Silver Daniels: I'd been in the tradition for maybe about a year and at this point I still hadn't seen it. 

Heather Freeman: This is Silver Daniels. He’s a Lucumí practitioner. About nine years ago, he witnessed his first animal sacrifice.

Silver: So, yeah, the animal is sacrificed, but it's always done in the most humane way.

For one thing, it's taboo for the animal to go through any type of trauma or trouble, or to be dirty, or to be in any type of unwell state because then they won't be accepted by the Orishas. So it has to be in the best state possible. We're talking about better than free range and better than organic, right? Like, it's gotta be sort of pampered, because ultimately these are the animal's last days. And so it's gotta be treated extremely well. But also, you know, the community is going to eat that meat and you want to make sure that the animal is in the most cared-for state as possible because you're going to consume it. 

Heather: Silver lives in Long Beach, California. And like many Americans living in cities, he was never close to the death of animals for food. (He just bought it at the store!)  Silver had always known that animal sacrifice was a core part of Lucumí practices. But he was uneasy with it -- until he experienced it for himself.

Silver: So the first time I sat down and had eaten a goat that I had previously petted just a few hours ago, that was my first time coming in contact with the animal that I was eating, right?

I was a part of the entire process in terms of, I saw it while it was alive, I petted it, you know, I fed it grass. And then, a few hours later, now I'm eating it. I'm sitting next to the elders who were eating it. I'm sitting a few feet away from the Orishas who have the organs of the animal sitting in front of them, right? So they're consuming that.

And in that moment, it just kind of clicked for me, right? — The continuity of it, how we are all sharing in this.

Heather: Orishas are venerated spirits in Lucumí, and we'll talk about them more in a minute. 

Silver: There's communion in Catholicism, right? In a way to share in the life force of Christ through the sacraments. I wasn't unfamiliar with the concept of communion, but this was the first time in my life where I really felt like I was communing, like, we were all sharing the same meal. You know, between me, and the 50, 80 people that were there, and the Orishas, you know?

The cycle of life just became extremely loud to me in that moment. And it's a moment that I think about often. And it impressed something upon me that, 10 years later, I'm still unpacking. 

Heather: Lucumí is an African Diaspora Religion that came to the United States from Cuba, where it originates. And animal sacrifice is just one part of this complex and rich tradition. It includes spirits called Orishas, ancestor veneration, and ashe, which is an energy that moves through all things. As a religion, Lucumí is very community-focused and is most often practiced privately, in homes across the country. 

But in the 1980s, the Lucumí practice of animal sacrifice was in the national spotlight when a legal case between the City of Hialeah, Florida, and a Lucumí church, went all the way to the Supreme Court. 

And this case? It's defining American religious liberties to this very day.

Danielle Boaz: It's a court case that pretty much every law student is going to study in their first year of law school. 

Frank Burgos: They had no understanding of what the Church was all about and what Santeria was all about.

Mindy Marques: I remember Fernando Pichardo said to me, “It's back to the witches of Salem.”

Heather: I'm Heather Freeman, and this is Magic in the United States. 

In today's episode The Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, we'll learn about the legal fight between this church and the City of Hialeah, Florida, how definitions of religion and religious freedom went to the highest court in the land, and how adherents of this African Diaspora Religion still face persecution in the United States today.

We'll be right back. 

(BREAK)

Heather: Welcome back to Magic in the United States. I'm Heather Freeman.

It's the 1980s. A used car lot sits vacant in the city of Hialeah, Florida. The nondescript building on this lot is about to be repurposed as a church. 

Back then, Frank Burgos was a reporter for The Miami Herald, and he covered the city of Hialeah. 

Frank Burgos: And you couldn't have two municipalities more different from one another. Miami was this glittering, sophisticated city that was sort of the capital, the unofficial capital of the Caribbean and South America in many ways. Hialeah, in contrast, was this fairly respectably large city that had a very much small-town kind of feel to it. It was blue-collar and predominantly Cuban. 

Heather: The Cuban Americans of Hialeah, Florida were largely Roman Catholic but there were also practitioners of Lucumí there. 

Since Lucumí originated in Cuba — and it's fairly common there — Hialeah residents probably knew that Lucumí practitioners lived in their community. But Lucumí was (and still is) very private and rather secretive.

So when the Church of Lucumí Babalu Aye announced that it was going to set up shop, publicly, at the old used car lot, people took notice.

