Santería (Lucumí)

Overview

Santería, also called La Regla Lucumí or the "religion of the orishas", grew up in 19th-century Cuba among enslaved Yorùbá people, there called Lucumí, who paired their orisha deities with the saints of Spanish Catholicism. It is not a static import of African practice but a new, dynamic religion shaped by the conditions of slavery and Cuban Creole life. Devotees build personal relationships with the orishas through divination, sacrifice, initiation and mediumship, seeking protection, wisdom and help in crisis. Santería combines Yorùbá and Spanish Catholic religious traditions, above all in linking saints with orisha spirits, and most of its Cuban practitioners also consider themselves Catholic. After Cuba's 1959 revolution, large numbers of Cubans carried the religion to Miami, New York and beyond, and it has since spread well past its original Cuban-American community.^{[1–4, 6, 11–13]}

History

Formation under slavery c. 1790s–1860s

Yorùbá people from south-western Nigeria, enslaved and shipped to Cuba in large numbers mainly between 1790 and 1865, were known there as Lucumí, and their worship of the orichas became La Regla Lucumí, or Santería. Rather than a frozen survival of West African religion, it grew as a new Afro-Caribbean tradition, reshaped again and again by the needs of enslaved and later free Creole communities. A related tradition, Palo Monte, grew the same way among Cuba's enslaved Bantu-speaking Congolese.^{[3–4, 9]}

Saints and orishas 19th century

The name "Santería" began as a Spanish term for the popular cult of saints and of the Virgin Mary; colonial Cubans applied it to the links Lucumí devotees drew between their orishas and Catholic saints, such as the orisha Ochún with Cuba's patron, Our Lady of Charity. Scholars differ on whether this reflected a real identification between African and European spiritual beings or was a way of concealing African worship under Catholic images, and Santería is generally described as a syncretic, hybrid religion on this basis.^[14–15]

Exile after the revolution 1959–1980s

After Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution, hundreds of thousands of Cubans left the island over the following decades, and many who practised Santería settled in Miami and New York, continuing their religion there. Once practised mainly by poor, Black Cubans and viewed with hostility by the Cuban state, Santería has since spread to people of many ethnic and economic backgrounds, and Cuba's government has grown more tolerant of it.^{[13, 16]}

Legal recognition in the United States 1987–1993

The city of Hialeah, Florida, passed ordinances against animal sacrifice, and a local Santería church challenged them. In 1993 the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck the ordinances down in Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. Hialeah, upholding devotees' right to practise the rite.^[17]

Key moments

1. c. 1750 CEAfrican religions cross the Atlantic · West and Central Africa to the Americas

Beliefs

Orisha · oricha

deities

Santería devotees hold personal relationships with the orishas, who offer protection, wisdom and success in exchange for devotion, and who guide people through crisis. Worship includes songs and prayers in Yorùbá, and drumming is held to speak for the orishas during ceremony.^[6–7]

Lucumí · Lucumí

the Cuban name for Yorùbá people and their religion

Lucumí names both the enslaved Yorùbá of colonial Cuba and the religion their descendants built, more formally called La Regla Lucumí or La Regla de Ocha.^[3]

Palo Monte

a related Afro-Cuban tradition of Bantu origin

Distinct from Santería but often practised alongside it, Palo Monte is one of two religions that survived in Cuba among the enslaved: the Yorùbá's Santería, and the Bantu-speaking Congolese's Palo Monte. A palero's practice centres on the spirits of the dead, held to be "fixed" inside iron pots called gangas.^[9]

Practice

Ifá divination and sacrifice · cult of Ifá

A trained priest, a babalawo, divines through the fall of consecrated palm nuts to reveal an orisha's answer to a seeker's question. Most consultations prescribe some sacrifice or offering to the orisha involved, and babalawos usually also perform the animal sacrifices at Santería initiations.^[8]

Initiation and mediumship

Divination may reveal that a particular orisha has claimed a devotee as its child, leading to initiation: in the "crowning" ceremony the orisha's symbols are placed on the initiate's head, making them an olorisha, one who "has the orisha". At drum dances called bembés, drumming is held to speak for the orishas, and olorishas may lose ordinary consciousness and become mediums through whom the orisha speaks and acts.^[7]

People

Places

Havana

CUB

Cuba's capital and, with its surrounding region, the historic centre of Santería's formation among Lucumí and other Afro-Cuban communities.^[2]

Hialeah

USA

A Miami-area city whose attempt to ban animal sacrifice by a local Santería church reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1993.^[17]

Common misconceptions

Glossary

Lucumí · Lucumí

The Cuban name for enslaved Yorùbá people and their descendants, and for the religion also called Santería or La Regla de Ocha.^[3]

Orisha · oricha

A Yorùbá-descended deity honoured in Santería, traditionally paired with a Catholic saint.^[6]

Olorisha

An initiated devotee who "has the orisha": one who has undergone the crowning ceremony and may become its medium.^[7]

Babalawo

A priest of the cult of Ifá who divines through consecrated palm nuts and usually performs Santería's animal sacrifices.^[8]

Bembé

A ceremony of drumming and dance at which olorishas may enter trance and become mediums for their patron orisha.^[7]

Palo Monte

A related Afro-Cuban tradition of Bantu origin, centred on spirits of the dead fixed in iron pots called gangas.^[9]