LA MILAGROSA transports us through Santeria's visual universe, a religious syncretism between African deities and Catholic religiosities that was generated throughout the Spanish colonization process in Cuba island. Black slaves, in an oppression context, developed their own languages and religious-cultural processes, that both resulted of their assimilation as they expressed a significant resistance, through the subversion of iconographic and performative senses.

As African rituals were forbidden, slaves would disguise them through Catholic saint adoration, in relation to whom they established secret formal, symbolic and mystical correspondences relating to their ancestral gods — the orixas. Such beliefs and religious practices not only were developed during the slavery period as they historically were perpetuated beyond their abolition, the country's independence from Spanish colonialism, the white elite domination connected to northern American neocolonialism, and inclusively continued to exist in an officially atheist communist political context.

As a visual witness of the Ioruba mythology's presence perpetuation, brought from Africa to a "New World" island, the video reveals a subtle but vast pantheon of tribal gods through saints, corners and colours present in flowers, fabrics, sweets, candles, doves, clothing, bead necklaces and bracelets, amongst several mystical purpose appropriate objects (for example, dolls, shells, drums, maracas, living plants, aquariums, pots, fans, boomerangs, money, billiard balls, beer cans, golden or copper objects, etc).

On that level, religious practices appear related to symbolic elements with their own aesthetical characteristics: water and the colour blue (correspondent to the goddess of the sea and motherhood — Yemaya — syncretized with the Regla Virgin who also wears a blue mantle); sweet tasting chromatic variations of yellow (for example, bananas, that correspond to the love and sensuality goddess Oshun); wood elements, percussion instruments and red and white (corresponding to Shango, the thrones, bolts, justice, dance and fire orixa, evoked by chants and drums, like the "Canto para Chango" that can be heard in this visual essay's soundtrack, interpreted by Abbilona, a historical reference in Santeria's ritual music; here the syncretism happens between Saint Marcus and Saint Theresa).

LA MILAGROSA drives the spectator through a santera's (woman that works with Santeria) domestic altars. The track includes the bigger apparatus altar of Santeria (within the colourful staging typology normally present in home entrance halls), as well as other more discrete ones in the backyard, that inclusively display rawer nature related elements (for example, sticks, stones, shells and water) hidden in a dark cloth covered hole (like the ones that existed well hidden in the bottom of senzalas, where slaves would secretly practice their rituals).

The visual narrative later leaves the Afro-Cuban ritual's private domain and goes through a Catholic typology's public space, that equally became a Santeria's iconic place: the Cementerio Cristóval Colón, in Havana. It was thus nominated during the colonial time to honour the European "discoverer" of America. It is frequently considered one of the world's most beautiful cemeteries. In the video it is possible to see a woman walking in search of a grave, amidst an expressive Carrara marble funeral statuary, from the white colonial and post-colonial elite great wealth period. Through the way there's an ethnographic record of all those that work, restore and visit the cemetery (which has been acquiring touristic interest). The performative quotidian present at the cemetery gains a choreographic dimension on the video through editing.

After a continuous travelling following a long search through the cemetery, the camera stops at a grave that was considered miraculous by the locals. It is the grave of a woman buried in 1903, called Amelia, that was entombed after giving birth to a child that died during labour. Legend says that when it was exhumed 13 years later, the mother and child's bodies were not only intact as they had moved to embrace each other. The belief in that grave's miraculous power started after that story, and it is nowadays a popular pilgrimage place for requests that regard fertility, pregnancy and child-birth.

Finally, the video presents nocturnal images of one of Cuba's biggest processions, with thousands of people, first towards Saint Lazarus sanctuary and later already within. The sanctuary's importance is owed to Saint Lazarus corresponding to Babalu-Aye orixa, infirmity healer. The video documents the existence in that procession of a series of Catholic practices impregnated with a black cultural presence connected to body performativity and elements like water (church holy water and water in glasses to offer saints, just like in Santeria) or fire and smoke (lighting purple candles and smoking cigars at the temple). There are those that wear burlap to evoke Saint Lazarus the beggar. It is also worth to point out that the offered candles and flowers are also purple because it is the colour that corresponds to Babalu-Aye orixa.