The Caribbean is one of the areas of the planet where more cultures have been found. In addition to the native Amerindian peoples, the arrival of the Spanish colonizers and, somewhat later, the arrival of slaves from Africa, caused the fusion of many cultures.
La Santeria, one of the most widespread beliefs throughout the Caribbean, is an example of this fusion. Although it has had a bad reputation over the years, it is a belief system like any other, far from witchcraft or black magic.
Santeria has its roots in the Yoruba tribe from Africa. The Yoruba lived in what is now Nigeria, along the Niger River. They had a powerful structure organized in kingdoms of which the most important was Benin. Likewise, the Yoruba were and are a very civilized people with a rich culture and a deep sense of ethics. We are not facing primitive religions or rites as they have tried to make us believe.
With the colonization of Africa by the Europeans, the Yoruba were enslaved and taken to different parts of America, mainly Caribbean countries and Brazil. Spanish laws required that slaves be baptized in order to enter Las Indias and they were prohibited from practicing their religions.
The Yoruba, to circumvent this prohibition, identified their African deities, called Orishas, which are deities that govern various aspects of the world, with the Saints of Catholicism, resulting in a religious syncretism known as Santeria.
The countries where the practice of Santeria is most widespread are Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia and places with a large Hispanic population in the United States.
Of all of them, Cuban Santeria is one of the most popular and widespread as well as one of the most organized.
Santeria is later than Voodoo (currently very badly interpreted when relating it to black magic nothing else) in the Caribbean they mixed the voodoo brought by African slaves with Catholicism carried by the Spanish.