International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Volume 26.

1 March 2002 121–37

Deterritorialization and Reterritorialization

of the Orisha Religion in Africa and the
New World (Nigeria, Cuba and the United
States)*

ERWAN DIANTEILL

If we are to put the concept of religious territory into operation in social science, we
should not simply conceive of it as representing the relationship between living space and
‘the administration of the sacred’ by a human community. Using this concept also implies
combining it with at least two other dimensions of community life: kinship and political
organization.
‘The rise of genuinely local gods’, wrote Max Weber, ‘is associated not only with
permanent settlement, but also with certain other conditions that mark the local
association as an agency of political significance . . . From the viewpoint of the history of
ideas, this concept of the association as the local carrier of the cult is an intermediate link
between the strict patrimonial view of political action and the notion of the purely
instrumental association and compulsory organization, such as the . . . view of the modern
‘‘territorial corporate organization’’ (Gebietskörperschaft)’ (1978: 414–5).
In other words, for Max Weber, the idea of a cult associated with a place must be
situated somewhere between, on the one hand, a lineage-based conception of community
and, on the other, the impersonal relationship between individuals that characterizes the
contemporary state. In the first, the feeling of belonging to a group is based on kinship —
more precisely, on the claim of common ancestry. This can even perfectly well adapt to
nomadism: the social bond has not been generated by a stable place of residence, but by
the idea of belonging to the same line of descent. As far as the modern state is concerned,
the idea that the community occupies and administers a certain space (the ‘national
territory’) is certainly present, but the unity of the community is based on something
completely different. The citizens of a modern state are linked by rights and obligations
that go beyond mere spatial community. Between lineage and citizenship, therefore, Max
Weber introduces a middle term, that of the social bond associated with the cult of local
gods.
This means that the coexistence of different lineages in the same place generates
tension between the purely hereditary transmission of the cult and the spread of beliefs
‘by contact’ between these lineages. Relations of proximity between individuals may thus
lead to the generalized propagation of a religion, independently of the descent of the

* Translated from French by Karen George.

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122 Erwan Dianteill

individuals. Nevertheless, if each lineage is devoted to an exclusive cult of its founding

ancestor, co-residence will not be enough to unify a community. By contrast, if the cult of
a god is associated with a place by all the co-resident lineages, then it represents a first
stage in the construction of a metalineage political unit, since regarding a place as sacred
implies that those who are located there have a metonymical share (in Durkheimian
terms, ‘by contagion’) in the deity concerned, whatever their ancestry.
Transmission through proximity or through descent-based religion is also determined
by the mode of political organization in which it is produced, and in particular by the
relations of domination between groups. The form of religion practised in a community
often reflects its political and military history, and the religion of the victor can
sometimes be juxtaposed with that of the vanquished. Thus, drawing on the research of
the Africanist anthropologist Leo Frobenius, Joachim Wach, one of Max Weber’s chief
heirs in sociology, mentions ‘the twofold religious obligation of the Yoruba family: to the
clan deity and to the great tribal gods with their variety of officiating priests, the obosha
or family priest and the adje or community priest’ (Wach, 1944: 80). This ‘twofold’
organization of religion among the Yoruba, who live in the south-west of present-day
Nigeria, in fact relates to the institution of vast territorial units of an imperial type,
accompanied by moves to establish the cult of the victors in the conquered country, yet
without lineage-based cults disappearing. The example of Yoruba religion shows that the
three-stage Weberian evolutionist pattern (lineage, proximity, citizenship) must be
rethought. Different types of religions, with variable modes of transmission, can coexist
in the same society, each with a different relationship to the territory.
The aim of this article is to pursue the analysis of this remarkable example from the
point of view of the relationship of religion to space, ethnicity and political domination.
In this perspective, religion of Yoruba origin constitutes a doubly interesting subject. This
is because it was first re-implanted in the Americas as a result of the deportation of
thousands of Yoruba slaves, to Cuba in particular, but is now experiencing a second
transplantation, as a result of Cuban emigration, mainly to the United States. These two
moves, from Africa to Cuba and then from Cuba to the United States, have been
associated with successive processes of territorialization and of dissemination in very
different social and political contexts; these will be analysed in historical sequence, in
three phases. We will see how, on each occasion, transmission through lineage and
dissemination through proximity have come into play in varying degrees according to the
sociopolitical context.
The first section of the article is devoted to the relationship between religion and
territory in the Oyo empire in West Africa. At the time of the slave trade, Yoruba religion
was linked to a specific political organization. Numerous local cults rubbed shoulders
with cults that were more widespread in the empire. The gods, known as orisha,1 were in
many cases — such as that of Shango — the protectors of royal lineages. They might also
be linked to specific economic activities, like Orisha Oko with agriculture or Ogun with
ironworking. It must at all costs be stressed that Yoruba religion was not homogeneous
throughout the whole territory of the Oyo, and that the circulation of beliefs, their re-
implantation and their transformation according to local cults had already led to religious
‘bricolage’ in the Lévi-Strauss sense (1962).
The aim of the second section of the article is to look at how orisha worship became
established in Cuba. It did not disappear, but became a religion of slaves, and this
transplantation provides a good illustration of the dialectical relations between
‘civilization’ and ‘society’. These concepts, used by Roger Bastide (1960) to analyse

1 To make things easier for the reader, I have used the English spellings for the names of Yoruba gods and
for their extensions into the New World. Strictly speaking, the Yoruba spelling should be used when
discussing these gods in Africa, the Spanish spelling for Cuba and the American spelling for the United
States.

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The Orisha religion in Africa and the New World 123

