Jesus Suarez, a Santeria priest, had slit the throat of one goat that June afternoon. He had three more goats, two sheep and 44 chickens to go.
But before he could finish the ritual sacrifice, Coral Gables police swarmed the house where he and some 20 other followers of the Afro-Cuban religion had gathered to worship.
The officers, Suarez recalls, pointed their guns at the devotees and screamed at them to freeze. Suarez could hear a couple of worshipers in the front yard yelling, "No dispare!" Don't shoot!
Soon there were TV vans on the street. Suarez counted 25 police cars.
"Why are you violating our civil rights?" Suarez asked them.
Soon thereafter, word of the raid made its way to the great defender of Santeria in the United States. That would be Ernesto Pichardo -- high priest, physical extension of the fire spirit Shango and co-founder of the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, the first incorporated Santeria church in the nation.
If officials in this upscale city were expecting to confront a serene mystic in flowing robes, well, that isn't Ernesto Pichardo.
Pichardo, 53, prefers loafers and slacks. He is a small man with a weather-worn face and a comb-over, a chain smoker and a trash-talker, argumentative, opinionated and occasionally profane. He is a proud member of the Cuban American bourgeoisie and a Republican. Yet his streetwise English carries a hint of Abbie Hoffman, with sentences that often end with a sardonic "man."
Pichardo, by his own admission, has "authority issues" that stem from the hostility and misunderstanding that his religion has garnered over the years.
"I'm a son of Shango," he said, referring to the Santerian deity, or orisha, with whom he claims a special bond. "I'm a fire god. That's what I do is start fires."
After the 2007 raid, Pichardo demanded an apology from Coral Gables Mayor Don Slesnick and a promise that his police would take sensitivity classes. Slesnick, who would not comment for this article, refused.
So this summer Pichardo filed a lawsuit demanding public information that officials had not turned over. He is hoping the worshipers will use that information as the basis for future federal civil rights complaints.
"It's almost offensive, the mentality of the Coral Gables mayor," Pichardo said. "To him, it seems that it's OK to practice these backwards African things in some other city, just not [his]."
