Is There a Santeria Feud in Mt. Pleasant?

Former DCist contributor Jeff Simmermon has a fascinating couple of posts (warning: photos of dead animals in that link) over at And I Am Not Lying for Real (hat tip: Free Ride) about an apparent feud between two Santeria practitioners in the Mt. Pleasant/Adams Morgan area.

Those dirty white doves lying by the curb alongside three little samurai hats made of coconut, their car-flattened heads some distance away -- they're not just some sick coincidence, a bored metalhead's idea of art or a Hot Topic teen's notebook dream rendered real. According to my neighbor, they're part of a spell meant to discredit him in the DC Santeria community and rob him of some of his prominence and prestige.

We stood out in the road together Friday night, six beers deep into the evening as he explained, flicking the dead doves around with a stick. "This is sloppy work, too," he said. "Amateur shit. This is some poorly hidden amateur shit and an embarrassment to everyone who practices Santeria. The spell was broken the second I laid eyes on this, and it should have been hidden better ... in the bushes at least, or wrapped in some brown paper and then hidden where nobody could find it."

According to my friend (who must remain nameless), someone else in the community is jealous of him and his standing. He believes this is an Anakin and Obi-Wan situation, an old former friend resentful of his spiritual growth, his influence over new initiates, and his role as an elder. If he is correct, the perpetrator of this spell owns a popular Botanica, a voodoo supply store that initiates new members into Santeria. Apparently, she charges for her services and for supplies.

"I don't make any money off this myself. It's my religion. I have my career as a network engineer and that's separate. This is my life, my spirituality and to her, it's her business, and I'm taking her customers."

Read both posts all the way through. Simmermon did a bit of research into Santeria practices and gods, and it makes for great reading. Though he's an outsider who's not very familiar with the details of the Yoruba/Catholicism hybrid religion, also known as Lukumí or Regla de Ocha, the blogger reckons his role in photographing and making the spell known to its intended target may have been the will of the trickster god Eleggua.

A quick search of Santeria activitity in D.C. reveals there's an active Meetup group for the metro area. Given the animal sacrifice involved in this incident -- and the plans for retaliation on the part of the spell's target reported by Simmermon -- we can't help but wonder about that other reported animal beheading earlier this month. According to Wikipedia, Santeria priests charged with doing animal sacrifice are trained in humane ways to kill animals and an animal would typically be cooked and eaten afterwards by the community. That doesn't mean, of course, that the practice is without controversy.