Regla's black Madonna is said to have crossed the Atlantic by ship, and the secret society sharing the town's name is a distinct tradition this entry deliberately does not try to explain in ritual detail.
A statue with its own crossing story
Tradition holds that the image of the Virgin of Regla, a black Madonna, was brought to Cuba from Spain, where devotion to a similarly named Virgin of Regla was already established, with legendary accounts describing a safe sea crossing attributed to the Virgin's protection, a founding narrative that predates and runs alongside the statue's later, better-known identification with the orisha Yemaya covered in this entry's companion article.
A separate tradition, deliberately not detailed here
Abakua, an all-male Afro-Cuban secret society with origins traced to the Ekpe leopard societies of the Cross River region in what is now Nigeria, maintains closed initiation rites and ritual knowledge restricted to members, historically associated with dockworker communities in Havana and Regla. Because Abakua's specific initiatory content is a closed tradition, this entry names its existence and general character rather than describing its rites, consistent with treating closed practices as closed rather than as material for outside description.
As this entry's companion article covers
The syncretism between the Virgin of Regla and Yemaya within Cuban Lucumi religion, and the case against loosely applying the term Santeria to traditions practitioners themselves name differently, are addressed directly in this entry's companion article rather than repeated here.