A religion merging the worship of Yoruba deities with veneration of Roman Catholic saints: practiced in
Cuba and spread to other parts of the Caribbean and to the U.S. by Cuban emigrés.
The Yoruba, faced with the full force of the Cuban/Spanish Inquisition and the grinding realities of slavery - in uniquely African fashion - masked their Orishas (literally, ori: head and sha: owner) under the guise of Catholic saints. The iconography gave them hints as to what Orisha was hiding there. The whiteness of the robes which Our Lady of Mercy wore, indicated she was none other than Obatala (Oba: King, tala: whiteness) whereas the abundant frills and blue mantle of Our Lady of Regla clearly pointed to Yemanya (Yema: fishes, iYA:mother) who is the mother of the ocean.
The same logic was applied to the other Orishas in the Yoruba pantheon - there are some 140 of Them. Orisha Oko, the Orisha of Farmers and all who work the soil was syncretized with St. Isadore the Farmer, Ochissi, the celestial archer who never misses the mark, was masked with St. Sebastian who was martyred by being shot to death with arrows.
The motive in doing this was to escape the persecution which would have followed had the Yoruba attempted to worship their Orisha in public. This disimilitude permitted them to worship at the feet of these statues with drumming and songs praising the "saint" while actually worshiping their ancestral Orisha.
It might be interesting to note that the early Christians, faced with the persecutions in Rome, did a somewhat simular thing.
The bronze statue of St. Peter which sits at the rear of St. Peter's Basilicia in the Vatican dates from the early second century. It is clothed in Papal robes and has been devoutly venerated by the faithful such that it's right foot is smooth and vry highly polished from a millenium of kisses. It was originally a statue of Jupiter Optimo et Bono, the Patron Protector of Rome. The early Christians, recast the hands and the head. Now, it looks more like the "traditional" version of St. Peter, the hand which held the little genius holding the laurel wreath towards Jupiter's brow now is reforged in a blessing mudra and the other hand, which once held lightening bolts now holds the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. Jupiter was baptized into St. Peter just as Our Lady of Regla was baptized into Yemanya. Simularly, the statue of the "Good Shepherd" started out life as a young devotee of Apollo and that of Demeter with Kore on Her lap became Mary with the Christ Child.