When the Saints Go Riding in: Santeria in Cuba and the United States

Abstract

This paper is a study of Santeria, a religion that developed in Cuba from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries as a syncretism of African religions, Roman Catholicism, and French spiritism. Still an important religious influence in Cuba today, its beliefs and practices have diffused to many other countries including the United States. The argument presented in the paper is that Santeria can be understood as a textual rewriting and rereading of the biographies, the histories, and the social contexts of its adherents. Using the oppositional, revisionary, and subversive hermeneutical principles inherited as part of their West African cultural heritage, the creators and followers of Santeria developed their religion as a counterhegemonic challenge to the social, economic, and political order that controlled their lives.