The Babalawo - Secrets of Santeria Revisited

About this episode

Growing up Catholic in Miami, I heard all kinds of stories about Santeria. People talked about dead chickens on doorsteps, curses, and spirits taking over people’s bodies. Even the people who didn’t practice it all said the same thing: “I don’t believe in Santeria, but I respect it.” That’s enough to terrify a little Cuban kid, and honestly, it still scares me. So I went back to my hometown to face that fear. My mom is a lifelong Catholic who has quietly started visiting a babalawo (or babalao, as we say in Miami), and she takes me to meet Fernando, the Santeria priest who told her things she swears he had no way of knowing. Santeria, also known as Lucumí or Regla de Ocha, is an Afro-Cuban religion with roots in West Africa’s Yoruba culture. Fernando explains how enslaved people in Cuba kept their orishas alive behind the faces of Catholic saints. Then he takes me to a botanica hidden in a residential neighborhood, where the animals for sacrifice wait in their cages. I also sit down with Cynthia Duncan, Ph.D., a scholar of Cuban culture who is also an initiated priestess. She explains what the orishas are, why the rituals are secret on purpose, what really happens during an ani