Letra del Ano 2007

History

Santería, also known as Lukumí or Regla de Ocha, is a set of related religious systems that fuse Catholic/Christian beliefs with traditional Yoruba beliefs. In the Yoruba language, Lukumí means "friends" and also applies to descendants of Yorùbá slaves in Cuba, their music and dance, and the cubanized dialect of the Yorùbá language.

The term "Lukumi" is an authentic ancient designation still in use by present day Yoruba peoples of West Africa and their descendents in Cuba and the diaspora. The term Lukumi also refers to a vastly large number of religious followers or adherents who practice authentic Lukumi traditions as well as the most common syncretic form of the religion known as "Santeria", which was established in Cuba dating back to around the mid-18th century. The term Lukumi derives from the word "Olukumi", meaning my friend. The term Yoruba as a cultural designation only dates back to the mid-19th century colonialism. In modern day Nigeria, the Yoruba consists of several ethnic groups, including but not limited to: Egba, Egbado, Ijebu, Oyo, all who arrived in great numbers in Cuba. The Lukumi however derive from a region known as Ulcumi/Ulcami, which was contained within the vast Oyo Empire dating back as early as the 16th century, located just north north-west of Lagos. Cuban Lukumi also refer to their ancient African Kingdon as Ulkuman, another variation of Ulcumi.(Law,1977,p.5)(Mason,1992,p.2) (La Enciclopedia de IFA).

What we recognize as modern Yoruba today, in Cuba they were known as Lukumí, the more ancient and authentic designation. Lukumi Slaves and slaves from other regions of Western Africa were purposely segregated by slave owning families as a means of maintaining tribal and ethnic tensions between them during times of enslavement (see Midlo Hall's 1992,2005). It is in this manner that Cuban Enslavement and the means of maintaining control over each of these cultural groups evolved. It wasn't until the early part of the 18th century that the Spanish Government and the Catholic Church allowed for the creation of societies called cabildos. These cabildos were primarily used by the slaves as a means for entertainment and reconstruction of many aspects of their ethnic heritage, and were also intended as a means to institutionalize the interethnic animosities.

"The colonial period from the standpoint of African slaves may be defined as a time of perseverance. Their world quickly changed. Tribal kings and families, politicians, business and community leaders all were enslaved in a foreign region of the world. Religious leaders, their descendants, and the faithful, were now slaves. Colonial laws criminalized their religion. They were forced to become baptized and worship a new "Loving God" surrounded by a pantheon of saints. The early concerns during this period seem to indicate a need for individual survival. An ability to live on and not die under harsh plantation conditions. A sense of hope was sustaining the internal essence of what today is called Santeria, a misnomer for the indigenous religion of the Yoruba people of Nigeria.

In their homeland, they had a complex political and social order. They were a sedentary hoe farming cultural group with specialized labor. Their religion based on the worship of nature was renamed and documented by their masters. Santeria, a pejorative term that characterizes deviant Catholic forms of worshiping saints has become a common name for the religion. The term Santero(a) is used to describe a priest or priestess replacing the traditional term Olorisha as an extension of the deities. The orishas became known as the saints in image of the Catholic pantheon." (Ernesto Pichardo, CLBA, Santeria in Contemporary Cuba: The individual life and condition of the priesthood)

In order to preserve their authentic ancestral and traditional beliefs, the Lukumi had no choice but to disguise their Orishas behind the veil of the Catholic Saints. When slave owners observed Africans celebrating a Saint's Day, they were generally unaware that the slaves were actually worshiping their sacred Orishas. Today, the terms saint and Orisha are sometimes incorrectly used interchangeably. The term Santería (also known as, Way of the Saints), a derisive term applied by the Spanish to mock followers' seeming overdevotion to the saints and their perceived neglect of God, was later applied to the religion by racist whites. The slaves' Christian masters did not allow them to practise their various west African religions. The slaves found a way around this by masking the Yorùbá Orishas as Christian saints while maintaining their original identities. Often this combining is called by Eurocentric anthropologists and other social scientists as syncretism, even though the practices are not actually combined and thus, are not actually a true example of syncretism. Nevertheless, the masters thought their slaves had become "good Christians" and were praising the saints, when in actuality they were continuing their traditional practices.

The Traditional Lukumí religion and its "Santeria" counterpart can be found to existed in many parts of the world today, including but not limited to: the United States, Cuba, Caribbean, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Argentina, Colombia, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Great Britain, Canada, Venezuela, Panama and other areas with large Latin American populations. A very similar religion called Candomblé is also practiced in Brazil, which is home to a rich array of other Afro-Latino American religions. This is now being referred to as "parallel religiosity" (Perez y Mena, SSSR paper 2005) since some believers worship the African variant that has no "devil fetish" and no baptism or marriage and at the same time they belong to either Catholic Churches or Mainline Protestant Churches, where there is a devil fetish. Yoruba religiosity works toward a balance here on earth (androcentric) while the European religions work toward the here after. Some in Cuban Santeria, Haitian Vodun or Puerto Rican Spiritualism (Afro-Latin Religions) do not view a difference between the Saints and the Orishas, the ancestor deities of the Yoruba people's Ifa religion.

There are now individuals who mix the Lukumí practices with traditional practices as they survived in Africa after the deleterious effects of colonialism. Although most of these mixes have not been at the hands of experienced or knowledgable practitioners of either system, they have gained a certain popularity.