haiti zine - melissa kelley

haiti

zine by melissa kelley VR worlds by jennifer lema + daphne pugliese

Fabric as Symbolism In a secret gathering in the woods on the eve of the Haitian Revolution, Francois Macandal, a powerful and charismatic guerilla leader would gather fellow slaves and pull out a bag with scarves. Slowly pulling out scarves one at a time from the bag he would prophesize the future of the country.

The yellow scarf represents the Taino Arawak people who originally ruled the island. The white scarf represents the French currently in power. The black scarf represents who will soon come to power.

His prophecy came true and these slaves became the first freed Black Republic in the World. However, today Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and this zine grapples with the struggles the country has faced as well as the resiliciency of it’s people.

I picked the colors white, red and blue to represent the colors of the current flag and I picked the colors black and white to represent the story above. While I was not able to get yellow for this project, I did weave information about the Taino people into this zine- specifically in the section on Vodou.

This zine combines the work of myself, Jenny, and Daphne as we take our seperate midterm work and combine around the subject of Haiti.

We ended up choosing a Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral located in Cap-Haïtien, not only because we liked the building but because we found it incredibly difficult if not impossible to find enough data on other buildings in Haiti. Although Our Lady of Assumption was better than most buildings, it was still lacking enough data in that Daphne had to desigin the building herself in Rhino

instead of using an already made model. This reflects the overt racism in google’s data and how it focuses mainly on North America and Europe. Nonetheless, Daphne was able to reimagine the Cathedral as a museum and an outreach center.

In later parts of the zine I highlight the three major religions that make up Haiti’s history and connect to Daphne’s concept of a Cathedral.

Jenny’s midterm project revolved around coral and to continue that topic we narrowed in on a piece of ocean that was relatively near Our Lady of Assumption so that Daphne and Jenny could combine their two worlds. As we talked about the ocean I was able to share that Haiti has a lot of lore surrounding water whether it being the deity water Agwe or the concept of Island Below the Sea, the final resting place for the dead.

Outside of our combined research, this zine focuses on the culture, religion, politics, and history of Haiti while also examining the role of outsiders such as the U.S. and France. It looks at various time periods whether during slavery or during a U.S. occupation and examines historical leaders through different lenses such as Boukman and Macandal examined through both Vodou and Islam.

fig 2: stills of the fabric installation created for this project

Finally, this zine asks what does a free Haiti look like? A Haiti post colonization and post imperalism?

While the majority of this zine is based off research from books there are a few instances where I get stories and insight from my haitian relatives.

I also illustrated this zine with sketches that I have made over the last 5 years. The sketches are inspired by South African Art, particularly Dumile Feni.

fig 1: a close up of a face

fig 3: stills of the fabric installation created for this project

fig 4: Our Lady of Assumption is located on the red square on the map of Le Cap, Haiti

Remainging Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral, Cap-Haïtien This cathedral was founded in 1670 when Haiti was a colony of France. The square of this cathedral was used to proclaim the liberation of slaves on August 29, 1793.

It suffered a series of calamities including an earthquake in 1842 as well as an attack and ransack by unknown individuals in 2011 resulting in it’s closing for a short time.

This is a Catholic cathedral but for the purpose of this assignment Daphne will reimagine this cathedral in the future as a religious center that honors the prominent religions of Haiti: Vodou and Catholicism, as well as Islam as Haiti has a significant, yet rather unknown Muslim history.

fig 5: Our Lady of Assumption, 3D Model

fig 8: Our Lady of Assumption, Le Cap

fig 6: Our Lady of Assumption, A Reimagining

fig 9: Our Lady of Assumption, Port-Au-Prince

fig 7: Our Lady of Assumption, A Reimagining

fig 10: Our Lady of Assumption, Port-Au-Prince

Besides a cathedral, Daphne is also remaigning this space as a museum and an outreach center.

This is based off of her previous work in this class with ecopunk and reimagining Parker Hall.

Coral off Le Cap

“The coral reef, much like the polar bear, has come to symbolize the devastating effects of climate change. The oncecolorful ecosystems that support a quarter of all marine species are quickly dwindling due to heat stress, ocean acidification, and water pollution. As of 2021, half of the world’s coral coverage had been lost just since the 1950s, and researchers have said that a 2.7-degree temperature rise could increase that number to a catastrophic 70% to 90%”16 Jenny has previously done work with Coral and she is continuing that work by exploring the coral off the coast of Haiti, specifically off of the coast of Le Cap near Our Lady of Assumption Cathedral.

Outside of research in Haiti, Jenny has explored Coral Reefs surrounding both the U.S. and Australia and has been exploring a diverse amount of methods for Coral Reef restoration.

fig 13:Underwater Robot

She describes her work here: For my part, I have created 3 different innovations to help coral reef restoration. One is the 3D printed reef structures, another is biorocks which essentially are steel framed structures that used electricity to restore coral, and lastly underwater robots that can help plant heat resistant corals and kill starfish by lethal injections.

Pierre Guy LaFontant, Haiti’s director general of fisheries, acknowledged that overfishing was a problem and said that officials were receptive to the idea of establishing protected waters. But if the government cannot enforce its existing fishing regulations, can fishermen be persuaded to abide by an invisible line in the water?

fig 14: Coral Reef Structure

fig 11: Haiti’s Ocean Museum

fig 15: Coral Reef Structure

fig 12: Biorock

fig 16: Underwater Robot

14. McDonald “Haitian Divers Hope to Aid Ailing Reef” 16. Vartan “Saving the Coral Reefs”

In Haiti, Coral Reefs are endangered. It’s marine enviornment has suffered “unseen” for years. Its extensive coral reef system, an attraction to foreign scuba divers in the 1970s and ’80s, has largely died off — partly from sedimentation and climate change, but mostly from overfishing. “It’s probably the worst overfishing I’ve seen anywhere in the world,” said Gregor Hodgson, the director of Reef Check, a nonprofit organization in California that monitors reef health around the globe.

Mr. Hodgson, who has been leading the training of Ms. Laloi and her fellow Haitians, said his organization had worked on reefs in 90 countries. After the earthquake Mr.Hodgson found dead coral as far as the eye could see, and almost no fish. He estimates that about 85 percent of the coral reef has died.

“That would be my deepest dream,” Mr. LaFontant said, “but the reality is totally different. For fishermen, there are no alternatives. Poverty is the law.” Mr. Hodgson argued the fishermen could, in fact, become the project’s strongest supporters. “Once they see the fish coming back, see the fish growing, see a beautiful reef coming back, then they become the ones who protect the reef,” he said.

The organization began recruiting volunteer divers earlier this year. Yet the going has been slow. According to Mr. Hodgson, only one of 30 applicants selected for a pool test in April could swim half its length. The rest could not swim at all. But what the volunteers lack in experience, they make up for in passion and curiosity14.

Island Below the Sea / Water Lore

Finally, Agwe is the lwa or deity in Haitian Vodou who rules over the sea. Edwidge Danticat references the significance of Agwe when telling the story of a young refugee on a ship that is about to sink in Krik? Krak!: “I go to them now as though it was always meant to be, as though the very day that my mother birthed me, she had chosen me to live life eternal, among the children of the deep blue sea, those who have escaped the chains of slavery to form a world beneath the heavens and the blood-drenched earth where you live.

Perhaps I was chosen from the beginning of time to live there with Agwe at the bottom of the sea. Maybe this is why I dreamed of the Catholic Mass under the sea. Maybe this was my invitation to go. In any case, I know that my memory of you will live even there as I too become a child of the sea”5

Haiti has a strong connection to the ocean, besides being obviously surrounded by water- there is history and memory in water. Some slaves would rather drown in the ocean than face the torment of slavery and similarly refugees from Haiti in the present day often face a watery death when trying to escape present horrors of the Island.

A historical fiction by Isabel Allende titled Island Beneath the Sea references the lore of the ocean floor. Island Beneath the Sea references a place where spirits and ancestors reside, “we go galloping together to visit my dead ones on the island beneath the sea. That is how is.”1 fig 18: Haiti’s Ocean Museum

She further references the Vodou rites where: “A year and a day following the death of a person, the family undertakes to reclaim his soul from the waters of the abyss below the earth and to lodge it in a govi where it may henceforth be invoked and consulted in the event of illness or other difficulties and so may participate in all the decisions that normally unite the members of the family in counsel”8.

Thus, Deren no longer situates the Island Beneath the Sea as mere folk lore, but as a real place for spirits and ancestors to dwell. fig 17: Haiti’s Ocean Museum

In Maya Deren’s Divine Horsemen, she referenes the source of all life being from the Island Below the Sea, most likely this is where Allende got her book title. Deren’s describes the watery abyss: The foot of the vertical plane rests in the waters of the abyss, the source of all life. Here is Guinee, Africa, the legendary place of racial origin. Here, on the Island Below the Sea, the loa (deities) have their permanent residence, their primal location. To it the souls of the dead return, taking marine or insect forms until their reclamation into the world, their rebirth, as if the ancient myth had anticipated the statements of evolutionary science. To address oneself to the earth, then, to rap upon it in ceremonies, to pour libations upon it, to dig into it and there to deposit offerings, to kneel and touch lips or forehead to it- these are gestures addressed not to the earth itself but to the cosmos which is contained within it.8 1. Allende “Island Beneath the Sea” 5. Danticat “Krik? Krak!”

