Adeshina Remigio Herrera
He is credited as being one of the most important founding fathers of Ifa in Cuba. Born & raised in Yorubaland and initiated as a Babalawo there, was enslaved and taken to Cuba as a young man in the 1830s.
#Yoruba
He is credited as being one of the most important founding fathers of Ifa in Cuba. Born & raised in Yorubaland and initiated as a Babalawo there, was enslaved and taken to Cuba as a young man in the 1830s.
#Yoruba
Legend has it that he swallowed his sacred Ikin Ifa used in divination in order to take them with him across the ocean. An intelligent and gifted man, he later bought his freedom and became a powerful property owner in the Havana suburb of Regla.
In addition to his large Yoruba and Creole religious family, he had many influential godchildren from Havanas Spanish, white elite and had important high society connections.
He set up a famous religious institution, the Cabildo of the Virgin of Regla (the Cabildo Yemaya) in around 1860, which became a powerful center of Ifa and Orisha worship.
Along with his daughter, the famous Ocha priestess Echu Bi, he organized the annual street procession on the feast day of the Virgin of Regla, every September 7th.
Each year seminal Afrocuban drummers like Pablo Roche Okilakpa would sound the mighty Ilú batá in honor of Yemaya as they processed around the town.
Incredibly, Adeshina is also reputed to have returned to Yorubaland, the land of his birth, in order to acquire the sacred materials needed to initiate Babalawos.
He returned again to Cuba with these sacred items in order to build Ifa there. All the "mojubas" (prayers and recitals of lineage to honor the ancestors) of babalawos in Cuba include Adeshina. A great man who helped carry Yoruba profound spiritual knowledge to the Americas