Mindy Marques was a reporter for The Miami Herald in the 1980s. And back then, she wrote about the Church’s origins and its founders, the Pichardos.

Mindy Marques: So Ernesto Pichardo, his brother Fernando, and his mother, Carmen Pla, they lived in Hialeah, and, you know, settled here like so many other Cuban immigrants. 

So the story really begins in 1969 with Carmen Pla.

She says that at one gathering, the spirit of a black Cuban slave, Encarnacion de Caridad Rodriguez, took hold of her body and spoke through her as had happened many times before. But on this occasion, it instructed her to “come out of the dark.” She told Pla that they did not want to keep “living in hiding.” 

Heather: Lucumí is well-known for this type of ritual trance, although it's often sensationalized in the media. But this ancestor of the practice was requesting something unexpected from Carmen and her family: she wanted them to 'come out of the dark’ -- to go public with Lucumí. This was a very unusual request, and nothing happened for a long time.

But nearly 20 years later, her sons Ernesto and Fernando decided to move forward and create the Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye.

Here’s Frank Burgos.

Frank Burgos: He and his group applied for and won an occupancy of residency, which is what you need to have legally before you can use a building in a religious gathering. And he was very proud about hanging that certificate of occupancy on a wall in the church, in the building -- which is, candidly, a rather nondescript building -- and it was basically planting a flag as it were, that, you know, Santeria was here and Santeria was here to stay.

Heather: ‘Santeria’ is another word for Lucumí. And to understand why this public Church was such a big deal, we have to understand its origins: among enslaved Africans who were trafficked to Cuba during the transatlantic slave trade. 

Dr. Danielle Boaz is an Associate Professor of Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Dr. Danielle Boaz: So Lucumídeveloped over time and the beliefs and practices of the Yoruba people were intermixed with the beliefs and practices of other Africans, some indigenous beliefs, as well as European religion, in particular Catholicism. It became kind of its own entity, but we would refer to it as an Afro-Cuban religion.

Heather: As a religion, Lucumí centers veneration of Orishas, which aren't quite the same as gods, spirits, or saints. 

Dr. Boaz: Orishas typically represent or oversee various spheres of human life and the world that we live in. Like, there's an Orisha that governs the oceans, the forest, and then there are Orishas who govern aspects of our lives like childbirth, employment. So, for example, one of the most popular Orishas is the Orisha Yemaya. She is the Orisha who governs the oceans and often affiliated with everything that lives in the ocean — so, fish, other sea creatures — and she's associated with the abundance of the oceans, this kind of divine motherhood.

Heather: Lucumí’s origins are in West African religious practices. But it was also shaped by Catholicism.

Dr. Boaz: And it was built on this idea that as African people were trying to hide, trying to mask their religion behind Catholicism, that they saw these Catholic saints as being similar to the Orishas. And so they would say, ‘Oh, this particular Orisha, it reminds me of this Catholic saint.’ That's how we get the name Santeria, that means: way or worship of the saints. 

Heather: The relationship between Catholic Saints and Orishas is complex, and enslaved Africans weren’t just ‘hiding’ Orishas –  they were innovating.

Dr. Boaz: People were sometimes hiding their religion, but sometimes maybe they were seeing something in Catholicism that made sense to them and willfully adopting it. There were just so many different aspects to the relationship. 

Heather: And there’s another really important practice in Lucumí: divination. But this isn’t fortune-telling. Rather, divination is a method of gathering information from the Orisha and ancestors about important questions impacting both individuals and the community.

Dr. Boaz: It is about making sure that a person is keyed into who they are in this life, what challenges they face in this life, what strengths they have in this life, and really fulfill their purpose on this earth. And divination, it could include communicating with spirits of departed persons through kind of a mediumship, or it could mean the throwing or casting of shells or seeds. 

Heather: Historically, in both Cuba and the U.S., all of these practices were done quietly, typically in someone’s home. So what the Pichardos were doing was controversial, not just for the City of Hialeah -- and we'll hear about that in a minute -- but also among other practitioners of Lucumí.

Reporter Mindy Marquez again.

Mindy: The first opposition for this idea came from other Santeros, for two reasons: One, is that they feared — as would eventually happen — that they were exposing the religion to the hostile public.

But they also feared that the Pichardos were trying to usurp their leadership or centralize it in a way, like, you know, the Pope. And that's not the way Santeria works. It's not a centralized religion at all. In fact, each priest has their own followers, and so it's very decentralized. So that created tension within the Santeria community itself. 

