"Afro-Cuban religions - especially the practice of santeria, based on West African traditions - are an essential aspect of contemporary Cuban identity, Christine Ayorinde argues, and their existence has forced the current revolutionary state into bizarre and contradictory positions." "Based mostly inside Cuba, Ayorinde's research includes interviews and conversations with individual Cubans, including practitioners of Afro-Cuban religions from different ethnic backgrounds. Some are movers and shakers in the liberal debate about contemporary religion, some are new initiates, others have been practicing for fifty years or more. Some have been members of the Communist Party; others never have been, and make their living from the practice of their religion. Ayorinde also interviewed both religious and atheist commentators on Afro-Cuban religions and culture, including academics, journalists, party officials, and members of governmental and nongovernmental institutions, many at the forefront of efforts to give santeria greater recognition as a central component of the national culture." "In addition, the book offers a fresh historical overview of changing religious forms and attitudes in Cuba, examining its encounter with European culture and the Roman Catholic Church, religious practice among slaves in the nineteenth century, the concept of racial fraternity articulated by Cuban patriot Jose Marti, and the witchcraft scares of the early decades of the twentieth century, when religious practices were associated with criminality. Its emphasis on the period since 1959 and on the current decade, in which the government has begun to rethink aspects of the Revolution, places it on the cutting edge of studies that examine contemporary Cuban culture."--BOOK JACKET.