ANT 2000, Intro to Anthropology, Week 13, Spring 2004

Case: Santería in Miami

Question: Why is Santería expanding and commercializing in Miami-Dade County?

Researchers: Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan

Santeria is the name given to the religious syncretism that emerged from the Yoruban Nigerian cult of the Orishas and the Spanish Catholic cult of the Saints. It has also incorporated other African beliefs and animistic practices.

Santería is a form of shamanism based on the West African religions brought to the new world by slaves. imported to the Caribbean to work the sugar plantations. These slaves carried with them religious traditions, which included animism, possession trance for communicating with the ancestors and deities, the use of animal sacrifice, and the practice of sacred drumming and dance.

Santeria has a polytheistic foundation. Before retiring from the earthly plane, the supreme creator divided his powers among his children, who today are the orishas/santos of the Afro-Cuban pantheon.

Santeria, the Afro-Cuban religious cult, brought to South Florida by the Cuban exile community, has experience an expansion here over the past decades, which surpasses any growth it had in modern Cuba before the Castro Revolution of 1959. Santeria has flourished, especially in Latin communities in the United States where Cuban exiles have settled in large numbers. It has dramatically attracted new followers, who seek help it its rituals, counsel in its divination system, and solutions for life’s problems (love, money, health) in the practices of the santero/priest.

In Miami-Dade County, Florida, this expansion and commercialization is evident in the growing numbers of botanicas, fruterias and florerias (shops that sell the items necessary for ritual practice), which dot the city of Miami and the rest of the county; in the increasing numbers of santeros/santeras (priests and priestesses); and in the open practice by members of all social and economic classes.

The study of Santeria’s growth in Miami-Dade County is anthropologically signficant for two reasons. First, why is this ancient shamanistic form of religion, in which supernatural powers impact the destiny of people in the material world, thriving side by side with the contemporary economic and political success of Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade County?

Second, the expansion of Santeria -- as an “old country,” traditional religious practice among second generation Cuban-Americans -- directly contradicts the classic trans-generational patterns described by Glazer and Moynihan. In their book Beyond the Melting Pot, Glazer and Moynihan found that, based on the study of earlier migration waves into New York City, each generation (following the initial immigration) displays a common main overarching goal.

For the first generation immigrant, the main goal is simply “survival.” The second generation strives towards “Americanization” at any cost, including the rejection of old country customs and practices. The third generation strives to “make it” economically and socially. And, the fourth generation attempts to re-discover its “roots.”

The growth of Santería among second generation immigrants from Cuba does not follow suit. In fact Santeria's expansion in Miami-Dade County seems to directly contradict the findings of Beyond the Melting Pot, by demonstrating the converse situation in Generation 2, in which an old country religious practice is embraced rather than rejected. Why?

It appears that Santería is functioning as an alternative mental health system for Cuban-American families in Miami-Dade County After arriving in the United States, Cuban-Americans often face a profound family crisis, based on three sources of stress:

• between parents and their children, many of whom adopt the cultural behavior and values of a more open and permissive U.S. society;

• between husbands and wives, especially when the wives enter the labor force and begin contributing to the family income, thus becoming more independent; and

• internally, for fathers who are required to make a living at low-income/low-status jobs, because they either lost their businesses during the Revolution and/or cannot in the short term continue to work in the prestigious professions (law, medicine, etc.) they once practiced in Cuba.

A lack of access to mental health services, along with a Latin cultural stigma concerning mental health treatment that labels patients as “crazy,” has created a need and a market for an alternative mental health care system. The emergence of Santeria as an alternative mental health care system is a significant phenomena in the Miami Cuban community. Thus, the study of Santeria may provide insight into new strategies through which Latins, and other contemporary immigrants to the U.S., are seeking psychological balance in a new and complex environment.

Recommended resources:

Wade Davis,

- Passage of Darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian Zombie.

- The Serpent and the Rainbow (book and movie)

Lydia Cabrera, El Monte.

Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot.

Mercedes Cros Sandoval, La Religión Afrocubana.

Rafael Mrtinez and Charles Wetli, “Santeria: A Magico-Religious System of

Afro-Cuban Origin,” Am. Journal of Social Psychiatry, 2:3, 1982.