8. Deren “Divine Horsemen”

fig 20: veve of Agwe, deity of the sea

It is also significant that Jenny chose the shape of a cross for her underwater museum as a cross represents Christanity but also the crossroads, a vital aspect of Vodou.

fig 19: Haiti’s Ocean Museum

fig 21: Haiti’s Ocean Museum

Faith, Slavery, and Torment This zine weaves together topics of memory, faith, religion, water, coral and reimagination. What is so striking is that the people of Haiti were and are able to keep faith through the constant torments they had to suffer through, whether during slavery by the French or whether through Imperalism by the US and other western powers in recent history. I put down the harsh torments that Haitians went through as a reminder that some were able to keep a belief in God or Gods or Loas (Deities) despite it all; as well as to highlight a painful past that is often erased.

because he forgot to follow the moon’s passings, or how many died because no one had a name and no one kept count.

At first they were pressed so tight that they could not lie down, but as bodies were dragged away there was more space.

Then came the worst, what he did not want to remember but lived over and over in his dreams: the ship. They were laid one beside the next, like firewood, on shelves of wood planking, with chains, and iron at their necks, not knowing where they were being taken or why that enormous gourd was bouncing and reeling as it was, all of them moaning, vomiting, shitting, dying.

The stench was so bad that it reached the world of the dead, and his father smelled it.

Neither could Gambo calculate time there, even though he was under the sun and the stars several times when they took them in groups to the deck to slosh them with pails of sea water and force them to dance around so they would not forget the use of their arms and legs. The sailors threw the sick and the dead overboard, then picked out a few captives and flogged them for entertainment. The most combative were hung by the wrists and slowly lowered into water boiling with sharks, and when they pulled them up there was nothing left but arms. Gambo also witnessed what they did with the women. He watched for a chance to jump overboard, thinking that after the feast of sharks that followed the ship from Africa to the Antilles his soul would swim on to the island beneath the sea to rejoin his father and the rest of his family.1

fig 22: close up of a man’s face

In Servants of Allah, Slyviane Diouf describes how Africans were forcibly stripped naked and shaved before being forced on the Middle Passage9.

Isabel Allende describes the Middle Passage vividly in Island Beneath the Sea1:Then Gambo saw whites for the first time and thought they were demons; later he learned they were people, but he never believed that they were humans like us.

They were dressed in sweaty rags, with metal breastplates and leather boots, yelling and flogging their captives for no reason. No fangs or claws, but they had hair on their faces, weapons and whips, and their smell was so repugnant that they sickened the birds in the sky. That is how he told it.

They separated him from the women and children; they put him in a corral, hot by day and cold at night, with hundreds of men who did not speak his language.

He did not know how long he was there 1. Allende “Island Beneath the Sea” 9. Diouf “Servants of Allah” 13. James “The Black Jacobins”

fig 24: chaos

C.L.R. James The Black Jacobins Slavery Description13 A captain held up by calms or adverse winds was known to have poison his cargo. Another killed some of his slaves to feed the others with the flesh. They died not only from the regime but from grief and rage and despair. They undertook vast hunger strikes; undid their chains and hurled themselves on the crew in futile attempts at insurrection. To brighten their spirits it became the custom to have them up on the deck once a day and force them to dance. Some took the opportunity to jump overboard, uttering cries of triumph as they cleared the vessel and disappeared below the surface.

Fear of their cargo bred a savage cruelty in the crew. The captain, to strike terror into the rest, killed a slave and dividing heart, liver and entrails into 300 pieces made each of the slaves eat one, threatening those who refused with the same torture.

Such incidents were not rare.

When the ship reached the harbour, the cargo came up on deck to be bought. The purchasers examined them for defects, looked at the teeth, pinched the skin, sometimes tasted the perspiration to see if the slaves blood was purse and his health as good as his appearance.

fig 23: a leg with the bone showing through

Some of the women affected a curiosity, the indulgence of which, with a horse, would have caused them to be kicked 20 yards across the deck. But the slave had to stand it. Then in order to restore the dignity which might have been lost by too intimate an examination, the purchaser spat in the face of the slave. Having become the property of his owner, he was branded on both sides of the breast with a hot iron.

His duties were explained to him by an interpreter and a priest instructed him in the first principles of Christianity.

For the least fault the slaves received the harshest punishment. In 1685 the Negro Code authorised whipping and in 1702 one colonist, a Marquis, thought any punishment which demanded more than 100 blows of the whip was serious enough to be handed to the authorities. Later the number was fixed at 39 , then raised to 50. But the colonists paid no attention to these regulations and slaves were not unfrequently whipped to death. The whip was not always an ordinary cane or woven cord, as the Code demanded. Sometimes it was replaced by the rigoise or thick thong of cow-hide or by the lianes- local growth of reeds, supple and pliant like whalebone. The slaves received the whip with more certainty and regularity than they received their food. It was the incentive to work and the guardian of discipline.

But there was no ingenuity that fear or a depraved imagination could devise which was not employed to break their spirit and satisfy the lusts and resentment of their owners and guardians- irons on the hands and feet, blocks of wood that the slaves had to drag behind them wherever they went, the tin-plate mask designed to prevent the slaves eating the sugar-cane, the iron collar. Whipping was interrupted in order to pass a piece of hot wood on the buttocks of the victim; salt, pepper, citron, cinders, aloes, and hot ashes were poured on the bleeding wounds.

Mutilations were common, limbs, ears, and sometimes the private parts, to deprive them of the pleasures which they could indulge in without expense. Their masters poured burning hot wax on their arms and hands and shoulders, emptied the boiling cane sugar over their heads, burned them alive, roasted them on slow fires, filled them with gunpowder and blew them up with a match; buried them up to the neck and smeared their heads with sugar that the flies might devour them; fastened them near the nests of ants or wasps; made them eat their excrement, drink their urine, and lick the saliva of other slaves. One colonist was known in moments of anger to throw himself on his slaves and stick his teeth into their flesh.

The torture of the whip, for instance, had ‘a thousand refinements’ but there were regular varities that had special names, so common were they. When the hands and arms were tied to four posts on the ground, the slave was said to undergo “the four posts”. If the slave was tied to a ladder it was “the torture of the ladder” if he was suspended by four limbs it was “the hammock” etc. The pregnant woman was not spared her “four-post”. A hole was dug in the earth to accommodate the unborn child. The torture of the collar was specially reserved for women who were suspected of abortion, and the collar never left their necks until they had produced a child. The blowing up of a slave had its own name‘to burn a little powder in the arse of a nigger’: obviously this was no freak but a recognised practice.

fig 25: boxes and triangles

Worked like animals, the slaves were housed like animals, in huts built around a square planted with provisions and fruits.

These huts were about 20 to 25 feet long, 12 feet wide and about 15 feet in height, divided by partitions into two or three rooms. They were windowless and light entered only by the door. The floor was beaten earth; the bed was of straw, hides of a rude contrivance of cords tied by pots.

The masters gave them half a dozen pints of coarse flour, rice or pease and half a dozen herrings. Worn out by their labours all through the day and far into the night, many neglected to cook and ate the food raw. The ration was so small and given to them so irregularly that often the last half of the week found them with nothing.

fig 26: human vase 13. James “The Black Jacobins”

fig 27: a seperation

After the dreaded journey across the ocean a woman was usually sterile for two years. Life in San Domingo killed them off fast. The planters deliberately worked them to death rather than wait for children to grow up13.

Torture on the Island Today, Edwidge Danticat from Krik? Krak!

CHILDREN OF THE SEA

if only i could kill. If i knew some good wanga magic, I would wipe them off the face of the earth. A group of students got shot in front of fort dimanche prison today. Our neighbor madan roger came home with her son’s head and not much else. Honest to god, it was just his head. At the morgue, they say a car ran over him and took the head off the body. When madan roger went ot the morgue, they gave her the head. By the time we saw her, she had been carrying the head all over port-au-prince. Just to show what’s been done to her soon.

The macoutes by the house were laughing at her. They asked her if that was her dinner. It took ten people to hold her back from jumping on them.

They would have killed her, the dogs.

I will never go outside again. Not even in the yard to breathe air. They are always watching you, like vultures. At night I can’t sleep. I count the bullets in the dark. they have this thing now that they do.

If they come into a house and there is a son and a mother there, they hold a gun to their heads. They make the son sleep with his mother. If it is a daughter and father, they do the same thing. Some night’s papa sleeps at his brother’s, uncle pressoir’s house.

Uncle pressoir sleeps at our house, just in case they come. We know a girl who had a child by her father that way. he (my father) is trying to protect us.

He cannot protect us. Only god can protect us. sometimes it feels like we have been at sea longer than the many years that I have been on this earth. The sun comes up and goes down. That is how you know it has been a whole day. I feel like we are sailing for Africa. maybe we will go to Guinin, to live with the spirits, to be with everyone who has come and has died before us. They would probably turn us 5. Danticat “Krik? Krak!

away from there too. Someone has a transistor and sometimes we listen to radio from the Bahamas. They treat Haitians like dogs in the Bahamas, a woman says. To them, we are not human. Even though their music sounds like ours. Their people look like ours. Even though we had the same African fathers who probably crossed these same seas together. do you want to know how people go to the bathroom on the boat? Probably the same way they did on those slaves ships years ago. They set aside a little corner for that. When I have to pee, I just pull it, lean over the rail, and do it very quickly. When I have to do the other thing, I rip a piece of something, squat down, and do it, and throw the waste into the sea. I am always embarrassed by the smell. It is so demeaning having to squat in front of so many people. People turn away, but not always. At times I wonder if there is really land on the other side of the sea. Maybe the sea is endless. Like my love for you. last night they came to madan roger’s house. Papa hurried inside as soon as madan roger’s screaming started.

The soldiers were looking for her son.

