El Poder del Santo
Exploring the mysteries of Santeria, the age-old Afro-Cuban religion
Close the blinds and close all the doors,” several people say.
In a middle-class home in southwest, metropolitan Miami, a private ceremony begins. Drums and an African language resonate throughout the room where people stand, and the Orisha see.
Four men sing and play their instruments before the altar with beats that start slow and progress in speed and intensity. They play songs honoring Orisha.
No one crosses any part of the body, because crossing prevents an Orisha from incarnating a person as a medium to the world of the living.
To one side solemnly stands Susana Abreu, wearing all white, as tears from her big, brown eyes follow a path down her tan cheekbones.
It is Oct. 2, 2005. This day marks a year since Susana, 46, was reborn the daughter of Obatala (saint of health) and initiated as a Santera.
Arrangements of chrysanthemums, sunflowers, purple and orange orchids and rich, red roses adorn every corner of the altar in Susana’s home. Perfect fruits like bananas, apples, grapes, coconuts, mangoes, oranges, papayas, and pineapples fill the floor. Money-filled canisters also decorate the floor as gifts to the Orisha, next to a mat and one broken coconut.
Inside the altar, urns which are decorated with teal peacock feathers and white and orange lace hold secret contents that only Santeros can see. They also contain the essence of the Orisha.
“It took an entire day to prepare the altar,” Susana’s husband, Mauro says. “She is truly devoted to the Orisha.”
Susana celebrates and gives thanks to the Orisha by creating the best altar she can make. The nicer and more intricate, the happier the Orishas will be, Susana says.
One can describe this ceremony as similar to a birthday. The main activity of the day is dancing. Santeros dance first, and then others join. The dancing represents the intent for a connection between Orisha and humans.
“Mounting” or the possession of the body by an Orisha, takes place at this time. Mounting may or may not happen depending on positive vibes—the stronger the better. Music allows it to occur to anyone present. During the process, people mimic or speak to others in the fashion of an oracle. After mounting, one cannot recall what happened.
“When the drums reach a speed, you reach a certain state of consciousness where your body is there, yet your essence is absent,” Susana explains. “During this song created for Obatala, I became entranced. He entered me. It’s no longer me: it’s him. It’s special because I’m his daughter.”
As she dances, her posture and face change, especially her eyes. While she contracts to the earthy beats, shaking her head, something in her eyes is missing. Obatala danced through her body, while Susana is on hold somewhere. Soon she wanders aimlessly and a high priest, or Babalawo, instructs everyone to lock arms to prevent her from walking outside. Suddenly, Susana’s Santeria godmother takes her to a room.
Someone follows with coconut water. No one else follows. What happens in the room? They cannot say.
During other songs, the Orisha mounts three others, including a musician.
One man, about 27, wanders off outside. Then the musician drops his guiro (a hollow, beaded wooden instrument) and intensely moves in all directions. His two children sit in a corner; one watching in fear.
A woman dressed in yellow however, snaps and her visage changes. She travels around the room with Susana’s godmother translating, and advises people.
Then our eyes meet. I will refer to the godmother as Teresa.
“Never cut your hair,” Teresa translates as the woman in yellow mounted by Oshun (ruler of rivers and streams) passes a yellow cloth around me. “You cannot, cannot, cannot have children.”
I hear myself gulp. That is all.
“Not right now; you must not,” she then adds. “Rub aspirin between your knees, they will get better.”
How does she know my knees do not move well? It does not show. Still, I stand in shock as both women, dripping in sweat, turn away. Soon after, four strangers swarm toward me ranting, “Don’t get pregnant. Don’t have sex. Oshun knows.”
After the mounting the night ends, and people leave like nothing happened.
Becoming a Santero
Susana easily fell ill as a young child. At the age of 5, her mother took her to a Santero who gave her protective necklaces against illnesses and told her she’d eventually become a Santera.
“For 41 years of my life, I viewed things differently,” Susana says. “I didn’t pay much attention, but I did respect Santeria. I just wasn’t ready to take that path.”
Susana, a clinical psychologist educated in her birthplace of Havana, Cuba, remembers the time when, at the age of 14, doctors diagnosed her mother, who seven days earlier gave birth to her little sister, with bone cancer.
“The disease paralyzed her legs,” she says. “The doctors said they could do nothing for her. They did say that what my mother, my family and I could do was pray to the Orisha and the dead with a lot of faith, to prolong her life.”