the re-implantation of African religions in Brazil, also operate for Cuba. For Bastide,
‘civilization’ — that is, the world of symbols, collective representations, values and
beliefs — is conditioned by the ‘society’ in which it develops, including mainly economic
relations and political and family organization. Working counter to the Marxist
hypotheses that make the superstructure a simple emanation of the mode of production,
Bastide devotes himself to showing that African religions in Brazil have maintained a
dual dialectical relationship with their environment, comprising relations of domination
by slavery, on the one hand, and symbolic relations with Catholicism, on the other. When
slaves in Cuba identified African gods with the saints and Virgins of Catholicism, orisha
worship took the name ‘Santeria’. Especially well-established in the western half of the
country, Santeria also has variants in the eastern region, although it is relatively recently
established there. In Havana, some Catholic churches have been partly annexed by
santeros, with the implicit agreement of the Catholic Church. This is the case with the
Sanctuary of Our Lady of Regla, and even more so with the church at El Rincón, which is
dedicated to the cult of Saint Lazarus.
The introduction of Santeria into the United States and its development there form the
subject of the third section of the article. From the 1960s onwards, with Cuban emigration
to the United States, other types of relationship between civilization and society have
been established: Santeria is being recontextualized in a multicultural society segmented
into communities. On the East Coast of the United States, three trends have been
identified. Santeria has spread to the Hispanic districts of New York, and has sometimes
combined with Puerto Rican spiritism to give rise to ‘Santerismo’. It has also penetrated
the black American community. In its most radical variant, the Santeria of black
Americans has become the ‘Orisha-Voodoo’ movement, which has broken with the
Cuban santero community and rejects all Catholic influence. Finally, in Florida, there is a
discernible trend towards institutionalization, and this has been carried forward by the
court case won by a Santeria church in 1993. However, these three trends cannot be
observed across the whole territory of the United States. In California, Santeria has been
adopted by Chicanos, but it does not take the form of the ‘Santerismo’ of New York
Puerto Ricans, being more a question of a ‘patchwork syncretism’, in which religious
images are juxtaposed but not confused. Some black Americans have also adopted
Santeria, but have remained with its ‘orthodox’ form. Finally, the marginal position of the
santeros, their fear of repression and the tradition of a degree of independence for each
‘religious house’ are tending to limit the process of ecclesiogenesis.

Yoruba religion: a patchwork of local cults

Before studying the transplantation of orisha worship to the Americas, we should first
devote some attention to the organization of this religion at the time of the slave trade.
The trading of slaves to America was at its most intense between 1680 and 1830, and had
developed particularly on the coasts of Nigeria. At that period, the Oyo empire was the
predominant political entity in the Yoruba world. The city-state of Oyo extended its
influence from the Mosi River in the north to Lagos in the south, and from the Opara and
Yewa rivers in the west to the Osı́n and Oshun in the east — a territory that had attained
an area of 45,000km2 and a population of perhaps one million by the beginning of the
eighteenth century. Oyo supremacy was partly based on the domestication of horses
imported from the north, at a period when the other Yoruba did not know them. This
explains why the empire extended little farther than the east of the Oshun river, an area
unfavourable to cavalry movements (Pemberton, 1989: 147–8).
From the point of view of relations between religion and territory, I will look first at
how the tension between monarchy and oligarchy structured the Oyo empire, then at how
orisha worship spread and transformed inside this African empire.

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124 Erwan Dianteill

Mythology, politics and Yoruba territory

Politically, Oyo was an organized confederation of lineages, whose chiefs formed a
council, the Oyo Mesi, which designated as king, or Alafin, a claimant to the throne,
descended from the royal line. In some situations, the Oyo Mesi could even oblige the
sovereign to commit suicide. Each member of the council was also a religious chief, with
the main altar of a certain deity or deities located in his area, obliging followers to
perform the most important ceremonies there. As John Pemberton has written, ‘the Oyo
Mesi, therefore, represented a definition of Oyo as a confederation of lineages both in
matters of governance and worship. While acknowledging the role of the Alafin, they
adhered to the principle of decentralized authority’ (1989: 147–8).
The Alafin, on the other hand, represented another principle of political organization
— that of concentration of power, with power viewed as sacred. Once he had been
selected from among the descendants of Oranmiyan, the mythical founder of Oyo from
the town of Ife, he was surrounded by a court of servants and slaves charged with his
protection, with organizing military campaigns and with collecting the taxes and tributes
paid by towns that fell under Oyo influence. In fact, the empire was a kind of
confederation of vassal towns that recognized the authority of the Alafin, to whom they
periodically delivered wealth in the form of material goods and slaves, and whom they
assisted in case of war.
Although Oyo came to control most of Yorubaland in the second half of the
eighteenth century, the empire did not manage to maintain itself in the nineteenth century.
It was swept away by conflicts between the Alafin, the Oyo Mesi and the vassal cities.
The contradiction between centralization and distribution of power was a dual one,
affecting both relations between the centre and the territorial periphery and the
paradoxical concept of elective royalty. Undermined by dissensions and confronted with
rebellion by its vassals, notably Dahomey (the present Republic of Benin), Oyo
succumbed to the assaults of the Muslim Kingdom of Ilorin. The city was looted and
abandoned in the 1830s, but its cultural and religious influence endured into the twentieth
century.
Relations between politics, territory and religion in the Oyo empire were also
expressed on the mythological level. The Alafins were viewed as the heirs of Oduduwa,
the first Yoruba king of the town of Ife, which the Yoruba traditionally viewed as the
centre of the world. Oranmiyan — either the elder or the younger son of Oduduwa,
depending on the version — was regarded as the first Alafin. In so far as all Yoruba cities
claimed to be emanations of Ife, the mythical ascendance of the Alafins took on a central
importance in legitimizing Oyo’s domination over the Yoruba world.
Furthermore, the legitimacy of the Alafin was strengthened by a second element of
mythical genealogy. Shango, son or grandson of Oranmiyan, was a conquering king, but
also a tyrant who created fatal conflicts between non-royal lineage chiefs in order to
monopolize power. According to some versions, he was dethroned and exiled with his
three wives, Oya, Oshun and Oba. It is thought that he hanged himself from a tree,
although his followers refute this and proclaim, on the contrary, ‘Oba ko so! — The king
did not hang himself!’. In fact, this is a play on the sound of the word ‘Koso’, the name of
a town near Oyo, where his main temple was located. The most important fact to note is
that Shango is closely associated with lightning, to the point where he became its deity.
According to some, in his lifetime he had the power to spit fire and to make lightning
strike: ‘he made lightning strike his palace, destroying it totally and thus causing the death
of his wives and of his children. Enraged, he kicked the ground and sank beneath the earth
with a terrifying noise; he became an ORISHA’ (Verger, 1954: 164). According to others, it
was only after his death that his believers learned to use lightning and punished his
enemies, with the result that he was then deified (Pemberton, 1989: 158). All the versions
in fact express a single paradoxical theme — that of the danger inherent in the

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The Orisha religion in Africa and the New World 125

concentration of political power, both for the people and for the king himself. But Shango
also represents the ‘lightning’ power of the sovereign, which must be feared and
respected. This is why the mythical ‘bad’ king was claimed as the protector and ancestor
of the Alafins, and the whole of the latter’s entourage was initiated into the cult of
Shango.
In the Oyo empire, the ambiguous figure of the emperor was mythologically
associated with the towns of Ife and of Oyo. Although the cult of Shango had strong
territorial roots in the latter town, it was not restricted to Oyo.