The soldiers were looking for her son. Madan roger was screaming, you killed him already. We buried his head. You can’t kill him twice. Wasn’t your son on the radio talking about the police? Did he say down with the tonton macoutes? Did he say down with the army? He said the military had to go. She was shouting, you killed him already! You want to kill me too?

Go ahead. I’m dead already. You have already done the worst to me that you can do. You have killed my soul. They start to pound at her. You can hear it.

You can hear the guns coming down on her bed. It sounds like they are cracking all the bones in her body. we had to throw out extra things in the sea because the water is beginning to creep in slowly. The boat needs to be lighter. my two gourdes in change had to be thrown overboard as an offering to Agwe, the spirit of the water.

i asked her about the baby’s father. she keeps repeating the story now with her eyes closed, her lips barely moving: She was home one night with her mother and brother Lionel when some ten or twelve soldiers burst into the house. The soldiers held a gun to Lionel’s head and ordered him to lie down and become intimate with his mother. Lionel refused. Their mother told him to go ahead and obey the soldiers because she was afraid that they would kill Lionel on the spot if he put up more of a fight. Lionel did as his mother told him, crying as the soldiers laughed at him, pressing the gun barrels farther and farther into his neck. Afterwards, the soldiers tied up Lionel and their mother, then they each took turns raping Celianne.

When they were done, they arrested Lionel, accusing him of moral crimes.

After that night, Celianne never heard from Lionel again. The same night, Celianne cut her face with a razor so that no one would know who she was.

Then as her facial scars were healing, she started throwing up and getting rashes. Next thing she knew, she was getting big. She found out about the boat and got on. She is fifteen. she threw it overboard. I watched her face knot up like a thread, and then she let go. It fell in a splash, floated for a while, and then sank. And quickly after that she jumped in too. And just as the baby’s head sank so did hers.

They went together like two bottles beneath a waterfall. The shock lasts only so long. There was no time to even try and save her. There was no question of it. The sea in that spot is like the sharks that live there. It has no mercy. last night on the radio, i heard that another boat sank off the coast of the bahamas. i can’t think about you being in there in the wayves. my hair shivers. from here, i cannot even see the sea. behind these mountains are more mountains and more black butterflies still and a sea that is endless like my love for you5

My Madonna cried. A miniature teardrop traveled down her white porcelain face like dew on the tip of early morning grass.

When I saw the tear I thought, surely, that my mother had died. I sat motionless observing the Madonna the whole day. It did not shed another tear. I remained in the rocking chair until it was nightfall, my bones aching from the thought of another trip to the prison in Port-au-Prince. But, of course, I had to go.

The guards shaved her head every week.

And before the women went to sleep the guards made them throw tin cups of cold water at one another so that their bodies would not be able to muster up enough heat to grow those wings made of flames, fly away in the middle of the night, slip into the slumber of innocent children and steal their breath.Sometimes the food you bring me, it lasts for months at a time, she said. I chew it and swallow my saliva then I put it away and then chew it again. It lasts a very long time this way.

Manman’s name to a guard and waited for a response. “She will be ready for burning this afternoon” the guard said. My blood froze inside me. I lowered my head as the news sank in.

I had chose to go barefoot, as my mother had always done on her visits to the Massacre River, the river separating Haiti from the Spanish speaking country that she had never allowed me to name because I had been born on the night that El Generalissimo, Dios Trujillo, the honorable chief of state, had ordered the massacre of all Haitians living there.

All of these women were here for the same reason. They were said to have been seen at night rising from the ground like birds on fire. A loved one, a friend, or a neighbor had accused them of causing the death of a child. A few other people agreeing with these stories was all that was needed to have them arrested. And sometimes even killed.

She then gave me the pillow, my mother’s pillow. It was open, half filled with my mother’s hair. Each time they shaved her head, my mother had kept the hair for her pillow. I hugged the pillow against my chest, feeling some of the hair rising in clouds of dark dust into my nostrils.

The yellow prison building was like a fort, as large and strong as in the days when it was used by the American marines who had built it. The Americans taught us how to build prisons. By the end of the 1915 occupation, the police in the city really knew how to hold human beings trapped in cages, even women like Manman who was accused of having wings of flame.

One morning when I woke up, Manman was gone. There was the sound of a crowd outside. When I rushed out I saw a group of people taking my mother away.

Her face was bleeding from the pounding blows of rocks and sticks and the fists of strangers. She was being pulled along by two policemen, each tugging at one of her arms as she dragged her feet. The woman we had been staying with carried her dead son by the legs. The policemen made no efforts to stop the mob that was beating my mother. Lougarou, witch, criminal! They shouted. I dashed into the street, trying to free Manman from the crowd. I wasn’t able to get near her.

NINETEEN THIRTY-SEVEN

My mother had grown even thinner since the last time I had seen her. Her face looked like the gray of a late evening sky.

These days, her skin barely clung to her bones, falling in layers, flaps, on her face and neck. The prison guards watched her more closely because they thought the wrinkles resulted from her taking off her skin at night and then putting it back on in a hurry, before sunrise. This is why Manman’s sentence had been extended to life. And when she died, her remains were to be burnt in the prison yard, to prevent her spirit from wandering into any young innocent bodies.

She pointed at the Madonna in my hands, opening her arms to receive it. I quickly handed her the statue. She smiled. Her teeth were a dark red, as though caked with blood from the initial beating during her arrest. She pressed the statue against her chest as if to reward the Madonna and then, suddenly, broke down and began sobbing herself. I reached over and patted her back, the way one burps a baby. She continued to sob until a guard came and nudged her, poking the barrel of his rifle into her side. She raised her head, keeping the Madonna lodged against her chest as she forced a brave smile.

5. Danticat “Krik? Krak!

I followed her cries to the prison. Her face was swollen to three times the size that it had been. She had to drag herself across the clay floor on her belly when I saw her in the prison cell. She was like a snake, someone with no bones left in her body. I was there watching when they shaved her head for the first time. At first I thought they were doing it so that the open gashes on her scalp could heal. Later, when I saw all the other women in the yard, I realized that they wanted to make them look like crows, like men.

My mother had escaped El Generalissimo’s soldiers, leaving her own mother behind. From the Haitian side of the river, she could still see the soldiers chopping up her mother’s body and throwing it into the river along with many others.

When we got to the city, we went directly to the prison gates. Jacqueline whispered

I walked over to her and asked, “What happened?”. “Beaten down in the middle of the yard,” she whispered. “Like a dog,” said another woman. “Her skin, it was too loose,” said the woman wearing my mother’s dress. “They said prison could not cure her”.

Then the story came back to me as my mother had often told it. On that day so long ago, in the year nineteen hundred and thirty-seven, in the Massacre River, my mother did fly. Weighted down by my body inside hers, she leaped from Dominican soil into the water and out again on the Haitian side of the river. She glowed red when she came out, blood clinging to her skin, which at that moment looked as though it were in flames.

In the prison yard, I held the Madonna tightly against my chest, so close that I could smell my mother’s scent on the statue. When Jacqueline and I stepped out into the yard to wait for the burning, I raised my head toward the sun thinking, One day I may just see my mother there.

“Let her flight be joyful” I said to Jacqueline “And mine and yours too”5

Imperalism In Haiti The Indemnity: French Royal Ordinance of 1825 For two decades following its military defeat in Saint-Domingue (Haiti), France refused to recognize the independence of its former colony. The rest of the Atlantic powers followed suit, effectively isolating Haiti diplomatically. Finally, in 1825 Charles X issued a Royal Ordinance recognizing the independence of “the French side of Saint-Domingue” under the condition that the Haitian government agree to pay a substantial indemnity destined to compensate the former plantation owners for property lost during the revolution.

When the ordinance was brought before Haitian president Jean-Pierre Boyer it was accompanied by a French squadron prepared to start a blockade should the Haitian leader not accept the agreement.

Although Boyer, under pressure, agreed to the terms, he also saw it as an opportunity to end Haiti’s political and economic isolation10.

one of the most recognizable and famous photographs in Haitian history, a kind of monument to the cruelties of the U.S. occupation of Haiti- and one produced, ironically, by the occupying power itself.

The horror of his death is emphasized by the presence of his mother, looking at the corpse and weeping at his side10.

According to NPR: Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the world, and rich countries have their fingerprints all over the nation’s stunted development. The United States worked to isolate a newly independent Haiti during the early 19th century and violently occupied the island nation for 19 years in the early 20th century. While the U.S. officially left Haiti in 1934, it continued to control Haiti’s public finances until 1947, siphoning away around 40% of Haiti’s national income to service debt repayments to the U.S. and France15. fig 29: you could call these curves

After the 2010 earthquake completely devastated Haiti, scholars and journalists wrote a letter to the French president demanding that France pay back Haiti.

The French economist Thomas Piketty resurrected the idea in 2020, arguing that France owes Haiti at least $28 billion.

The French government, under multiple presidents, has balked at the idea, and it is unlikely to pay Haiti back anytime soonX.

That indemnity of $150 million in 1825 translates to billions of dollars owed to France. According to NPR: Over the next century, Haiti paid French slaveholders and their descendants the equivalent of between $20 and $30 billion in today’s dollars15 France demanded money for lost “property” meaning Haitians who refused to be slaves, and are reaping the reward of the money gained off this so called lost property to this day..

U.S. Influence and Destruction According to the New Yorker, even after the official US occupation of Haiti, the US has had it’s hands in Haiti with it’s only aims being for US interests instead of Haitian interests. The U.S. decimated Haiti’s native pig population which could be used to pay for food, clothing, and education. A powerful consortium of foreign governments and institutions, including the U.S.D.A. and the International Development Bank, required Haitian farmers to kill every pig in the country fearing a swine disease might reach the United States.

