*Santeria: Rapid Growth in Urban America*
When 12 bodies were dug up in early April near Matamoros,
Mexico, law officials initially blamed the deaths on a satanic cult
of drug smugglers. According to Cameron County (Texas) Sheriff's
Lt. George Gavito, cult members ritually sacrificed the victims and
prayed to the devil "so the police would not arrest them, so
bullets would not kill them and so they could make more money."
By April 19 law officials found there had been more victims,
placing the total suspected to have died at the hands of the sect
at 15. Among them was Mark Kilroy, 21, a Texas pre-med student who
vanished during his spring break in March.
Police arrested nine sect members in the case. The leader (or
"godfather") of the group, Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, and his
right-hand man killed themselves on May 6 as police were closing in
on a Mexico City apartment where they were staying.
But in the wake of the arrests and intense media publicity, one
thing became clear: members of the tightly-knit religious cult were
_not_ satanists in the traditional sense. Instead they were linked
to _Santeria,_ a strange mixture of Catholicism and an ancient
African religion brought to the New World (mostly to the Caribbean)
between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries by slaves from the
West African Yoruba tribe.
It also became clear that they were not _Santerians_ in the
traditional sense either. Although the sect did follow some
traditional Santeria practices, and were even organized like a
traditional Santeria group (having a "godfather" and a "godmother"
at the top), they did not follow certain other Santeria practices.
Following the arrests, defensive Santeria priests (sometimes
called _santeros_ or _espiritualistas_) across the U.S. pointed out
that their religion does not permit human sacrifice. And law
officials and authorities on Santeria were quick to agree. Texas
Attorney General Jim Mattox later said that although Santeria
normally includes the practice of sacrificing chickens and goats,
some of the Matamoros cult's practices were styled by themselves.
Santeria expert Dr. Mercedes Sandoval, professor of anthropology at
Miami-Dade Community College, was quoted in the April 13 _Miami
Herald_ as saying: "These may have been a group of deranged people
who may have started with Santeria and ended with these
barbarities. What they did is not Santeria."...
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