Santería

Since the late 20th century, some practitioners have emphasized a "Yorubization" process to remove Roman Catholic influences and created forms of Santería closer to traditional Yoruba religion.

Practitioners of Santería are primarily found in Cuba's La Habana and Matanzas provinces, although communities exist across the island and abroad, especially among the Cuban diasporas of Mexico and the United States.

These initiates serve as diviners and healers for a much larger range of adherents of varying levels of fidelity, making the precise numbers of those involved in Santería difficult to determine.

[32] It has absorbed elements from many cultures that it has encountered,[33] such as that of the Chinese migrants who came to Cuba in the 19th century,[34] while in continental North America, Santería has also incorporated influences from Central American and Mexican religions as well as from New Age and modern Pagan practices.

[80] He is depicted as being black on one side and red on the other,[81] and practitioners will frequently place a cement head decorated with cowrie shells that represents Eleguá behind their front door, guarding the threshold to the street.

[99] Babalú Ayé, who is associated with disease, is often identified with the Catholic Saint Lazarus, who rose from the dead,[77] while Changó is conflated with Santa Barbara because they both wear red.

[103] Santería's focus is on cultivating a reciprocal relationship with the oricha,[60] with adherents believing that these deities can intercede in human affairs and help people if they are appeased.

[149] In the U.S., some African American adherents have contrasted what they regard as the African-derived ethos of Santería with the non-African origins of Christianity,[150] thus adopting it as a religion readily combined with black nationalism.

[202] New otanes undergo a bautismo ("baptism") rite,[199] entailing them being washed in osain, a mixture of herbs and water, and then "fed" with animal blood.

[203] Material may be selected based on the tastes of the adherent; anthropologists have observed practitioners who have included Taoist figurines[207] or statues of wizards,[208] on their altars.

[215] Alternatively, many practitioners of Santería—like those who follow Palo—will have a rinconcito ("little corner"), a small area in which they collect together assorted objects, often those typically found in a household, as a material manifestation of the dead.

[224] If this fails to materialise, practitioners may resort to several explanations: that the details of the ritual were incorrect, that the priest or priestess carrying out the rite lacked sufficient aché, or that the wrong ebbó was provided for the situation.

[74] Some practitioners describe the killing of animals as an acceptable substitute to human sacrifice,[230] and in Cuba there have been persistent rumours of children being sacrificed in Santería rites.

[260] This name often incorporates elements indicating the initiate's tutelary oricha; devotees of Yemajá for instance usually include omí ("water"), while those of Changó often have obá ("king").

[284] Although a largely orally-transmitted tradition,[285] santeros and santeras often emphasise teaching in a non-verbal manner, encouraging their initiates to learn through taking part in the ritual activities.

[337] Particular focuses of Santería healing include skin complaints, gastrointestinal and respiratory problems, sexually transmitted infections, and issues of female reproduction; some practitioners provide concoctions to induce abortion.

[342] Adherents also often believe that humans can harm one another through supernatural means, either involuntarily, by giving them the mal de ojo (evil eye),[343] or deliberately, through brujería (witchcraft).

[358] In Cuba, protective rituals from Santería have often been invoked in hospitals to prevent the cambio de vida ("life switch"), a practice by which the ailments of a sick person are believed to be transferred to another individual, often without the latter's knowledge.

[382] As part of this, a funeral mass is held in a Roman Catholic church nine days after the individual has died to ensure that their soul successfully travels to the realm of the spirits.

[383] A year of additional rites for the dead individual follow, a period ended with the levantamiento de platos, the breaking of a dish, to symbolise the deceased's final departure from the realm of the living.

[382] As well as having been influenced by Spiritism,[384] Santería is often intertwined with Espiritismo, a Puerto Rican tradition focused on contacting the dead;[385] this is particularly the case in areas such as New York and New Jersey.

[387] Various santeros or santeras are believed capable of communicating with spirits;[388] seances conducted for this purpose are called misas espirituales ("spiritual masses") and are led by mortevas ("deaders") who are usually women.

[397] To provide a new labor source for the sugar, tobacco, and coffee plantations they had established on Cuba, the Spanish then turned to buying slaves sold at West African ports.

[141] As Santería formed, separate West African orisha cults were reconstituted into a single religious system,[413] one which had a newly standardized pantheon of oricha.

[449] Priests of Santería, Palo, and Ifá all took part in government-sponsored tours for foreigners desiring initiation into such traditions, while Afro-Cuban floor shows became common in Cuban hotels.

After being initiated in Cuba, he established a temple in Harlem before relocating with his followers in 1970 to a community in Sheldon, South Carolina, that they called the Yoruba Village of Oyotunji.

[461] The scholars of religion Anibal Argüelles Mederos and Ileana Hodge Limonta estimated that in the early 21st century around 8% of Cubans were initiates of Santería, which would amount to between 800,000 and 900,000 people.

[480] Based on his ethnographic work in New York City during the 1980s, Samuel Gregory noted that there Santería was not a "religion of the poor", but contained a disproportionately high percentage of middle-class people such as teachers, social workers, and artists.

[481] The American Religious Identification Survey of 2001 estimated that there were then approximately 22,000 practitioners in the U.S.,[482] although in the mid-1990s the scholar Joseph Murphy suggested that hundreds of thousands of people in the country had engaged with Santería in some form, often as clients.

When the International Afro-Caribbean Festival in Veracruz was launched in 1994, it showcased art and ritual by Mexican santeros/santeras, although this brought public protests from Roman Catholic organizations, who regarded such rites as Satanic, and animal welfare groups, who deemed the sacrifices to be inhumane.