“Throughout the history of the human race, even up till the present moment, one of the most potent forces which men use to rally oppressed peoples together, in their drive towards freedom and emancipation from their oppressors, is religion. Men who have successfully led their enslaved peoples from bondage and servitude to freedom; have at one point or the other, mobilized their people with a rallying cry and an appeal to a deity, which had its origins in the subconscious of their people; for deliverance from slavery, servitude and oppression.”
From: Dutty Boukman – Samba Boukman by Edrys Erisnor
http://www.articlebiz.com/article/143351-1-dutty-boukman-samba-boukman/
“Pact With Devil”
“The god, who created the earth, who created the sun that gives us light. The god who holds up the ocean; who makes the thunder roar. Our god who has ears to hear. You who are hidden in the clouds; who watches us from where you are. You see all that the whites have made us suffer. The white man’s god asks him to commit crimes. But the god within us wants to do good. Our god, who is so good, so just, He orders us to revenge our wrongs. It’s He who will direct our arms and bring us to victory. It’s He who will assist us. We all should throw away the image of the white men’s god who is so pitiless. Listen to the voice for liberty that speaks in all our hearts.”
These are the famous words of the slave Dutty Buckman, a high priest of vodou and leader of the Maroon slaves, during a religious ceremony at Bois Caiman on August 22,1791… This ceremony included an animal sacrifice of a pig… This was the beginnings of the Haitian Slave Revolt for Freedom…
After watching Pat Robertson’s “Pact With the Devil” video I decided to learn more about it… I was unaware of Dutty Buckman as in “school” I was taught about General Toussaint L’Ouverture when we studied the Haitian Slave Revolt… I don’t believe it would be a far stretch to say that there was no way a young man in Oklahoma going to school in the 60’s was ever going to be taught that an African Voodoo Priest conducted a Voodoo Ceremony to the God “Ojun” and that was the spark the led to the only successful Slave Revolt in recorded history…
“Drums, Zombies and Dolls”
When most of us think about Voodoo we conjure up secretive Nocturnal Rituals of rhythmic dancers around flames of fire soon to become possessed with trances from the gods… We can picture the Drums fashioned from human skin calling out to the Zombies to do the evil bidding of the Priestess who when paid the right sum will gladly provide you with a love charm, mojo bag or the dreaded Voodoo Doll…(maybe even a monkey paw claw)
In fact Voodoo is an ancient religion that may have ties to Judaism… I am still learning all I can about Voodoo and am providing several informative links… To understand Voodoo is to understand Haiti…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A1019666
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/index-faa.html
http://www.wehaitians.com/haitian%20voodoo.html
http://www.wehaitians.com/main.html
“Preventing The Next Disaster”
Soon the world be taking on the task of re-building a nation that has historically been one of the poorest, if not the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere… A nation founded by Africans enslaved in a faraway land that once Freedom was realized once again became an enslaved population by a class system based on skin color and kept enslaved by lack of Education… Haiti is our neighbor, Haiti is our Sister, Haiti deserves our best efforts to allow the dreams of those longing to be free to see that the generations that followed them have Freedom…
http://news.aol.com/article/why-haiti-keeps-getting-hammered-by/855207
“Why is Haiti So Poor”
http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/misctopic/leftover/whypoor.htm
“Hunger and Rage”
http://www.photoshelter.com/gallery-slideshow/G0000KvhMnD3qR3o/
Courtesy of KQuark : HaitiAction.net is more topical to the issues that Haiti faces in our time… http://www.haitiaction.net/
U.S. Department Of State
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/1982.htm
http://www.travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1134.html
To segue this article on Vodun and the one on Limbaugh:
Did you know that one kind of Vodun spirit (loa) is called a Limba?
It lives in the rocks and eats passersby.
So, I’m guessing, passersby when seeing a Limba would cry “ugh!”. Hence Limbaugh (Well, why not?)
I like it!
Very clever.
We should turn it into a meme. We should come up with something just as batshit crazy as they do with birth certificates and the like.
Fight crazy with crazy.
Finally – something that Explains It All. Thank you!
Well, it figures that Pat Robertson would equate Vodun with a pact with the devil. I’d wondered if this wasn’t what he was driving at, though I was ignorant of the information about Dutty Buckman. I was not as ignorant as to equate this West African religion (with some ties to Santer
I was fascinated to learn about Dutty Boukman myself Khirad, it leaves me wondering what other little tid bits of history and folklore that I am unaware of…
Don’t you hate that feeling? This is part of why I’m so curious. I’m certain I’m never given the full story!
