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Experts say the religion offers the faithful comfort and protection, not an incitement to violence.
By JAMES HARPER
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 1, 2000
Its roots are in Africa and it flowered in Cuba, where slaves substituted Roman Catholic saints for the names of ancient deities.
Followers of Santeria -- an estimated 1-million in the United States -- are most likely to pray for good health, a happy romance or worldly success.
On Thursday, however, a 36-year-old Cuban refugee wearing the symbolic white clothes of a novice Santeria priest was charged with fatally shooting four fellow employees at the Tampa hotel where he worked. Three others were injured. A fifth victim died during an aborted carjacking a few minutes later.
A deadly shooting rampage, and a religion that involves primitive rituals, sometimes including animal sacrifice. Could the two, possibly, be related?
To some, the very question smacks of stereotypes and cultural bias.
"When someone who is Catholic gets into a rampage like that, nobody in the newspaper makes a point of saying he was Catholic or Jewish or Baptist or something like that," said Mercedes Sandoval, a Miami anthropologist who has studied Santeria for 50 years.
Jose J. LaCalle, a forensic psychologist in Orange County, Calif., agrees with Sandoval and other experts that in Cuban culture, Santeria is a healthy, mainstream religion. Its focus is on protecting people from harm and enabling them to be of service to others.
But as in any religion, some believers can find mistaken assurances that wrongdoing is not only permissible, it will also be protected.
LaCalle, whose practice focuses on crimes committed by Hispanics, said he has seen cases in which a Santeria believer "committed a crime in plain day, then went home thinking nothing will happen to me because the spirits told me to do it."
LaCalle knows nothing about Tampa suspect Silvio Izquierdo-Leyva, who has refused to speak with detectives. But the key question to ask him, he said, would be "whether he was acting under the misbelief that one of his spirits asked him to do that, or was he simply acting out a case of workplace rage."
If Izquierdo-Leyva believed he were spiritually motivated, that could explain his uncanny calm after his arrest, LaCalle said.
Followers of Santeria believe in a supreme being, Oloddumare, who created the universe and sent lesser deities, or orishas, to create life out of the earthly elements. In daily practice, there are seven deities that represent forces of nature and can be called upon to influence the course of a person's life.
When slaves were brought from West Africa to Cuba, they disguised their beliefs by adopting the Roman Catholic custom of appealing to various saints, in order to appease their captors intent on converting them to Christianity.
The intertwining of the two religions is most evident in the requirement that an initiate be baptized first as a Catholic. Generally, one of the first places a person goes after the seven-day initiation ritual is to Catholic Mass.
Some believers never get initiated formally but merely consult Santeria priests for guidance and use the totems and prayers in their everyday worship, Sandoval said. And not every initiate plans to become a priest.
Sometimes, a priest will recommend that a troubled person go through the initiation ritual to gain the protection of a particular god, Sandoval said.
The secrecy of Santeria -- deeply ingrained in its resistance to slavery -- is one factor in its occult reputation. So, too, are occasional media stories that link bizarre occurrences such as grave desecrations to the religion. Mainstream Santeros do not believe in grave desecrations or communing with the dead.
But undeniably, animal sacrifice -- chickens and goats -- is the thing that most separates Santeria from mainstream North American religion. Sacrifices generally are restricted to commemorations of major life events. The animals often end up as human meals after they are ritualistically killed and offered to the gods.
In 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Santeria sacrifices are protected under the Constitution's guarantee of religious freedom. The ruling has done much to encourage Santeros to be more open about their religion.
Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report. Information from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Associated Press was also used.