By Virgile Ahissou Associated Press Writer

Thousands gathered on a beach Tuesday to celebrate Benin’s once-banned Voodoo, slaughtering animals and welcoming revelers from Brazil and the United States, including descendants of slaves who took the religion to the Americas centuries ago.

At a ceremony in the southern town of Ouidah, Voodoo high priestess Nagbo Hounon Gbeffa sacrificed a goat, a rooster and a chicken as divine offerings.

“I’m very moved,” said Faith McDouglas, a 37-year-old nurse from Omaha, Neb. “I’ve understood many things regarding my origins, because I’m a descendant of slaves.”

Voodoo originated in West Africa and holds that all life is driven by spiritual forces of natural phenomena like water, fire, earth and air that should be honored through rituals that include animal sacrifices. Followers believe they can communicate with divinities and spirits by putting themselves into a trance.

Countless Africans were shipped into slavery from the West African coast, taking Voodoo with them, and cults still exist in the Caribbean, Latin American and the southern United States.

The annual celebration “is an occasion for us in Ouidah to remember the hundreds of thousands of blacks deported to the Americas as slaves,” said Albert Dossou, a member of the Daagbo Hounon family, which traces its lineage to a 15th-century Voodoo chief.

“It is always a pleasure for us to see them make the pilgrimage to the land of their ancestors.”

Pamella Jonqueira, a Brazilian living in Portugal, said she came to Ouidah, 25 miles west of the commercial capital, Cotonou, to make a documentary about Voodoo.

“I’ve been able to glean some really beautiful images, but most importantly, I feel the need to initiate myself in Voodoo,” she said.

The religion was repressed in Benin, then banned during incumbent President Mathieu Kerekou’s first 18-year stint in power, which ended in 1991. Kerekou’s Marxist regime believed the rites went against the socialist work ethic.

But the religion, practiced by an estimated 60 percent of Benin’s 7 million people, was impossible to suppress and the government inaugurated National Voodoo Day in 1996, giving the religi on an official place here alongside Christianity and Islam.

Benin is considered the West African capital of Voodoo, and every year, hundreds of revelers, believers and curious tourists from as far away as Haiti and the United States attend the festival with thousands from Benin.

After Tuesday’s animal sacrifice, Gbeffa, the Voodoo priestess, prayed for the March 5 presidential elections to be peaceful, saying they should be held “in an atmosphere of tolerance and brotherhood.”

Kerekou lost the country’s first democratic elections in 1991 but won office again in 1996 and 2001. The constitution bars him from seeking another term.

Benin is not alone in Africa in having a history of suppressing local religions. In Zimbabwe on Monday, a senior High Court judge urged the government to ease colonial era restrictions on the practice of witchcraft, state-run radio reported.

Many Zimbabweans retain strong beliefs in the healing power of spirit mediums – known as n’angas, or witch doctors – along with the role of ancestral rites in the nation’s cultural life, Judge Maphios Cheda said.

Zimbabwe’s century-old Witchcraft Suppression Act has not been strictly enforced since independence from Britain in 1980, but Cheda said it has forced some rites to be performed in secret.

Article from World News Network
The Associated Press

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti

Haiti’s government has officially sanctioned voodoo as a religion, allowing practitioners to begin performing ceremonies from baptisms to marriages with legal authority.

Many who practice voodoo praised the move, but said much remains to be done to make up for centuries of ridicule and persecution in the Caribbean country and abroad.

Voodoo priest Philippe Castera said he hopes the government’s decree is more than an effort to win popularity amid economic and political troubles.

“In spite of our contribution to Haitian culture, we are still misunderstood and despised,” said Castera, 48.

In an executive decree issued last week, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide invited voodoo adherents and organizations to register with the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

After swearing an oath before a civil judge, practitioners will be able to legally conduct ceremonies such as marriages and baptisms, the decree said.

Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest, has said he recognizes voodoo as a religion like any other, and a voodoo priestess bestowed a presidential sash on him at his first inauguration in 1991.

“An ancestral religion, voodoo is an essential part of national identity,” and its institutions “represent a considerable portion” of Haiti’s 8.3 million people, Aristide said in the decree.

Voodoo practitioners believe in a supreme God and spirits who link the human with the divine. The spirits are summoned by offerings that include everything from rum to roosters.

Though permitted by Haiti’s 1987 constitution, which recognizes religious equality, many books and films have sensationalized voodoo as black magic based on animal and human sacrifices to summon zombies and evil spirits.

“It will take more than a government decree to undo all that malevolence,” Castera said, and suggested that construction of a central voodoo temple would “turn good words into a good deed.”

There are no reliable statistics on the number of adherents, but millions in Haiti place faith in voodoo. The religion evolved from West African beliefs and developed further among slaves in the Caribbean who adopted elements of Catholicism.

Voodoo is an inseparable part of Haitian art, literature, music and film. Hymns are played on the radio and voodoo ceremonies are broadcast on television along with Christian services.

But for centuries voodoo has been looked down upon as little more than superstition, and at times has been the victim of ferocious persecution. A campaign led by the Catholic church in the 1940s led to the destruction of temples and sacred objects.

In 1986, following the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier’s dictatorship, hundreds of voodoo practitioners were killed on the pretext that they had been accomplices to Duvalier’s abuses.

El Nuevo Herald
Miguel A. Sirgado
msirgado@herald.com

Preservar vivos los anales del pueblo cubano y establecer sus antecedentes y vínculos con otros fenómenos históricos de América y el Caribe, es una de las misiones del Centro de Estudios Cubanos y Cubanoamericanos de la Universidad de Miami. Y este mes en el que Estados Unidos celebra el aporte de Africa a su cultura, la institución ha organizado una serie de eventos que reflejan la profunda influencia de la herencia negra en el desarrollo sociocultural de los cubanos hasta el presente.

En su edificio conocido como la Casa Bacardí, la institución proyectará todos los días de este mes a las 2:30 p.m., los documentales Voices of the Orishas, del director Alvaro Pérez Betancourt, y Lucumí, del grupo creativo Mundo Latino.

”Se trata de dos piezas que aunque no forman parte del circuito comercial cinematográfico, resultan de gran interés para el público general por su valor documental”, explica Eugene Pons, coordinador del Cuban Information System de la Universidad de Miami.

Según Pons, el primero es un trabajo fílmico que documenta en 37 minutos ciertos aspectos de la cultura africana en Cuba y específicamente de la herencia religiosa yoruba que han logrado sobrevivir al tiempo y forman parte de la vida contemporánea de los cubanos.

En español con subtítulos en inglés, el documental de Pérez Betancourt recoge entre otras, imágenes de un ritual ceremonial con cantos, danza, rezos y un toque de tambores batá en el que se invocan a las 22 deidades u orishas que conforman el panteón yoruba.

En la cinta se puede apreciar también parte del rito en el que un santero le rinde homenaje a sus deidades al tiempo que le pide guía para resolver asuntos que involucran el nacimiento y la muerte, y permiso para iniciar nuevos santeros en los misterios de su religión.

Por su parte, Lucumí revela de manera mucho más didáctica aspectos de la santería cubana y explica mediante imágenes el valor y los mitos detrás de cada orisha así como su sistema adivinatorio, mezcla y síntesis de la cultura yoruba y la religión católica.

”Se trata de una excelente investigación histórica, sociológica, mitológica y etnográfica que intenta descifrar las raíces de esa religión”, afirma Pons.

Como parte de las actividades del centro, este viernes entre 7 y 9 p.m., quedará inaugurada también una muestra de las pinturas del artista cubanoamericano Humberto Hernández, que tocan aspectos de la cultura afroamericana y la vida rural en la mayor de las islas del Caribe.