Charlemagne Peralte and the Protest Against the 1915 U.S. Occupation of Haiti Charlemagne Peralte led the Caco revolt against the U.S. occupation of Haiti, which began in 1915. Beginning in May 1919, the U.S. Marines designed a covert operation to eliminate Charlemagne Peralte. On 31 October, working with a Haitian collaborator, soldiers were able to sneak into his camp at night and assassinate him.

They brought his body back to Le Cap and displayed it so that local residents could see that the rebel leader had been killed. A Marine photographer took this image of the body and copies of it were distributed in the countryside in the hopes that it would quell resistance. Instead the photograph became an iconic depiction of Peralte as a martyr for liberty. He looks Christ-like, with his head against his battle flag (the Haitian flag), with a crucifix attached to the pole above him. This has become 6. Daut “What is the Path Forward for Haiti” 10. Dubois et al. “The Haiti Reader” 15. Rosalsky “The Greatest Heist in History”

fig 28: Peralte

Governmental interventions in Haiti have a terrible track record—even ones that respond to natural disasters, such as the 2010 earthquake that devastated Port-auPrince. That year, the United Nations sent two thousand troops and fifteen hundred police officers to Haiti to support the nine thousand peacekeepers already on the ground and help provide emergency relief, including food, water, and medical care6.

But some of those troops brought cholera with them, creating an overlapping disaster when an outbreak killed at least ten thousand Haitians and sickened hundreds of thousands more. The mission was also plagued by allegations of rape and sex trafficking; during the same period, U.S. families hastily adopted more than a thousand Haitian babies and children, as the U.S. government temporarily did away with routine screening protocols.

A few years earlier, an investigation by ProPublica showed that the American Red Cross, which raised a half billion dollars for aid in Haiti after the quake, had squandered the money, building only six permanent homesX.

fig 30: boxes

During the occupation, U.S. soldiers helped establish the puppet Presidency of the pro-U.S. politician Philippe Sudré Dartiguenave, paving the way for the United States to play a role in installing or deposing every subsequent Haitian President. François Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, was elected in 1957, allegedly by a landslide; as the writer Patrick Bellegarde-Smith has shown, however, four times as many Haitians voted for his opponent, Louis Déjoie. The U.S. supported the election because Duvalier was anti-Communist. In 1964, following another sham election, Duvalier declared himself “President for life.” The infamous brutality perpetrated by his henchmen, the Tontons Macoutes.

US backed Duvalier unleashed a reign of terror, censoring the press and imprisoning or killing his rivals along with journalists, academics, and students. When he died suddenly in 1971, his nineteen-year-old son, Jean-Claude, known as Baby Doc, inherited the dictatorship. Hardly less brutal than his father, he reigned until February, 1986, when a popular uprising known as déchoukaj, or uprooting, forced him out of office. As many as thirty thousand people were killed by the Duvalier regimes.

The junta left power in 1991, when JeanBertrand Aristide, a former priest, took office, winning nearly seventy per cent of the vote. Aristide, Haiti’s first popularly elected President, was known for sharp criticisms of the U.S. He accused Haiti’s economic élite of exploiting the poor, and took the military to task for its human-rights abuses. After only eight months in power, his administration was toppled by the Haitian military in a 1991 coup. Even as he took refuge in the United States, Aristide publicly blamed the U.S. and the U.N. for much of Haiti’s economic and political turmoil.

And despite Haiti being in ruin because of France and the U.S. many view Haitian’s failings as a fault of the people or the practice of Vodou.

In 2010, right after the devastating earthquake that killed over 200,000, Pat Robertson, the evangelical Christian who once suggested God was punishing Americans with Hurricane Katrina, says a “pact to the devil” brought on the devastating earthquake in Haiti.

Robertson, the host of the “700 Club,” blamed the tragedy on something that “happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it.”

The Haitians “were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever,” Robertson said on his broadcast. “And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’ “You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free.

But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.”3

Many Haitians believe that the French government orchestrated Aristide’s removal because, in 2003, he engaged an international cadre of lawyers to study the nineteenth-century independence indemnity. They calculated that France owed Haiti twenty-one billion dollars in reparations—a number recently confirmed by an independent investigation at the New York Times. Speaking to the Times, Thierry Burkard, who was France’s ambassador to Haiti in 2004, acknowledged that Aristide’s removal was effectively “a coup,” orchestrated in part by France. It was, he said, “probably a bit about” the Haitian President’s request for reparations.

This is the history of neocolonial Haiti.

Kwame Nkrumah, the former President of Ghana, has defined neocolonialism as the “last stage of imperialism.” A country subjected to neocolonialism “has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty,” he went on, but “in reality its economic system and its political policy is directed from outside.” This is why the Haitian historian and anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot once referred to Haiti as “the longest running neo-colonial experiment in the west.”6

fig 31: the devil 3. CNN “Pact to the Devil” 6. Daut “What is the Path Forward for Haiti”

Catholicism during Slavery Sylviane Diouf untangles the web of Islam and Catholicism in Haiti’s early history with her thesis of Christanity being this: It was essential that the new land become Christian as quickly as possible, because evangelization was a large part of the justification for the enslavement of the Africans9.

turn them into good Catholics, the missionaries, who were slaveholders themselves, came into close contact with the Muslims and, according to their observations, found them uncooperative.

Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua has left a vivid description of the practice of imposing Christianity. He explains how as soon as he arrived on his owner’s plantation in Pernambuco, Brazil, he had to conform to rites that were void of any meaning to him or to the other Africans: We all had to kneel before them [images made of clay]; the family in front, and the slaves behind. We were taught to chant some words which we did not know the meaning of. We also had to make the sign of the cross several times. Whilst worshipping, my master held a whip in his hand, and those who showed signs of inattention or drowsiness, were immediately brought to consciousness by a smart application of the whip. This mostly fell to the lot of the female slave who would often fall asleep in spite of the images, crossings, and other pieces of amusement” Conversions- at least superficial oneswere thus achieved through harsh punishment9.

fig 32: lost

To affirm one’s faith is also to refuse to change it. In Catholic lands, slaves were excluded and segregated on a secular, social basis but were included in the spiritual community. Baptism thus became a moral obligation of the owners toward their slaves, as was codified both in the French Code Noir (Black Code) of 1685a collection of all the laws and rulings dealing with the administration of the slaves- and in the Spanish regulations of the sixteenth century. As a consequence, the newly arrived Africans were converted on a large scale. The Jesuit Pedro Claver, who officiated in Cartagena, Colombia, in the first half of the seventeenth century, reportedly baptized more than three hundred thousand Africans and was canonized for this good work.

The Catholic French Caribbean offers a valuable insight into the relations between Christians and Muslims in the early stages of the colonization process. Most of what we know was written by Catholic priests in charge of ensuring the spiritual salvation of the Africans. As they endeavored to 9. Diouf “Servants of Allah”

fig 33: plants or fruit

Two currents ran among the priests. One, probably the strongest, preached for forced conversion, as prescribed by the Black Code. Other priests, like Father Vidaud, tried to do their work with conscience, stating that baptism could be administered only if the conversion was sincere. The latter attitude contrasted greatly with that of the priests stationed in Africa, who sprinkled the human cargo on the beach en masse with holy water, in a travesty of baptism, to save the souls of those who would perish during the Middle Passage. It also contrasted with what was transpiring on the plantations, because for the most part the Africans were simply coerced into converting from whatever religion they had to Catholicism. fig 34: boxes

Catholicism Today

There is currently scholarship on a Black Presence in the Bible. Some major figures include Zipporah, the wife of Moses and the mother of a line of priests; as well as The Ethiopian Eunuch- the first non-Jewish convert to Christanity in the biblical book Acts of the Apostles.11,12

Catholicism is a complex body of ideas, beliefs and practices. While the oppressors sought to instill subservience so the enslaved would embrace their inferiority, the Haitians and others from the African diaspora interpreted their faith as a source of comfort and community.

There is also a recurring use of freedom in the Bible: “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry…I know of their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them” (Exodus 3;7-8)4 God sides with and comforts the humble and those who are suffering.

My mother is from Haiti and I grew up in a Catholic household. My grandma (Edith Jean-Laurent) was passionate about Catholicism and when she stayed with us during summers she would frequently watch Pitit Manman Mari TV, a youtube channel broadcasting Catholic masses from Haiti on repeat. If my grandma was going through any sort of anguish then she would pray the Rosary for comfort.

I asked my mom (Myriam Kelley) recently what Catholicism meant to her and to the people of Haiti. She said this: Haiti is a very poor country. The poorest of the Western Hemisphere. So, faith is a pillar of strength. It gives them hope that tomorrow will be brighter for them. The church loves the beatitude “Blessed are the poor because they’ll see the Kingdom of God” or when Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to the Kingdom of God”. Church is a place for people to find comfort in the face of adversity. This is where their emotional supports are met.

For me personally, when I was going through cancer in 2004, Catholicism gave me something to hang on to. I had this faith in God and I believed that if I prayed hard I would get better. I think God pulled me through, He kept me from not going down.

fig 36: birds wings

I also talked to my mom’s sister, my Tatie Magguy (Margarette Pierre). This conversation happened to take place while I was driving so it’s based off memory and paraphrased more than the other interviews.