Tiger – this is fascinating! For me, it’s like trying to learn all the sects of Christianity (you would BE amazed) never mind Islam and Judaism, etc.
I guess this must be why Pat Baby could so blithely condemn Haitian freedom as the work of the Divvil, but his analysis rests on total ignorance, not knowledge. I know very little about Voodoo other than the fact that, like ANY religion, there is a beneficent version and an ugly one.
A friend who was raised Catholic but not practicing, asked me once why there were people devoted to versions of Christianity that were so morbid, so angry, so hopeless and joyless. I confess I cannot answer other than looking at the adherents and knowing that any religion that professes to have all the answers if you merely obey it seems comforting to those for whom personal judgment has been sadly lacking.
In the history of social movements, religion has played a huge role. We are not the first epoch to have “end times” millennialism, but we have raised it to the highest level. Centuries ago when slaves sought freedom from an oppression that made the US slavery look like a day at the beach (which it was NOT), one can understand why those seeking freedom would also seek powerful spiritual forces in “alliance”. Christianity was a force of oppression from way too many slaveholders – US, French, Spanish. Personal salvation for the other world just does NOT compensate for human misery in the here and now. So why would Haitian slaves turn to an agent of their genocidal oppression? It makes very good sense that they’d return to the animism of their own historical roots, mingle it with what appeared to work within their captivity, and use it as both motive force and embrace of protection while they set about trying to overthrow their vicious oppressors.
Pat, as a tangential member of “The Family” is quite comfortable with oppression – The Family believes hierarchical domination is ordained. He owns diamond mines in Africa the laborers of which are near slaves. The Family emerged after the Seattle general strike during the Depression because the founder was so horrified that common laborers would rise up against the elites – he believed THAT was inspired by the Divvil, too. It must be comforting to those who have wealth and power to embrace this notion of being the elect so that oppression can be rationalized as “God’s will”. Of course, anyone seeking to end their lowly status is in league with evil. When you build that sort of rationale, when you utterly ignore the roots of your own belief, you can justify anything you do as being good, and anything others do in opposition as evil.
I find Voodoo scary because I do not understand it. It’s not my culture, not my tradition. That does not make it evil. It just affirms MY ignorance. Too bad Pat would never own up to his.
Haiti is the most exploited and oppressed nation in the Western hemisphere, and all the wonderful links here show why. The sorrow and the pity is that even in liberation, the people of Haiti could not shake the bonds of domination by ruthless people. We have aided and abetted their poverty and suffering, aided and abetted their political oppression, and now Mr. Robertson wants to add their damnation. Since he and other rich, white people probably have found a way to profit from their exploitation, the question I have is – who’s really in league with evil?
choicelady I always enjoy reading your posts. You bring such breadth and depth to the issues we discus.
And I yours, KQ! You have a wealth of insight into SO many issues! As I said before, YOU were my first “fanned” link over at the Dark Side, and I followed you here. I have always found your analyses brilliant, humane, and wonderfully insightful. Thanks for being so thoughtful on all levels.
Funny, Pat has his Operation Blessing all over Haiti, probably more for his purpose of bringing salvation to the “voodoo people” than for aide.
The republican party, Clinton and Stanley Lucas(a wealthy landowner in Haiti) and the senior officer for International Republican Institute in Haiti played a part in the coup of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
From an article Max Blumenthal wrote today:
President Bill Clinton, who forced Aristide to sign free trade agreements that would destroy the rural economy as the condition for returning him to power
Thank you for raising this critical issue SueinCA!!!
I decried Clinton’s capitulation to global capitalism when he was president. I think that, as with former President Carter, at the core he is decent, but he listened to the last person who talked to him, and given power relationships in DC, that probably was a corporate shill. Hillary – are you ready, those who’ve not read “The Family” – is a member, at least a close ally, of The Family and is in sync with the perpetuation of US exploitation of the world. She was weaned in her teens on a version of Methodism that is ugly and pernicious. I regret those strains exist – a kind of noblesse oblige wherein fighting for justice is considered unseemly or yes, a form of socialism. Some of my organization’s partner denominations are not perfect and not immune to conservative ideology. It just tends to be the minority, thank heaven. However, she is someone I massively distrust due to this inculcation of extreme individualism and sense of entitlement of the rich. She creeps me out.
Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter need to be called out on their presidential support for global capitalism. In retirement, both men have proven much more humane than when they were world leaders. But the harm they did is being reaped even now in places such as Haiti.
Nothing Bill Clinton does to aid the earthquake victims can compensate for what he did that allowed US capital to abet substandard construction of buildings, the pillaging of subsistence farming, the heartless creation of growing dependence of people on foreign imports. All these factors contribute to the victims’ immiseration in the quake aftermath.
I see in President Obama a move away from this sort of pillaging of other, especially impoverished, nations. His unwillingness to support the coup in Honduras alone is a massive step away from our nearly medieval sense of dominion over all people and lands. He honors foreign nations’ right to self determination from rich nations to poor. He has broken the tradition of thoughtless exploitation, and with any hope at all, the rebuilding of Haiti may lead us to help them create a REAL democracy and rebuild a vastly more self-sufficient economy.
We will have turned a corner when we can see that US policy does not view the world as there simply for our pickings. I hope that time is now. We shall see. What happens from now on in Haiti may well be a foreshadowing of our entire future.
Choice, you have just hit the nail on the head…AGAIN!
“We have aided and abetted their poverty and suffering, aided and abetted their political oppression, and now Mr. Robertson wants to add their damnation.”
Thank you for your insight and your comments. Spot on!
Thanks Khirad! The part you emphasized has that Chris Rock kind of truth to it. Very funny guy!
Not sure if appropriate here or not, but here is an article by Max Blumenthal on our country’s role in the oppression of Haitians in the modern day and meddling in their affairs
http://maxblumenthal.com/
I have to say I keep seeing pictures of the president’s palace then i see the poverty and destruction in the country, see the lack of their own government response and ask why that mansion? My husband thinks I am fixated on the palace/mansion but it is the comparison that has me steaming.
It’s a good question, Sue. They have never had a government that cared half so much for the people as for the comfort of the leaders themselves. It’s all rationalized as a “public” building – to which the public never has access. Governments always have beautiful buildings, but the difference lies in who benefits and the discrepancy between them and the people outside the gates. It’s sad to see a lovely building shattered, but perhaps this will begin a rebuilding of the whole of Haiti for all the people, not just the powerful few. Or perhaps not…
Hey choice! I like your optimism! I was thinking today as I saw the ruins of the palace that this could be the beginnings of a new way of doing things in Haiti. Rebuild the country, elevate the people out of poverty, and clean up the government, something that has been happening for a couple of years from all reports. This horrible tragedy is focusing the world’s attention and perhaps, over the long run, it will bring something good for the people there.
Wow.
I’m impressed, Tiger!
I would have never thought to research voodoo but I will read your links and begin that journey for knowledge.
I’ve always thought of voodoo as evil because of movies and television that shows a dark religion that uses dolls, pins, and hair from an oppressor or enemy.
I’ve always thought voodoo was an evil religion that was based on retaliation and not in a good way.
You’ve definitely opened up a door with this article and I thank you for that.
Amazing.
When you think about it “Evil Voodoo” is usually all that is portrayed in our culture… The only “good” Voodoo Priestess that I can recall in a movie is Minerva in
“Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”…
“To understand the living, you got to commune with the dead.”
Incredibly interesting article.
Let’s not forget that the French demands for gold started Haiti off to a very poor start. I noticed the
It’s mentioned under ROOT CAUSES: A. INTERNATIONAL FORCES
3.THE FRENCH DEBT OF 1838. He mentions the interest on the debt was harsh on the economy during that period of time… “Haiti paid many times over 150 million francs in interest on this debt. It is difficult to measure the incredible harm which this did to the Haitian economy, but by the most conservative measures it was extremely significant.”
But, The page you linked to links to a great site that I found to be quite informative and more up to date on the Haitian peoples plight… Thanks…
http://www.haitiaction.net/
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/HA/6_20_9/6_20_9.html
Cheers I skimmed through it and missed it. The Nathanial Turner website had allot of depth on this issue and how it specifically affected the early history of the country. It’s just so sad that the cycle started and is continuing.
This is going to take some reading Tiger! To me to understand Voodoo is like understanding all the sects of Islam.
I agree…