Leader says ban on animal sacrifice is affront to faith
By Michael Grabell,
The Dallas Morning News
Euless, Texas | The room was set up with benches and shrines, the herbs, dried coconuts and eggshell chalk laid out on a table. With the preparations done, 10 church members sat by the pool behind the red-brick home on the cul-de-sac and drank beer.
The next day, they would sacrifice a chicken to initiate a new member, using the energy in its blood to communicate with the spirits, known as orishas.
But then Euless police knocked on the door.
The officers explained to the priest, Jose Merced, that killing animals of any kind is illegal within the city limits. And Merced tried unsuccessfully to explain that animal sacrifice is as essential to his religion, Santeria, as the Eucharist is to Catholicism.
Now, Merced has filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the city, thrusting the African-Caribbean religion and the quiet suburb into the spotlight. And Merced has a U.S. Supreme Court case supporting Santeria animal sacrifice, indicating that Euless might have to compromise.
"It appears that city officials are either deliberately defying the Supreme Court justices on this ruling or they're simply confused," said Ernesto Pichardo, head of the Santeria religion in the U.S. and the plaintiff in the 1993 Supreme Court case.
Euless officials declined to present their side of the story, saying they wouldn't comment on their dispute with Merced, the intentions of their ordinance or the Supreme Court case because of the pending lawsuit.
The city's code says the law against slaughtering animals is intended to promote "the health, safety, morals and general welfare of the city," "to protect property values" and "to enhance the quality of life of persons, pets and other animals."
What is Santeria?
Santeria, also known as Lukumi, originated among the Yoruba people in southwestern Nigeria thousands of years ago and came to the Caribbean through the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
It arrived in South Florida during the Cuban exodus of the 1960s. High priests, or obas, like Pichardo estimate that there are 3 million to 4 million followers in the U.S.
"This is not drinking blood, and we don't sacrifice children," Pichardo said. "It is an African religion that has its own central dogma, its own bible. It is a pre-Christian religion. It has its own ceremonies. It has its own rituals."
But like other African religions that followed the slave trade, such as voodoo and macumba, the practice of Santeria takes place outside the public eye, through home worship instead of in a central temple.
"We don't do it in a church because due to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the diaspora, they totally pulverized those kinds of religious and social structures," Pichardo said.
Believers in Santeria came to Euless for the same reason many others did - its proximity to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and higher-paying jobs with the airlines.
Merced arrived from Puerto Rico in 1990. He says at least four other Santeria families live in Euless, and he estimates that there could be as many as 6,000 followers in North Texas.
Trouble brews
The complaints started after he became the only Santeria oba in the region in 1999 and started performing rituals and holding gatherings at his house. Neighbors began complaining to police about cars blocking driveways, loud chanting, animal cries and smells.
There have been many ceremonies at the house, but Merced says he's conducted just two animal sacrifices in the area, using chickens and goats.
The offerings are an essential part of the religion, considered so sacred that Santeria would cease to exist without them. Santeria teaches that the orisha spirits, which emanated from God, can manifest themselves only through the energy contained in blood, which opens a channel of direct communication with the orishas.
The blood is also an essential part of what makes a priest a priest.
"If you were to remove animal offerings from ordination rites, (Santeria) would not have priests," Pichardo said.
"Can we remove the ritual symbolic cannibalistic act of drinking wine as Jesus Christ's blood?" he asked. "You do that, you do not have the ability of conducting a Christian Mass."
After the ritual, the animals are cleaned, cooked in a stew and eaten during a feast.
Euless isn't some hayseed Podunk, ignorant of other cultures. This is a town that rallies around its high school football team's dancing of the haka - a Polynesian war dance that involves chanting, chest-thumping and tongue-flailing.
The city of about 50,000 people has one of the highest concentrations of Tongans in the U.S. and a large percentage of Mexican immigrants. Almost 40 languages are spoken in its elementary schools.
"We are not narrow-minded, and we certainly are not insensitive to other cultures," said Betty Fuller, whose husband is related to the town's founders.
Fuller lives four houses down from the house where Merced performs the Santeria rituals. She said she believes they're entitled to their religious beliefs but shouldn't be sacrificing animals in a neighborhood. Years ago, her husband's ancestors slaughtered pigs and chickens for food on the very same land.
"You would wring a chicken's neck and have it for Sunday dinner, and that was perfectly fine," Fuller said. "That was back in the '30s and '40s, when there were only 200 people living in Euless.
"This is not out-in-the-country Euless anymore."
Leader says ban on animal sacrifice is affront to faith