I was raised Catholic, my mother was very involved in the church. I was raised Catholic but I’m a Christian because I believe in God. It’s important to be able to turn to a higher power and to feel that someone is watching over you. I always feel that God is watching over me, while I’m driving or doing anything, or even while I’m on the phone talking to you now. I’m not saying that other religions are wrong, all religions have their merit. I just like Catholicism; but I think I would like any form of Christanity. If I was raised Baptist I’m sure I would like that too. But for Catholicism I like praying to Mary- other religions don’t have that aspect. And I like the Baptism. I am very religious because religion has always been a big part of my life. I went to church every day, I went to Catholic school. I went to these retreats in the mountains. Catholicism means a lot to me.

Jesus’s first public sermon is as follows: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Because he has anointed me To bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives.

(Luke 4: 18)4 Haitians can identify with the suffering of Jesus and their hope for the future with his resurrection.

Ultimately, the Church whether historically with Jesus and the Bible itself, or now, has proven to be a tool for community, hope, and liberation.

fig 38: bark growing and overlapping

fig 35: merging 4. Coogan “The New Oxford Annotated Bible” 11. Felder “Stony the Road We Travel” 12. Hurston “Moses Man on the Mountain”

fig 37: fruit of hope

This begs the question, was the “Catholicism” that the slave owners put upon their slaves truly Christanity? To me their version of the religion was a twisted pervision of the true religion to the point where one might not even call it Catholicism. How Catholicism acts today in Haiti and the hope it inspires in it’s people is a much better representation of the actual religion and the true values of the trinity.

Islam from Syvianne Diouf’s Servants of Allah Turbaned men and veiled women, their prayer beads around their necks, chopped cotton, cut cane, and rolled tobacco from sunup to sundown. Like other slaves, they were beaten, whipped, cursed, raped, maimed and humiliated. They saw their families torn apart and their loved ones killed. In the midst of abuse and contempt, they continued to pray, fast, be charitable, read, write, help one another, sing their lonesome tunes, and display pride in themselves, their religion, and their culture.

The African Muslims may have been, in the Americas, the slaves of Christian masters, but their minds were free. They were the servants of Allah.9

Although large numbers of Muslims had been forcibly baptized, some had retained their original names, and Ayouba, Tamerlan, Aly, Soliman, Lamine, Thisiman, Yaya, Belly, and Salomon appear in the notices. Female runaways, such as Fatme, Fatima, and Hayda, are also mentioned.

The Africans left individually and, more usually, in groups. For instance, twelve Mandingo men, aged twenty-two to twenty-six, fled one night in 1783 from their owner’s house in Port-au-Prince.

They were all professionals- masons, carpenters, and bakers.

Macandal Through the Lens of Islam The most famous of the pre-Revolution maroon leaders was without a doubt Francois Makandal, formerly employed on a sugar plantation. One day, as he was working the sugar mill, one of his hands got caught in the wheel and had to be severed. As he could no longer cut the cane, he became a cattleman, later running away. For eighteen years Makandal was at large, living in the mountains but making frequent incursions on the plantations to deliver death. He organized a network of devoted followers and taught them how to make poison, which they used against their owners or against other slaves in order to ruin the slaveholders. HIs reputation was such that a French document of 1758 estimateswith much exaggeration, no doubt- the number of deaths he provoked at 6,000 over three years.

An African born in “Guinea”, Francois Makandal was in all probability a Mandingo. He came from an illustrious family and had been sold to the Europeans as a war captive. He was a Muslim who “had instruction and possessed the Arabic language very well,” emphasized nineteenth century Haitian historian Thomas Madiou, who gathered information through the veterans of the Haitian Revolution.

fig 39: waves

What the French did not realize was that their most profitable colony, SaintDomingue (Haiti), was fecund ground for Muslim maroons and rebels. The island had always had numerous maroon communities, and an average of a thousand runaways were advertised every year. The notices posted by the plantation owners, who listed the disappeared give a measure of the place of the Muslims among the maroons.

7. De C., Monsieur “Makandal, Histoire véritable” 9. Diouf “Servants of Allah”

Makandal was probably a marabout, for a 1779 French official document describes him as being able to predict the future and as having revelations. This hypothesis is reinforced by the man’s name. Melvil Bloncourt noted that Makandal likely came from makanda, “Guinean sorcerers”. In reality, in Mandinka mo kadan comes from ka mo kada, to tie someone either concretely with a rope or chain or in a mystic manner, which leads to naming as such people who are reputed to have these powers. In some dialects of Mandinka, makanda is a spiritual protection. Thus, Makandal acquired his

name because of his mystical power and involvement with amulet making- so much so that amulets became known on the island, as makandal.

In addition, Makadnal was said to be a prophet, which indicates that he was perceived as having a direct connection to God. Thus besides being a marabout he may have been a sharif, a descendant of the Prophet; but no evidence exists to confirm this hypothesis.

On January 20, 1758, Makandal was burned at the stake. The pole he was tied to collapsed, and the crowd saw this incident as a sign of his immortality. He had told his followers that as he was put to death, he would turn into a fly and fly away. The executioner asked to kill him with a sword as the coup de grace, but his request was denied by the attorney general. Makandal was tied to a plant and thrown into the fire again. Makandal can best be described as a marabout-warrior.

He used his occult knowledge and his charisma to gain allies to wage war against his enemy, and he participated in the action personally.9 It is significant to note that during his interrogation he allegedly repeated the Shahada (testimony of Muslim faith) in Arabic several times and even translated its meaning to his French captors during his interrogation before being condemned to death7.

Boukman Through the Lens of Islam Another popular leader who attained quasi-mythical status in Haitian history was Boukman. Very little is known about him.

He was not born in Saint-Domingue but came from Jamaica, smuggled by a British slaver. Using a position that allowed him to travel from plantation to plantation, as well as his charismatic personality, he had built a network of followers in the north.

August 14, 1791, in a clearing in the forest of Bois-Caiman. During this Vodun ceremony, Boukman launched the general revolt with a speech in Creole that has remained famous. He denounced the God of the whites, who asked for crime, whereas the God of the slaves wanted only the good. “But this God who is so good, orders you to seek revenge,” he pounded.

“He will direct our arms, he will assist us.

Throw away the image of the God of the whites who is thirsty for our tears and listen to freedom which talks to our hearts”9

A week later, two hundred sugar estates and eighteen hundred coffee plantations were destroyed. At the beginning of November, Boukman was shot dead by an officers as he was fighting a detachment of French army with a group of maroons.

His severed head was fixed on a pole and exposed on a public square in CapFrancis.

There are indications that Boukman was a Muslim. Coming from Jamaica, he had an English name that was rendered phonetically in French by Boukman or Bouckmann; in English, however, it was Bookman. Bookman was a “man of the book” as the Muslims were referred to even in Africa- in Sierra Leone, for example, explained an English lieutenant, the Mandingo were “Prime Ministers” of every town, and they went “by the name bookman”. It is likely that Boukman was a Jamaican Muslim who had a Qur’an and that he got his nickname from this.

As many Muslims had done, and would continue to do, he had reached the top of the slave structure. He was a trusted professional. He was also at the top in another way: he was recognized as a priest. He has passed down in history as a Vodun priest, but this does not mean that he was such. Because the Muslim factory largely has been ignored, any religious leader of African origin in the Caribbean has been linked to Vodun or Obeah.

Islam’s Role in the Haitian Revolution There is thus compelling evidence that two major leaders in Haitian history- Makandal and Boukman- were not only Muslims but also marabouts. They were not the leaders of Mulsims, they did not embark on a jihad, but they were the leaders of the enslaved population, irrespective of religion. What they provided was military expertise coupled with spiritual and occult assurance that the outcome of the fight would be positive. Both skills were of extreme value, each in its own way; but put together, they conferred on these leaders the aura of mythical figures. Because of their maraboutic knowledge they could galvanize the masses, push them to action and to surpass themselves.

Other marabouts, and the Muslims in general, played a role in the Haitian revolts and ultimately in the Haitian Revolution through their occult skills, literacy and military traditions. The marabouts provided protections to the insurgents in the form of amulets, and the Muslims used Arabic to communicate during uprisings, as Colonel Malefant recorded. Though their role and contribution have not be acknowledged, 9. Diouf “Servants of Allah”

the Muslims were part of the success of the Haitian Revolution.

Prayer as Salvation The African Muslims remained attached to their faith, and their enslavement was itself a good reason to be even more devout. Faith meant hope, moral comfort, and mental escape. It was also a link to the past, to a time when they were free, respected, and for some, engaged in intellectual pursuits, not menial labor.

Keledor expresses well the emotional support that religion could give to enslaved men and women: “I had resolved to be faithful to the religion which I had been carefully raised. I was attached to it by conviction; I was attached to it so much more that it was the only thing left to me from my family and my country; so much more that I attached to it the memories of the causes of my captivity, and the hope of release which was promised to me”

fig 40: a different canvas

This faith, preserved openly or secretly, manifested itself in the various acts that mark the life of a Muslim believer throughout the year. First was salat, prayer, the Second Pillar of Islam. Constraining so as to promote self-discipline, it is done five times a day, at precise times, and is preceded by ablutions (the washing of feet, forearms, hands, and face). It also requires a mat, prayer beads, and a veil for women.

In a situation of servitude in a non-Muslim environment, the discipline of salat seems a particularly difficult endeavor. Though it considers prayer a pillar, the Qur’an is flexible, and a believer is allowed to abstain from praying if circumstances are not favorable. Understandably, then, the Muslims who prayed did so by choice, not by obligation.