De su trabajo se ha dicho que es “modernista y simbólico, de colores tropicales que se identifican con el carácter de su tierra mientras reflejan elementos arquitectónicos y otros aspectos del vernáculo cubano”.

Nacido en la ciudad de Cienfuegos, Cuba, Hernández estudió arte en la Escuela de San Alejandro y continuó sus estudios en el Miami-Dade College y la Universidad de Miami.

Paralelamente la institución abrirá una exposición de litografías de los dioses yoruba hechas por Alberto del Pozo y que forman parte de la colección de la herencia cubana del pabellón Roberto Goizueta, en la biblioteca Otto G. Richter de la universidad.

Nacido en la ciudad de Santa Clara, Cuba, Pozo estudió arte en Nueva York y trabajó como diseñador de vestuario y escenografía en aquella ciudad hasta que se mudó a Miami, en 1975, donde falleció en 1992.

La Casa Bacardí está ubicada en el 1531 Brescia Ave., en Coral Gables. Para obtener información adicional sobre las actividadees del departamento se puede llamar al 305-284-CUBA (2822).

The Chicago Tribune
At the beginning of each year, Afro-Cuban religious leaders gather to forecast the events of the next 12 months, the Tribune’s Gary Marx finds
Gary Marx is the Tribune’s Havana correspondent

HAVANA — President Bush may be leading all his would-be challengers in the polls, but a prominent Afro-Cuban religious leader says the Republican is likely to lose his re-election bid this autumn.

That’s only one of a handful of bold predictions made by Victor Betancourt as part of an annual event in which Afro-Cuban priests divine what’s in store over the next 12 months.

Betancourt said 2004 could find President Fidel Castro stepping aside after 45 years in power. He sees the risk of a sharp drop in the U.S. stock market, trouble for the world economy, a strong possibility of a terrorist strike in the U.S. and continued bloodshed in Iraq.

He also said there is a “tremendous possibility” that the 4-decade-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba could be lifted or rendered ineffective.

“This is a year to be very, very careful because it is possible that great chaos could be unleashed on a universal level,” Betancourt warned.

Just before each new year, Betancourt and scores of the island’s most senior Afro-Cuban religious leaders gather to sacrifice chickens, goats and other animals and read sacred seeds to help forecast the upcoming year’s events.

The secret, three-day ceremony ends in the Letter of the Year, a terse, typewritten document that lays out the pluses and minuses of the next 12 months and explains the conduct, prayers and sacrifices needed to please the Afro-Cuban divinities.

Some of the suggestions this year make good moral sense, such as avoiding “indecorous conduct with the goal of acquiring money.” Other recommendations are a little more esoteric to those who do not follow Santeria and other Afro-Cuban religions with a wide following.

The 2004 letter calls for praying to Elegua, the god of destiny, with a roasted sweet potato smeared in palm oil. It also recommends that heads of households participate in a cleansing ceremony using blood and feathers of white guinea fowl.

“The letter is always very accurate,” said Natalia Bolivar, a scholar of Afro-Cuban religions who has tracked each year’s predictions since 1955. “When the religious leaders tell people to do sacrifices, they do them so that they will have a very good year.”

Bolivar said the 1957 letter foretold that Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista would face assassination. Upon hearing the news, Batista built a secret escape door in the Presidential Palace and slipped through it several months later when armed revolutionaries stormed the building and narrowly missed him, she said.

“The people who reached his office said his coffee was still hot,” Bolivar recalled.

She also said the 1994 letter predicted that “the dead would not be buried.” Later that year, tens of thousands of desperate Cubans tried to float on rafts to U.S. shores. Many of them drowned, and their bodies never were recovered.

Skeptics say the predictions contained in the annual letter are often so vague and universal that they are likely to be realized no matter what happens during the year.

The letter said 2004 will bring an “increase in the struggle for power,” the “removal of officials from office” and the “deaths of elderly religious and public personalities.”

