Modest store, perhaps a botánica, offering an array of medicinal plants in Santiago de Cuba, 1997 (first left); Botánicas in Miami, 2007 (three on the right).

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Botánicas are retail stores which sell images and paraphernalia for Afro-Cuban home altars and temples and offer healing and other religious and spiritualist services to the public. The term botánica as applied to these establishments in Cuba and elsewhere in the Spanish Caribbean seems to derive from a combination of terms: "botany" or botánica referring to the knowledge of plants, particularly of their medicinal properties, and "botica" which in Spanish means pharmacy or retail store of medicaments and drugs. Although medicinal herbs are sold in these locations, botánicas do not specialize exclusively in plants as the concept of healing in these Afro-Cuban and other popular religions is more holistic and relies in the performance of other spiritual and magical practices calling for the use of other religious paraphernalia. Botánicas can be eclectic and serve the needs of a wide range of popular and Afro-Cuban religious traditions. Below are some signs advertising these establishments in Miami where they are public and quite widespread. Botánicas are found in any US city where large latino populations of Spanish Caribbean origin and increasingly in other Latin American countries too.

OF INTEREST

"Making Secular Art Out of Religious Imagery" (NY Times: Art Review & Slide Show)