Word: santeria
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...away: chanting, bleating, squawking, cooing. At the back of the house, in a white-tiled, surgically clean room, sits an old woman in a white dress. She will remain there for an entire week, eating and resting and praying. The remainder of her initiation into the priesthood of Santeria -- literally, "saint worship" -- will take an entire year, during which she must wear only white, remain celibate and eat only prescribed foods...
...goats, 14 chickens, 14 guinea hens and several doves will be offered as sacrifices. The carcasses will be butchered in the garage and prepared for the next day's feast. As many as 100 people will attend to celebrate the "birth" of their newest Santeria priest...
...believers in Santeria, ritual sacrifices are essential to winning the favor of the gods and initiating new members into the priesthood. To animal- rights activists, they are gratuitous carnage. In Los Angeles and in Hialeah, Florida, where Santeria is spreading quickly through the Latin, Caribbean and African-American communities, the activists have pressed for laws prohibiting sacrifices. It now falls to the Supreme Court to decide whether those laws violate the Constitution's protection of "free exercise" of religion...
...have himself named Maximum Leader. Both pursued quirky impulses. Ceausescu made his wife Elena his deputy, and she not only draped herself in furs and jewelry but also used the police to spy on her grown daughter's love life. According to U.S. Army investigators, Noriega practiced Santeria, a mystic religion, and wore red underwear to fend off the evil...