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Santer?a is one of the 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 trance for communicating with their ancestors and deities, animal sacrifice and the practice of sacred drumming and dance. Those slaves who landed in the Caribbean, Central and South America were nominally converted to Christianity. However, they were able to preserve some of their traditions by fusing together various Dahomean, baking (Congo) and Lukumi beliefs and rituals and by synchronizing these with elements from the surrounding Christian culture.
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