In 1612 the "Three Juans"--two Indian men and an enslaved black boy--found a small statue of the Virgin Mary floating in the ocean off of Cuba's southeastern coast. The effigy was taken to the small mountain mining village of El Cobre, and since then the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre, also called Cachita, came to serve as a potent symbol of Cuban national identity. Jalane D. Schmidt shows how diverse groups have constructed and disputed the Virgin's meanings and mobilized her to promote competing claims about religion, race, and political ideology. She focuses on the five times since 1936 Cachita has been brought down from El Cobre into Cuba's urban streets to be venerated in large-scale public ceremonies. Schmidt also compares these religious rituals to other contemporaneous events in Cuba's streets, including riots, carnivals, and revolutionary rallies, that organizers use as venues to perform contested definitions of Cubanness. By providing a comprehensive history of Cuban religions told through the prism of Cachita, Schmidt offers a new interpretation of Cuban culture and history.