Heather: Furthermore, Ernesto Pichardo was a Cuban-American of Spanish and French ancestry, so some practitioners were concerned about the intentions of a white Church leader promoting this Afro-Cuban religion to a largely white American audience.

Yet in many ways, Pichardo was the perfect person to make a very private religion public.

Frank Burgos again.

Frank: Ernesto Pichardo was a very charismatic figure. He was somebody who passionately felt that it was time for Santeria to come out of the closet as it were and to be recognized as a legitimate religion. 

Heather: But there was a tension between this effort to establish a public-facing Church and the natural privacy of some rituals. Now, privacy doesn't necessarily mean secrecy. But there are ceremonies that are really for initiates only.

Now that we understand some of the Lucumí practices, we need to understand its journey to the U.S., because how it arrived plays a key role in our story.

It's hard to say how long people have been practicing Lucumí in the United States. But by most accounts, there was a major influx of practitioners after the Cuban Revolution. 

Dr. Boaz: In the 1960s, we start to see a lot of people fleeing Cuba, which has now become a communist country. We start to see waves of people, hundreds of thousands of folks coming to the U. S., where they were ultimately given what was treated as kind of a political form of asylum.

Heather: The wealthiest Cubans were mostly white, and they were the first ones to flee to the United States. But this started to shift in the 1980s when more Afro-Cubans came to the U.S., along with Black refugees from Haiti.

Dr. Boaz: There starts to be a shift in the racial makeup of the people who are coming to the United States, and Miami in general is suffering from a lot of drug-related crime, which is being blamed on immigrants.

Frank: And suddenly Miami was becoming this Hispanic capital and Hialeah along with it. And with that came all the tensions that sort of existed within that community for the longest time, and one of them being, you know, the Catholic Church versus Santeria, as the Cuban community viewed it at the time.

Dr. Boaz: As we start to see more Black people, more Afro-Cubans coming to the United States, we see a lot of concern in Cuban communities about how the U.S. public is going to see the race of the Cuban population. And, as we see more Afro-Cubans coming to the U. S., we see their practices, their religions, their music. And this combined with the growing prejudice against Black Cubans, Afro-Cubans, and concerns that the arrival of more devotees of Lucumí, that these things might make Cubans be seen as non-white, might make them be seen as the people who are causing or fueling the rise in crime in Miami.

Heather: So, Cuban Americans in South Florida were already feeling tense about how they were being perceived. And then the Pichardos decision to establish a public-facing Lucumí church set off a firestorm. 

Frank: There was a petition presented to the City Council with about 5,000 signatures saying that they wanted this shut down.

Heather: So the City Council called an emergency meeting — and hundreds of people showed up.

Mindy: That city hall meeting was insane. Outside there were about a hundred people, protesters. You know, it drew a diverse group of people banding together. And then inside there were like 300 people packed in that council hall. 

Dr. Boaz: And there were all these different people who came to the meeting and said these really atrocious things: that these people are not really a religion; they're primitive; they're barbaric; we can't allow them to have a church here; Cubans are Christian people and we can't be seen as being associated with this African stuff. 

Heather: And at the center of all these complaints: animal sacrifice. 

Frank: This religion was, I think, an embarrassment for many of the people in Hialeah. So, you know, obviously the Cuban community, it's highly Roman Catholic. They thought it was Satanic. 

Heather: And these protests against the Lucumí religion and its practices worked. 

Dr. Boaz: After this apparently long rant where a number of people were saying all these hateful things about African people and their religions and Afro-Cubans and this religion in particular, the City Council passed a series of ordinances — of local laws — that basically would make it impossible for one of the religion's central practices, animal sacrifice, to take place in the city at all.

Frank: And one of the City Council members said, you know, ‘Jesus Christ died for our sins. He made the ultimate sacrifice. We don't need to sacrifice anything else.’

Heather: Animal sacrifice. That can be a triggering idea for many Americans.

For some, the killing of animals is offensive, regardless of the context. But for many others, it really depends.

Whether it's a fast-food cheeseburger, a venison stew after a successful hunt, or the euthanasia of a beloved pet, there are many contexts in American society for the death of animals at human hands. 

And around the world, human relationships with animals are deeply complex and diverse— and also culturally contextual. After the break, we'll explore that phrase, ‘animal sacrifice’, and learn how it set off a legal battle that would go all the way to the Supreme Court.

We'll be right back.

 (BREAK) 

Heather: Welcome back to Magic in the United States. I'm Heather Freeman. 

