One Friday afternoon in February, Francisco Álvarez León loaded his white pickup with a basket of honey, a bottle of beer, and a bundle of yellow flowers. He turned on corridos, then drove with his wife and two young kids to their favorite riverbank in Colima, México. This is where Álvarez León practices Lucumí alongside two other priests, who are called babalawos in the religion; known around the world as Santería, Lucumí shares its name with the West African-descendant communities in Cuba who first developed the practice, which has since expanded across Latin America and its diaspora.
Upon their arrival, Álvarez León and his family sat by the water, unpacking the offerings one by one. He set everything out in front of them, then said a quiet prayer before releasing the honey into the water and leaving the flowers on the riverbank.
The offering was for Ochún: the Lucumí orisha, or deity of fresh water, luxury, love, beauty and sweet things. Álvarez León, who has studied and practiced Lucumí for nearly 30 years, has become more grounded in his purpose and better equipped to navigate life’s inevitable chaos.
He first learned about Lucumí in the late ‘90s, after a compatriot asked him to join a meeting near his former home in Las Vegas. “They started telling me about my future, how I was going to come into some money — which I didn’t believe because I didn’t know where that much money would come from,” he said in Spanish.
Even so, he accompanied the group to a lake the next day, where they performed a ceremony for him. “I slept really well that night and the next morning, an old friend knocked on my door.” He was looking for someone to help open two cellphone stores in Vegas — and Álvarez León ended up with $50,000 to help make that happen.
His introduction to Lucumí may have been by way of divination, but Álvarez León stayed in the practice because it keeps him grounded and connected — to his community, to a higher consciousness, and to his ancestors. “Lucumí is spirituality, it’s a different lifestyle that inherently requires you to step away from negative energy,” he explained. “If I do something to taint that spirituality, I have to work hard and wait a while for that bad energy to leave my life and my energy field.
“So that’s made me realize that if I’m putting in so much work to cultivate positive things in my life, it’s not worth doing anything negative. I’m very careful who I’m around, where I go, when I go places and when I stay home, and even thoughtful about what I say, because this is what’s been helping me,” he said.
Álvarez León’s words resonate with contemporary scholars, who are actively working to destigmatize and demystify the religion. “Lucumí is all about survival and care,” explained Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús, a professor of American studies at Princeton University and author of “Electric Santería: Racial and Sexual Assemblages of Transnational Religion.”
“[Because these practices] were for the survival of enslaved African peoples, [they] really focused on people’s health, well-being and balance… but still connecting back to African traditional religious practices and beliefs,” added Beliso-De Jesús.
At its core, Lucumí is a tradition that prompts us to ask: How do we live in balance? And how do we stay well in a world that often wants us unwell?
And yet, Lucumí is widely misunderstood and frequently demonized — especially within white and white-adjacent Latine communities, long entrenched with anti-Black beliefs. Although Catholicism, Evangelical Christianity, and even Jehovah’s Witnesses are widely accepted in Latin households, Lucumí is too often reduced to “witchcraft” or “voodoo,” simply because it exists outside the bounds of whiteness — and, more importantly, in resistance to white supremacy.
Lucumí is an Afro-Caribbean religion with roots in Yoruba cosmology, formed and sustained by enslaved Africans in Cuba as an act of resistance and remembrance. Lucumí emphasizes character, balance and connection to the divine through orishas, “which are the energies that are tied to nature and the person’s own balance in the world,” explained Beliso-De Jesús.
The religion emerged out of necessity. When West Africans, primarily Yoruba people, were enslaved and forced to Cuba during the transatlantic enslavement trade, they carried their cosmologies with them. Though colonizers tried to erase their traditions through forced conversion to Catholicism, enslaved Africans found ways to adapt and protect their spiritual practices. Over time, Yoruba religious systems evolved into what we now call Lucumí or La Regla de Ocha, incorporating new layers of meaning while retaining their ancestral backbone.
Many of these early rituals took place within cabildos — Spanish-imposed religious meetings meant to socialize enslaved people into Catholicism. “The church created these institutions to teach enslaved Africans how to be ‘good Catholics,’” said Elizabeth Pérez, an associate professor of religion at UC Santa Barbara and ethnographer and historian of Afro-Diasporic and Latin American religions. “But what actually happened is that people from different African groups got together, remembered their songs and stories, and began reimagining their religion.” In other words: Colonizers accidentally gave them a space to reconnect.
“Early practitioners began to open up the tradition to people from other African ethnic groups,” explained Pérez. “They even initiated mixed-race individuals and people of other backgrounds — Chinese migrants, white Cubans — because this was about survival. The goal was to preserve something, to create something powerful and shared.”
Even after abolition, Lucumí continued — quietly, often in private homes — as police and officials criminalized anything perceived as “pagan.” To this day, many practitioners keep their faith discreet for safety — and because outsiders still treat it like something threatening or strange. But the truth is: Lucumí has always been about protection, healing and remembrance. Its roots lie not in fear, but in love and holistic health.
While animal sacrifice is a real part of some ceremonies, the media’s obsession with this particular practice has created a distorted picture that reduces an entire spiritual system to a single, sensationalized act.
“The way people talk about sacrifice in Lucumí is often completely disconnected from how it actually works,” said Akissi Britton, an assistant professor of Africana studies at Rutgers. “Yes, animals are sometimes offered to the orishas. But it’s done prayerfully, with care. The meat is almost always prepared and shared with the community.” In other words, it’s not some violent spectacle.
Beliso-De Jesús agreed, adding that the fixation is racialized. “There’s a tendency to view anything African-derived as ‘barbaric,’ while turning a blind eye to widespread animal slaughter in other contexts,” she said. “We kill millions of animals every day in this country for food, for science, for convenience.” But when Black people do it as part of a sacred ritual, it’s suddenly horrific?”
In 1993, the Supreme Court ruled in Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah that laws banning animal sacrifice specifically targeted Lucumí and violated practitioners’ First Amendment rights. Still, even with the ruling in place, discrimination and surveillance continue — holdovers from centuries of colonial rule.
“Vilification was strategic,” said Beliso-De Jesús. “Colonizers needed a way to justify enslavement, genocide and forced conversion. So they painted African and Indigenous religions as evil.” That wasn’t a mistake — that was part of the plan.
Britton put it even more plainly: “Anything that wasn’t Christian got demonized. And once something is seen as demonic, it’s easier to police. It’s easier to ban. It’s easier to fear.”
Another persistent stereotype is that Lucumí is all about “black magic” or throwing curses at your enemies. This is dangerous nonsense rooted in fear of African spirituality, said Britton.
“Lucumí is about aligning yourself with your destiny,” she said. It’s about nourishing your spirit, taking care of your body, honoring your ancestors, and staying in balance. Throwing negativity at someone almost assures it’ll come back to you, and then you’ll be off balance.
Beliso-De Jesús expanded on that idea, pointing to the concept of iwa pele, or good character, as a guiding principle in Lucumí. “It’s about living well, not harming others, and being in the right relationship with yourself and your community,” she said. In other words, Lucumí and the orishas aren’t instruments of revenge — they’re sacred forces that guide people toward clarity and balance.
The truth is that Lucumí honors nature, uplifts ancestors, and offers tools for collective survival. That’s exactly what made it so threatening to those who uphold white supremacy — and exactly what makes it beautiful today.
The post Essay: Inside the history of Lucumí: Afro-Caribbean spirituality as survival appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
