Granai della Memoria

The term “santeria” was coined from the Spanish to denigrate the slaves’ excessive devotion. Because of this, slaves did not understand  the main role of god in the Catholic religion. This behaviour was born from a costraint imposed by the slaveholders to the slaves: death penalty and prohibition to practice their animist religion brought from West Africa, forced them to find a solution to get around this prohibition. They hide their Gods under the Catholic iconography, so as to be free to worship them without incurring the cruelty of the oppressor. In this way Spanish rulers thought that slaves, as good Christians, were praying saints when in fact they were preserving their traditional faiths.