By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
The cult of Abakua (Abaqua, Abacua) originated as early as the 1700s, in West Africa, particularly in the Ivory Coast, Gabon, Liberia and Sierra Leone in Nigeria. It came to the Caribbean, South America and Cuba with slaves in the early 19th century. Its all-male members are known as Ñáñigos, and it's believed they could transform into leopards through the use of witchcraft to kill their enemies. Old Calabar native council c.1906
Certain secret societies spread across the people living in the region from southeastern coastal area of Nigeria to northwestern Cameroon mostly among the Efiks. At first glance they functioned as a social club, however they developed a much more sinister reputation. They were known by different names. One of these was the Ekpe Society. Ekpe, according to tradition, is a being from untamed nature that threatened humans and was very much feared. The term "Ekpe" also means "leopard". This belief influenced the checkered pattern of their costumes that mimicked leopard spots.
The cult members also killed in imitation of a leopard by "slashing, gashing and mauling their human prey with steel claws and knives." Part of their ceremonies were drinking the blood and eating the flesh of their human victims. A Leopard Man, from Le Monde colonial illustré (c.1934)
They were known as Anyoto Aniota, and they operated mostly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Côte d'Ivoire.
It was very easy to provoke an attack. A random illness or failure of crops would demand a human sacrifice. In Old Calabar they were known as Mforoekpe and were dreaded. An initiate had to drink a bottle of their victim's blood before the assembled members. An elixir made from their person's intestines was believed to give them superhuman powers, and the ability to change into leopards. This drink is called borfima. . The executioner known as Bati Yeli, would wear a ritual leopard mask and a leopard skin robe. He would stalk a victim that has already been chosen. The sacrifice was usually made at their jungle shrine, but it could be done anywhere using a two-pronged steel claw that was part of the executioner's costume. Ekpe was introduced by slaves from the Cross River region in Africa, and emerged as the abakua in Cuba. Induction involves secret ritual ceremonies, and the costume is called "ireme". Purposefully the costume has a mask to give the wearer anonymity. George Banbury's book, Sierra Leone: or the White Man's Grave (1888) described the following: Beyond jurisdiction, sacrifices and slaughter are still carried on. Trials by ordeal, of both fire and poison, are frequent. Unfaithfulness of wives, or concubines, affords opportunity for a special medicine man detector, and he will be feasted with plenty today, and dash out the wretched woman's brains on the morrow, under the pretense of discovery of marital sin. In 1891, reports came of murders were committed by the leopard men and the bodies were mutilated
In 1891, a story came from Sierra Leone, West Africa. The leopard men left the mutilated body of a man on the roadside. "The head had been opened and the brains taken out, the right hand and the left foot was cut off and the heart also taken away." According to the writer this was the third instance of a murder in the area.
Shortly after WWI (1914-1918) there was an outbreak of leopard cult murders in Sierra Leone and Nigeria. Many of the members were captured and executed, forcing the cult to go underground. They continued to perform their ritual murders every year for the next 20 years. In 1923, reports of the Leopard society in Sierra Leone described where members were armed with a set of iron instrument fastened inside both hands. In 1934, Dr. Werner Junge worked in St. Timothy's Hospital at Cape Mount, Liberia. He was a German surgeon and physician, who worked as an Episcopalian missionary from 1930 to 1940 in the area of Sierra Leone. Dr. Junge was confronted many times with activities of both the Crocodile Society and the Leopard Society. Dr. Junge wrote a book African Jungle Doctor (1952). He described how he was asked by the chief of Tosso to give an opinion about the cause of a girl's death. The question was whether she had been mauled by a leopard. Dr. Junge thought it was rather odd when the chief told him that a man may have committed the murder, even though it was reported she had been savaged by an animal. There, on a mat in a house, I found the horribly mutilated body of a fifteen-year-old girl. The neck was torn to ribbons by the teeth and claws of the animal, the intestines were torn out, the pelvis shattered, and one thigh was missing. A part of the thigh, gnawed to the bone, and a piece of the shin-bone lay near the body. It seemed at first glance that only a beast of prey could have treated the girl's body in this way, but closer investigation brought certain particularities to light which did not fit in with the picture. I observed, for example, that the skin at the edge of the undamaged part of the chest was torn by strangely regular gashes about an inch long. Also the liver had been removed from the body with a clean cut no beast could make. I was struck, too, by apiece of intestine the ends of which appeared to have been smoothly cut off, and, lastly, there was the fracture of the thigh - a classic example of fracture by bending. (p.176) The Legend Cults of Africa c.1923
Dr. Junge observed when two leopards were given a dead monkey to eat. He noticed they did not tear their prey at all like the corpse had been mutilated. This convinced him the girl was murdered by a man and not an animal.
