Santería, also called Lucumí or Regla de Ocha, is an Afro-Cuban religious tradition centered on relationships with the orishas, divine powers honored through ritual. It developed in Cuba from religious knowledge carried by enslaved Yoruba-speaking people from West Africa, especially during the nineteenth century. Communities in Cuba gave that knowledge new forms in mutual-aid associations, religious houses, ceremonies and music. Martin Holbraad’s study of Ifá and its relationship to Santería · Beliso-De Jesús’s ethnography of Lucumí practice
Yoruba traditions and African associations in Cuba
Yoruba-speaking people brought religious knowledge to Cuba under the coercion of the Atlantic slave trade. In Cuba, Lucumí came to identify people of Yoruba origin. The word also came to refer to the ritual language and the religious tradition. Afro-Cubans organized cabildos de nación, associations that drew on the model of Spanish Catholic brotherhoods or mutual-aid societies. Lucumí cabildos also sustained forms of ritual organization, including initiation. These institutions gave people a place to maintain relationships, develop practices and pass on knowledge. Beliso-De Jesús on Lucumí identities and the cabildos
One example is the Cabildo Santa Teresa in Matanzas, which Concha-Holmes traces to the nineteenth century. Its founding story remembers two musicians from Oyo, Ño Blas Cardenas and Mauricio Piloto. Concha-Holmes observed Catholic images alongside Yoruba imagery, rhythms and movement. The people she studied also distinguished which practices belonged in particular rites. That detail shows how an association could be home to more than one tradition while its members kept distinctions that mattered in practice. Concha-Holmes’s study of the Cabildo Santa Teresa
Orishas, saints and sacred music
Some orishas are associated with Catholic figures. The notes accompanying the Smithsonian Folkways collection Orishas Across the Ocean identify Ochún with Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre. The same collection documents a song for Ochún in Cuba and Trinidad. The Cuban performance described in the notes uses a lead singer and chorus. In the Trinidad recording, one singer supplies both parts. A connection through a shared song can thus be heard in locally different forms. Smithsonian Folkways recording notes, track 15
Recordings collected by Lydia Cabrera and Josefina Tarafa in Matanzas around 1957 preserve songs and drumming associated with Lucumí ritual. One track lists Inés Sotomayor singing a song of homage to the orisha. Notes to another recording describe her leading a group in a song for Yemayá in the bembé drum style. She also led an annual festival at the former Arrati sugar mill, where descendants of enslaved people honored ancestors and orishas associated with that place. The archive documents a named practitioner and the different settings in which she helped sustain the tradition. Smithsonian Folkways, Matanzas recordings and track list · Notes on Sotomayor and the recordings for Yemayá
Divination and learning within a religious house
Initiation establishes relationships through which a person learns and takes on responsibilities. Martin A. Tsang describes how a libreta, a ritual notebook, can record counsel from divination at a priesthood initiation. The person who receives it can add to it over time. Practitioners also copy notebooks by elders and ritual specialists. This gives one example of how writing and personal instruction work together to carry knowledge within a lineage. Tsang’s study of ritual notebooks, abstract
Divination also connects Regla de Ocha with Ifá, a closely related tradition with its own initiation and specialists. In his research in Havana, Martin Holbraad describes babalawos, fully initiated Ifá specialists who interpret divinatory signs and may officiate in some Santería ceremonies. The two traditions share many stories and devotional references. The specific kind of initiation matters because it helps determine which ritual responsibilities a person can assume. Holbraad’s field research on Ifá oracles in Havana
Religious life beyond Cuba
Research by Beliso-De Jesús between 2004 and 2011 included practitioners in Havana and Matanzas as well as New York, Miami, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. The study describes relations between Cuban and U.S.-based priests and differences over access to ritual knowledge. These connections show how people can belong to a religious network that crosses borders while learning in a particular house or lineage. Beliso-De Jesús’s study and fieldwork note
A public dispute in Florida shows one way a community sought space to practice. In 1987 the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye announced plans for a house of worship in Hialeah. The city passed ordinances restricting animal sacrifice. In 1993 the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated the challenged measures, concluding that they targeted religious practice and failed to apply generally to comparable conduct. The ruling concerns those ordinances and the circumstances in which the church challenged them. Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520
Conclusion
Regla de Ocha developed in Cuba as people of Yoruba origin and their descendants formed communities under the conditions of slavery and its aftermath. Cabildos offered a setting for collective life. Religious houses and ritual notebooks passed on specific responsibilities, while songs and ceremonies kept relationships with orishas and ancestors present in particular places. As those practices traveled, the houses, lineages and communities that taught them continued to shape what people learned and how they practiced.
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