African religion is turning out to be one of the continent's most vigorous cultural export to the Americas. In Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad & Tobaggo, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Panama and even in "God's own country" the United States, African religious groups are booming like never before. Sinikka Kahl, recently in those shores, has a happy tale to tell.

The priest folds the struggling chicken into his hand and touches it to the initiate's head and shoulders. Expertly he wrings the bird's neck and sprinkles blood on the soil, seeds and pieces of an earthenware jar that symbolise Orishaoko, the earth divinity, in a corner of his modest kitchen.

Chants in Yoruba accompany the sacrifices of more chickens, doves, water, honey and maize puree. Finally, the priest plants two candles in the soil and lights them. "They give strength to the god," he explains. His elderly female assistant sighs with satisfaction. The initiate, a broad-chested worker, smiles as if rejuvenated.

One could almost imagine oneself in West Africa. But the ceremony is taking place across the Atlantic Ocean, in the southern Cuban city of Trinidad, and both the priest and the initiate are white men.

Ask almost anywhere in Cuba and chances are that you can easily locate an Afro-Cuban priest and witness similar ceremonies.

The religion brought in by African slaves centuries ago - known to Westerners as "voodoo" - is booming like never before.

More and more people are turning to it in Cuba; Fidel Castro's communist government is increasingly tolerating and even promoting it, and Cuba is helping to spread it to other Latin American countries and to the United States.

The ceremony in Trinidad, (conducted by a group known as Santeria), takes place just a few blocks from the 19th-century Holy Trinity Church where Christian believers keep dropping in to pray.

When Pope John Paul II made his historic visit to Cuba in 1998, he drew huge crowds, but many experts believe that African religion is Cuba's most widespread religion.

Around a million Africans are estimated to have been shipped as slaves to Cuba between the 16th and 19th centuries to work on sugar, coffee and other plantations. The slaves came from present-day countries ranging from Togo and Nigeria to Congo and Angola, and they brought their religious beliefs with them.

"For us blacks, there was nothing but chains and whips here, so we had to adopt the Catholic saints to be able to continue worshipping our African gods," explains Blas Puig Zayas, an Afro-Cuban priest in Trinidad.

The religious groups were preserved by associations known as the cabildos, a kind of charity and brotherhood organisations of different African ethnic groups which were founded from the 16th century onwards, and some of which still function.

The Cabildo of Saint Barbara is the oldest in Palmira, northwest of Trinidad. Many Afro-Cubans consider the tranquil agricultural town as a sacred place due to the large number of cabildos there. Nothing points to their existence on arrival to the palm-shaded central square, but any resident is able to point the way to the Cabildo of Saint Barbara in a working-class neighbourhood.

The house is not marked on the outside, but an elderly female carekeeper willingly accepts to show it and unlocks the door to a meeting room with rows of chairs.

A huge statue of Saint Barbara, dressed in a white tunic and a red cape, dominates the altar. Flowers and fruit have been deposed at her feet, and behind her, a fresco shows a cross and two praying angels.

This cabildo was founded in 1896, 10 years after Cuba abolished slavery. The building was constructed with the money of a slaveowner who wanted to thank a former female slave for curing his sick daughter with herbal medicine.

Every year, the statue of Saint Barbara is led through the streets in a procession - but is it really the Roman Catholic saint that the chanting crowds are worshipping? For most of the believers, Barbara is not a Christian figure at all, but an ancient African divinity, the thunder god, Charigo.

When slaves were drumming and dancing in the cabildos, Spanish colonial masters thought that they were honouring the saints. In reality, these were acquiring new identities.

The love goddess Qchun, for instance, was synchretised with the yellow-clad virgin at the Basilica of El Cobre, Cuba's most pilgrimage site in the east of the country.

The sea goddess Yemaya was assimilated into the black virgin at the Church of Our Lady in the town or La Regla, near Havana. The god of diseases Babalu Aye became Saint Lazarus, the iron god Ogun was worshipped as Saint Peter, the guardian of entrances Eleggua synchretised with the holy child of Atocha, and so on.

The constant import of new slaves helped to keep the cabildos authentic. Catholic priests were also scarce, and the colonial masters were not keen to see their slaves waste working hours learning about Christianity.

Many experts now regard the Cuban and Brazilian cabildos as the "purest" - the most African - in the Americas.

Colonial repression was later followed by pressure by Castro's communist regime. But in the 1995, Castro's government began to relax the restrictions on religion, and today it even funds museums and helps to stage conferences on the Afro-Cuban cabildos.

"There are no longer attempts to prevent drumming ceremonies, and even Communist Party members are free to join in," researcher Maria Isabel Berbes says. Officially, Castro's government treats all religions equally, but it is said to have a weak spot for the cabildos, because they help build tourism, and their popularity weakens the influence of the Catholic Church, traditionally seen as politically conservative.

The most popular cabildo is the Santeria (or cult of the saints). Its real name is La Regla de Ocha, which originated from mainly present-day Nigeria, especially among the Yoruba.