He wrote up a report, and brought it in person to the Mayor, which ended up in the hands of the head of police. The official told him he knew all about "that kind of murder." It was the work of a secret society; the so-called Leopard Society, and that there was no protection again the "scourge". None of the natives would step outside after dark, and when there was another leopard murder in a distant village, "they all breathed again, for now, so they said, there would not be another for a month." Soon the chief from Tasso called for another post-mortem. This time it was an 8-year-old boy who was mutilated the same way the 15-year-old girl had been. Dr. Junge then sent both reports to the Minister of the Interior in Monrovia. The reply he received was polite, but "left no doubt that further reports, or any interference on my part, were not desired. 'In the interests of my personal safety' I was advised to keep right out of the matter in question." African Jungle Doctor: Ten Years in Liberia by Werner Junge
The next victim was an old woman. It was the fifth murder of an 18-year old married woman which brought the chiefs of Tosso and Jonni to approach the Mayor and demand that something be done. The local government dragged its feet.
The fact that villagers were fleeing, and then another murder of a retarded man who had slept outside in a hammock forced the hand of the authorities. Eventually there were confessions and about 30 members of the Leopard Society were arrested, however the chief of the band remained unknown. The identity of the ringleader was discovered purely by coincidence. A young man who had been trapping in a forest near Jonni took shelter in a small shed to escape a thunderstorm. It was full of clutter and rubbish, and he bedded on some boards and mat laid across the beams which supported the sloping roof. He awoke when the door opened and a man came in with an oil-lamp. By the dim light it was evident he was familiar with the place. The boy saw him open a large chest, take something out and shut it. Inside the chest he saw caps of leopard-skin, claws of iron sheathed in leopard-skin, spears, oddly shaped knives and large pincers. African sacrifice ring
The boy did not stir until the man left. The next morning he ran fifteen miles from Jonni to Cape Mount, and told his story to the Mayor.
Soldiers returned with the boy to the hut, and found the owner which was the old man with the lamp. He was the head of the Leopards. Also arrested was Cane, a black missionary. It was he who had brought this "ancient and blood-thirsty religious order" of the Leopards from his native Bassaland, south of Monrovia, and revived it in Cape Mount. The Master of the Leopards possessed a fetish with a "medicine" that transformed his followers into leopards and exacted blood sacrifice. The fetish was a "lump of black wax about the size of a child's head, wrapped in cloths and bits of leopard-skin." During the dry season the protecting wax would dry up and cracks would appear on its surface. This was the "medicine's call" for a sacrificial victim. Blood would be poured on it to give it moisture, especially that taken from the victim's organs. Also fat taken from the bodies was used to moisturize it. It demanded not merely human blood, but the blood of one of the members of the society on whom the choice of the talisman fell. This member would offer their blood by claiming a victim from their own family, even two generations descended from them could be substituted. The reasoning was if "I offer the blood of one of blood-relations I offer my own, and so the requirement of the god is met." This also explained why the villagers had told Dr. Junge the murders would only occur during the dry season. It turned out the head of the Leopard cult was defended by his son who lived in Cape Mount. His defense was based on the fact that his father was received as a youth into the Society of the Leopards, and by offering his own blood had been joined to the leopard magic, and could never be separated from it, not even when he became a Christian. Jungle Pilot in Liberia by Abe Guenter
He was innocent of the murders since they were committed by the other members, who by then had already been executed. The murders were deemed the act of the leopards, since as men they had lost their own will. "As men they were innocent, and their guilt as leopards could not be assessed by any human court."