Spread and transformation of cults in Yoruba territories

Although it was above all associated with the royal lineage of Oyo, belief in this god of
heavenly fire spread widely across the empire, thus bringing him into juxtaposition with
numerous local orisha. Other gods were also originally associated with specific places,
but altars to them then spread throughout the Yoruba territories.
Ogun, the god of fire and of smiths, hunters and warriors, is associated with the town
of Ire Ekiti, about 50km east of Ife, but festivals in his honour are also held at Ibadan, and
in a dozen towns east of the Oshun River, on the edge of the Oyo empire (Peel, 1997:
271). Unlike Shango, Ogun was not a deity closely linked to a royal lineage. As Peel has
written, ‘Ogun’s was typically a civic, rather than a royal, cult’ (1997: 277), and this is
clearly apparent from festivals of Ogun, where the confrontation between the people and
the king is staged.
Several female orisha are associated with streams and rivers. Oshun is the eponymous
orisha of the Osogbo river and the town of Osogbo. Ifa divination poems,2 interpreted by
the babalawos, specialists in divination, make her a wife of both Orunmila and Orishala,
while other sources add Ogun, Shango, Babalu Aye and Osain to this list. She is the deity
of cool, fresh water, of sexual pleasure and of childbirth. Yemoja is also a river goddess,
since she is linked to the Ogun river (sometimes called the Yemoja), which runs near the
town of Abeokuta. She is sometimes regarded as a wife of Orishala, or else as a Nupe
princess from the town of Bida, who married Oranmiyan in Oyo and gave birth to his son
Shango. One myth, of which several versions exist, tells how she stumbled while fleeing
from the anger of her then husband, Okere. The jug full of water that she was carrying on
her head tipped over and created the Ogun river, while Okere changed himself into a
mountain in order to prevent her passing. Shango threw a bolt of lightning at him and
opened a canyon into which the Yemoja River was able to rush. Finally, Oya and Oba,
whom mythology makes wives of Shango, are respectively the orisha of the Niger River
and of the Oba River, a tributary of the Oshun. Oya manifests herself in the violent wind
that accompanies the thunder and lightning represented by her husband (Bascom, 1980:
43–6).
A final example of the territorial roots of orisha worship in Yoruba territories is that
of Orisha Oko. The main site of his cult was at Irawo, in the north-west of the Yoruba
territories. The mythology presents him as a hunter turned farmer. From the geographical
point of view, Orisha Oko is the main god of agriculture in the west of the area, while in
the east he has more general duties, such as protection against disease and witchcraft,
since, before the introduction of the cult of Orisha Oko, iron agricultural implements were
already linked to Ogun in that area. In the central region, around the town of Ila-Orangun,
a complementary relationship can be observed between the two orisha: Ogun is the god of
hunting and Orisha Oko the god of farming (Pemberton, 1989: 167; 1997: 112; Peel,
1997: 277).
A great many other orisha exist in Yoruba territories, like Erinle and Oshosi, for
example, who are gods of hunting, Babalu Aye, the god of smallpox, Orunmila, god of
2 For a complete account of Ifa divination, see Bascom (1969).

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126 Erwan Dianteill

divination, the Ibeji, the gods of twins, Osain, the god of vegetation and Eshu Elegba, the
Divine Messenger and god of roads.3 But any ‘functional’ presentation in the form of a
rigorously organized pantheon is deceptive, since, on the one hand, several orisha may
have identical functions and, on the other hand, the same entity may have distinctive
functions or appearance according to region. Wars, trading exchanges and periods of
drought or plenty in certain regions all produced population movements and contributed
to the heterogeneous spread of beliefs in the Oyo empire. Shango, for example, is
sometimes conceived of as a female deity, if his cult was introduced where an equivalent
male god already existed. Thus, in Ketu and Sabe, Shango is the first wife of Ara, local
god of lightning (Peel, 1997: 285). Yoruba religion was not integrated and unified across
all the Oyo territory: it was, as Peel has written, a ‘local cult complex’ — that is, ‘the
ensemble of cults found in a particular place, which is likely to include both a good many
of the orisha found widely (especially those found in Ifa divination verses) and others of
more local currency, perhaps even unique to that place’ (1997: 275).
These variations in attributes, according to the territory and the degree of
confrontation with local cults, are of the highest importance in understanding the
transformations of the religion that took place in Cuba during the colonial era.

Santeria established in Cuba

From 1492 to the 1860s, over 500,000 slaves were deported to Cuba.4 Most of these slaves
originated from West Africa and Central Africa. Among them were many Yoruba, who
were deported in large numbers at the time of the collapse of the Oyo empire during the
early nineteenth century. Unlike slaves in the English-speaking Americas, whose religion
was almost completely eradicated during the colonial era, the Yoruba in Cuba managed to
re-implant some traditional cults, which evolved in a specific way in creole society.
At first, orisha worship was maintained through certain institutions corresponding to
specific places (towns, plantations, isolated country areas), which disappeared at the end
of the nineteenth century. But it was not implanted uniformly across the island: religion of
Yoruba origin was much more present in the west, especially around Havana, than in the
east of the island. Finally, some Catholic places of worship came to provide bases for
orisha worship.

Preservation and dissemination of orisha worship

The dynamics of the spread and transformation of local cults in Yoruba territories in fact
provided a model to slaves from that region. Thus, there are really no grounds for the
astonishment expressed by the earliest Cuban anthropologists, such as Fernando Ortiz
(1906), at Afro-Cuban religious ‘syncretism’, since this composite nature was already
characteristic of the religion of the Yoruba before their deportation. As we have seen,
they had already experienced internal warfare, so the introduction of new gods was
frequent, as was the modification of the attributes of gods, depending on which orisha
were already present on the local scene.
Three institutions favoured, in varying degrees, the maintenance and development of
beliefs and rites that were African in origin: palenques in remote mountain areas,
barracones in the sugar-cane plantations and cabildos in the towns.5 In the era of slavery,
palenques were communities of fugitive blacks, which formed in the least accessible
3 For a presentation of the characteristics of these orisha, illustrated by a rich iconography, see Verger
(1954).
4 The slave trade was officially abolished in 1820, but it was still tolerated for a long time by the Spanish
authorities. See López Valdés (1985: 39) and Thomas (1971: 170, 235, Annexe 5 and 10).
5 Castellanos and Castellanos (1988, volume 1: 110–5, 200–11; volume 3: 14–18).

