Chicken Sacrifice in Euless

» DMN: Santeria leader fights Euless ban (Michael Grabell)

Just in case you haven't had your fill of stories pertaining to animal sacrifice, this one might be worth a read. Apparently, this story comes from the town I grew up in during my formative Jr. High/High School years. On the one hand, I'm amazed that an incident about 10 people who wanted to off a chicken in a cul-de-sac really warrants as many words and background as this story offers.

But on the other hand, the story somehow ends up painting a rather interesting look at Euless, Texas over the course of recent history. That is, once you get past the chicken's side of the story.

Euless isn't some hayseed Podunk, ignorant of other cultures. This is a town that rallies around its high school football team's dancing of the haka – a Polynesian war dance that involves chanting, chest-thumping and tongue-flailing.

The city of about 50,000 people has one of the highest concentrations of Tongans in the U.S. and a large percentage of Mexican immigrants. Almost 40 languages are spoken in its elementary schools.

"We are not narrow-minded, and we certainly are not insensitive to other cultures," said Betty Fuller, whose husband is related to the town's founders who migrated to Texas after the Civil War.

Ms. Fuller lives four houses down from the house where Mr. Merced performs the Santeria rituals. She said she believes they're entitled to their religious beliefs but shouldn't be sacrificing animals in a neighborhood. Years ago, her husband's ancestors slaughtered pigs and chickens for food on the very same land.

"You would wring a chicken's neck and have it for Sunday dinner, and that was perfectly fine," Ms. Fuller said. "That was back in the '30s and '40s, when there were only 200 people living in Euless.

"This is not out-in-the-country Euless anymore."

...

And large gatherings around the cooking of livestock are not that uncommon in Euless.

Since immigrating to Euless in the early 1980s, the Tongans have celebrated holidays by roasting pigs in a tradition similar to Hawaiian luaus.

The festivals by members of the Tongan First United Methodist Church on Main Street sometimes involve as many as 15 pigs, said the Rev. Alex Latu. Because few people have freezers large enough to fit a whole hog, sometimes "they go and buy them live and kill it in the back yard," he said.

Mr. Latu said city officials have expressed concern about outdoor roasting only during severe droughts. Tongans have complied with the burn bans, he said. Pig roasting is a cultural tradition, not a religious one.

It took long enough, but kudos to the Dallas Morning News for confirming that Euless is not "some hayseed Podunk."

For once, we're at least doing better than McKinney, TX in the PR department.