Santeria was traditionally an unacknowledged and underappreciated aspect of what it meant to be Cuban. Yet the syncretism between the Yoruba religion that the slaves brought to the island and the Catholicism of their masters is, in my opinion, the underpinning of Cuban culture. Every artistic realm--music, theater, literature, etc.--owes a huge debt to Santeria and the slaves who practiced it and passed it on, largely secretively, for generations.

Dreaming in Cuban