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The Orisha religion in Africa and the New World 127

regions of the island. Removed from the authority of the Spanish, these runaways built
villages, cultivated the land, hunted wild game and re-activated the religion of their
ancestors. There is also evidence of African religious practices continuing in the
barracones, unhealthy sheds where thousands of slaves were lodged after work in the
fields. Finally, in the eighteenth century, the cabildos — officially intended to represent
individuals from the same African ‘nation’ to the colonial authorities — became
associations for entertainment and mutual aid, which collected funds in cases of sickness
or bereavement, and even purchased the freedom of some of their members. A ‘nation’
comprised individuals who came from African groups crudely matched by the Spanish.
Thus, Havana had cabildos for the Congos reales, the Congos mumbala, the Congos
masinga, the Arará cuévano, the Arará sabalú, the Arará dajomé, the Carabalı́ isuama,
the Mina popó and the Lucumı́.6 The Palenques, barracones and cabildos disappeared
after the abolition of slavery in 1886 and the subsequent independence of Cuba in 1898,
but in their time they constituted the real crucible of Afro-Cuban religions.
Although orisha worship was maintained in Cuba, it lost its ‘ethnic’ character there.
The orisha were often viewed as protective ancestors by the Yoruba, so the cult was
hereditary. In Cuba, the breaking of lineages as a result of the slave trade was the first
thing that seriously weakened the bond with ancestors. Subsequent unions between slaves
of different descent and between blacks and whites completely blurred genealogies in the
end, to the point that no Cuban, however black his skin, can now say to which ethnic
group his ancestors belonged. The disappearance of the palenques, barracones and
cabildos accelerated this movement towards ‘de-ethnicization’ of Cuban society. Many
black runaways and former slaves established themselves in towns, where large-scale
mixing of the population took place at the end of the nineteenth century. In addition, the
gradual disappearance of the cabildos destroyed one of the drivers towards division of the
black population into ‘nations’, as established by the colonial power.
Thus, individuals of all origins adopted orisha worship, even though it is still
especially present in working-class districts, where the descendants of slaves mostly live.
In Havana, where I have been engaged in a field survey since 1993, the majority of
worshippers I met were ‘blacks’ or ‘mulattos’, but even so, ‘white’ santeros7 formed over
30% of the sample (Dianteill, 2000: 93). This substantial minority can be explained by the
absence of any ‘racial’ barrier to entering the Orisha religion in Cuba. A ‘white’ person is
perfectly able to become an initiate: it will simply be said that he is the son of the given
orisha, without any regard to skin colour. The concept of descent in Santeria has here
been freed from biological generation, and this has certainly contributed to the extension
of the cult throughout the population. This shows how transmission of religion through
descent can be combined with transmission through proximity: descent is interpreted as
an affinity with a spirit, and not as a biological transmission from generation to
generation. In this perspective, entry into the cult is not conditional on the ancestry of
individuals, even though the fiction of ‘descent’ is preserved.
Although orisha worship has spread outside the group descended from slaves, it has
also seen substantial territorial variations.

Cuban Santeria: regional variants

The distribution of orisha worship was not homogeneous throughout the territory of Cuba.
The first anthropologist to note this spatial heterogeneity was Rómulo Lachatañeré, who
6 Castellanos and Castellanos (1988, volume 1: 111). The word Lucumı́ designates the Yoruba in Cuba and
their descendants, as well as the culture and the religion that have arisen from this ethnic group, while
Arará applies similarly to the Ewe/Fon. For a more detailed account of the role of the cabildos and of their
decline, see Dianteill (2001).
7 The sociophenotypical categories of ‘black’, ‘mulatto’ and ‘white’ in no way correspond to scientific
concepts. They relate only to social usage current in Havana.

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128 Erwan Dianteill

suggested defining Santeria as ‘a system of local cults, whose essential element related to
the adoration of the santo, that is, the original deity born of the syncretism between
African and Catholic beliefs’8 (1940: 207). In Cuba, therefore, the Orisha religion became
Santeria, or Regla de Ocha. It first became established in Havana and in Matanzas,
spreading only relatively belatedly into the eastern region of the country, to Santiago in
particular, where spiritism and Bantu influences predominated. According to Lachata-
ñeré, Santeria was introduced to Santiago only in the twentieth century, by a santero
called Reinerio, whom the anthropologist met in 1937. This man originated from the town
of Matanzas, where the cult of Babalu Aye was strongly established, and this perhaps
explains why the latter was the most popular orisha in Santiago at that period. Most of the
orisha known in Havana were then identified in Santiago with different Catholic saints.
For example, Oya was associated with Saint Claire in Santiago and with Our Lady of
Candlemas in Havana (Lachatañeré, 1940: 214–5). At the level of ritual, there appears to
have been little adherence to the characteristic features of the Havana form of Santeria,
and practices described by Lachatañeré as ‘Bantu’ were favoured in Santiago, although he
gives no further details. In the 1930s and 1940s, therefore, the Orisha religion underwent
a period of ‘acclimatization’ in the island’s chief eastern city.
So, how do things stand today? Fieldwork carried out in Santiago in October 1999
enabled me to confirm the relative weakness of Santeria’s implantation in the east.
According to Abelardo Larduet, a researcher at the Casa del Caribe, there are between
3,000 and 4,000 santeros in Santiago, and hardly ten or so babalawos (specialists in
divination), out of a population of over 400,000 — although spiritism in different forms is
very widely practised there. These figures are not based on a rigorous statistical survey,
rather on sustained, frequent contact with the Afro-Cuban ‘religious milieu’. Never-
theless, they give an idea of the limited spread of Santeria and of the cult of Ifa in this
town. A santera who was initiated in Santiago in 1993 told me, for example, that she was
obliged to have the ‘tools’ — the symbolic objects relating to each orisha — needed for
her initiation brought from Havana, since there were no specialized craftsmen in the town.
Similarly, the low number of babalawos implies that sacrifices are almost always carried
out by santeros themselves.
Furthermore, the low number of initiates is accompanied by a greater heterogeneity
of practices. Even the term ‘Santeria’ is frequently used within the population to describe
practices that would be designated as ‘spiritist’ in Havana. In Santiago, spiritists can be
possessed by an orisha during the course of a ‘spiritist mass’; I have never witnessed this
in Havana, where Santeria and spiritism are clearly distinguished on the ceremonial level.
In Havana, possession by the orisha takes place exclusively at the time of drum festivals,
while it is always the spirits of deceased people (and not gods) who possess mediums
during spiritist masses.
I will give one final example of the low level of orthopraxis of Santeria in the far east
of the island. During a visit to the basilica of El Cobre, where there is a lesser basilica
dedicated to La Virgen de la Caridad (Our Lady of Charity), I questioned a man, aged
about twenty, who was wearing the characteristic bracelet of the santeros initiated into the
cult of Oshun, the Yoruba goddess of love. He explained to me that he had gone to
Santiago, where he had been initiated over two days into ‘Santeria’ by calling on La
Caridad for protection (to use his own words). In Havana, initiation normally lasts seven
days or, in very rare cases, three days. Above all, it is impossible for an individual to
choose his protecting orisha: this can only be found out by a long session of divination,
which is completely beyond the control of the future initiate. Apparently, the young man

8 Rómulo Lachatañeré has merged all the Afro-Cuban religions, including those of Bantu origin, under the
same heading — Santeria — even though this term is mainly used by the population to refer to the Orisha
religion. However, this confusion in no way detracts from the relevance of the statement that Afro-Cuban
religions are territorially heterogeneous (see Dianteill, 1995).

