Santeria

[From American Spanish santería, worship of saints, from Spanish santo, saint, from Old Spanish, from Late Latin sānctus. See saint.]

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Santería is a religious tradition brought to the United States by immigrants from Cuba in the latter half of the twentieth century. It originated among the Yoruba peoples of present-day Nigeria. The Yoruba were enslaved in large numbers in the first decades of the nineteenth century and brought to Cuba to labor in the island's expanding sugar industry. Perhaps as many as 500,000 Yoruba men and women came to Cuba, where they were called "Lucumi." The Lucumi established a strong ethnic presence in Cuba and created important cultural institutions that survived their enslavement and flourish today.

The word "santería" means "way of the saints" in Spanish and reflects the tendency of the Lucumi to correspond their deities from Africa, called "orishas," with the saints of the Roman Catholic traditions into which they were indoctrinated. This tragic history of forced acculturation has led some contemporary practitioners to reject the name "santería" as a colonial misnomer for an independent African tradition that might preferably be called "Lucumi religion," after its ethnic heritage, or "Orisha religion," after its deities.

The orishas are personal, cosmic forces that inhabit and energize the world of nature: mineral, vegetable, animal, and human. In theory, there are innumerable orishas—1,600 is a traditional number used to show the vastness of the pantheon—but in practice there are some sixteen that are widely known and venerated. Each orisha has a distinct personality, and is approached through its own songs and dances with appropriate ritual foods, plants, and altar displays. The orisha Ogun, for example, is a hard, masculine deity, who as the cosmic blacksmith transforms the world through metals and tools. The orisha Oshun, by contrast, is a cool, feminine deity of the river, who works through the pliant, but no less powerful medium of water. Each orisha offers blessings and benefits to its devotees ranging from spiritual experience to practical assistance in finding jobs or maintaining health. The lore of the orishas contains a very large pharmacopoeia and this tradition has been of inestimable aid in providing medical and mental health care to the urban poor. In the late twentieth century, hospitals in Miami and New York established cooperative programs with orisha devotees to try to meet the needs of people often poorly served by established health institutions.

Since its introduction to the United States in the latter half of the twentieth century, the veneration of the orishas has spread well beyond the original Afro-Cuban population. In the early years of the twenty-first century, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and other Latin Americans, as well as significant numbers of African Americans and white Americans have embraced it. It is difficult to estimate the number of practitioners, as there are few public organizations or groups of congregations beyond the individual "houses," which typically claim twenty or thirty active participants. In the United States, the number of initiated priests and priestesses may number 50,000, while active participants are likely ten times that. As for those who might consult a priest or priestess for help, they number in the millions. Kindred orisha traditions are practiced throughout Latin America, particularly in Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela, making "santería" a world religion of growing influence.

Bibliography

Brandon, George. Santería from Africa to the New World: The Dead Sell Memories. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.

Murphy, Joseph M. Santería: An African Religion in America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1988.