In the absence of a vast corpus of references to Muslim prayer in the Americas, and because of the policy of forced conversion, it seems natural to assume that secret prayer was the most common. Yet a few cases of public prayers have been recorded. In addition to both secret and public prayers, some Muslims managed to hold prayers in groups, in specially designated areas. There was also evidence of tasbih- resembling a Catholic rosary it is made of round beads and an elongated bead in lieu of a cross. The presence of these tasbihs in the Americas is an indication that the Muslims who used them were no “ordinary” believers but men and women deeply involved in the religion, in its most constraining and most mystic aspects9.

fig 41: a different canvas

fig 42: a different canvas

Vodou Maya Deren’s Divine Horsemen Maya Deren is a Ukranian artist and her book Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti delves into her multiple visits to Haiti in the 1940’s with the original intention on making a film on dance. However, she soon learns that dance cannot be seperated from the religion of Vodou and how the religion has far overshadowed any original intent she had. She says of the religion in the preface: “I have come to believe that if history were recorded by the vanquished rather than by the victors, it would illuminate the real, rather than the theoretical, means to power; for it is the defeated who know best which of the opposing tactics were irresistible.

Similarly, her work as an artist instead of an anthropologist allows her to eventually join the religion instead of observe it from a distance which can be summed up by the Haitian proverb “when the anthropolgosit arrives, the gods depart”.

Deren describes Vodou in this way: Voudoun is a religion of major stature, rare poetic vision and artistic expression, and that it contains a pantheon of divinities which, in astronomical terminology, could be called a constellation of first magnitude.

Like all religions, Voudoun is built on certain basic premises. Briefly, it proposes that man has a material body, animated by an esprit or gros-bon-ange- the soul, spirit, psyche or self- which, being nonmaterial, does not share the death of the body. This soul may achieve (by stages elaborated in the discussion immediately following) the status of a loa, a divinity, and become the archetypal representative of some natural or moral principle. As such, it has the power to displace temporarily the gros-bon-ange of a living person and become the animating force of his physical body. This psychic phenomenon is known as “possession”. The actions and utterances of the possessed person are not the expression of the individual, but are the readily identifiable manifestations of the particular loa or archetypal principle.

Since it is by such manifestations that the divinities of the pantheon make known their instructions and desires and exercise their authority, this phenomenon is basic to Voudoun, occurs frequently, and is normal both to the religion and to the Haitians. In fact, the Haitian would find it abnormal if it should suddenly cease to occur.

To most readers, however, such religious possession is not only unfamiliar, but carries exotic and sensational 2. Brown “Mama Lola” 8. Deren “Divine Horsemen”

overtones. Also, as the most spectacular phenomenon in a religion whose ritual action is disciplinarian, reiterative and replete with detail having no significance for the uninformed, it has frequently inspired in observers an emphasis which isolated it from its context and gave rise to interpretations which distorted its true quality and function. The detailed elaboration and analysis of possession has been reserved for the final chapter of this book, in the hope that, by then, the structure and emotional logic of that total context of which it is a part will have been amply demonstrated and established. In describing Voudoun, however, it will be necessary to make repeated reference to possession. For the purposes of such description the fact will be referred to as precisely what it is sincerely understood and believed to be by those who are involved in the context of the religion.

Thus, if a loa possesses a person it will be assumed that, for the duration of the possession, the actions and attitudes witnessed and described are those of the loa spirit and not of the person proper. If a male loa possesses a female devotee, the name of the loa or the pronoun he will be used (as it always is in Voudoun) when referring to the acting subject responsible for all the events transpiring during that possession; and conversely, if a female loa possesses a male, the pronoun will be she8.

fig 43: loa

Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn Karen McCarthy Brown is a scholar who spends years working with a Vodou Priestess named Alourdes but is more commonly called Mama Lola. Similar to Deren, Brown eventually converts to Vodou.

Brown describes Vodou in this way: Vodou is different for each person who deeply engages with it, because each person concentrates on his or her own particular spirits. Although Alourdes routinely honors all the major spirits, she has half a dozen on whom she focuses most of her ritual activity. It is understood within Vodou that the spirits select their special devotees, not the reverse. The spirits Alourdes concentrates on are those who have “chosen” her, who “love” her and whose “protection” she has inherited from earlier generations within her family.

They are the ones featured on her altars and routinely called on for assistance in her healing practice. Singly and in relation, these spirits shape and guide her professional and personal life.

Alourdes makes no major decision without consulting one or more of these spirits.

All significant events are filtered through the sieve of their personalities, and their character traits and patterns of behavior frame her choices. But the spirits are not moral exemplars. Nor do they dictate exactly what she is to do, although from time to time some of the spirits give advice.

More commonly, through possessionperformance, the spirits explore all the potentialities, constructive and destructive, in a given life situation. In this way they provide the images that allow Alourdes to reflect on problems and to make her own choices about the most appropriate and effective ways of dealing with them2.

fig 44: crossings

The Taino’s Integration into Vodou It led me (Maya Deren) further, to sense, for instance, that the Petro dance and drumming (Petro and Rada are two major divisions in Vodou) were not merely another ritual- not merely a more violent canvas by the same painter- but that they were of a different character- a canvas by another painter altogether. This distinction arrested my attention and I began to observe the difference in major forms, which eventually led me to look for the possible interpolation of another culture, to investigate the history of the Spanish and Indian period of the islands, and finally to the determination of the Indian influence as elaborated in the Appendix to this book. What emerges from this research is the fact that the African culture in Haiti was saved by the Indian culture which, in the Petro cult, provided the Negroes with divinities sufficiently aggressive (as was not true of the divinities of the generally stabilized African kingdoms) to be the moral force behind the revolution. In a sense, the Indians took their revenge on the white man through the Negro.

It is doubtful whether any other two peoples, of different racial and continental origins, could have discovered such an astonishing coincidence of religious beliefs, not only in basic pattern but in basic ritualistic and even accessory detail. Both religious traditions had in common a creator deity as first source; myths of the first human pair, or twins; a concept of the abysmal waters as the life source; a pantheon of divinities of the elements, or natural forces; a serpent deity of prime importance, the worship of ancestral spirits; a metaphysical concept of the cardinal directions, of cross-roads, and of trees; a belief in the manifestation of psychic or cosmic forces in the physical world by possession; a belief in the manipulation and control of these forces by human beings who functioned simultaneously on religious (priest), social (king) and physical (doctor) levels.

In both systems, the manipulations, on a magical level, involved fetishes that brought to focus metaphysical forces and referred either to ancestral spirits or to elemental forces (such as rain and fertility). The relationship between humans and nature was expressed in a concept of metamorphic power, the ability to change into an animal, for instance.

Moreover, the worship of the metaphysical forces had to be sustained by feeding, or sacrifice, and their benediction maintained by propitiation. Ritualistically, the major faith ordeal of both systems was related 8. Deren “Divine Horsemen”

to fire; and the service of supplication involved drumming and collective dancing (rather than performances by the specially chosen, as in Bali). Ritualistic accessories included rattles, in both cases. And finally, both religious traditions, being polytheistic, were mutually tolerant rather than absolustic and exclusive.

The overwhelming similarity of these two systems of belief not only preclude any antagonism but must have been a strong incentive to amalgamation, mutual assimilation and confusion. If one were to consider the material facts alone, ignoring the different emotional colorings of the two systems of rituals, the differing tensions in the attitudes of the body in the dancing and all those other nuances in which ethos is manifest, one could confound them entirely. The historical situation of the African Negro, however, made him welcome precisely the difference, and the moral, intellectual and magical techniques that reflected it.

As we have said, the African tradition, particularly of Dahomey, had developed a centralized state; but the more primitive decentralized, shamanistic stage of the Caribbean Indians was eminently suited to the new situation, and could serve as a methodological guide to reorganization on a decentralized, democratized basis.

Inevitably, such decentralization would lead to an emphasis on magical rather than on divine and royal authority and this stress would involve cabbala-like elements already present in the Indian system. The emphasis of Indian religious practice was aggressive, impearlistic and active, assertively dynamic, which met the new-world need of the Negro in a way that his own Dahomean religion- almost settled and passive with security- could not match. And finally the American pattern was strongly colored by the severity of the divinities: propitiation had the violent bloody character typical of the Aztecan, Mayan and Incan cultures. Indeed, it is only logical to serve violently those divinities of whom one requires aggressive action. As an outlet for this new world rage of the African, the violent or tense ritual was certainly psychologically most valid.

For when divine power is to be put into action by human beings it becomes magic.

Vodou’s Basic Premises THE COSMIC MIRROR AND THE CORPSE ON THE CROSS-ROADS For the Haitian, the metaphysical world of les Invisibles is not a vague, mystical notion; it is as a world within a cosmic

mirror, peopled by the immortal reflections of all those who have ever confronted it. The mirror is a metaphor for the cosmography of Haitian myth. The loa are addressed as mirror images and summoned by references to a mirrored surface. The vevers- the sacred symbols drawn during ceremonies- are frequently designed in mirrored symmetry to both sides of an horizon.

As long as a man lives, his gros-bon-ange is a reflection on the surface of that cosmic mirror, held to that surface by the existence of the body which it mirrors. But with death, there ceases to exist the flesh, the force which held it buoyant, and it sinks into the depths of the mirror.

The metaphor for the mirror’s depth is the cross-roads; the symbol is the cross. For the Haitian this figure is not only symbolic of the totality of the earth’s surface as comprehended in the extension of the cardinal points on a horizontal plane. It is, above all, a figure for the intersection of the horizontal plane, which is this mortal world, by the vertical plane, the metaphysical axis, which plunges into the mirror. The cross-roads, then, is the point of access to the world of les Invisibles, which is the soul of the cosmos, the source of life force, the cosmic memory, and the cosmic wisdom.

