey, Puerto Rico: Colección Estudios Afrocaribeños, 1978).

Lydia Cabrera, Koeko iyawó, aprende novicia: Pequeño tratado de regla Lucumí (1980).

Joseph M. Murphy, Santería: An African Religion in America (1988).

Migene González-Wippler, Santería: The Religion (1989).

George Brandon, Santería from Africa to the New World: The Dead Sell Memories (1993).

Additional Bibliography

Ayorinde, Christine. Afro-Cuban Religiosity, Revolution, and National Identity. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004.

Brown, David H. Santería Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Cros Sandoval, Mercedes. Worldview, the Orichas, and Santería: Africa to Cuba and Beyond. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006.

Fernández Olmos, Margarite, and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert. Creole Religions of the Caribbean: An Introduction from Vodou and Santería to Obeah and Espiritismo. New York: New York University Press, 2003.

Hagedorn, Katherine J. Divine Utterances: The Performance of Afro-Cuban Santería. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001.

Pérez Medina, Tomás. La santería cubana: El camino de Osha: Ceremonias, ritos, y secretos. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 1998.

Wedel, Johan. Santería Healing: A Journey into the Afro-Cuban World of Divinities, Spirits, and Sorcery. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004.

                                     Joseph M. Murphy