Weird NJ

Last week, fishermen found the body of a two year old infant in a plastic bag in the Passaic River. It turns out that this body was disinterred from its grave in Connecticut. Who would dig up the body of an infant girl in Connecticut and dump it in a river in North Jersey? Apparently, practitioners of "Palo Mayombe". According to the Record ("Police: 'Miracle baby' might have been stolen from grave as part of ritual"):

STAMFORD, Conn. – The body of a child ripped from her grave in Connecticut and found floating in the Passaic River may have been stolen for use in a ritual by practitioners of an obscure religion who prized the “miracle” girl.

[...]

“We’re seeing this as a ritualistic type of theft of the body,” said Capt. Richard Conklin of the Stamford Police Department.

Imani was born in 2004 with semilobar holoprosencephaly, a rare condition that kept her brain from fully developing. She wasn’t expected to live; the condition often causes babies to die before birth or shortly after.

Yet she survived two and a half years. Doctors hailed her as a miracle baby, and her short life was chronicled by the Stamford Advocate newspaper.

“We think that’s the hook,” Conklin said. “That the people practicing these beliefs sought that power, that mystic nature of this child.”

Conklin cited Palo Mayombe, a belief system that originated in Central Africa in which sticks and human bones and skulls are used to summon spirits. Palo Mayombe is sometimes referred to as the dark cousin of Santeria, a Caribbean blend of West African beliefs and ancient Catholicism often connected with animal sacrifices.

The Record quotes a local professor who worries that people might demonize Palo Mayombe:

Peter Savastano, a professor at Seton Hall University, cautioned that there is a tendency in Western Christian-oriented cultures to demonize African-diasporic religious traditions.

“I’m immediately suspicious that [people] are kind of demonizing of these traditions that are not easily understood by mainstream Americans,” he said.

To his credit, Record columnist Mike Kelly rejects Prof. Savastano's appeal to cultural relativism. In his column ("Who steals the body of a child?"), Kelly writes,

[I]n a nation that cherishes freedom of religion, what do we make of this? Is there a place in our diverse and open society to allow the theft of a baby's body as a form of religious expression? Or can we call this what it really is – barbaric?

A Colombian Tradition Comes to NJ

An article earlier this week in the Record of Northern NJ ("Stupidity on Wheels") mentioned that Bergen County police pulled over a multicolored bus after they saw debris being thrown out the windows of the bus, causing drivers of other cars to swerve. The bus, it turned out, was outfitted with a dance floor, deejay booth, and bar, and was full of high school students for Morristown partying after their prom. A Record column today by Mike Kelly explains the origin of this tradition:

The bus, owned by La Chiva Way, is a “chiva” – a term that describes rolling party buses that are common in rural Columbia. The firm’s website advertises itself as the “best party on wheels.”

Kelly also notes an immigration angle to this story:

A few hours later, the phone range at the home of Diana Mejia, a Morristown-based immigration advocate. The caller was one of the students on the bus – and here the story takes an intriguing turn.

Mejia says the student – and others who called later — were not so much concerned about the penalty for underage drinking, though Mejia adds that the students said they did not drink. Rather, Mejia said the students worried that the attention from the prom bus might lead police to discover that some of their relatives in Morristown were illegal immigrants.

Many of the students, were from Morristown’s burgeoning Latino community, said Mejia, who works the American Friends Service Committee and the Wind of the Spirit immigration group.

“Some of the kids may be documented,” said Mejia, using a term that refers to a person’s immigration status. “But their parents may not be. Remember, these are mixed families.”

The photo above, of disc jockey Ricardo Silva, left, of Jackson Heights, N.Y., and party bus promoter Jean Balcazar of College Point, N.Y., waiting to be called in municipal court in Hackensack, accompanied Mike Kelly's column online and is credited to Elizabeth Lara of the Record. The two men were smiling in the photo of them that accompanied Kelly's column in the dead tree edition of the paper today.