The City of Hialeah, Florida was up in arms over the establishment of a Lucumí church. And a lot of that was actually about Cuban American identity. But another part of it was about animal sacrifice, which always has a context.

In Lucumí — as in many other religions around the world — animal sacrifice has a very specific role and purpose. And it isn't taken lightly.

Dr. Danielle Boaz explains.

Dr. Danielle Boaz: Animal sacrifice is something that's often very misunderstood, I would argue. In Lucumí, an animal sacrifice is offered to an ancestor, to an Orisha, and it is supposed to be kind of the most perfect, most pure, the best offering of ashe — of this energy that flows through all things — as is possible.

Basically, there's very little difference between the way that Muslims or Jewish people would kill an animal and the way that it's done in Lucumí. The animal is supposed to be treated well. It is supposed to be killed very swiftly and painlessly. And there's a lot of training that goes into the process before a priest is authorized to carry out such sacrifices. 

Heather: When it comes to animal sacrifice, how an animal is killed is often one part of the concern. But another part is what happens to the animal after it's died.

Dr. Boaz: In Lucumí, the blood is drained from the body because that is the source of ashe, of this energy that runs through all things. And so the blood is given to shrines as an offering to the Orishas, to the ancestors, to the Divine. 

In Lucumí, like in these other religions, the meat of the animal is typically consumed after the sacrifice is conducted. For instance, if animals are sacrificed for an initiation, a big part of the celebration of the ceremonies is then coming together and cooking up the animals. And then the community will eat together. 

Heather: In Lucumí, there's an intimate and sacred relationship between food, community, and the honored spirits. 

But the opponents of the Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye painted a very different picture. So let's get back to the 1980s in the city of Hialeah and see how the City Council handled protests against Lucumí and the practice of animal sacrifice.

Dr. Boaz: So the City Council is prohibiting or limiting the ritual slaughter of animals with the intent of preventing the Church from being able to establish or open in the city of Hialeah. Now, the interesting thing that they did with this is that they explicitly carved out exemptions for other religions that require a certain religious or ritualistic type of killing of animals, kosher and halal killing of animals.

Heather: Reporters Frank Burgos and Mindy Marques again. 

Frank Burgos: In the beginning, the council tried to just do a resolution condemning the practice and hoping that would quell the crowd. The Church and its lawyer said (I'm paraphrasing here), you know, quit hiding behind resolutions. If you're going to do this, pass an ordinance.

Mindy Marques: So one outlawed animal sacrifice, another banned animal slaughter except at slaughterhouses, and a third prohibited the possession of animals for improper slaughter or sacrifice. And it got very ugly for the Pichardos, it was very frightening. You know, they got death threats, things thrown at the church, at them. 

There's a letter that they had saved and it was addressed only to the Church of Satan and the U. S. Postal Service delivered it to them. And what they said was, ‘Take yourself and your African gods back where they belong in the swamps of Cuba.’ So there definitely was an element of racism.

Heather: This racism was complicated because it was also tied up with the identity of an immigrant community. Cuban Americans are diverse, and much of this complexity played out in City Council meetings.

Frank: What I found interesting was that the folks who were most cautious about the City of Hialeah taking the steps that it did were the Anglo members of the administration. The City attorney was not Cuban. The acting police chief was not Cuban. And they were pretty much saying, ‘Whoa, City Council, we might be falling into some issues here we don't want to fall into.’ And ultimately they proved to be right, given what happened through the court cases. 

Heather: The Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye sued the City of Hialeah and the case quickly made its way through the courts. Time and again, the lower courts sided with the City of Hialeah: the Church would have to follow the ordinances. But Church leaders kept appealing, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dr. Boaz: When the Supreme Court hears this case, they take a look at the way that the City of Hialeah carved out these laws, and they find that it's a thing that they called ‘religious gerrymandering.’ You can't pass a law to specifically target a religious community. 

The City of Hialeah had carved out exceptions so that no other practice would be limited except for animal sacrifice as practiced by Lucumí. So there was no question that they were intentionally targeting this community. And the Supreme Court said, wait a minute, you can't do that. 

Heather: In the end, the justices ruled unanimously in the Church’s favor. The Supreme Court case wasn't just important to the Lucumí church: It gained national attention from many different religious organizations. 

Mindy: It was interesting to see the coalition of what you might call strange bedfellows that really came on the side of the Church. You have the National Association of Evangelicals, with the liberal, you know, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and you have the Church of Latter Day Saints, and Jewish organizations….