The letter does not mention Bush’s political fate, Iraq or any leader or nation by name. Betancourt gave his own spin in a separate interview.

Still, even Cubans who are not strong believers in Santeria pay close attention to the letter, especially for any sign of what it may mean for their Maximum Leader.

A buzz rippled through the island last year after the letter predicted that “the king will turn in his crown before he dies.”

“Every year it seems people interpret the letter as if this is the year Fidel will die,” one believer said. But other Cubans believe Castro has remained in power so long because he has the protection of the Afro-Cuban deities.

Bolivar said the annual letter began at the end of the 19th Century, but in recent years the island’s Santeria priests–known as babalawos–have split into two rival groups, each announcing its own set of annual predictions each January.

“I read the letter to see what the year is going to be like,” said Alfredo Serrano, 55, a telephone worker who had just finished skimming the document. “If you follow the letter’s advice, you won’t have any problems.”

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

Article from The Longview News-Journal
By John Lynch

Lawmen who thought they had seen it all saw something new Monday after a routine traffic stop turned up 12 pounds of marijuana, a pistol and more than $6,000. The discovery resulted in the arrests of two Cuban nationals suspected of being in the country illegally.

But it wasn’t the money, contraband, firearm or even potentially illegal aliens that surprised Gregg County sheriff’s deputies — it was the urns filled with strange fluids, sacks of fur, feathers and animal bones, some tied into cross shapes, said Capt. Ken Hartley, sheriff’s spokesman. He said authorities also found books written in Spanish that appeared to be about voodoo or Santeria. Voodoo and Santeria are similar religions practiced mainly in the Caribbean that combine elements of Roman Catholicism with the worship of African tribal gods and involve animal sacrifice.

The items were found after a search of a black 2003 GMC Yukon Denali stopped for speeding by Deputy Tracy Freeman.

According to arrest reports, the sport utility vehicle was stopped for speeding 77 mph in a 70 mph zone about 8:20 a.m.

The driver, 34-year-old Javier Diaz, told the deputy he and his passenger, 25-year-old Osmany Maynet, both of Albuquerque, were heading from New Mexico to Florida, the report said. Diaz didn’t say much more, however, claiming he did not understand much English, according to the report.

Freeman became suspicious after Maynet told him the pair were driving from Arizona to Georgia, according to the report, which notes the SUV has Georgia license plates.

Both men denied any involvement with illegal drugs, the deputy reported, but a check of their criminal histories showed both men had been arrested before on suspicion of drug involvement.

Freeman then asked for permission to search the vehicle, which Diaz agreed to allow, the report shows. During the search, investigators found about 12 pounds of marijuana, divided into a dozen bags that were covered with duct tape, the sheriff’s office reported. Found with the contraband were a loaded .38 caliber handgun, also wrapped in duct tape, and $6,309, which was hidden inside a red and white towel. Duct tape is commonly used by narcotics traffickers to try to mask the scent of drugs from police dogs, the sheriff’s office noted.

The authorities also found the urns, sacks of animal remains and books, but after checking to make sure the materials were not illegal and did not contain human remains, deputies left them in the SUV where they found them, Hartley said.

Hartley said authorities believe the items are used in Santeria rituals because both men are from Cuba, where the religion is very popular. Both men told jailers they were Roman Catholics when they were booked into jail. The SUV has been impounded. The men can get their things back when they get out of jail, but that doesn’t look to be anytime soon.

The pair are held in the Gregg County Jail without bond, charged with felony marijuana possession, felon in possession of a firearm and federal immigration detainer. They will be turned over to federal immigration officials after the drug charges are resolved.

The Miami Herald
Posted on Tue, Dec. 16, 2003
By Larry Lebowitz

Someone is apparently trying to give defense attorney J.C. Elso a supernatural leg up as his federal money-laundering trial hits the homestretch.

