Once Again: It’s Not Santeria

Dead or disappearing animals? Why it must be Santeria! After all, everyone knows that Santeria rituals sometimes include animal sacrifice. Right? Despite the fact that many of those “ritualistic” looking dead animals (or animal parts) have no relation to actual Santeria practice, and that disturbed teens are more often the likely culprit, lazy writers and reporters continue to smear the faith. The trend continues with The Brooklyn Paper, who reports on a mysterious blue bag with dead animals in it.

“A Santeria-style shocker has washed up on the shores of DUMBO — a bag full of dead birds, fish, food and even some cash! Pro photographer Steve Harris spotted the macabre mess during an otherwise pleasant stroll last Sunday in the park at the foot of Main Street, just east of Empire–Fulton Ferry State Park. Inside a soaking blue sack were decapitated turkeys, a smaller bird, dead fish, beans, corn, root vegetables, plantains, and six $1 bills.”

Harris seems to think this blue bag is related to earlier animal deaths at Prospect Park, even though local Parks and Recreation officials said that a Santeria-related explanation for those deaths was “off the table”, and a local expert thinks a Santeria connection for this latest discovery is tenuous at best.

“The connection to Santeria seems clearer in the current incident — though a scholar was hesitant to declare that the sack of spooky stuff was without a doubt an example of the syncretic religion. “I don’t want to jump to the conclusion that anytime there is a dead animal in a bag, it’s Santeria,” said Miguel de la Torre, a professor at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. “Many times there are copycats who don’t understand the religious traditions and copy traditions they don’t understand.” Birds are not typically decapitated, he said.”

So even though the previous deaths were not considered Santeria related, and a local scholar casts doubt on whether the blue bag is Santeria related, that doesn’t stop The Brooklyn Paper from opining that this is “far from the first time an unsettling Santeria discovery has shocked a gentrified neighborhood”, and closing with a quote from Harris wishing those practitioners of Santeria would just keep their dead animal parts at home!

“If you’re going to do these things to these animals that’s one thing,” Harris said. “But don’t throw it somewhere where kids will see it by the playground!”

Thanks to this sloppy work, the story is getting picked up elsewhere as a the “Santeria bag”, or that “theories abound that the sack may have been a part of a Santeria sacrifice ritual”, when there isn’t a shred of proof that this was done by a practitioner of Santeria. It’s just a kinder, gentler, version of the rhetoric used by reactionary nativists to scare people about immigrants.

“Immigrants in Florida practice ‘Santeria’ where they behead and bleed goats and chickens in front of children as they spray themselves with blood to cleanse themselves from evil spirits. Where do they stage it? In city parks where Americans are treated to that dark ages practice!”

Of course, even when faiths like Santeria and Vodou keep to their homes and don’t “throw it somewhere where kids will see it”, that’s no promise they won’t have the cops called on them, or even have the police burst into their homes and have them stand around in handcuffs for hours, even though no crime was committed. None of this will stop so long as seemingly respectable publications keep tagging every animal part found in a park or beach as “Santeria”, framing the practice as a barbaric cult that spreads offal and death wherever they go. So once again, it’s not Santeria, and it would be nice if reporters would follow the conclusions of their own evidence for once.