can anyone enlighten me about Voo-Doo practices and Santeria?

can anyone enlighten me about Voo-Doo practices and Santeria?

Yes it's people who are very poor and underprivileged in spite of their vaunted voodoo powers.

Santeria is one of the many pancreatic religions created in the New World. It is based on the West African religions brought to the new world by slaves imported to the Caribbean to work the sugar plantations. These slaves carried with them their own religious traditions, including a tradition of possession trance for communicating with the ancestors and deities, the use of animal sacrifice and the practice of sacred drumming and dance. Those slaves who landed in the Carribean, central and south America were nominally converted to Catholicism. However, they were able to preserve some of their traditions by fusing together various Dahomean, baking and Yoruban beliefs and rituals and by synchronizing these with elements from the surrounding Catholic culture. In Cuba this religious tradition has evolved into what we know today as Santer?a, the Way of the Saints. Today hundreds of thousands of Americans participate in this ancient religion. Some are fully committed priests and priestesses, others are "godchildren" or members of a particular house-tradition, many are clients seeking help with their everyday problems. Many are of Hispanic and Caribbean descent but as the religion moves out of the inner cities an into the suburbs a growing number are of African-American and European-American heritage. As the Ifa religion of Africa was recreated in the Americas it was transformed, today as it moves moves into mainstream America we can expect further transformation.

the Laos and Trix's are powerful spirits who were made worthy, when alive to control the forces of nature--we all have a Lao or an Erica as a guardian, or parent, and once initiated into the practice the spirit enters into you, possesses you and bestows knowledge and abilities upon you you would not have had otherwise--they are symbolized by verve's, fir mas or pintos Ricardo's, which are symbols drawn on the ground in colored sand, they are given offerings of rum, tobacco, and food, and are sometimes represented by catholic saints in the united states