The Yoruba religious tradition arose in West Africa, but its influence has spread beyond Africa to millions of adherents in the Americas as well. 'Santeria from Africa to the New World' retraces one path taken by this tradition―a path from Africa to Cuba and to New York City. George Brandon examines the religion’s transatlantic route through Cuban Santeria, Puerto Rican Espiritismo, and Black Nationalism. In following the historical and anthropological evolution of the Yoruba religion, Brandon discusses broader questions of power, multiculturalism, cultural change, and the production and reproduction of African retentions.
Addresses broader issues such as power relations within Caribbean slavery, multiculturalism, and the forms of religious accommodation to cultural change. This book examines the religion's transatlantic route through Cuban Santeria, Puerto Rican Espiritismo, and Black Nationalism.
Author(s): George Brandon
Series: Blacks in the diaspora
Edition: First paperback edition
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Year: 1997
Language: English
Commentary: scantailor made
Pages: 228
City: Bloomington and Indianapolis
Tags: african diaspora;santeria;orishas;yoruba;santeriafromafri00bran
Santeria from Africa to the New World
Contents
Acknowledgments
I. Introduction
The Processual Framework
Phases of Religious Development
Continuity and Change
II. Africa
The Old Religion
Three Brothers Quarrel, and their Homes are Invaded by Strangers
III. Cuba: Pre-Santeria and Early Santeria (1492-1870)
The Conquest Culture
The Catholic Religion
The Sugar Boom and Expansion of Slavery
Lucumi Ethnicity
Syncretism of African and European Religions
Transformation of the Old Religion
IV. Cuba: Santeria (1870-1959)
An Economic Transition
The Suppression of the Cabildos
Espiritismo
Afro-Cubanism
The Ambivalence of Repression and Resistance
Cuban Postscript
V. Santeria in the United States (1959-1982)
Spirits in Exile
New Forms in New York
VI. Continuity and Change
Problems of Collective Memory
Problems of Syncretism
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Illustrations follow page 31 and page 120
Plate 1. Decorations on the front of a Vodun shrine
Plate 2. Shrine to Orisha Oro (Oro Society House)
Plate 3. Worshipers assembled outside a shrine to the Vodun
Plate 4. Inside a shrine to the Orisha Osanyin
Plate 5. Inside a shrine to the Orisha Shango in Oyo, Nigeria
Plate 6. Inside a shrine to the Orisha Oshumare, the rainbow serpent, Nigeria, 1940
Plate 7. “Witnessing objects”: sacred pots from a shrine for the Orisha Obatala. Nigeria 1940
Plate 8. Candidates for initiation into the priesthood
Plate 9. Procession of initiates
Plate 10. Don Fernando Ortiz presents Santeria bata drummers to Cuban intellectuals. Havana, 1930s
Plate 11. Large Afro-Cuban Santeria altar in the house of a santero. Matanzas, Cuba, 1930s
Plate 12. Throne for Yemaya at La Casa de Los Hijos de San Lazaro, Guanabacoa, Havana Province
Plate 13. Chromolithograph of the Seven African Powers
Plate 14. The author at a spiritist session in the Bronx, New York, 1981
Plate 15. Santeria drum-dance, or bembe, in the Bronx, New York, 1980
Plate 16. Oba Osejiman Adefunmi I, king of the Yorubas in America, around 1980
Plate 17. The Oshun shrine at Oyotunji Village, South Carolina, 1981
Plate 18. The Ogun shrine at Oyotunji Village, South Carolina, 1981
