Drumming The Gods
Overview of Santeria

The Cuban sugar plantations had an insatiable hunger for labor. For example, records of the Cuban slave trade indicate the importation of 350,000 African slaves between 1821 and 1860. The slaves were principally brought from Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, Angola, Senegal, Liberia, French Guinea and the Congo. The ones that were to have the greatest cultural influence on Cuba were the Yoruba from the Southwest of Nigeria. Yoruba religion was, and is, intimatelly tied to a concept of family, those living and the dead. Control over natural forces is attributed to the ancestors. Those with ashe, power, were transformed into divine beings, Orishas. According to the Yorubas, this metamorphosis happens during moments of emotional crisis. The individual's material self disappears, burned by passion and only his or her ashe remains, manifested as pure energy. These Orishas, and their liturgical drumming, chanting and dancing came to new world with the slaves. The Spanish colonists were far more permissive than their English counterparts when it came to allowing the enslaved Africans to express their culture through festivals. Partly, this was done to maintain the differences and rivalries among the tribes and nations. Religion stole hours from production, but the plantation owners saw that it insured against the unity necessary for a rebellion. A process of syncretism began when the African and Catholic belief systems met. The slaves accepted the Catholic saints as new guises for their Orishas. They noticed simple similarities, and melded together the figures of their divine ancestors with the church's hagiography. St. Lazarus became associated with Babalu Aye, Agayu with St. Christopher and Chango with St. Barbara. Eleggua became the Holy Child of Atocha. With the abolition of slavery in 1880, Eulogio Gutierrez, an ex-slave from Matanzas, decided to return to Africa. He was possessed by Olofi on two occasions while in Nigeria. The Orisha demanded that he return to Cuba and found the Rule of Ifa, the sacred order of the babalawos. Around 1900, a babalawo in Matanzas, Lorenzo Samá, became worried about the lack of unification among the Yoruba cults. Along with a "daughter" of Chango, Latuan, he worked to unify the different cults into a single liturgical body which he named the Rule of Ocha (La Regla de Ocha). His ideas gained general acceptance and modern Santeria was born.