Havana - Few visitors to Havana miss the Cathedral Square, where women wearing the white dress of Afro-Cuban Santeria priestesses and smoking huge cigars tell fortunes from tarot cards in front of the imposing baroque-style church.

Other women wearing colourful dresses reminiscent of Afro-Cuban goddesses and Spanish flamenco dancers pose for tourist cameras, while music bands blend the throb of the African drum with the melancholic sound of the violin.

Here as elsewhere in the Cuban capital, people will express satisfaction over the election of Barack Obama as the first black US president.

The interest is, however, limited, as Cubans certainly do not need Obama to feel proud of their African heritage.

"No other country outside Africa has valued its African cultural components as much as Cuba has, and given them as much official recognition," says Oscar Fagette, former director of the Afro-Cuban art gallery at Havana's Yoruba Cultural Association.

However, many Cubans still remember times when practitioners of the Afro-Cuban religion Regla de Ocha, popularly known as Santeria, could not get positions within the ruling communist party, or stage ceremonies without police permission.

"Unlike in many other Latin American countries, Cuba's indigenous population became almost completely extinct," explains Arisel Arce, researcher and author on Afro-Cuban religion and folklore.

"The Cuban identity is thus based on mainly just two components, the Spanish one brought by colonialists and the African one contributed by slaves," she says.

Around a million African slaves belonging to dozens of ethnic groups had been shipped to the Caribbean island by the late 19th century.

African religious traditions served as vehicles to preserve cultural practices, with the Yoruba from West Africa and people from the Central African Congo region emerging as the most influential groups.

Before the 1959 revolution and even afterwards, "white Cubans tried to deny the African cultural influence," despite the rise of the Afrocubanist cultural movement in the early
20th century, Arce and fellow researcher Armando Ferrer explain.

Santeria remained a poorly organized, semi-underground, allegedly primitive "slave thing," according to Arce and Ferrer.

It was only in the early 1990s that the official attitude clearly changed, with the atheist regime of Cuba's then leader Fidel Castro becoming more tolerant, not only of Santeria, but of all religions in the wake of the collapse of communism in eastern Europe.

Many observers now see Santeria, which has a pantheon of dozens of Yoruba gods and goddesses, as having surpassed Catholicism in popularity.

Not only black Cubans, but also whites and even foreigners attend ancient rituals involving divination and animal sacrifice.

The rise of Santeria and of the related Palo Monte religion has boosted Cubans' growing pride in the African part of their roots.

"African rhythms have influenced, not only all Cuban popular dance music, but even classical and folk music," Arce says.

"In art, look out for the subjects and warm colours chosen by painters ranging from Wilfredo Lam to Manuel Mendive," she advises.

"And in literature, African references can be found in the works of some our most revered writers, such as Nicolas Guillen and Alejo Carpentier," Arce adds.

Some observers see the regime, now headed by Fidel Castro's brother Raul, as preferring Santeria over Catholicism.

Santeria is seen as working-class religion, and it also has touristic value, while Catholicism has traditionally been associated with anti-revolutionary conservatism, according to Fagette, Arce and Ferrer.

Cuba's African culture also helps the country to present itself as a champion of the developing world, and the regime has not hesitated to invest in promoting it.

Cuba has institutions such as a foundation named after pioneer anthropologist Fernando Ortiz and the Casa de Africa in Santiago de Cuba, which publish research on Afro-Cuban culture.

The Havana area boasts several museums on African or Afro-Cuban culture, and dance groups such as the Conjunto Folklorico Nacional stage performances based on Yoruba mythology.

Major international conferences on Yoruba religion have been staged in Cuba, and many Cubans proudly recall a 1987 visit to the island by the king of the Nigerian city of Ife, regarded as the cradle of the Yoruba.

"A son of (the Santeria god) Obatala prays for the revolution," the government newspaper Granma recently headlined an interview with Antonio Castaneda, president of the Yoruba Cultural Association.

Some see such associations as serving the interests of the regime, while others complain that Santeria has gained too much importance at the expense of other cultural expressions such as painting.

Santeria has also become increasingly commercial, as Cubans struggling with economic hardship charge high prices from foreigners whom they initiate into the religion. (dpa)