Patroness of the Bay of Havana

Across the harbour from old Havana lies the town of Regla, whose parish church enshrines a venerated image of the Virgin under this title, and there Our Lady of Regla is honoured as patroness of sailors and of the Bay of Havana, protector of those who put to sea. Her feast, kept on 7 September (the eve of the Nativity of the Virgin), is marked by a well-known procession in which her image is carried through the streets and toward the water, a celebration of the port community and its long dependence on the sea. As a Black Madonna venerated in a Cuban port with a large Afro-Cuban population, her image has, in the syncretic religion of the island, been associated with a figure of Afro-Cuban tradition; within Catholic devotion she is honoured as the Virgin Mary, guardian of seafarers and of the harbour that bears her care.

In the syncretic religious practice that developed among Cuba's enslaved and free Afro-Cuban population, this Black Madonna of the harbour came to be associated specifically with Yemaya, the orisha of the sea and of motherhood in the Yoruba-derived tradition later systematised as Santeria, or Regla de Ocha; the identification rests on a shared maritime domain and dark complexion rather than on any doctrinal connection the Catholic Church itself recognises. Both devotions are described here as documented, coexisting religious practices, neither explained away in terms of the other.