Prosecutors complained Monday that their courtroom seats and evidence boxes were covered with voodoo powder in a Santeria ritual.

Veteran Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Gregorie said he respects all religions, but is tired of getting his suit coats cleaned of powder residue.

Co-prosecutor Michael S. Davis showed U.S. District Judge Patricia A. Seitz a large quantity of the grayish dust that was dumped in evidence boxes next to their table in the courtroom.

Santeria experts say voodoo powder can bring good luck, swaying juries, judges or prosecutors in favor of the accused.

”White powder, generally, is for things to go good,” said Mercedes Sandoval, a retired Miami Dade College anthropology professor.

The names of the judge, prosecutor, defendant and others are written on pieces of paper and burned. Ashes mixed with ground-up twigs are then spread around for maximum impact.

Black magic is rarely found at the federal courthouse, but is more common outside the Richard Gerstein Justice Building, the state criminal courthouse. A janitorial crew dubbed ”the Voodoo Squad” regularly removes sacrificial chickens, roosters and goats from the grounds.

Elso’s defense attorney, Mel Black, said whoever is hoping to help his client has probably done the opposite:

Seitz ordered the courtroom locked during breaks, meaning Black can’t prepare there for the next series of witnesses.

Voodoo Practitioners Mark Day of the Dead With Rum, Loud Music, Lewd Behavior at Haiti Cemetery
The Associated Press

Passing under a crumbling archway that reads “Thou Art Dust,” voodoo practitioners flocked to Haiti’s largest cemetery Saturday to honor the guardian of the dead with rum, thunderous music and lewd behavior designed to awaken mischievous spirits.

Followers visit the tombstones of relatives and pay their respects to Baron Samedi, the god of the dead, and to his lascivious, sardonic offspring, Gede. To show they are “possessed,” followers often rub hot pepper juice on their bodies. Some hold swearing contests steps away from the gates of the capital’s sprawling municipal cemetery.

Two-thirds of Haiti’s 8 million people are said to practice voodoo. Earlier this year, Haiti’s government officially sanctioned the faith as a religion, allowing priests to legally perform baptisms and marriages.

“The Gedes helped us win our independence,” said voodoo priest Desaville Espady, 38, dressed in a white robe with a silver cross on a thick chain hanging from his neck. “We pay homage to our ancestors, and they cure us of our ills.”

Gede was the name of a West African tribe that disappeared during the slave trade.

Voodoo followers integrated some Christian rites into their practice before Haiti won independence from slave-holding France in 1804. The slaves, forbidden from practicing their African rites, disguised their gods in the trappings of Roman Catholic saints. The Catholic church frowns on voodoo and, in the 1940s, tried unsuccessfully to eradicate it.

Practitioners believe in a supreme god and spirits linking the human and the divine. Many believe their spirits will return to Africa when they die. The bodies of slaves were buried without ceremony.

Men and women say they are possessed by Gede. Dressed in mauve kerchiefs, white pants and white or violet dresses, they wander in a mystic trance through the cemetery, spouting obscenities and asking for money.

“The cult of the dead is one of the first steps of resistance against slavery and a foundation stone of voodoo,” Haitian sociologist Laennec Hurbon said.

Encumbered by political problems, Haiti’s economy has been in a slump since 1980. The poorest nation in the Americas, the Caribbean country’s population has declined for two years, and life expectancy dropped from about 53 years in 2002 to about 49 years in 2003. Most people survive on less than $1 per day.

Because of deepening poverty, voodoo which often requires pricey offerings of alcohol and food to the spirits has lost some followers. One-third of Haitians are Protestants.

Miami Herald’s Tropical Life Section
By Liz Balmeseda
Special to The Herald

Hialeah City Hall rises on the stormy side of Palm Avenue. From where Ernesto Pichardo stands across the street, it looks like a shrine, not your ordinary municipal building.

