A santero, or santera for a woman, is an initiated priest of Santeria, one in whose head a particular orisha has been seated through the kariocha initiation.
The making of a priest
After initiation the santero cares for that orisha, divines with the cowrie shells, conducts ceremonies and initiates others. Priesthood runs through the godparent relationship: every santero belongs for life to the house of the godparent who initiated them, and there is no seminary, no ordination and no central authority beyond this lineage. The office is open to women and men on equal terms, and the diloggun cowrie oracle is read by both.
History and a contested vocabulary
The office took shape in nineteenth-century Cuba, sheltered in the cabildos, the mutual-aid societies of enslaved and free Africans. It stands beside, and sometimes in tension with, the separate and traditionally male priesthood of Ifa, the babalawo. The word santero belongs to the same contested vocabulary as the religion's own name; some priests prefer olorisha, owner of orisha, or omo-orisha, child of orisha, and the choice of term carries a judgement about how the tradition should be described.