Her mother sought initiation and became a Santera as a daughter of Obatala. Susana’s mother survived for seven more years, and died when Susana turned 21.
A little more than a year ago, Susana’s deteriorating health pushed her to seek a quick solution. People who seek initiation usually have personal problems dealing with justice, sickness or taking a wrong path.
“First, you attend a consultation, where a Babalawo throws shells and asks whether you can become a Santero,” she says. “My time had come.”
The first three months, the initiated must avoid mirrors. The process forbids haircuts and, during this time, they must eat only from the floor. They wear everything white: socks, underwear, long-sleeve shirts and turban-like covers for their heads. Santeros must even sleep on white bed sheets and keep their own white towels.
“For a year I could not wear perfume, dye my hair, drink alcohol, go out at night, dance, shave or have physical contact; not even kissing or hugging,” Susana says. “And, as bizarre as it sounds, we have to be home before midnight and must always remain inside the house at noon.”
She explains that first year Santeros can leave the house at 11:58 a.m. or 12:01 p.m., but not noon. The sun’s rays shine too strongly for Santeros. Olofi, the equivalent to God, forbids this because his “newborn” children have been blessed already, and any other strong force could hurt them.
“Think of a first year Santero as a baby,” she says. “They are delicate, they must be covered at all times, and babies can catch anything.”
Nothing that Santeros touch can come in contact with another human being. They eat from their own plates and utensils, dry with the same towel and they can’t give money to anyone.
For seven days, Susana slept on the floor inside the Orisha’s altar. Susana’s godmother serves as a kind of nanny. She fed her, bathed her, all inside the altar.
These things symbolize purification. Tradition designates the first year of rebirth as the children of a given Orisha as the time to cleanse negative energy. Tradition also prohibits physical contact because another will carry the negative weight Santeros try to disperse.
The first year and the initiation ceremony cost thousands of dollars. The amount varies according to parent Orisha. Some hold more power than others. Elegua, ruler of the paths and doors of the world, runs at about $10,000. This cost includes a whole new white wardrobe, towels, plates, drinking glasses, urns and their contents, the necessary animals, foods, miscellaneous objects required and payment to the Babalawo who performs the rituals.
Rituals
Susana’s son, Maurito, 21, remembers walking to the back room of a Babalawo’s home. At this $100 gathering, the Babalawo told Maurito he must urgently be initiated.
“Your life will soon be endangered in a bad accident, and it could be fatal,” Maurito recalls the Babalawo as saying.
Susana pushed for Maurito’s initiation for fear that he could die. “The Orisha give quick solutions,” she says.
Maurito’s refusal of initiation caused a temporary rift between the two because he felt unready. As scared as they both were, Maurito remained skeptical and decided to wait until he found faith in the religion. He did, however, attend a cleansing ritual.
“There was a circle of plates full of beans, flour, sugar, coffee beans and all kinds of meat surrounding a basket with cloth in it,” he says.
Those participating walk around in the circle from plate to plate, picking up handfuls of the food and crossing them over their bodies in an eight form, starting around the head down to the toes. They throw the food back into the basket as they move. Toward the end of the ritual they place two eggs, one on each eye, and a Babalawo passes a live chicken or duck all around the body while it screeches.
“I was scared it would bite me,” Maurito says. “I was scared the first time I got cleansed. Now, it’s like nothing.”
In the center of the circle, the Babalawo then snaps the chicken’s head and chops it off with a knife, holds it upside down and lets the blood drip into the basket. He then disposes of the basket and the bird elsewhere.
All the negative forces cleansed from the participants rest in the basket and the chicken. Only the Babalawo can touch the basket. The negative energy inside could fall upon someone and ruin him or her.
“I’ve always been skeptical because Santeria has become commercialized,” Maurito says. “There are people who exploit the people who need help, so sometimes they might just tell you stuff.”
Another Miami resident, Havana-born electrician Jose Aguilera also remembers paying for expensive cleansings. For about $400, a Santero chanted while passing a live bird around every crevice of the house. When the Santero reached the door, Jose watched him snap the animal’s neck. He also saw him gut and take the organs out with his bare hands. The Santero made the offering to allow the Orisha to absorb the blood.
“I only paid the money because my wife wanted to do it,” Jose says. “I don’t approve of it though.”