Pichardo knows shrines. But this shrine across the street, it’s a piece of work. Its deity can be harder to appease than the entire pantheon of African demigods in Santería. A goat, a chicken, a cigar won’t cut it. This feeds on votes and rezoning. Let’s put it this way: In Hialeah, not even Changó, the feared god of thunder, can rattle the big guy, Mayor Raul Martínez.

Pichardo is the city’s most famous ”little guy,” the santero who took Hialeah City Hall to the U.S. Supreme Court for the right to practice his religion. Ten years ago, his church won a landmark ruling when the high court threw out a 1987 city ban on animal sacrifices. That unanimous decision turned the lights on in Hialeah. The epic case, Church of the Lukumí Babalú Ayé Inc. vs. City of Hialeah, not only put Santería on the visible landscape, it put it on the curricula of law schools across the country.

So why is Pichardo still peering across the street a decade after he trounced City Hall? Good question. The answer, he suggests, is summarized on a bumper sticker: Pichardo, el pueblo te quiere. Pichardo, the people want you. It was a line that stuck with him as he talked to disgruntled citizens. He adopted it as his company slogan, but people took it as a campaign slogan. And they egged him on.

People still show up at his storefront office at Pichardo and Associates, the consulting firm he operates with his brother, Fernando. It’s a pretty colorless place for a mystical man. The only hint of the esoteric is the incense by the receptionist’s desk. Pichardo seems like any other Hialeah businessman in a sky blue shirt and print tie. His holy vestments are at home as are the cowry shells he uses for divination. He doesn’t need them here. People tell him what’s going on.

A MATTER OF IMAGE

But why would they come to a santero/business consultant for a zoning hassle? Pichardo says it’s a matter of image. ”I’m the only person who has taken on Raúl and beat him,” he says.

So they come to complain about City Hall’s crackdown on illegal housing subdivisions. Many have been hit with fines, liens, even foreclosures. Either they bought the house that way, or they did what lots of proud Hialeah homeowners have always done — built a room for the in-laws, constructed a wing for the grown kids, rented it to the cousins from Havana. No biggie for a city of hardworking folk and pragmatistic architecture. It’s Hialeah. Everything is attached to everything else. The personal to the political. The inlaws to the outlaws. The cement to the saints. Hialeah is so tightly interwoven that what goes around comes around a lot faster than it does in most other places.

When Pichardo opened that door to the wilds of Hialeah code enforcement, he got a feeling of dejá v. The legalese brought him back to his 1987 fight for his church. Same mayor. Same kind of abrupt lawmaking. But more confounding than any of that was the sense that the so-called Ciudad Que Progresa, the City of Progress, was stuck in time. Of course, Pichardo wasn’t 32 years old anymore. He was 48. But in his eyes, the fact that he could slaughter a white pigeon for Obatala, god of wisdom and purity, didn’t amount to democratic progress. After all, two years ago the mayor and the entire council were re-elected without opposition for the first time in Hialeah’s 75-year history.

”The city is worse off now than it was in 1987,” says Pichardo. “Back then, we had two political camps, so there were checks and balances.”

RUN FOR OFFICE?

Which is why he spent months toying with the idea of running for office. He was torn between running for city council in the Nov. 4 election, or waiting until 2005 and making a run at the mayor’s office. He relished the uncertainty, for it generated a nervous stir in the political establishment. He kept his cards close to his vest, answering simple questions with rhetorical ones.

Unlike the candidate who keeps his eye on his intended office, Pichardo embraced the process as the prize. He took delight in tangential observations, noting new faces entering the council race.

But when the filing deadline came Aug. 15, he let it pass. He concluded that one councilman would not amount to significant opposition. Does this mean he’ll run in 2005? You’ll have to toss the cowry shells to find out. He’s not saying. You can’t blame Pichardo for being protective. The City Hall he sees through his storefront pane is run by the same mayor who messed with his church. Back then, with Martínez’s backing, the council passed three laws banning animal sacrifices. City Hall crushed Pichardo in one legal blow after another. The late U.S. District Judge Eugene Spellman ruled against the church, citing public health concerns. Three federal appeals judges in Atlanta upheld that decision.