As the daily life of a man depends upon his constant communication with his own gros-bon-ange- his own memory, intelligence, imagination, and invention- so the Haitian, individually and collectively, would communicate and draw upon the world of les Invisibles. For this reason, the cross-roads is the most important of all ritual figures. Where other cultures might conceive of the physical and metaphysical as, at best, a parallelism, a necessary irreconcilable dualism, the Haitian peasant resolves the relationship in the figure of right angles8.

The foot of the vertical plane rests in the waters of the abyss, the source of all life.

Here is Guinee, Africa, the legendary place of racial origin. Here, on the Island Below the Sea, the loa have their permanent residence, their primal location. To it the souls of the dead return, taking marine or insect forms until their reclamation into the world, their rebirth, as if the ancient myth had anticipated the statements of evolutionary science. To address oneself to the earth, then, to rap upon it in ceremonies, to pour libations upon it, to dig into it and there to deposit offerings, to kneel and touch lips or forehead to it-

Bois Caiman Vodou Ceremony, Boukman and Revolution

in ceremonies, to pour libations upon it, to dig into it and there to deposit offerings, to kneel and touch lips or forehead to it- these are gestures addressed not to the earth itself but to the cosmos which is contained within it. Whether drawn in flour on flat ground, or traced in the air, the sign of the cross-roads is always the juncture of the horizontal and the vertical, where the communication between worlds is established and the traffic of energies and forces between them is set up. It is at this point of intersection that the food for the loa is placed; and here also that they emerge to act upon the material world.

Particularly are trees the great natural highway of such traffic. And the leaves, properly plucked and treated may therefore carry divine and healing properties. The most ancient of loa are known as loa racine (root loa); the songs tell of their “racine sans but” (root without end).

The master of the island below the sea, Grand Bois D’Illet, is often represented by a branch. And if one or another tree is particularly consecrated to this loa or that, it is not because the loa is the spirit of the tree, it is, rather, in the sense of that tree a preferred avenue of divine approach. The stylized tree, its branches and roots symmetrically extended to both sides of an horizon, is signaled, over and over in the vevers. As center-post-poteaumitan- this same vertical avenue, axis of the metaphysical cosmos, is built into the very center of the peristyle, the ceremonial enclosure. Around this poteau-mitan revolve the ritual movements and the dance; at its base the offerings are placed; and through it the loa enter the peristyle.

Historians of Haiti agree on fixing the beginning of the revolution on a cult ceremony held on August 14, 1791. They also agree on the details, namely, that it was a ceremony conducted by a houngan named Boukman (he is sometimes called a bocor) who had been born in Jamaica. It seems that, in the middle of the ceremony, a great storm arose, and there suddenly appeared an old Negress whose body was trembling violently and who danced a “wild” dance, holding a large knife over her head.

As a climax of the dance she sacrificed a black pig. All the participants drank of the blood of the pig, and swore to follow Boukman. A week later the revolution was in swing. This event is cited by Verschueren (Vol. 2, p. 26) and Simpson (II) among others. The description of the ceremony makes it clear that it was a Petro ceremony, since those are distinguished by pig sacrifices. It is quite possible that the woman was the original Marinette, or was possessed by Marinette, the major and violent female of the Petro nation.

fig 45: Ayiti, Land of Mountains

Since this vertical dimension exists at any and all places, one has but to signal intersection. The sign of the cross appears everywhere, whenever communication or traffic between the world is indicated. The vertical dimension comprehends both the abyss below and the heavens above earth, the dimension of infinity; the horizontal comprehends all men, all space and matter8

fig 46: a reexamination 8. Deren “Divine Horsemen”

Simpson also points out that one of the inducements to revolt was the concept, proposed by several of the Petro houngans, that the souls of the dead would return to Africa. He also says that “meetings of slaves were dangerous to colonials because of the possibilities they offered for plots and revolts”. Most historians do agree that Voudoun was responsible for the unity that made the revolution possible. Simpson also says that Voudoun took form between 1750 and 1790 but ceremonials must have been occurring since the arrival of the slaves from Africa., otherwise the African forms could not have been preserved. His dating does, however, link the revolution to a “preparatory” period in the development of Voudoun8.

Macandal Through The Lens of Vodou From Allende’s Island Beneath the Sea Macandal had been brought from Africa, a cultivated Muslim who read and wrote in Arabic, and had knowledge of medicine and plants. He lost his right arm in a horrible accident that would have killed a weaker man, and as he was unable to work in the cane fields, his master sent him to herd cattle. He moved around the region, feeding on milk and fruit, until he learned to use his left hand and his toes to set traps and fashion knots to hunt rodents, reptiles, and birds. In the solitude and silence he recovered the images of his adolescence, when he had trained for war and hunting, as befitting the son of a king. His brow was high, his chest strong, he had swift legs and eagle eyes, and he grasped his lance with a firm hand. The island vegetation was different from that in the enchanted regions of his youth, but he began to experiment with leaves, roots, husks, many kinds of mushrooms, and found some that acted as cures, others provoked dreams and trances, and some killed.

illnesses that ravaged the Antilles, and they were manifest only among whites; at that point there was no doubt it was poison. Macandal, again Macandal. Men dropped dead after drinking a swallow of liquour, women and children after a cup of chocolate, all the guests at a banquet before dessert had been served. The fruit on the trees could not be trusted, nor a sealed bottle of wine; not even a cigarette, because no one knew how the poison was administered. Hundreds of slaves were tortured without telling how death entered their victims’ houses, until a girl of fifteen, one of many the Mandingo visited at night in the form of a bat, when threatened with being burned alive, revealed the way to find Macandal. She was burned anyway, but her confession led the militiamen to the lair of Macandal, scaling peaks and chasms like goats until they reached the ashen mountains of the ancient Arawak chieftains. They captured Macandal alive.

By then six thousand persons had died.

It is the end of Macandal, the whites said.

We shall see, the Negroes whispired.

He escaped his plantation and joined with other Maroons, and soon they saw the effects of his fury and his shrewdness: a surprise attack on the darkest night, the radiance of torches, the thudding of bare feet, cries, metal against chains, fires in the cane fields. The name of the Mandingo traveled from mouth to mouth repeated by the Negroes as a prayer of hope. Macandal, the prince of Guinea, was transformed into a bird, a lizard, a fly, a fish. A slave bound to a post would see a rabbit race by before the lashing that would sink him into unconsciousness: it was Macandal, witness to his torture. An impassive iguana observed the girl who lay in the dust, raped: “Get up, wash yourself in the river, and do not forget, because soon I will come for revenge”, hissed the iguana. Macandal. Decapitated roosters, symbols painted with blood, hatchets in doors, a moonless night, another fire.

First the cattle began to die. The colonists attributed it to a lethal plant that grew hidden in the fields and began, without results, to call on European botanists and local witch doctors to find and eradicate it. Next were the horses in the stables, the mastiffs, and finally entire families were struck down. The victims’ bellies swelled, their gums and fingernails turned black, their blood turned to water, their skin peeled off in strips, and they died in the grip of atrocious contortions. The symptoms did not fit with any of the 1. Allende “Island Beneath the Sea”

fig 47: lines of various thicknesses

A roll of drums announced Macandal’s appearance. He was welcomed by a chorus of threats and insults from the whites, mockery from the mulattoes, and shouts of frenetic excitement from the Africans. Macandal was tall, very dark, his entire body marked with scars and barely covered by a pair of filthy bloodstained breeches. He was in chains, but he stood erect, haughty, indifferent. He ignored the whites, the soldiers, priests and dogs; his eyes passed slowly over the slaves, and each knew that those black pupils saw them, giving to them the unconquerable breath of his spirit. He was not a man to be executed but the only free man in the throng.

The Gouverneur gave the signal and the soldiers chained the prisoner to the post of the fire. The executioner lighted the straw, and soon the greased logs were blazing, enveloped in dense smoke. Not a sigh was heard as the deep voice of Macandal rose to the sky: I will be back! I will be back!

What happened then? That would be the most asked question on the island for the remainder of it’s history, as the colonists liked to say. Whites and mulattoes saw Maccandal break free of his chains and leap over the blazing logs, but the soldiers fell upon him, clubbed him, and led him back to the pyre, where minutes later he was swallowed up in the flames and smoke. The Negroes saw Macandal break free of his chains and leap over the blazing logs and when the soldiers fell upon him he turned himself into a mosquito and flew up out of the smoke, made a complete circle of the place, so all would be able to bid him farewell, and then was lost in the sky, just before the rainstorm that soaked the bonfire and put out the flames. The whites and affranchis saw Macandal’s charred body. The Negroes saw nothing but the empty post. The former withdrew, running through the rain, and the latter stayed, singing, washed clean by the storm. Macandal had conquered and had kept his promise. Macandal would be back1

How Vodou and Catholicism Blur in Haiti, An Interview with my Uncle Nordy My Uncle Nordy (Yves Norton Pierre) took the time to call me one afternoon and tell me about his thoughts of the religions of Haiti. What I initially thought was going to be a call about Catholicism quickly slid into a back and forth between the two main religions of the Island today and their intersections.

To me, what my religion was depends on the stage of my life- in the beginning I’ve seen my parents taking me to church and I kind of- I was never- I wasn’t as deep into Catholicism. I had an open mind and used to go to different churches and see what they were doing. Because deep down in my heart I knew that there cannot be only one way to serve God. I always ask myself, what happens to the people who never got access to Catholicism? What would happen to them? Would they be punished? All while we are saying God is good. Those were my reflections back in the day.

There may be a Creator, I’m not sure.

