One Friday afternoon in February, Francisco Álvarez León loaded his white pickup with a basket of honey, a bottle of beer, and a bundle of yellow flowers. He turned on corridos, then drove together with his spouse and two younger children to their favourite riverbank in Colima, México. That is the place Álvarez León practices Lucumí alongside two different clergymen, who’re referred to as babalawos within the faith; identified around the globe as Santería, Lucumí shares its title with the West African-descendant communities in Cuba who first developed the observe, which has since expanded throughout Latin America and its diaspora.
Upon their arrival, Álvarez León and his household sat by the water, unpacking the choices one after the other. He set every part out in entrance of them, then stated a quiet prayer earlier than releasing the honey into the water and leaving the flowers on the riverbank.
The providing was for Ochún: the Lucumí orisha, or deity of contemporary water, luxurious, love, magnificence and candy issues. Álvarez León, who has studied and practiced Lucumí for almost 30 years, has turn out to be extra grounded in his goal and higher outfitted to navigate life’s inevitable chaos.
He first discovered about Lucumí within the late ‘90s, after a compatriot asked him to join a meeting near his former home in Las Vegas. “They started telling me about my future, how I was going to come into some money — which I didn’t consider as a result of I didn’t know the place that a lot cash would come from,” he stated in Spanish.
Even so, he accompanied the group to a lake the following day, the place they carried out a ceremony for him. “I slept really well that night and the next morning, an old friend knocked on my door.” He was in search of somebody to assist open two cellphone shops in Vegas — and Álvarez León ended up with $50,000 to assist make that occur.
His introduction to Lucumí could have been by means of divination, however Álvarez León stayed within the observe as a result of it retains him grounded and linked — to his neighborhood, to the next consciousness, and to his ancestors. “Lucumí is spirituality, it’s a different lifestyle that inherently requires you to step away from negative energy,” he defined. “If I do something to taint that spirituality, I have to work hard and wait a while for that bad energy to leave my life and my energy field.
“So that’s made me realize that if I’m putting in so much work to cultivate positive things in my life, it’s not worth doing anything negative. I’m very careful who I’m around, where I go, when I go places and when I stay home, and even thoughtful about what I say, because this is what’s been helping me,” he stated.
Álvarez León’s phrases resonate with up to date students, who’re actively working to destigmatize and demystify the faith. “Lucumí is all about survival and care,” defined Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús, a professor of American research at Princeton College and creator of “Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational Religion.”
“[Because these practices] were for the survival of enslaved African peoples, [they] really focused on people’s health, well-being and balance… but still connecting back to African traditional religious practices and beliefs,” added Beliso-De Jesús.
At its core, Lucumí is a practice that prompts us to ask: How can we reside in stability? And the way can we keep properly in a world that usually desires us unwell?
And but, Lucumí is extensively misunderstood and often demonized — particularly inside white and white-adjacent Latine communities, lengthy entrenched with anti-Black beliefs. Though Catholicism, Evangelical Christianity, and even Jehovah’s Witnesses are extensively accepted in Latin households, Lucumí is simply too typically lowered to “witchcraft” or “voodoo,” just because it exists exterior the bounds of whiteness — and, extra importantly, in resistance to white supremacy.
Lucumí is an Afro-Caribbean faith with roots in Yoruba cosmology, shaped and sustained by enslaved Africans in Cuba as an act of resistance and remembrance. Lucumí emphasizes character, stability and connection to the divine by means of orishas, “which are the energies that are tied to nature and the person’s own balance in the world,” defined Beliso-De Jesús.
The faith emerged out of necessity. When West Africans, primarily Yoruba folks, have been enslaved and compelled to Cuba throughout the transatlantic enslavement commerce, they carried their cosmologies with them. Although colonizers tried to erase their traditions by means of pressured conversion to Catholicism, enslaved Africans discovered methods to adapt and shield their non secular practices. Over time, Yoruba non secular methods advanced into what we now name Lucumí or La Regla de Ocha, incorporating new layers of which means whereas retaining their ancestral spine.
Many of those early rituals befell inside cabildos — Spanish-imposed non secular conferences meant to socialize enslaved folks into Catholicism. “The church created these institutions to teach enslaved Africans how to be ‘good Catholics,’” stated Elizabeth Pérez, an affiliate professor of faith at UC Santa Barbara and ethnographer and historian of Afro-Diasporic and Latin American religions. “But what actually happened is that people from different African groups got together, remembered their songs and stories, and began reimagining their religion.” In different phrases: Colonizers by accident gave them an area to reconnect.
“Early practitioners began to open up the tradition to people from other African ethnic groups,” defined Pérez. “They even initiated mixed-race individuals and people of other backgrounds — Chinese migrants, white Cubans — because this was about survival. The goal was to preserve something, to create something powerful and shared.”
Even after abolition, Lucumí continued — quietly, typically in personal houses — as police and officers criminalized something perceived as “pagan.” To this present day, many practitioners hold their religion discreet for security — and since outsiders nonetheless deal with it like one thing threatening or unusual. However the reality is: Lucumí has all the time been about safety, therapeutic and remembrance. Its roots lie not in worry, however in love and holistic well being.
Whereas animal sacrifice is an actual a part of some ceremonies, the media’s obsession with this explicit observe has created a distorted image that reduces a complete non secular system to a single, sensationalized act.
“The way people talk about sacrifice in Lucumí is often completely disconnected from how it actually works,” stated Akissi Britton, an assistant professor of Africana research at Rutgers. “Yes, animals are sometimes offered to the orishas. But it’s done prayerfully, with care. The meat is almost always prepared and shared with the community.” In different phrases, it’s not some violent spectacle.
Beliso-De Jesús agreed, including that the fixation is racialized. “There’s a tendency to view anything African-derived as ‘barbaric,’ while turning a blind eye to widespread animal slaughter in other contexts,” she stated. “We kill millions of animals every day in this country for food, for science, for convenience.” However when Black folks do it as a part of a sacred ritual, it’s all of the sudden horrific?”
In 1993, the Supreme Courtroom dominated in Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. Metropolis of Hialeah that legal guidelines banning animal sacrifice particularly focused Lucumí and violated practitioners’ First Modification rights. Nonetheless, even with the ruling in place, discrimination and surveillance proceed — holdovers from centuries of colonial rule.
“Vilification was strategic,” stated Beliso-De Jesús. “Colonizers needed a way to justify enslavement, genocide and forced conversion. So they painted African and Indigenous religions as evil.” That wasn’t a mistake — that was a part of the plan.
Britton put it much more plainly: “Anything that wasn’t Christian got demonized. And once something is seen as demonic, it’s easier to police. It’s easier to ban. It’s easier to fear.”
One other persistent stereotype is that Lucumí is all about “black magic” or throwing curses at your enemies. That is harmful nonsense rooted in worry of African spirituality, stated Britton.
“Lucumí is about aligning yourself with your destiny,” she stated. It’s about nourishing your spirit, caring for your physique, honoring your ancestors, and staying in stability. Throwing negativity at somebody nearly assures it’ll come again to you, and then you definitely’ll be off stability.
Beliso-De Jesús expanded on that concept, pointing to the idea of iwa pele, or good character, as a tenet in Lucumí. “It’s about living well, not harming others, and being in the right relationship with yourself and your community,” she stated. In different phrases, Lucumí and the orishas aren’t devices of revenge — they’re sacred forces that information folks towards readability and stability.
The reality is that Lucumí honors nature, uplifts ancestors, and affords instruments for collective survival. That’s precisely what made it so threatening to those that uphold white supremacy — and precisely what makes it stunning at this time.
