Santeria Class Less Ritual, More Rigor

December 29, 2007

Author: ERIKA BERAS

Source: The Miami Herald

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami_dade/story/360425.html

Those who came to Oba Ernesto Pichardo's fall semester course at Florida International University's Biscayne Bay campus expecting chicken heads, seashells and drum circles probably left disappointed.

The controversial, charismatic and enterprising Pichardo, a Yoruba priest and the country's leading expert on Santeria, spent hours talking about the transatlantic slave trade, paraded in cultural anthropology professors and expected both PowerPoint presentations and 12-page research papers at semester's end.

It was a different side of a man best known for having spent the last few decades fighting lawmakers and Santeria detractors.