To be fair, the other side didn’t have an easy go, either. The mayor went to jail and the judge died. The mayor was convicted on federal charges of extortion, although his case was dropped in 1996, after a second and a third trial ended in hung juries.

But you have to wonder why Pichardo would even want to be a politician when he’s such an effective activist. He says even his barber wonders about that. ”He tells me fighting City Hall is making me bald,” says Pichardo.

His activism has cost him more than his hair. It cost him money and property. It was yet another jolt for the former Catholic altar boy whose mother had a vision that changed his family’s spiritual path. Since that adolescent initiation into Santería, Pichardo has come to find hints of the sacred in all he does. This is what keeps him going as an activist, the blessed candle and glass of water behind a believer’s door, the daily fusion of Santería into Hialeah life. Everything is attached to everything else. He didn’t think twice when he invited a couple of veteran political campaigners to the yearly reading of the santero forecast. And he didn’t flinch when a client told him he had asked Orula, the oracle god, if he ought to give his business to Pichardo and Orula said yes.

Such whispers drew Pichardo back into the fray. After the Supreme Court victory, Pichardo concentrated on his religious duties. His church certified more than 40 priests. And he presided over a santero wedding procession that moved to drumbeats along Palm Avenue and into Angelito Banquet Hall, where one member of the wedding party became possessed with Ochún, goddess of love.

But these days, Pichardo isn’t doing many spiritual readings. And when he does, he usually conducts them outside Hialeah city limits. He prefers the quiet of Goulds in South Dade, where he and his wife, Nydia Davila Pichardo, a priestess of the faith, attend to their select few. There, Pichardo slips into his priestly garments and takes inspiration from their lush herb garden and their ornate, white and red shrine to their ruling orisha, Changó. Thanks to Pichardo, the deity still works overtime. Even out in Goulds, Changó can’t hide from Hialeah.

From The Jersey Journal

PASSAIC (AP) – Making good on a vow to perform an animal sacrifice, a Santeria priest killed two red roosters last night at an altar behind his religious supply store on the city’s main street.

“This is a great moment for me,” said Felix Mota, after performing the two-hour ritual at Botanica St. Barbara on Main Avenue. “For the first time, I feel I can openly practice my religion without interference.”

Mota, 43, a santero, or priest of the Afro-Cuban religion, vowed last Wednesday to perform the sacrifice and advised city officials of his plans.

Mota’s lawyer, Jesus Pena, said the ritual was protected by a 1993 Supreme Court decision, Lukumi Babaluaye v. the City of Hialeah, Fla., in which the court ruled the sacrifice was a form of religious expression shielded by the First Amendment.

Last week, Mayor Sammy Rivera said that his administration has never interfered with an animal sacrifice if it involved a religious ritual. Police were posted outside the botanica last night for crowd control.

During a press briefing before the ceremony, Mota told reporters, most of them from Spanish speaking news media, that the ritual was not an act of cruelty but an homage to God.

“It’s very important for us to sacrifice animals because it’s part of our ritual and how we make our God happy,” Mota said.

The ceremony began with singing, chanting and drums and other percussion performed by a dozen participants dressed in white and red, evolving into a frenzied dance.

At one point, a white dove was produced from a back room and given to Mota, who held it aloft and recited a prayer in Spanish. He took the bird outside to a sidewalk where he freed it as a crowd of several dozen people, held back by police barricade, looked on.

Afterward, two red roosters were brought in to the altar.

Mota and other participants knelt on the floor and held the first bird firmly, as Mota appeared to bless the bird with wine poured into cups made from goat hooves. He then poured some wine into a porcelain dish.

The bird’s neck was then held over the dish as Mota unsheathed a dagger, raised it and, as drums and chanting continued, brought the blade down into the back of the bird’s neck.