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did not even know that the Catholic Virgin was identified with the orisha Oshun. This
almost total absence of orisha worship was confirmed for me by Julio Corbea, historian of
the town of El Cobre, according to whom almost no one knew of Oshun when he went
there in 1989. On the level of territorial rootedness, therefore, the Orisha religion is much
better implanted in the west of Cuba than in the east. It is also much more homogeneous
in Havana, where it is organized according to explicit rules that differentiate it from other
Afro-Cuban religions, whether these are of Bantu origin, like Palo Monte, or of Euro-
American origin, like spiritism. In Santiago, in contrast, it has tended to mix with these
influences.

The appropriation of Catholic churches: diverting the use of places of worship

Not only have santeros identified the saints of Catholicism with the Yoruba orisha, which
is a phenomenon equally well-known in Brazil (Bastide, 1958) and in Haiti (Métraux,
1958), but they have also ‘diverted’ some Catholic places of worship. Uprooted by the
deportation, slaves re-invested their religion in churches where they found images of the
saints they associated with their gods.
Thus, one of the most visited churches in Cuba is that of Regla, a village situated on
the Bay of Havana. The sanctuary, founded at the end of the eighteenth century, is
consecrated to a black Virgin, patron saint of the Bay, identified with the Yoruba river
goddess, Yemoja, who, until the end of the 1950s, was fêted with great pomp on 8
September each year. On that day, a statue of the Virgin belonging to the santeros was
promenaded in the village street, accompanied by a crowd dancing to the sound of the
bata, the three ritual drums of Yoruba origin. The statue was carried to the doors of the
church, where it was received by the parish priest, then placed on the shore of the Bay of
Havana. The pilgrims then washed their faces and limbs with seawater in order to purify
themselves. Others, in small boats, threw coins into the water, or passed a live duck —
Yemoja’s favourite animal — over their body before setting it free to carry away bad
influences (Cabrera, 1974: 17–19). By the 1990s, this collective demonstration no longer
took place. Nevertheless, many novice santeros went to Regla to pay homage to the
Virgin on the seventh day of their initiation. Others went to the sanctuary because of a
vow, or an obligation imposed through divination. Although Afro-Cuban use of the
church at Regla has become more individual, it has not disappeared under the Communist
regime.
On the other hand, there is a place of pilgrimage near Havana that always attracts a
massive crowd. This is the former leper hospital at Rincón, where thousands of pilgrims
come on 17 December. The church at Rincón is consecrated to Saint Lazarus, identified
by the santeros with Babalu Aye. I took part in this pilgrimage in 1995. On 16 December,
those who have made a promise to Saint Lazarus leave Havana and walk to Rincón. Some
crawl along the ground or walk with their feet deliberately twisted (Dianteill, 2000: 128–
9). Once they arrive at the sanctuary, they place their offerings at the feet of the statue of
Saint Lazarus. Here the ambivalent attitude of the representatives of the Catholic Church
towards the pilgrims must be stressed. In fact, two statues of the saint have been set up in
the church. The first represents the Lazarus revived by Jesus, who was, according to
tradition, the first Bishop of Marseilles. But this is not the statue before which the
pilgrims place flowers and candles. They address their devotions to a second statue,
representing a bearded beggar, ragged and covered in sores, accompanied by two dogs
licking his legs. This representation does not refer strictly to a Catholic saint, but to a
character in a biblical parable (Luke 16, 19–21). It is this character that has been
associated with Babalu Aye, Yoruba god of lepers. In 1995, the Catholic parish priest did
his utmost to direct the crowd of pilgrims towards the statue of the bishop, which
represents ecclesiastical authority. These efforts were in vain, and all the pilgrims
crowded around the statue of the down-and-out. Therefore, faced with this Afro-Cuban

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investment in the imagery and in Catholic places of worship, the Church has taken a
tolerant line. It would be simple to remove the statue of the beggar or even to close the
church doors on 17 December, in order to hinder Santeria practices. However, the Church
has conducted a different policy, in accordance with the doctrine of ‘inculturation’. This
consists of welcoming all the pilgrims into the sanctuaries and coming to terms with the
heterodoxy of their beliefs, while still reminding them, from time to time, of the ‘official’
point of view of the Catholic Church.

Santeria in the United States: a variety of forms of regional

development
Fidel Castro’s seizure of power and the subsequent setting-up of a Communist regime in
Cuba were followed by the start of a large movement of emigration to the United States.
Although the first migrants belonged mainly to the ‘white’ Cuban bourgeoisie, blacks and
mulattos followed them in increasingly large numbers. Orisha worship, ‘de-ethnicized’
and tinged with Cuban Catholicism, penetrated the United States with this population.
The Orisha religion was thus displaced a second time, in a completely different social
context.
According to George Brandon (1993: 106), the first Cuban santero to settle in the
United States was Francisco (Pancho) Mora, in 1946. He lived in New York, where he
remained until his death in 1986. He organized the first drum festival there in 1964. He
initiated novices in Puerto Rico, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela, but, it
seems, not in the United States. He never succeeded in organizing a stable association of
santeros nor in acquiring a building that would act as its headquarters. Mercedes Noble,
initiated in Cuba in 1958, was the first santera to organize an initiation in the United
States, in 1962.
In addition to ‘orthodox’ Santeria, practised similarly in the United States and Cuba,
Brandon identifies two main variants (1993: 106–20). Their birth is linked to the
community-based structure of American society and to the identity-affirming social
movements that were strengthened in the 1960s. Paradoxically, even though Santeria was
the product of a ‘de-ethnicization’ of religion, it was ‘re-ethnicized’ in the United States,
to the point where a schism was created. The Afro-Hispanic fusion has broken down to
give, on one side, a Latino Santeria and, on the other, a black American Santeria —
although there has been no return to the pre-colonial situation where African religion and
Catholicism were clearly distinguished. Indeed, the opposite is true: as we will see, the
two variants are strongly linked to their North American social context, and to the region
in which they have developed.

