a curandero, with the practice known as Curanderismo. The blending of cultures through Spanish colonialism introduced other influences on the religious and healing practices that later became crystallized in botánicas. During the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the Spanish brought large numbers of Africans to their colonies in North America, South America, and the Caribbean. Many of them brought along their African religious beliefs. Much as Vodou developed under French colonialism in Haiti as a blend of Roman Catholicism and African religions, Santería ("Way of the Saints") developed along similar lines in Cuba. Santería absorbed a strong influence from Spanish Catholicism. Its rituals include dancing, drumming and speaking with spirits. As practitioners of these religions have immigrated to the U.S. and other countries, botánicas allows customers to have access to materials used in their religious rituals. Evidence suggests that the first botánicas were opened in Cuba and Puerto Rico in the late 1950s and early 1960s. These shops were initially “green pharmacies” operated by herbalists. The earliest Mexican and Mexican American botanicas seem to date to the late 1960s and early 1970s. Others argue that the botánica first emerged in the United States, citing New York's Spanish Harlem as the birthplace. According to this theory, similar shops spread out first across the U.S. and only later back to the Caribbean and Latin American countries from which these practices originated. Over the following decades, people from a wide variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds have founded and used botánicas for economic and cultural benefit. Spirits Botánicas are religious shops, a place to buy the material objects that enable people to interact with spirits. The majority of the products offered for sale and the services provided at botánicas are most closely associated with Afro-Cuban religions (Santería and Palo Mayombe); Latin American Spiritist doctrine (Espiritismo); localized, vernacular expressions of Catholic piety (folk Catholicism); and Latin American folk healing or traditional medicine (Curanderismo). In many of these practices, African divinities and spirits are syncretized with Catholic Saints. Religious rituals often aim to induce possession trance to enable spirits to interact with mortals through a medium. Reglas de Kongo or Palo also originated in Cuba; this religion solicits African spirits and spirits of the dead to aid the living. Botánicas are commonly also embedded in Espiritismo. A tradition established by Frenchman Allan Kardec, popular in Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, and elsewhere, it focuses on communicating with