The authorities ordered Mr. Cane to leave the district. He retired to his native Bassaland, where he died two years later. Abe Guenter was a missionary who spent 35 years in Liberia. He was a pilot with a plane which took him to many places in Africa. By the time he left in 1980, he came across the Devil Society, the Alligator Society and others. He wrote a book, Jungle Pilot in Liberia (1992). In 1947, he was visiting a church near the coast. One day he noticed a brass ring buried in the mud. It weighed ten pounds, measured 7 inches across and 1.5 inches thick with four knobs. He cleaned it off and took it to a man named Deacon Carr. He asked what the item was. The response was: Oh yes, I will tell you. My grandfather was the big chief in this village. He was so afraid of spirits, sicknesses, war and other people's witchcraft that he went to the big, big witch doctor. With the help of the blacksmith, they poured this beautifully marked brass ring. The witch doctor laid the ring down in the middle of the village. By then the sun was going down and the witch doctor had a meeting with just the elders of the village and my grandfather. He told them, ' You asked for the most powerful witchcraft, and that always needs a human sacrifice. I want you to bring a young boy at midnight to the new god so we can make this sacrifice'. An eight-year-old boy, with his mouth gagged, was brought that night. They cut his throat and spilled all his blood on the brass ring, and from that time on, all the activities of the village revolved around the 'brass god': sacrifices, worship and all. The Leopard Society had to offer sacrifices from their bloodline
In 1948, police finished a three-year investigation into the butchering of so many people. They calculated that 196 men, women and children had been victims of the man-leopard murders, and these were the ones that had been discovered. It was suspected there were many more that never came to light.
In the movie Black Panther (2018), there is a reference to the leopard men cult, "which shows African men wearing leopard costumes to defend the interests of their society," which is quite misleading since historically many of the victims were innocent Africans who were used for sacrificial purposes, and handled as expendable beings, with no thought for their suffering. Egbo Men, Old Calabar (postcard) c. early 20th century
It is from these origins that the Abacua cult flourished in the new world, especially the island of Cuba. They carried on the same traditions from their homeland of Africa.
The Abacua are known for swearing their members to lifelong secrecy, and if they ever betray what they knew they would be murdered. They are known to steal and sacrifice children as part of their rituals. Animals are also regularly sacrificed. Notorious in Africa for making regular deals with slavers, they would turn over their victims for profit at the coastal city of Calabar. Made up mostly of merchants, the population was divided into freemen and slaves which made up the majority of inhabitants of Old Calabar. This area was active for the slave trade from the 1640s until the 1840s. Slaves from this area became known as Carabali, a corruption of the city's name which was known as "Old Calabar". It was situated in the Bight of Biafra, which included a loose confederation of nearby settlements united under the Ekpe secret society. The region was originally named by 15th century Portuguese navigators who referred to the denizen of the Gulf of Guinea coast as "Calabar" due to the area being a primary source of the poisonous Calabar bean. The British abolished slavery in the British territories in 1808. The arrival of British missionaries in 1846, particularly from the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland, marked a significant turning point in the region's history. Palo mayombe "nganga" cauldron
These African-based cults syncretized with the Catholic religion which prevailed in much of the New World.
