Residents on Capp Street between 23rd and 24th woke up Friday morning to the ghastly sight of a beheaded goat and a dead chicken.
Residents discovered the remnants of the dead animals, which had been hidden under a parked car, at around 10:30 a.m. The first photo showed up on Mission Mission.
By Friday afternoon there wasn’t a noticeable amount of blood at the scene, but a considerable pile of goat excrement lay next to the goat. Neighbors immediately blamed the incident on nearby residents who practice Santeria.
“It was [them], they practice Santeria and they always do strange stuff,” said a woman in Spanish, who refused to back up her accusation with a name.
Others jumped into the gossip, but knocks at the door of the accused neighbor brought no answer.
Santeria is an official religion in the United States, with approximately 22,000 practitioners, according to the U.S. Census. It’s practiced mainly in the Caribbean islands, most notably in Cuba and Puerto Rico.
As immigrants from these islands began to arrive in the United States, so did their religion. There are quite a few stores in the Mission District that target these populations.
An employee of Ninas Blacas Botanica on 24th Street said that it is rare to sacrifice a goat, and it would be odd for the remains to be thrown on the street. In official ceremonies, trained priests often perform the rituals and would take care of the animals’ remains.
Devoted Santeria practitioners perform animal sacrifices as part of “ebos,” rituals involving various spiritual practices. Goat blood is thought to have properties that can increase a person’s life span and cure disease.
In 1993, the Supreme Court found laws banning the sacrifice of animal for religious purposes unconstitutional. Therefore, animal sacrifices by Santeria churches have constitutional protection under the First Amendment.
Anyone with information about the incident should contact Animal Care and Control at 415-554-6364.
We have a long tradition in this country – check the Constitution – of tolerance for all “religions.” But that’s at the governmental level. Nothing requires us as individuals to not criticize religion, per se, or various practices which present themselves as “religion.” So feel free to find this weird, barbaric, stupid, or whatever you like. You have that right; and frankly, an obligation. But do, at the same time, check out catholicism, and mohammedanism, and fundamentalist protestantism: they’re all pretty nutty. They just don’t butcher goats and chickens.
Animal sacrifice …legal. Heck, I don’t think a pile of excrement in our neighborhood is anything unusual either.