Obá Oriaté Miguel “Willie” Ramos, Ilarí Obá, Lukumí, olorisha of Shangó, was born in Havana, Cuba and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Ordained into the Lukumí priesthood at the age of thirteen, he has been an Obá Oriaté (master of ceremonies for Lukumí ordinations and other rites) and an apuón (singer) for over thirty-five years. Ramos is a student of Lukumí/Yoruba religion in Brazil, Cuba, and the Cuban Diaspora. He holds PhD in History from Florida International University where he has taught courses on Anthropology, Sociology and History. His dissertation focused on Lukumí and Afro-Cuban history and culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Over the years, Ramos has participated in numerous conferences in the U.S. and abroad. In 2001, he was a guest curator for an exhibit on Lukumí Orisha arts held at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida in Miami. That same year, Ramos traveled to Dusseldorf, Germany where he collaborated with the Museum Kunst Palast, inaugural exhibition.

Ramos has published several books for Lukumí devotees, and has also contributed to several scholarly texts and journal articles, including his important “La División de La Habana . . .,” which was based on oral history and fieldwork conducted in Cuba and the U.S. during the 1990s. Three of Ramos’ recent publications, Orí Eledá mí ó…Si mi cabeza no me vende (2011); Adimú: Gbogbó Tén’unjé Lukumí (2012); and Obí Agbón—Lukumí Divination with Coconut (2012), have received considerable praise from the Lukumí community.

Presently, Ramos hosts Eleda.Org, a website about Lukumí religion and culture, and is president of the Diaspora Cultural Center in Miami. For the past thirty years, Ramos has conducted fieldwork in Cuba and Brazil, and is a pioneer in defeating passé ideologies about learning the religion by offering seminars on Lukumí rituals and consecration ceremonies for ordained olorishas. Ramos is a strong advocate of the tenets of the odu Ejiogbé Odí that emphasize the need for the distribution of knowledge.