Latinization
In the first place, ‘Santerismo’ arose from the association of spiritism and Santeria
produced in centres of Puerto Rican spiritism in New York. Here, there are neither animal
sacrifices nor drum festivals, but followers wear orisha necklaces and in some cases listen
to recordings of Afro-Cuban chants during ceremonies. We should note that the term
‘Santerismo’ is not vernacular. Amongst themselves, followers always say ‘spirits’ or
‘mediums’, not ‘santerists’. Even within the research community, this term has not been
uniformly adopted. Perez y Mena, for example, refers to ‘Puerto Rican spiritism’ to
designate the same religion.
Apart from Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Panamanians and other ‘Latinos’ also frequent
these centres, which may explain the spread of the beliefs. The iconography, chants and
prayers of ‘Santerismo’ refer to the ‘Seven African Powers’. In fact, this most often

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means seven of the orisha: Shango (god of lightning), Eshu Elegba (the messenger god),
Orishala or Obatala (god of wisdom), Oshun (goddess of love), Ogun (god of iron),
Orunmila or Orula (god of destiny) and Yemoja (goddess of the ocean). This seven-deity
grouping is not traditional in Cuban Santeria. For example, we can see that Oshosi (god of
hunting) and Agayu (god of volcanos) are missing from this series, even though they are
well-known in Cuba. The orisha are frequently identified with saints or Virgins, although
sometimes different ones from those in the Cuban model. Thus, Orunmila is frequently
associated with Saint John the Baptist, patron saint of Puerto Rico, while in Cuba he was
linked to Saint Francis (Perez y Mena, 1991: 46). These orisha have been integrated into
the hierarchy of spirits peculiar to spiritism, which runs from the least pure to the most
pure — that is, from the most material to the most ethereal. In the hierarchy of spirits,
those who are the most ‘attached’ to life on earth are also the most malicious. Distance
from material existence goes hand in hand with ethical progress of the entity, an idea that
certainly demonstrates Western influence.

God
Pure Spirits (angels, seraphim etc.)
Orisha/saints and Virgins
Heros and leaders
Spirits of ordinary people
Intranquil spirits
Incarnate spirits10

This type of representation is foreign to Santeria, both because the idea of level of
material existence of these entities is not relevant and because orisha are not conceived as
intrinsically good or bad. They are all capable of harming or being beneficial to human
beings: everything depends on the type of relationship that is maintained with them. In
other words, the ‘Latinization’ of Santeria has here been accompanied by an ethical
strengthening. We should also note that, unlike the neo-African religious movements
discussed below, Santerismo has not broken with Catholicism. Apart from the fact that we
find candles, statues of Virgins and of Catholic saints in places of worship, cult leaders
sometimes encourage members to take part in mass at the Catholic church. Thus, at the
Puerto Rican spiritist centre in New York studied by Perez y Mena in the late 1970s,
ceremonies never took place on Sundays, as they do in all Christian churches, but on
Mondays and Thursdays, so that followers could go to the Sunday morning service at the
local Catholic church9 (Perez y Mena, 1991: 4). Added to this desire for rapprochement
with Catholicism is the rejection of ‘Santeria’, which is viewed as witchcraft — as is
voodoo — despite the fact that many spiritist practices clearly derive from Afro-Cuban
orisha worship. The wearing of white clothing and necklaces symbolizing orisha, to
protect the wearer from bad influences, and purification by herbal baths are obvious
examples of these (Perez y Mena, 1991: 14, 118, 216, 224). We can see that the
Latinization of Santeria in New York has had a paradoxical outcome. There, Santerismo,
or Puerto Rican spiritism, has ‘smuggled in’ some practices of orisha worship, while still
likening it to dangerous witchcraft. The opposite approach can be discerned in the
movement towards re-Africanization of Santeria.

9 Although the leaders of the spiritist cult encouraged followers to practise Catholicism, the Catholic priest
of the local parish explicitly condemned (apparently in vain) participation in spiritist ceremonies (Perez y
Mena, 1991: 5).
10 The Puerto Rican Espiritismo (Santerismo) Spirit Hierarchy (after Harwood, 1977: 40 and Brandon, 1993:
110).

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Neo-Africanization
The second tendency that has arisen from Santeria during its acclimatization in the United
States may be referred to as ‘Orisha-Voodoo’ (Brandon, 1993: 114–20). The movement
was begun by Walter King, a black American born in Detroit in 1958. He was brought up
as a Christian, even though his father took part in a proto-Muslim movement, the Moorish
Science Temple, and in Marcus Garvey’s UNIA in the 1920s. King joined the Katherine
Dunham Dance Troupe in 1948. After travelling in Europe, the Caribbean and Africa, he
was active in the African nationalist movement, then, in 1958, he was initiated as a
santero at Matanzas, as a ‘son of Obatala’. On his return to New York, he founded several
‘African’ temples and took an African name, Osejiman Adefunmi. From this period on,
he professed a form of African religious nationalism based on the rites of Santeria. Whites
were admitted only to public ceremonies. Adefunmi was very active politically, and went
on to argue in favour of the creation of an independent black American state on United
States territory.
Relations between Adefunmi and the nascent community of santeros in the United
States deteriorated for several reasons. In the first place, the Orisha religion was, for him,
above all an African religion, and should be reserved for the descendants of slaves. In
fact, the majority of santeros in the United States at that time were white. They were
attached to the Cuban origin of their religion, and in particular to the worship of saints —
all rejected by Adefunmi. It must be added that in Cuba there are black, white and mixed
race santeros: the issue of skin colour never enters into a person’s initiation. In the second
place, proselytism ran counter to the Cuban tradition of secret rituals and of discretion
about individual membership. Santeria rituals took place in private, but Adefunmi
organized public festivals at his temple. Thus, he rebaptized all the members of his temple
with Yoruba names, even though the ritual name of an initiate into Santeria remains
theoretically secret. He put on drum festivals that were filmed for television, and the
Yoruba Temple troupe performed in the African Pavillion at the New York World’s Fair
in 1965. The break became complete in 1970, when Adefunmi initiated several people
into the orisha cult without the participation of any Cuban santeros, although he had been
strictly forbidden to do this by those who had initiated him in Matanzas, since, they said,
he was destined to become a babalawo. At the same period, he founded an autonomous
‘Yoruba’ village, called Oyotunji, in South Carolina (Brandon, 1993: 118–9).
This village still exists, and consists of African-style huts, where ceremonies in
honour of the orisha are held. Adefunmi became the self-proclaimed ‘King of the Yorubas
in America’, under the name of Oba Osejiman Adefunmi I. Visits are organized, with a
choice of different options: drum festival, divination session, welcome by a member of
the royal court.11 It seems that Adefunmi’s initial plan for political and religious secession
has been modified.