The original Yoruba pantheon had around 400 gods or orishas, and about 30 of them are today actively worshipped in Cuba.

Another widespread cabildo is the Regla de Palo Monte whose roots have mainly been traced back to what is now Angola. It venerates the principal Santeria divinities under other names, but primarily focuses on harnessing the spirits of dead persons, often for magical purposes.

Other cabildos include the Abakuas, an all-male secret society of Nigerian origin.

Ordinary adherents are aware of the cabildos' African roots. "Oh, have you been to Nigeria? That's where our religion comes from," a Santeria believer may say if you tell him or her that you have been to Africa.

"Nigerian Yorubas have sometimes visited Santeria temples," a priest said in Trinidad. "But when they hear our chants in ancient Yoruba, they cannot understand them."

At the same time, however, the cabildos are no longer a "black man's thing" - have not been in a long time.

In the slavery era, colonial masters - or, perhaps even more frequently, their wives - took to Afro-Cuban rites. One owner of a sugar mill in the western region of Pinar del Rio, for instance, is said to have annually sacrificed a dog to the iron god Ogun to keep his machines running smoothly.

In more recent times, the dictator Fulgencio Batista - overthrown by Fidel Castro in l959 - is believed to have sought to buttress his power with animal sacrifices.

With the current economic crisis, Cubans are increasingly seeking solace in religion, and people of all skin colours mingle happily in Afro-Cuban dance ceremonies.

Experts estimate that up to 70% of Cubans practise African religion, whether through an occasional offering or a rigorous practice. In the capital Havana, Santeria initiates dressed entirely in white can easily be spotted.

In some of the poorer neighbourhoods, practically every home appears to have a household shrine dedicated to some Santeria divinity. But the cabildos are by no means limited to the less educated classes, and many adherents have college degrees.

The cabildos have had a vast influence on Cuban culture, from art galleries where paintings depict orishas to carnivals where dancers dress up as them.

Pop groups have names such as Los Orishas, and jukeboxes all over the country are blasting a hit by the singer Celina, called "Que viva Chango". There is even a liquor called "Santero".

In a recent book, Cuba Santa, about religion in Cuba, the anthropologist Natalia Bolivar and journalist Roman Orozco do not hesitate to speak of an Afro-Cuban "boom".

What is it, then, that accounts for the growing popularity of these ancient religion from a faraway continent? A frequently given answer is, that the Afro-Cuban cabildos are inherently practical and address people's everyday concerns.

Whether your problem is money, work, love, or health, Afro-Cuban priests can find its cause by reading cowrie shells, pieces of coconut shells, or other oracles. Santeria priests known as "babalawos", who need a very long training, use the highly complex Ifa divination system. Gods and spirits can also send messages through mediums in trance.

Solutions can then be sought by offering sacrifices - countless things from goats and sheep to sweets and Havana cigars - to the gods.

With their individual personalities and all-too-human weaknesses, the orishas - frequently compared to the ancient Greek pantheon - may also be felt as being closer to humans than the strict and faraway God of Catholicism.

The lesser orishas are presided over by a supreme god, Oloddumare, but he is thought to have distanced himself from human affairs and no cabildo is dedicated to him.

Many Catholic priests tacitly tolerate the cabildos. "In comnunist Cuba, many people are not baptised, but Santeria requires initiates to go through the rite, and priests know perfectly well that they are baptising people to prepare them for Santeria ceremonies," researcher Berbes says.

At the same time the Church is seen as getting less permissive. During his visit to Cuba, the Pope met representatives of the Protestant and Jewish communities, but the Afro-Cubans religious groups were excluded.

"The cabildos represent competition for the Church," a historian said in La Regla. "It used to allow Santeria worshippers to bring food offerings to the virgin at our church, regarded as Yemaya, but that has now been forbidden."

Elsewhere, groups of African religious origin are regarded as major religions in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, and Brazil. They are also becoming increasingly popular in Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Panama. Thousands of Latin Americans have travelled to Cuba to be initiated, according to Bolivar and Orozco.

Many Europeans have also been made into "sons" or "daughters" of Santeria gods in Cuba. In the American state of Florida, the large Cuban exile community has helped to popularise the cabildos which are thought to have up to a million adherents in the US alone.

The biggest danger to the cabildos may no longer be cultural repression, but their very popularity. In Cuba, they are taking on a touristic aspect which, experts fear, could distort them into caricatures of themselves.

Dancers dressed as orishas perform to tourists, Santeria priestesses read tarot cards to tourists at Havana's cathedral square, and mock cabildo objects are sold in souvenir shops.

Tourist guides encourage travellers to "look up" a Santeria priest to get some advice and priests are beginning to charge outrageous prices from tourists.

At a Santeria initiation ceremony in Trinidad, the drumming attracted tourists who kept dropping into the room where the initiate, dressed in blue and white for Yemaya, was to remain for a week, sleeping on the ground.

A basket for money had been placed near him, and an assistant kept an eye on the tourists to make sure that dollars flowed in.

And the dollars did flow in! For a change, Africa is saleable in these shores.