Though he was unable to sever the rooster’s head, he held the blade down until the bird was dead. The bird’s carcass was then placed in a red silk scarf and tied in a bundle.

He repeated the ritual on the second bird, this time severing the head cleanly, allowing blood to pour from its neck. Mota drank some of the blood mixed with wine.

Lisa Lange, spokeswoman for Norfolk, Va.-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said that the organization opposes the killing of animals, whether for religious reasons or for food.
“Our feeling is this, that local authorities should prosecute based on cruelty statutes. Abuse is abuse, whether or not you’re doing it because you say God told you to,” Lange said.

El Nuevo Herald
Wilfredo Canico Isla

Associated Press
EL BABALAO nigeriano Wande Abimbola preside el octavo Congreso Mundial Yoruba en La Habana, donde participan 700 seguidores del culto a los “orishas”.

Al ritmo trepidante de los tambores africanos, Cuba celebra el VIII Congreso Mundial de Tradición y Cultura Orisha con la asistencia de unos 700 practicantes del culto yoruba en Brasil, Estados Unidos, Canadá, Nigeria, Trinidad Tobago, Francia y el país sede.

Pero la inconformidad de santeros cubanos de la isla y la diáspora por las restricciones organizativas del foro está ya sumando ruido al festín internacional de los orishas.

En Cuba, la Comisión Organizadora de la Letra del Año criticó las limitaciones impuestas a sus miembros para participar en el congreso, patrocinado por la Asociación Cultural Yoruba de Cuba (ACYC). Aunque la convocatoria al evento informaba que podían participar personas no asociadas si pagaban una inscripción de 250 pesos cubanos, las solicitudes de los principales directivos de la Comisión fueron rechazadas.

Los organizadores dijeron que se presentaron más de 800 solicitudes de Cuba, y que la capacidad de admisión de nacionales –unos 300– se fijó a partir de la confirmación de visitantes extranjeros.

Desde Miami viajaron a La Habana unos 20 santeros, pero en la delegación del exilio no hay figuras reconocidas de la comunidad religiosa afrocubana como Rigoberto Zamora, presidente de International Union Yoruba Rights; José Montoya, presidente de la Asociación Lucumí Shangó Eyeífe; o Ernesto Pichardo, líder de la Iglesia Babalú Ayé.

”Este congreso es un conciliábulo armado por el señor Antonio Castañeda [presidente de la ACYC], que no muestra verdadero respeto para los cubanos practicantes de la santería fuera de Cuba ni se inscribe en un espíritu de unidad mundial de las religiones”, opinó Montoya, quien promueve el viaje de un crucero a Cuba con unos 700 santeros y feligreses de los ritos afrocubanos en EEUU.

Para la especialista en asuntos afrocubanos, Natividad Torres, el congreso no resolverá ningún asunto esencial para los santeros, porque ”sus bases están minadas por la hipocresía y la comercialización”. ”Aunque practicamos la misma religión, hay un problema de reconciliación que no está resuelto entre los feligreses cubanos de la isla y del exilio”, explicó Torres. “Pedimos a los orishas por un cambio, porque no estamos de acuerdo en que el gobierno actual siga manejando las riendas del país después de 40 años de traiciones a nuestro pueblo”.

Montoya reafirmó que el crucero viajará a la isla a fines de mes, y aclaró que la iniciativa ”no está vinculada ni amerita el respaldo” de la ACYC.

La pasada semana Castañeda desvinculó públicamente a su organización con el viaje del crucero, y acusó a Montoya de tratar de politizar una anunciada ceremonia religiosa (ebó) a la entrada de La Habana.

Los viajeros planean realizar un ebó en la bahía habanera para pedir una solución a los problemas de Cuba.

”Es muy mediocre determinar desde Cuba lo que los santeros cubanos de afuera debemos hacer o no en nuestra patria”, señaló Montoya.