But if the Creator is good, nobody should be punished. When I was in Haiti, I was so open minded I went to a Vodou place to see what it was about. It was people in church- praying to their own God- it was not anything different than what the Protestants or Catholics were doing. They were worshipping. Of course there was a chicken that was killed, and so on and so forth. My grandma from my mother’s side was not a Catholic, she was a Vodou person. Worshipping all of those spirits, I’ve never seen her going to church. I’ve seen her go in trance- when the spirits take over her body. I’ve seen this. Those things got me to question things.

Of course my mother, she was a Catholic.

I couldn’t say she was 100% into it but she was brought up as Catholic. My father, he would go to church- he was a free mason.

He used to take me to their places- but I’ve never practiced myself. All of the prayers he was doing at our home was saying things to my ear- secrecy - but I didn’t understand what they were.

I know for a fact in Haiti a lot of people would call them Catholic but they would go and worship the spirits from Vodou. One of the things in Haiti is when people get really sick, they would go to a Vodou priest to help them. This is common. A lot of Haitians would be Catholic but also serving

the Vodou spirits. Deep down in our belief, some way some how we do believe in the power of the spirits. Even though Tatie Magguy (his wife and my aunt) has a different take on it. The more I think of it: what makes me sad and angry, 400 years ago Europeans went to Africa and sell them their God and we got disconnected from our spirits and our Gods. I had the opportunity to go to Africa this summer and if you go deep in the country you don’t see any trace of Jesus or Mary or whatever.

All the atrocities that were made on behalf of Catholicism when they came to Haiti.

They planted a cross and that’s how they eradicated the Haitian population and replaced them with Africans. If you read the history there were Indian people living in the Caribbean and now the existence of these people is not there. And you don’t have to look at just the Caribbean you can look at the United States of America. Now the Indians are in the conservation places.

To me- it’s one way of worshipping. But, as humans we need to take into account all people’s way of worshiping. One way of worshipping shouldn’t be better than another way. And the sad thing is. A lot of people are classifying Vodou as a bad thing- as something people should be scared of- something used to hurt people.

From my point of view- from what I’ve seen in Haiti- that is not true. Because if the Vodou people have all this power- think about it- Haiti wouldn’t be a very poor country. This is my take on it.

I am a vodou person.

If you go to Africa, or for example Benin, Vodou is there. They are not killing people.

They are very peaceful. European people portray them as people who are very mean, they just have a different way of worshipping. Back in the Bible they used to sacrifice animals, so in Vodou if they sacrifice a chicken what’s the difference.

But everyone has their own beliefs and I think we should respect everyone’s own beliefs. And as an African I am more connected to the drum than I am to you know the violin or these types of thing.

I’ve been spending my time to teach my way about it, this is how I feel. At this stage of my life I cannot even call myself a Christian- I’ll go to church - if need be. But on Sundays I will not take the time to go to church. But that’s me. But Tatie Magguy, she will go to church every sunday. On that point we respect each other’s stance on that. It’s not that I’m saying what she is doing is bad. I just don’t feel the connection. But that’s me. I evolve and change the way I think over time. If God

is punishing me for that, that’s okay. God knows it all- so he should have known that’s how I was going to become. To me life is not black and white. There is a lot of fuzzy lines. People need to adapt to what makes sense to them. I have friends who do not believe in anything. And those friends, those people who I grew up in Haiti with, they were 110% into Catholicism, but they’ve done their research- and over time they’ve changed the way they are thinking. It is what it is. At the end of the day everyone is dying and the great thing is we don’t know where we are going.

Some people are speculating where we are going- but we don’t - nobody knows.

I know there is a body and a soul- but no one knows where the soul is going after.

I wish I knew. If I knew Jesus was on the other side I would change my mind (laughing) but I have no idea. Nobody knows. At the end people do what makes them feel good. Do what makes you feel good.

And your enviornment- I’m sure if I grew up in an enviornment in Haiti if I was surrounded by Vodou people I never would’ve cared about Jesus at all. We are the products of our enviornment. Though now as I say that I’m kind of detaching myself from the enviornment I grew up. But I look at things from a different view. Tatie Magguy has a completly different view than what I am telling you.

author’s concluding note / on freedom One of the ideas my group has been asking ourselves as we have worked on this project is what would a post colonization and post imperialism Haiti look like? Haiti is the first Black Republic in the world as well as the second independent country in the New World after the U.S.; and ever since Haiti took its first breath it’s been suffocated by imperial forces. I would describe the horrors here but if you’ve gotten this far then you know that Edwidge Danticat, Sylviane Diouf, Isabel Allende, C.L.R. James and others describe the tortures better than I ever could. They also show that in the many moments of darkness there are moments of light: butterflies landing on a wrist, the soft shimmer of the ocean in the moonlight with big stars hanging low, and a love for a home country that has persisted since the country’s inception. Beloved Haiti, there is no place like you. I had to leave you before I could understand you, cry the refugees on their sinking ship in Krik? Krak!

I’ve been to Haiti three times, twice as a baby and once my junior year of High School. While I have a deep love for Haiti, most of my contact with the Island comes through books. As I have been grappling with the idea of what a free Haiti would look like, I wanted to go to my mom who grew up on the Island and has a deeper connection to it than I could ever hope to have. When I asked her what a free Haiti would look like over tea one night she immediately had a clear image in her mind. Haiti is a beautiful island with warm beaches and waters, we should be a tourist destination like Jamaica or the Dominican Republic. The money from tourism can finally go back to the people who can send their children to school and begin to return to their crafts. Haiti is full of artists just waiting to be able to express themselves. Also if people are able to, they all leave the Island. My dream is for people to be able to return home.

To me freedom looks like the ability to practice the religion of one’s choice, the ability to breathe, and dance, go to school, to eat and sleep, to simply exist without violence. Finally, freedom to me is the ability to simply go to Haiti. Haiti now is simply too dangerous for outsiders to go and by that logic Haiti is too dangerous for the people living there as well. An end to the centuries long bloodshed and violence. Reparations from France in the form of billions. An acknowledgment and acceptance of the indigenous Taino and an understanding of their profound impact and influence. In fact, the name Haiti came from the Taino name for the Island Ayiti, the land of mountains. The understanding that there is no successful Haitian Revolution without Vodou (and quite possibly Islam) and there is no Vodou without both Africans and Taino alike.

A reimagining of Vodou as an intricate, beautiful and profound religion with ancient origins. An understanding of the deep impact of Islam on the Island hundreds of years ago. A connection to the beauty of Catholicism that sustains people today.

A reimagining of the devil and how that concept truly operates in Haiti, and who the real devil is.

While I wasn’t there during the infamous 2010 earthquake, my whole family felt as if we were as we waited for days wondering if my grandparents and other family members would survive in their port-au-prince home. They did survive.

The 200,000 plus souls, crushed under faulty cement in an instant- and all the other martyred souls who are now on The Island Below The Sea deserve peace and justice.

My love for Haiti grows a little deeper every day- like the roots of a tree at the crossroads. My research of my beloved Island has been something that I’ve pursued for years, trying, failing, grasping, grazing- getting close - but never close enough. Yet as I sit here writing this knowing that I won’t be able to articulate everything that I am feeling and will leave this zine knowing that I could have said things differently. Knowing that there will be little snippets of Haiti that I forgot to mention about one week too late. Nonetheless, if you have read any of this zine know that you are holding part of my heart in your hands and I hope it touches you in some small way.

-melissa edith kelley

Works Cited 1. Allende, Isabel “Island Beneath the Sea”, HarperCollins Publishers. New York. 2010.

2. Brown, Karen McCarthy “Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn”, University of California Press. Berkeley and Los Angeles. 1991.

3. CNN “Pat Robertson says Haiti paying for ‘pact to the devil”, Jan 13 2010. https://www.cnn.com/2010/US/01/13/haiti.pat.robertson/index.html 4. Coogan, Michael D. “The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version With The Apocrypha”, Oxford University Press, New York. 2018.

5. Danticat, Edwidge. “Krik? Krak!” Vintage Books. New York. 1991.

6. Daut, Marlene L. “What is the Path Forward for Haiti”, The New Yorker. Mar 18, 2023. https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/whats-the-path-forward-for-haiti#:~:text=A%20powerful%20 consortium%20of%20foreign,pigs%20from%20North%20American%20farms 7. De C., Monsieur (15 September 1787). “Makandal, Histoire véritable”. Le Mercure de France: 308–315 8. Deren, Maya, “Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti” Thames & Hudson. London and New York. 1953.

9. Diouf, Sylviane A. “Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved In The Americas”. 15th Anniversary Edition.

New York University Press. New York and London.1998 and 2013.

10. Dubois, Laurent et al., “The Haiti Reader: History, Culture, Politics”. Duke University Press. Durham and London. 2020.

11. Felder, Cain Hope. “Stony the Road We Travel: African American Biblical Interpretation” 12. Hurston, Zora Neal. “Moses Man on the Mountain” 1939.

13. James, C.L.R. “The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution” Random House Inc. Toronto. 1963.

14. McDonald, Brent. “Haitian Divers Hope to Aid Ailing Reef” The New York Times. Sept 1, 2011. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/02/world/americas/02reef.html 15. Rosalsky, Greg. “The Greatest Heist In History’: How Haiti Was Forced To Pay Reparations For Freedom” NPR. Oct 5, 2021. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/10/05/1042518732/-the-greatest-heist-in-historyhow-haiti-was-forced-to-pay-reparations-for-freed 16. Vartan, Starre, “Saving the Coral Reefs: 9 Innovations in Coral Reef Restoration”, Treehugger. Feb 17, 2022. https://www.treehugger.com/creative-techniques-being-used-keep-coral-reefs-alive-4868013