page_title: Santería
section_title: Growing Yorubization and transnational activity
hierarchical_section_title: Santería / History / In Marxist–Leninist Cuba: 1959–present / Growing Yorubization and transnational activity
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: La Havane&#160;: vente d'articles religieux (Santería)
context_page_description: Santería, also known as Regla de Ocha, Regla Lucumí, or Lucumí, is an African diasporic religion that was developed in Cuba between the 16th and 19th centuries. It arose through a process of syncretism between the traditional Yoruba religion of West Africa and the Roman Catholic form of Christianity. There is no central authority in control of the movement, which comprises adherents known as creyente and initiates known as santeros and santeras.
  Santería is polytheistic, involving the veneration of deities known as oricha. These are often identified both as Yoruba gods as well as Roman Catholic saints. Various myths are told about these oricha, which are regarded as subservient to a transcendent creator deity, Olodumare. Each individual is believed to have a specific oricha who has been connected to them since before birth and who informs their personality. Santería's members usually meet in the homes of santeros or santeras to venerate specific oricha at altars set up for that purpose. A central ritual is the toque de santo, in which practitioners drum, sing, and dance to encourage an oricha to possess one of their members.
context_section_description: The Cuban Revolution generated an exodus of many Cubans, who settled in other parts of the Americas, especially the United States, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela. Although initial waves of migrants were predominantly white and middle-class, by the Mariel boatlift exodus of the 1980s the migrants included larger numbers of Afro-Cubans. With an increased Cuban presence in the U.S., Santería began to grow in many large U.S. cities, where it was embraced both by Latino Americans but also European Americans and African Americans. For many African Americans, it was seen as a more authentically African religion than others available to them, especially when purged of European-derived Roman Catholic elements. For some of these individuals, it became a religious wing of the Black Power movement. During the mid-1960s, several African American practitioners established the Yoruba Temple of Harlem.
  In the second half of the twentieth century, there was a growing awareness among santeros/santeras of the trans-national links that their religion had with other orisha-worshipping belief systems in West Africa and the Americas. This was accompanied by growing contact with other orisha-worshippers elsewhere. Collectively, these different movements were increasingly described as the "Orisha Tradition." This process was partly influenced by the 1957 visit to Cuba of the French photographer and ethnographer Pierre Verger, who promoted a pan-Yoruba theology. These transnational links were reinforced when the Ooni of Ife, a prominent Yoruba political and religious leader, visited Cuba in 1987. Cuba's government permitted the formation of the Yoruba Cultural Association, a non-governmental organization, in the early 1990s. In July 2003, Havana hosted the Eighth World Orisha Conference. Various practitioners of Santería made visits to Nigeria to study traditional Yoruba religion there.
  The late twentieth century saw a growth in the yorubización ('Yorubization') of Santería, with attempts made to remove Roman Catholic elements from the religion and make it more closely resemble West African religion. This process was promoted at the International Workshop of Yoruba Culture, which was held in Cuba in 1992. Within Cuba, the Yorubization process was often attributed as reflecting the influence of practitioners in the United States. Cuban cultural nationalists were critical of the Yorubization process, viewing Santería's syncretism as a positive trait and arguing that advocates of Yorubization presented homogenous societies as superior to heterogenous ones. Many Santeros who opposed the reforms highlighted that even in West Africa, orisha-worship never foregrounded ideas of purity and exclusivity. The head of the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba, Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega y Alamino, also opposed the Yorubization process, believing that the Roman Catholic elements of Santería were a positive influence within the religion. The close of the twentieth century also saw adherents of Santería increasingly utilise the internet to promote the religion.
caption: A shop in Havana selling paraphernalia associated with Santería
exif: {"Image Make": "Panasonic", "Image Model": "DMC-TZ30", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "180", "Image YResolution": "180", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 9.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2015:02:03 19:21:42", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 14, 0, 1, 0, 22, 0, ... ]", "Image Tag 0xC6D2": "[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ... ]", "Image Tag 0xC6D3": "[0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, ... ]", "Image ExifOffset": "664", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1302", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7461", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/60", "EXIF FNumber": "33/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "320", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Standard Output Sensitivity", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2015:01:29 22:06:16", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2015:01:29 22:06:16", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "441/128", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "43/10", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4320", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3240", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1176", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "0", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "24", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "High gain up", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal"}