Abacua is a variant of the santeria religion and worship many of the same deities or "orishas". Its main ceremony known las matanzas translates from Spanish as "the massacre". This is also the name of a Cuban province where it became deeply rooted. Besides allowing only men in its ranks, they reject any black-colored object, including sacrificial animals. Most of the members are initiated as children. Despite being described as a fraternal order, a religion or even a secret society, abacua has a reputation for being dark and evil. Jim Schutze, Texas journalist and author of Cauldron of Blood: the Matamoros Cult Killings (1989), described it as the "darkest of all Afro-Caribbean sects." They have been accused by santeros of torture, human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism. According to Michael Newton in his book, Raising Hell: An Encyclopedia of Devil Worship and Satanic Crime (1993), Detective Jim Bradley with Washington D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department said that "abaqua is the 'most dangerous' of santeria's fringe groups, surpassing even palo mayombe in its malignancy." In 1978, a play titled Abaqua was presented in Havana, Cuba, which depicted the covert rituals known only by the members. Fourteen days later the cast of 20 actors had been murdered by "persons unknown." Most secret societies demand secrecy from their members, but the abacua are known to punish disclosure with death. This has made the exact number of members difficult to ascertain. Many followers came to Miami during the 1980 Mariel boatlift. Cuba's Penal Code explicitly criminalized abakuá or ñáñigos since 1876. The cult is not adverse to identifying as santeros, which are more integrated with Catholicism or to paleros, adherents of palo monte mayombe who are described as the darker side of santeria, to further obfuscate who are members. Manantial Bello (Matanzas, Cuba) c.1880
Both santeria and palo mayombe camouflage their pantheon with Catholic saints. Santeria followers are thought to practice gray magic, while palo mayombe is mostly black magic intent on binding the souls of the dead. To differentiate themselves from any Christian identity, they call themselves as "paleros Judios", equating the comparison to Jews who are not baptized by holy water.
The paleros' power is centered in a magic cauldron known as a nganga where he strives to "create a miniature universe of death and corruption, where souls are sucked in and trapped, compelled to do the palero's bidding." Inside it are blood, bones, coins, remains of animals and humans, railroad spikes, poisonous insects and deer antlers. In putting together the nganga, a palero will seek the key ingredient, which is a fresh corpse known as kiyumba. Cemeteries are robbed to obtain a head, rib, fingers, tibias and toes. Eventually other ingredients are added such as blood or organs obtained through ritual sacrifice. "As in juju and other Afro-Caribbean cults, death by torture is preferred for sacrificial animals and human beings, so that the spirits are 'charged up' with pain and fear when they reach the 'other side'" (Newton, 1993). Twenty-eight sacred sticks are buried in it, and used to call forth the captive spirits known as nkisi, which are fed with blood. Cauldron with the remains of Mark Kilroy inside c.1989
A blending of santeria, palo mayombe and abacua are believed by international authorities to have been practiced by Adolfo Constanzo and his followers. Constanzo was a narco-satanist who along with his cult followers kidnapped med-student Mark Kilroy in 1989. Kilroy's body along with others were found buried in shallow graves in Matamoros, Mexico. They all showed signs of torture and being ritualistically sacrificed. However stories of abacua murders predate this event by decades.
In 1905, The Evening Star detailed a horrendous crime committed in Cuba. It involved the sacrifice of a child by a "brujo" named Domingo Bocourt, a Lucumi from Africa. He told a woman named Adela that her dementia could be cured by the blood of a white child. Juana, another woman who could not conceive was told she was cursed, and could only be cured by the blood and heart of a white child. He selected two followers, Ruperto Ponce and Victor Molina to find a child for the "cures". In November, 1904, they went to the neighboring farm Reserva located in the village of Gabriel on the outskirts of Güira de Melena. The act was described as: Molina, one of them, went to cut palms on the Zuñiga farm, adjoining that on which live the three Diaz brothers, each of who had young children. Having possessed himself of one of these, the little Zoila Diaz, he and the other went to the latter's (Bocourt) house and there butchered the child, taking out her heart and collecting her blood in a glass jar, after which the corpse was preserved, probably by first salting and then smoking. The blood and heart were administered to the patients without any perceptible effect on Adela, while it is too early for Juana's faith in their efficacy to be confirmed or shaken. Cuban detective, Jose Valdes c.early 20th century
The child was only twenty months old, and taken from the back yard of her home. The family could not understand how their young daughter could disappear so suddenly, since she would be unable to walk a long distance. A search by the authorities and neighbors only produced a camisole with bloodstains.
