He was a humble cart driver, farmer, spiritist, healer and soldier in the Liberation Army, where he rose up on 24 February 1895, during the last independence struggle organised by our apostle José Martí.

He was born in eastern Cuba in what is now the province of Granma in 1869. According to Luis Ángel Fonseca Olivera, his great-grandfather led a bohemian life, until his eldest daughter fell ill with a mental disorder that seemed to have no cure. He tells us that her father took her to a spiritist Caridad Villalón from Santiago de Cuba, who was the founder of the Mas Luz Spiritist Centre, located at 373 Pío Rosado Street between Figueredo and Lora, Bayamo City; she discovered that Salustiano had a great faculty and a great mission to accomplish. She opened the way for him to moralise himself, until little by little he achieved a powerful magnetic fluid, adds Luis Ángel. In an interview with Yiya Villalon, Cachita's niece, she confesses that her aunt and Salustiano met and her spirit told her that she had to set up a centre.

The 91-year-old spiritist also tells us that Salustiano attended the Más Luz Spiritist Centre and developed in this centre. With this moral and doctrinal formation, and the support of other spiritists in the eastern zone, including Agustín Sánchez, Salustiano became not only the healer of his own daughter, but also of hundreds of mentally ill people and those with other ailments, who came to his centre from many parts of the country, according to the testimony of several neighbours of Monte Oscuro. After healing them, Luis Ángel says that he recommended some of them to create their own spiritual centres. It was in 1910 that he began the practice of cordon spiritist practices in the spiritist centre "Luz y verdad" in the community of Monte Oscuro, a few kilometres from the city of Bayamo. He was one of the founders of cordon spiritist practices in Cuba, together with Agustín Sánchez and Francisco Salgado. Although it was in 1918 that the spiritist centre Luz y Verdad was registered in the register of associations of the Republic of Cuba, its practices date from almost a decade before that date. This centre was visited by Don Fernando Ortiz in 1948 and according to declarations of the researcher Rodríguez Lora, the wise man called the place the Cathedral of spiritist practices in Cuba, declarations and studies reflected in the periodical press such as Bohemia in 1952.

According to Ortiz, these practices are called the cordoneros de Orilé, which are genuinely Cuban and he assured that Bayamo is the cradle of nationality. These practices are carried out by their descendants and thousands of spiritist followers, uninterrupted until today. Since 1912 its main leader was Salustiano Olivera. He also became mayor of the El Horno neighbourhood in the period 1915-1929. This spiritist centre, better known by the spiritist centre of Monte Oscuro, the community where it is located, the "Light and Truth" Spiritist Centre was declared Local Heritage. The Bayamo historian and intellectual Carlos Rodríguez Lora offered details of the news that fills with joy the practitioners of this religious cultural manifestation that distinguishes the region of Bayamo and the East of the country. The National Commission of Monuments and Historical Sites of the National Directorate of Cultural Heritage approved the dossier with the argumentation presented by prestigious researchers from Bayamo because it is a very important centre for Cuban history and culture, which transcends time and geographical space and radiates traditions to other regions of the country.

Salustiano Olivera died in 1950 at the age of 81 in the Monte Oscuro area of Granma province.