Heather: And the Supreme Court case also put a bright light on the role of prayer in a religiously plural and diverse society.

Mindy: I think it was Sandra Day O'Connor asked, ‘Can you boil a lobster, a live lobster in Hialeah and eat it?’ And it really tracked with something that Fernando Pichardo at one time had told me, you know, you could kill a turkey, pray over it, and eat it, but you can't pray over a turkey, kill it, then eat it.

Frank: It was interesting to see how the Supreme Court kind of ruled unanimously in reversing all the court decisions below. I think the language that Justice Anthony Kennedy used in the decision that, you know, religious beliefs need not be acceptable, logical, consistent, or even comprehensible to others to deserve First Amendment protection.

Heather: The Supreme Court ruling allowed the Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye to pursue its religious practices in the City of Hialeah.

And on the surface, it protects other marginalized religions from discriminatory laws. Yet across the United States, practitioners of Lucumí and other African Diaspora Religions still face harassment.

Dr. Boaz:  It hasn't necessarily stopped the persecution of these communities.

There have been a number of incidents where, for example, neighbors will call the cops and say, ‘Hey, I see these people going into this house, they've got a bunch of animals with them.’ And then the police will show up as if, you know, somebody has made a bomb threat or something. And they'll have like dozens of cars, sometimes dozens of officers. They'll approach the devotees with their guns drawn, they'll hold them at gunpoint, they'll interrogate them, or just take down their license plates and say that they're going to kind of keep tabs on them.

And so there has been a continued level of harassment, a continued level of targeting that really undermines the idea that this is truly a religion that's accepted, that's equal, that people are free to practice.

Heather: And back to Long Beach, California. Silver Daniels has never experienced discrimination against his Lucumí practices at work, but he has experienced it in other spheres of his life.

Silver Daniels: It's always on a personal level, like an interpersonal relationship. Like, people have decided they didn't want to date me anymore because of the practices, which is why I generally don't tell people. Like, unless you're a significant part of my life, then it's none of your business. Unless you're a significant part of my life, my practice won't impact my relationship with you.

Heather: Right now, Silver is preparing for an important initiation in Lucumí. This will require a series of personal sacrifices in both time and convenience. He's really excited. But it's going to be a lot of big changes and adjustments.

Silver: There's a period after the initiation process called the ‘year in white’, and during that time you are restricted from physical contact with people. Like, you shouldn't be touching other people, other people shouldn't be touching you, can't go out at night, you can't look in mirrors, and you have to wear white the entire time. And the initial section of that period, you're not allowed to sit at a table — you have to sit on a floor, on the mat. 

And so up until now, none of my practices have ever impacted my professional life. But now that this is coming up, and I work for a very large broadcasting network, and we have meetings during lunch, so I shake hands with a lot of people, and I'm in a bunch of meetings and stuff like that. I've already explained to them that I'm going to have to wear white coming up. So I explained it to them and they were, you know, they were very supportive, very understanding, very intrigued.

In my experience, it helps when people get to know you as a person, and they respect you as a person, and they like you as a person.

Then later on, when you have to reveal to them these ‘extra things’, right, they are a lot more understanding.

Because they respect you as a person.

Heather: Next week on Magic in the United States we’ll manifest the hidden history of Christian Science, New Thought, and the Law of Attraction. And if you practice affirmations or positive thinking, you might just be a spiritual descendant of this uniquely American view of the Universe. In the meantime, manifest abundance, my friends, and good vibes only!

Would you like to leave us a comment or a thought on one of our episodes? Give us a ring. 980-277-4402, or leave a message or voicemail at magicintheunitedstates@gmail.com. We'd love to hear from you!

Magic in the United States is written and hosted by me, Heather Freeman. The show is produced by Amber Walker and edited by Lucy Perkins Our Associate Producer is Noor Gill, and the show is mixed by Jennie Cataldo. Fact-checking by Dania Suleman. The Executive Producer for PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. The show’s music is from APM Music and Epidemic Sound,  and our project managers are Edwin Ochoa and Morgan Church. Thanks to advisers Danielle Boaz, Yvonne Chireau, Sabina Magliocco, and Meg Walen. Thanks to guests Danielle Boaz, Frank Burgos, Silver Daniels, and Mindy Marquez. This production was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.  

Wherever you are in the United States, the East, the West, the North, or the South: remember, that magic is everywhere.

I'm Heather Freeman. And I'll see you at the crossroads.