Initially there was a belief it was a kidnapping, but no request for ransom was sent to the parents. There were no clues as to what happened to the child. A detective Mr. Jose Valdes lived in the village of Vereda Nueva. He had recently lost his own daughter of about the same age to sickness. He read of the disappearance of the child in the newspapers, and asked the local authorities to be assigned over the case. Upon his arrival in the village of Gabriel, he started to "read" the people who lived there. He had worked other cases of kidnapping, and normally an act where a child was taken would be spoken of by everyone, however he observed that no one made mention of the kidnapping; not on the streets, the taverns or anywhere. He considered this his first clue. After this he went to see the governor over the municipality, and explained that he believed what happened to Zoila was the work of individuals who lived in the area. This was a person the local populace were afraid of. Diaz also noted many men that seemed unemployed, and which were ñáñigos. The governor refused to believe that members of the cult existed in his jurisdiction, however he had heard of a number of "negros brujos" who resided there. Detective Valdes in the guise of a worried father, approached the witches saying that his young daughter was sick, and that he would do anything in order to save her. Previous to this he had inquired from the parents what jewelry Zoila had been wearing when she disappeared. She had a necklace made of jet, and small gold earrings with pieces of coral, and a bracelet made of coral. "Little Devil" afro Cuban palero in costume (Diabilito Nigo de la Habana) c.1870
Valdes arrived at the home of the head witch and spoke to a man named Julian Amaro. He told him his young daughter had sickened, and a Congolese woman had helped to make her better, but she had sickened again. On her third visit, the woman had instructed him to come to this village, because she knew of young girl named Zoila which had disappeared. If the head witch would give him the necklace Zoila was wearing, once he placed it on his daughter, she would be cured. Detective Valdes described the necklace was made of ten pieces of jet and fifteen corals. He offered Amaro "20 centenes" for the necklace. Julian told him he had to speak to someone above him named Jorge Cardenas, and they agreed to meet later in the day at a tavern.
When Valdes met with Cardenas later in the day, he kept up the pretense of the distraught father. He became convinced there was a group of men involved in the crime, after Cardenas told him he would bring the necklace he had described. Ñáñigos Diabilito (little devil)
However the days passed and Cardenas did not come forward with the jewelry. The detective then received permission to bring Cardenas in for questioning, but the man did not admit to anything. However suspicion deepened when he denied meeting with Julian Amaro in the prior days, when it was known they had.
While Cardenas was being held on a minor charge, his house was placed under surveillance. They saw a young woman named Micaela Romero leave with a bulky package. Police questioned her as to what she carried, and where she was taking it. She initially tried to deny everything, and then said it was only clothes that had to be ironed. The police went to the house where she had left it. The owner said that Micaela had arrived with what she said was clothes that had to be ironed, and had left the package in one of the rooms. They took Micaela to the house, and asked her to retrieve it. Inside they found a newspaper with a human skull. There was also a tibia and other things. Scene from family in Cuban countryside (“Los guajiros,” Tipos y costumbres de la isla de Cuba, Victor Patricio de Landaluze) c.1881
Both women, with the contents of the package, were taken to the police station. Inside were different colored powders, roots, horns, colored glass and other objects used in witchcraft. From the arrest of Jorge Cardenas and Julian Amaro, they obtained the name of Domingo Bocourt known as "el brujo de San Cristóbal"
The search for the girl had become so intense that the murderers were forced to throw the body in a thicket equally distant from the house of the perpetrator, where it was found. In January, 1906, Domingo Bocourt and Victor Molina were garroted in prison by the executioner Patricio Lopez Abeleira. He was an accused murderer who agreed to execute prisoners in order to reduce his sentence. For each execution he would receive an ounce of Spanish gold. Bocourt told him before his death, "preparate que vas a trabajar," which translates to "prepare yourself you are about to work." The executioner responded, "I don't wish to, but if there is one occasion I will do my work with satisfaction it will be now, since I will execute the author of one of the most horrendous crimes I have known of." A dozen other men and women were arrested in connection with the crime, and eventually six of them were convicted. Modern rendition of abakua costume
In 1976, Roberto Suro with the Chicago Sun-Times wrote of a visit to Cuba. He learned that Cubans in those years believed the CIA succeeded in poisoning Fidel Castro, and that he was saved by a "black doctor, who recited a chant that drew the poison out of Fidel and into his own body." The doctor died, exchanging his life for "El Commandante".
