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Santería
Santería (literally, Way of the Saints
- preferred terms among practitioners include Lukumí
and Regla de Ocha) is a set of related religious
systems that fuse
Catholic beliefs with traditional
Yoruba religion, practiced by black slaves and their descendants
in Cuba, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Panama and Hispanic
population centers in the
United States such as
Florida,
New
York, and
California. "Santería" was originally a derisive term applied by
the Spanish to mock followers' seeming overdevotion to the saints and
neglect of God. The slaves'
Christian masters did not allow them to practice their various
west African
animistic religions. The slaves found a way around this by
concluding that the Christian
saints
were simply different manifestations of their various gods. The
masters thought that their slaves had become good Christians and were
praising the saints, when in actuality they were continuing their
traditional practices.Santería ritual is highly secretive and
primarily transmitted orally. Known practices include
animal sacrifice, ecstatic dance, and sung invocations to the
spirits.
Chickens are the most popular form of sacrifice; their blood is
offered to the
orisha,
or lesser guardian deities, who correspond to Christian saints. Drum
music and dancing are used to induce a trance state in participants,
who may become possessed by an orisha and speak with the orisha's
voice. One's ancestors are held in high esteem in Santería. God is
referred to as
Olorun,
or the "owner of heaven" and Olodumare.
Many
animal rights activists take issue with the Santería practice of
animal sacrifice, claiming that it is cruel. Followers of Santería
point out that the killings are conducted in the same manner as many
food animals are slaughtered and are not needlessly sadistic.
Additionally, the animal is cooked and eaten afterwards. (The
similarities between Santería and other forms of slaughter for food
are of no comfort to animal rights activists who are
vegetarian.) In
1993, the
United States Supreme Court ruled in
Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah that
animal cruelty laws targeted specifically at Santería were
unconstitutional, and the practice has seen no significant legal
challenges since then.
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