Ecclesiogenesis
Another development has affected the ‘orthodox’ Santeria of Cuban immigrants to the
United States: what is in fact a movement of ecclesiogenesis, but in dual form, can be
observed. The first aspect is that of the transition from private worship, taking place in a
family context, as is the case in Cuba, to a public religion, whose ceremonies take place in
a temple distinct from the residence of the leader of the cult. Since the disappearance of
the cabildos, Cuban Santeria ceremonies have always taken place in private houses. The
creation of temples dedicated to the orisha in Florida is therefore a new phenomenon.12
11 To enjoy a speech from the king himself, you have to pay ‘500$ (negotiable)’, as the official Oyotunji
Internet site shows.
12 The spiritist centre described by Andres Perez y Mena is a ‘store front church’, but, as we have seen, this
religion is not explicitly situated within the tradition of Cuban Santeria.

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Ecclesiogenesis is also apparent in the training of an organized body of professional

religious specialists. In Cuba, each santero depends only on the one who initiated him or
her (the ‘godfather’ or ‘godmother’), and there is no hierarchy equivalent to that of the
Catholic church, with its laity, priests, bishops and sovereign pontiff. Santeria is, in its
Cuban form, organized into a network of individuals worshipping in their own homes and
often working in non-religious occupations. By contrast, there has been a noteworthy
attempt to organize a Santeria clergy in Florida.
The Florida court case involving the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye (Do Campo,
1995; Palmié, 1996) provides evidence of this process of ecclesiogenesis and the forms of
resistance it has encountered in American society. In 1987, Ernesto Pichardo, a santero
settled in Florida, took legal steps against the authorities of the City of Hialeah, to enable
him to found a Santeria church on a plot of land that he owned. The municipal council
passed orders forbidding any activities of religious groups that would be against public
morals, peace and security. It also adopted ‘an animal cruelty statute which provided
criminal sanctions to whoever . . . unnecessarily or cruelly . . . kills any animal’ (Do
Campo, 1995: 164). The Florida Attorney General upheld this decision, and prohibited
the pointless killing of animals, which enabled Hialeah’s municipal council to pass a new
series of decrees against animal sacrifice. Pichardo then lodged a complaint before the
Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida, for a breach of the religious
freedom guaranteed by the United States Constitution (First Amendment), but in 1989 the
Court found against him, declaring that the decrees had a solely secular purpose, aiming
to prevent cruelty to animals, ensure public health and protect minors who might be likely
to witness sacrifices The appeal court (United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh
Circuit) confirmed this judgement in 1991, and this obliged Pichardo to take the case to
the United States Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the appeal. That hearing clearly
demonstrated that the City of Hialeah had in fact been seeking to prohibit a religious
practice. On 11 June 1993, the Supreme Court declared unanimously that the Hialeah
decrees were in contravention of the First Amendment to the Constitution, and found in
Pichardo’s favour. On the day of the verdict, he declared in the New York Times:13 ‘The
future is to institutionalize the Santeria religion. We will do it as soon as we can’ (Palmié,
1996: 185).
In 2001, Ernesto Pichardo presents the church that he heads in these terms:

Our church is the first of its kind known to exist in the United States. CLBA was responsible for
the recognition of our faith as decided by the June 1993 unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling;
Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye vs. City of Hialeah.
CLBA is not syncretic, it’s a multinational community church. CLBA operates as a
centralized union of clergy members and faithful, representing various Afro-Cuban Lukumi/
Ayoba religious lineages. . .
Oba Ernesto Pichardo holds title of corporate president. He was ordained into the priesthood
order of Shango in 1971 by Oni Shango Agba lagba Juvenal Ortega Shango Dina. Oba Pichardo
was trained in the rank order of Oriate by Ogo Aga Oriate Roque Duarte ‘ibeji’.
Oni Shango Baba Fernando Pichardo, is our corporate secretary and CLBA administrator.
Feel free to contact him for your needs (Internet Home Page of the Church of Lukumi Babalu
Ayé [CLBA]).14

The presentation of the church as a ‘centralized union of clergy members and faithful’ is
an innovation, when compared to the way the network of orisha cults is organized in
Cuba. Similarly, there is nothing traditional about the existence of a ‘president’ and an
‘administrator’. Therefore, Ernesto Pichardo’s plan is very close to the way North
American Christian churches are organized.
13 New York Times, National Edition, 13 June 1993.
14 http://home.earthlink.net/~clba/.

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134 Erwan Dianteill

Santeria in Los Angeles

I have already noted that the three tendencies dealt with above (Latinization, neo-
Africanization and ecclesiogenesis) can be discerned in the eastern United States, from
Florida to New York. But are they evident in the west too?
In 1998–89, I visited six places of worship in Los Angeles, and a seventh in Santa
Barbara. Santeria and the Ifa cult have recently become established in this region, where
Cubans have traditionally been much less numerous than Chicanos. It is, in fact, in the
latter population that Santeria has spread, not in the Puerto Rican population, which is
concentrated in New York: three cult leaders out of the seven I met were of Mexican
origin. Therefore, the Latinization of Santeria takes a different form in southern
California than that observed in the east. It is not combined with Caribbean spiritism
there, but with Mexican — and, more generally, Central American — popular
Catholicism. Our Lady of Guadalupe, for example, was represented in all the places of
worship, even though she was not identified with a particular orisha. In some cases,
statues of Popocatepetl (the spirit of the Mexican volcano), of San Simon (a Guatemalan
saint not recognized by the Catholic church) and of Gregorio Hernandez (the spirit of a
Venezuelan doctor, invoked in cases of illness) were placed on the altars. Here we are
dealing with a ‘patchwork syncretism’ (Bastide), where images (statues or chromolitho-
graphs) are juxtaposed. The degree of symbolic integration achieved in ‘Santerismo’ is
not found in this case, and the Chicano santeros I met were practising a form of Santeria
identical to the Cuban model.15
Among the cult leaders I met, one was a black American. Nino (not his real name)
was about fifty years old when I met him. He had been brought up in a Presbyterian
family in New York. A dancer, singer and percussionist, he had first been attracted by the
aesthetic dimension of Santeria, then by its ‘Africanness’. He had been initiated into the
cult of the god Obatala by Cubans in New York, and settled in Los Angeles in the early
1990s. Although a black American like Walter King, Nino has not followed the same
path. This is because, although the majority of his initiates have been black Americans,
Nino has never broken with the Cuban santeros. Thus, he sent for his godfather from New
York to take part in the initiation of a young black woman at his house in 1999. A white
Cuban babalawo, who arrived in Los Angeles in 1994, took part in the ritual meal at the
end of the initiation. Moreover, unlike those in the ‘Orisha-Voodoo’ movement, he has
preserved all the Catholic iconography of saints and Virgins. In other words, both socially
and symbolically, Nino’s ‘religious house’, although it is frequented predominantly by
black Americans, does not display any of the characteristics of Adefunmi’s Afrocentric
nationalism.
Finally, the institutionalization announced by Pichardo in 1993 in Florida was hardly
noticeable in Los Angeles in 1999. In Los Angeles, as far as I know, there is no Santeria
temple equivalent to Hialeah’s Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye. Either the cult leaders
organize ceremonies privately in their homes (which was the case with three of the
santeros I met), or else the place of worship is an annexe of the shop, called the
‘botanica’, where religious articles (candles, statues, incense etc.) are sold. The Los
Angeles santeros explained to me that Pichardo’s efforts at institutionalization would not
succeed, because many of them do not declare the income that they receive from religious
services (divination, initiation, sacrifice etc.), and are social welfare claimants. According
to them, they would lose all these advantages if they declared to the authorities that they
were officials of a church. Of course, the tax regime of churches is advantageous by
comparison with commercial enterprises, but cult leaders are not permitted to make any
money from their services. If they establish a price list for divinatory consultation, for
example, they move into a different tax category, that of ‘psychological counsellor’, and
15 For a comparison of the development of Santeria, of the cult of Ifá and of Palo Monte in California, see
Dianteill (1999).