Suro toured the Museum of Guanabacoa, where a guide told him of three sects that were active in Cuba, based on beliefs the slaves brought from Africa. The guide described that the abakua banged drums "to recreate the voice of god." Each member of the sect was tasked to make a drum from a human skull that would be used at his funeral. As to how they acquired a skull, Suro was told that "no one is really certain." "Each of the abakua rituals is punctuated by the slaughter of a goat that is first caressed and kissed for several hours 'to make it human.' They are forbidden to speak of these things to nonbelievers." This is why human sacrifice among these cults, refer to the victim as a "goats without horns." The guide spoke of brujeros, also called paleros, which have the most "primitive beliefs." He asked the guide if these cults had adapted to communism. Her answer was that Fidel Castro felt a certain debt to them, because many abakua and santeros fought with him to overthrow the government and takeover Cuba. Suro asked an anthropology student at Havana University about how many people belonged to these cults, and he was told that there were 50,000 people waiting to join the abakua, and the sects had "many hundreds of thousands between them." He concluded that Castro had not ended voodoo worship, despite communists adhere to atheism and deny the existence of any deity. In pre-Castro years, 90 percent of all Cubans were practicing Catholicism. Belkis Ayón, ¡¡Déjame salir!!, collograph, 1997. (Source - Collection of the Belkis Ayón Estate)
In the late 1980s, Cuban artist Belkis Ayon was inspired by the abakua sect. Mostly it was based on the story of the princess Sikan, "the only woman in abakua lore, who was put to death for revealing the religion's secrets to her fiancée."
Towards the end of her life she produced Let Me Out (1997), in which a woman appears to be trapped by fire. "Sikán’s resolve in the face of death is here replaced by claustrophobic fear and anguish." Ayon's interpretation is of the artist who identified with the sacrificed princess. Ayon committed suicide in 1999, at the age of 32 Burnt remains and car of two men accused of sacrificing children on a farm in Brazil c.1979
Versions of this dark practice could be found in other countries, and not only the Caribbean.
In 1979, as many as five children were believed to have been sacrificed in a candomble and macumba rite in Cantagalo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. An investigation started after Antonio Carlos Magalhaes, a two-year-old disappeared. His aunt worked on a farm owned by Moacir Valente. She told police that Valente, along with an employee, Renato Anesio Ferreira, had sacrificed the child in a black magic ritual. According to the aunt, Valente's spiritual adviser, a brujo named "Ogir" told him to offer the blood of a goat, a black chicken and "an innocent child" to ensure a cement plant he planned to open would be successful. Up to then Valente had tried to find European investors, but without success. This is when he decided to seek help from Ogir. Police found the boy's body, decapitated and cut in half. His blood had been poured into a plastic bag. His corpse was placed in two other bags and was found behind a clump of trees. It was believed Valente had drunk the child's blood as part of the ritual. After this discovery, both men were arrested. Two other employees, Waldir de Souza Lima and Maria da Conceicao Pontes were accused of helping the wealthy farm owner. Lima and Pontes told police as many as four other child victims, who had been sacrificed were buried at Valente's farm. Antonio Carlos Magalhaes had been the last one. A mob of 2,000 residents surrounded the police station demanding immediate justice. They set fire to four police cars then stormed the jail. Seven policemen fled before the fury of the townspeople. The crowd kicked the two prisoners, and then threw them into a burning car where they perished. Police protection was ordered for the other two suspects. The authorities continued to search the farm for bodies of four other children reported missing, however it's unknown if they ever found anything. No doubt if the authorities did find the other children, they might have thought it prudent to keep it from the townspeople after what happened to the murderers. Valente's spiritual adviser, Ogir was said to have turned himself in to the police, many believed out of fear of retribution from other practitioners of candomble for bringing scandal to their religion. Candomble and macumba are African-based beliefs like abakua. Comments are closed.
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