Santería (Regla de Ocha / Lucumí)

Origins

Santería grew from the religion of the Yoruba of present-day Nigeria and Benin. Cuba received roughly 500,000 to 700,000 enslaved Africans, most of them in the 19th century, and according to the scholar David Brown large numbers of Yoruba arrived between about 1790 and 1865. In Cuba they were known as Lucumí, and their worship came to be called La Regla de Ocha, or Santería.

Brown describes the tradition as a living Afro-Caribbean religion built by creole communities, not a frozen survival of African practice. At first it belonged to the Lucumí "nation" and their direct descendants. In the 20th century it opened to Cubans of every background.

Names

"Santería" means "the way of the saints." Harvard's Pluralism Project notes that many practitioners now reject the name because it puts the Catholic elements ahead of the African heritage. They often prefer La Regla de Lukumí, La Regla de Ocha-Ifá, or simply Ocha.

Beliefs and practice

Devotees honor a supreme being, Olodumare (also called Olorun), whose life force, ashé, works through the ancestors (egun) and the orishas. Each orisha governs an area of nature or human life and has its own stories (patakís), colors, numbers, foods, dances, drum rhythms and chants in the Lucumí ritual language.

In 19th-century Cuba, orishas were paired with Catholic saints. Changó was linked with St. Barbara, Ogún with St. George, and Babalú Ayé with St. Lazarus, and the orishas' festivals came to follow the Church calendar. Altars combine saints' images, candles and flowers with stones and cowrie shells that embody the orishas' power, often kept in lidded porcelain tureens.

Worship is organized in houses (ilés), ritual families led by a priestess (iyalocha) or priest (babalocha), also called santera or santero. Godparents initiate godchildren, and the anniversary of initiation is celebrated as a birthday. Priests consult the orishas through divination, and highly respected male diviners called babalawos take part in many initiations. At drum ceremonies, initiates may become "mounts" for the orishas, who are believed to come down and dance, eat and give counsel. Offerings, including animal sacrifice, are part of rites of healing and feasting.

In the United States

Cuban migrants carried the religion to Miami, New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California, and to Puerto Rico. Its followers now include Black and white Americans and other Caribbean immigrants. The Pluralism Project reports estimates of 250,000 to one million practitioners in the US. Most ceremonies take place in home temples.

After the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, led by Ernesto Pichardo, leased land in Hialeah, Florida, and announced plans for a house of worship, the city passed ordinances banning ritual animal sacrifice. In Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah (June 11, 1993), the US Supreme Court struck the laws down. It held that they targeted a religious practice, were neither neutral nor generally applicable, and violated the First Amendment's guarantee of free exercise. The ruling remains a landmark of American religious-liberty law.