Cures
Jose respects Santeria and believes in its power, but says he feels that it is strong faith that can cure and make miracles.
“There are things you can’t explain,” he says. “But, I’m telling you, I have seen things.”
Jose’s mother, who suffered from mental trauma and damage from long-time electroshock therapy, sought the religion as a possible solution. She met her Santeria godfather, Marino Michel. Jose says Marino initiated her and, that year, her health improved steadily.
Jose says Marino earned fame from his work in Santeria and remembers the lines of 40 to 50 people waiting to see him in the mornings.
“Marino was a sincere man,” Jose says. “I spent a lot of time with him and witnessed many things.”
Jose’s mother tried to convince his grandmother into initiation as an attempt to remove her arthritis. Emiliana, a strongly Catholic woman, denied the offer but still visited Marino.
“He passed a live hen around her legs,” he says. “Marino chanted loudly in Yoruba and, immediately, the hen squawked and died.”
Jose considers himself a skeptic but says he watched the whole thing and couldn’t explain what happened. “I can tell you he’s not a liar,” he says.
Another time, Jose saw when a couple who drove five hours to bring their 9-year-old daughter, Raquelita, to Marino in hopes of a cure. Marino told the couple to leave the girl and promised them she would walk again.
Marino cared for the girl for six years and, at the age of 12, she used crutches. When Raquelita turned 15, Jose remembers when Marino told her at a ceremony to leave the crutches. She walked. Jose doesn’t know what he did, but she was cured.
Marino also cured a doctor’s wife’s asthma at another ceremony. All he did was chant around her several times. The doctor never believed in a Santero’s power until that day.
Jose recalls the story of Marino’s first experience with the power of the religion. Marino, a young mischievous child, always interrupted and annoyed the village Santeros. He mocked their beliefs. One day, one of them worked black magic on Marino, and he no longer could see. His parents traveled to Haiti, where a voodoo priest cured his vision and told Marino that, as punishment, he’d practice Santeria the rest of his life.
Susana and Mauro, a doctor, both worked at the Hospital Naval in Cuba. She recalls an incident where one of Mauro’s students told him she had a rare virus called “Ojo De Pescado,” or fish eye. The virus makes skin scaly. For the disease to subside, doctors burn the skin, and sometimes a cure proves to be a challenge. The student spoke of a Santero someone suggested.
“The girl said she visited one and saw him pray by a water-filled cup,” Susana says. “He performed a ritual on her and, when she returned, the virus was gone. We couldn’t explain it. It just was what it was.”
Animal problems
Jose, who owns his own electrician’s business, travels around Miami and commonly sees Orisha urns, animals and herbs. One time, however, Jose entered a home and quickly decided to return his client the money.
“I walked into one of the rooms,” he says. “The stench was unbearable and I saw a perfect circle drawn with white chalk on the floor. Inside sat a fruit bowl with an upside down, headless dove sticking out. Under the bowl laid charcoal and, next to it, laid a human head with remnants of a scalp and some blood on it.”
After the outrageous sight, he left.
These contents relate more to a branch of Santeria called Palo, normally associated with evil among the Cuban community. Its magic involves things like digging skulls out of graves, among other gruesome rituals.
“Some people choose their path,” he says. “Some practice good, some practice evil.”
Susana does say that good magic can be practiced in Palo.
“It’s not strange to see dead birds thrown on roads or grass,” Maurito says.
Santeria rituals are so common in the city of Hialeah that the local government filed a suit against The Church of Babalu Aye, a group established by Santeros of the area. It filed a suit because of the growing numbers of dead animals on roads lowering the look of the city.
The group took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court and won. The Court ruled in favor of Babalu Aye because prohibiting freedom of religion discriminates the group and is, therefore, unconstitutional.
Orisha require the blood of the sacrificed animal to carry out requests.
Susana cannot discuss animal sacrifice freely, except that she says it occurs when someone beckons something major.
Faith
Enough miracles happened around Susana to believe. She says she feels energetic and strong after initiation.
“My sacrifices pay off,” Susana says. “I have received health, material and intangible things I didn’t think possible.”
Both Jose and Susana agree that strong faith is most necessary.
“Imposters fill the world,” he says. “You can’t judge mysteries or religion based on them. Sometimes you just see something you can’t explain, and mysticism exists.”
Susana says she isn’t a fanatic, but rather a believer. “I have asked and they have given.”