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are then taxed as such. Some santeros also fear being pursued for practising medicine
illegally if they declare certain rituals to the authorities. Finally, the idea of becoming a
federation under Pichardo’s authority was not to the taste of some, who would prefer to
preserve their independence and to pursue their activities discreetly. Therefore, we can
see that, despite the prestige gained at the time of the Supreme Court judgement, the
ecclesiogenesis promoted by Pichardo is faced with structural obstacles that relate to the
precarious status of ‘professional’ santeros, to the conflict between official medicine and
therapeutic religious practices, and to the tradition of independence for each ‘religious
house’.
It cannot, therefore, be asserted that the Latinization, neo-Africanization or
ecclesiogenesis of Santeria in the United States are homogeneous phenomena. These
processes seem to be more powerful in Florida and in New York than in California.

Conclusion
I have argued in favour of the idea that kinship and political organization should be taken
into account, if the relationship between religion and territory is to be fully understood.
The Weberian conception of the cult of authentic local gods as a social bond historically
intermediate between lineage community and modern state has enabled me to distinguish
the patrimonial transmission of religion from its dissemination by proximity, which can
dissolve religious ethnicity in certain sociopolitical conditions. The example of orisha
worship among the Yoruba of West Africa, chosen by Joachim Wach to illustrate the
juxtaposition of local and national cults, has led us to reconsider Weber’s over-simple
evolutionist point of view. I have followed through the analysis of this notable example
by showing how this religion was organized in Africa, how it was transplanted to Cuba,
then how it has come to be established in the United States. On this journey, three types of
relationship between religion and territory can be highlighted.
At the time of the Oyo empire, each orisha was associated with a place, and the main
temple of this god was located in the town of which he was the protector, and whose
sovereign was frequently regarded as his descendant. For example, Shango was the god of
Oyo, Orula that of the town of Ife, and Oshun was the goddess of Oshogbo. This
conception of the bond between territory and religion was close to that of the Greek city
described by Max Weber: ‘In marked contrast to our state, which is conceived as a
compulsory territorial institution, the polis . . . remained essentially a personal association
of cultic adherents of the civic god. The polis was further organized internally into
personal cultic associations of tribal, clan, and domestic gods, which were exclusive with
respect to their individual cults’ (1978: 414). The creation of an empire around the city of
Oyo resulted in the wide dissemination of the cult of Shango outside the walls of its city
of origin and the spread of a large number of other orisha through the Yoruba territories.
The link between an orisha, a lineage and a place had therefore already been partially
weakened by the wars of conquest and the institution of an imperial political entity in
Yoruba territories.
Yoruba slaves deported to Cuba re-implanted their religion there, above all in the
west of the country, around Havana. But orisha worship completely lost its function of
legitimizing the monarchy: it became a slave religion. Genealogies were forgotten and
populations of African, European and Chinese origin became mixed; and the acceleration
of this process in the twentieth century led to a changed conception of the relationship
between an individual and an orisha. Nowadays, the adoption of the cult of a particular
orisha by an individual is not linked to a specific lineage, nor even to the fact of having
African ancestors: all individuals may be initiated without any condition of descent. The
shared life of blacks and poor whites in the same districts has led to fairly large-scale
dissemination of this religion in the white population. Depoliticized and ‘de-ethnicized’,

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136 Erwan Dianteill

orisha worship has become associated with popular Catholicism. The orisha have been
identified with Catholic saints, so this religion is known in Cuba by the name ‘Santeria’.
As far as the relationship with territory is concerned, some Catholic churches have been
annexed by santeros, who have diverted their use away from Catholic orthodoxy. The
basilica of El Cobre, officially dedicated to the cult of Our Lady, is also a place of
pilgrimage for the worshippers of Oshun, as is the sanctuary of Saint Lazarus for the
devotees of Babalu Aye. Orisha worship in Cuba, therefore, has been reterritorialized
through Catholic churches.
Although the reference to political power and to lineage had been lost in Cuba,
Santeria has been partially ‘re-ethnicized’ in the United States. Cuban refugees started to
practise Santeria in the United States in the 1960s, mainly in Florida and New York. In
this context, two divergent religious trends have appeared, which have their roots in
distinct communities. In the Puerto Rican population, Santeria has become Latinized. It
has become associated with the spiritism already practised in Puerto Rico, so that it is
sometimes referred to as ‘Santerismo’. In some cases, it has developed so far as to reject
Cuban Santeria, which is accused of being ‘witchcraft’, even though many ‘Santerismo’
practices are derived directly from it. Another trend arising from Santeria is the ‘Orisha-
Voodoo’ movement that has developed (on a modest scale) in the black American
population. It consists of a re-Africanization of ritual and beliefs, eliminating, in
particular, the references to Catholicism that were incorporated during the Cuban period.
Initiation into this movement is reserved for blacks, and it is organized into an ‘African-
based’ village community in South Carolina. This acts as a sanctuary for an attempt to
realign the linkages between political power of a monarchical type, lineage and orisha
worship. Finally, another development has affected ‘orthodox’ Santeria in the United
States: that of ecclesiogenesis. The Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye is currently attempting
to federate all American santeros into a centralized organization based in Florida.
However, these trends (Latinization, neo-Africanization, ecclesiogenesis) are much less
evident in California than on the East Coast of the United States.
Religion, politics and ethnicity were decoupled in Cuba, so what is taking place in the
United States is not simply a return to the pre-colonial African situation. On the contrary,
orisha worship there is developing in accordance with the main trends of American
modernity.

Erwan Dianteill (dianteil@ehess.fr), Centre d’Etudes Interdisciplinaires des Faits

Religieux, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 54 Boulevard Raspail, 75006
Paris, France.

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