Ritual consists of a social dimension, Hence, rituals and rites are situated within social history, and are social texts, discourses that replicate, retain and propagate historical realities and groups’ corporate social identity. As social texts and referential idiom ritual help to specify the nature of cultural and social spatial spheres, condition responses, shape habits and construct behavioral reactions and attitudes. The historical reality of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, a phenomenon produced by the globalizing atmosphere capitalist exploitation, produced a critical change in the human condition, altering radically human social relations. These changes in attitudes and knowledge led to the exploitation and explorations of new physical and social spaces, with significant implications for the ecological systems. With the extermination of aboriginal populations, slavery was sanctioned thus instigating the vast massive global influx of human traffic, forcefully removed from their environmental niche into new and harsh physical and social environments, mainly into the plantations of the “New World.” This traumatic reality of deprivation and denigration enhanced the social productions and reproductions of traditional cultural pathways, mainly mental artifacts and memories, mainly codified as religious and ritual practices. These too, were subjected to differing changes based upon the transformation of spaces and memories, and new historical and social realities. As a result, retained memories produced synthetic formats that perpetuated and mediated novel transformations, as embodied composites of the aboriginal.

Cuban Santeria, reflects one of such modalities in the “New World,” instantiated by the people of African descent, utilizing critical mnemonic reconstruction, with accreted inputs defined by the condition of their miliue(x), with their mental and social consciousness engendering novel transformations. Cuban Santeria, on the surface incorporates the African (Yoruba) motif and Catholic ritual idioms, integrating these domains, it remained critically nuanced as African, deriving its hermeneutics from the fields of African (Yoruba) relevance. Possessing a globalizing affect, Cuban Santeria has permeated the diverse significant spheres of Cuban social life- aesthetics, art, theatre, movies, and ballet e.t.c. Further, Cuban Santeria, together with Haitian Voodoo, Brazilian Candomble, provides a critical avenue to the mnemonic reconnection with the African ritual space in the New World, and even with Africa. This globalizing salience has relevance in this age toward generating a reconnection of African descents with their aboriginal roots. The widespread embrace and impact of these forms of religious expressions and spirituality has values for the continuous retention of Africans traditional rituals and religious expressions in human memory, given the onslaught against traditional African religions by African adherents of the world religions.