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RELIGION Miguel A. De La Torre. Santeria: The Beliefs and Rituals of a Growing Religion in America. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004. xviii + 264 pp. Illustrations. Tables. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. $18.00. Paper.
The study of Yoruba orisha religion and the various diasporic permutations of it has become a popular yet complex field to navigate. In Santeria: The Beliefs and Rituals of a Growing Religion in America, Miguel A. De La Torre speaks lucidly about Santeria, a variant of orisha worship developed in Cuba by enslaved Africans and their descendants. Interested primarily in the growth and evolution of Santeria in the United States as a result of the migration of large communities of Cubans after 1959, he writes as a former practitioner, now academic, intending to dispel stereotypes about the religion. De La Torre returns us to a debate already put to rest in many academic circles yet still very prevalent within popular discourses-the question of whether Santeria is a syncretic, confused form of Catholicism. He suggests this label was imposed on Santeria by a "Eurocentric mind" attempting to "subordinate it to the self-perceived purity of the dominant culture's religion" (7). By drawing comparisons and differences between the two practices and explaining the basic tenets of Santeria-such as the myths of the various orisha (deities), related saint hagiography, sacrifice, spirit possession, divination, steps to initiation in the orisha priesthood, and the layers of understanding acquired "as the believer's understanding of orisha mysteries deepens"-De La Torre explains that for Santeria practitioners there is no confusion about the difference between their religion and Catholicism.
The cornerstone of De La Torre's analysis is the idea that Santeria is a religion of liberation. He asserts that the Latin American liberation theologians of the 1960s...