When the Communist Party voted to “legalize” freedom of religion in 1991 after three decades of enforcing atheism as a social and cultural ideal, perhaps no other religion benefitted more than Regla de Ocha, commonly known as Santería. Created by enslaved Africans, free Blacks and creole slaves in the Nineteenth Century and rooted in Yoruba traditions, Santería was officially persecuted since the late 1960s when the Communist Party declared it “oscurantista” [a promoter of the dark arts] and ideologically destructive. The 1974 Code of Social Defense even demanded an automatic two-year sentence for any adult who passed on knowledge of the faith to minors. Starting in the 1990s, however, the visibility of new initiates like this grandmother and her granddaughter, both dressed in the white garb of yabós and out for a weekend stroll, became common. I took this picture years after the end of the Special Period, at the height of what appeared to be a “boom” in initiations. Old Havana, 2011.
