The Vodou faithful sing, their voices rising above the gunfire erupting miles away as frantic drumbeats drown out their troubles.
They pause to swig rum out of small brown bottles, twirling in unison as they sing in Haitian Creole: “We don’t care in the event that they hate us, because they’ll’t bury us.”
Shunned publicly by politicians and intellectuals for hundreds of years, Vodou is transforming right into a more powerful and accepted religion across Haiti, where its believers were once persecuted. Increasingly, they seek solace and protection from violent gangs which have killed, raped and kidnapped 1000’s lately.
The violence has left greater than 360,000 people homeless, largely shut down Haiti’s biggest seaport and closed the foremost international airport two months ago. Basic goods including food and life-saving medication are dwindling; nearly 2 million Haitians are on the verge of famine.
From January to March alone, greater than 2,500 Haitians were killed or injured, up greater than 50% from the identical period last 12 months, in response to the U.N.
Amid the spiraling chaos, quite a few Haitians are praying more or visiting Vodou priests referred to as “oungans” for urgent requests starting from locating family members who were kidnapped to finding critical medication needed to maintain someone alive.
“The spirits enable you. They’re at all times around,” said Sherly Norzéus, who’s initiated to change into a “mambo,” or Vodou priestess.
In February, she invoked Papa Ogou, god of war and iron, when 20 armed men surrounded her automobile as she tried to flee the community of Bon Repos.
Her three children and the 2 children of her sister, who died during childbirth, sat next to her.
“We are going to burn you alive!” she recalled the gunmen yelling.
Gangs had invaded their neighborhood before dawn, setting fire to homes amid relentless gunfire.
“I prayed to Papa Ogou. He helped me get out of the situation,” Norzéus said.
When she opened her eyes, the gunmen signaled that she was free to go away.
Vodou was at the foundation of the revolution that led Haiti to change into the world’s first free Black republic in 1804, a faith born in West Africa and brought across the Atlantic by enslaved people.
The syncretic religion that melds Catholicism with animist beliefs has no official leader or creeds. It has a single God referred to as “Bondye,” Creole for “Good God,” and greater than 1,000 spirits referred to as the lwa — some that aren’t at all times benevolent.
During Vodou ceremonies, lwa are offered treats starting from papayas and low to popcorn, lollipops and cheese puffs. A ceremony is taken into account successful if a Vodouist is possessed by an lwa.
Some experts consider it a faith of the exploited.
“Vodou is the system that Haitians have developed to cope with the suffering of this life, a system whose object is to attenuate pain, avoid disaster, soften losses, and strengthen the survivors as much because the survival instinct,” Haitian sociologist Laënnec Hurbon wrote in a recent essay.
Vodou began to take shape within the French colony of Saint-Domingue during funeral rituals for enslaved people and dances called “calendas” that they organized on Sunday evenings. It also was practiced by slaves referred to as Maroons who escaped to distant mountains and were led by François Mackandal, a Vodou priest.
In August 1791, some 200 slaves gathered at night in Bois-Caiman in northern Haiti for a Vodou ceremony organized by Dutty Boukman, a renowned enslaved leader and Vodou priest. They sacrificed a pig, drank its blood and swore to maintain secret an imminent revolt against slavery, in response to a surgeon present on the ceremony.
After a 13-year revolution, Haiti became independent, but Vodou remained oppressed.
The country’s recent leaders condemned Vodou worship, as did the Catholic Church.
Catholic leaders demanded parishioners take an oath renouncing Vodou in 1941.
Thousands of Vodou followers were lynched and a whole bunch of symbolic spaces destroyed in what became essentially the most violent attack in Haiti’s history against the faith, in response to journalist Herbert Nerette.
But Vodou continued. When François Duvalier became president in 1957, he politicized the faith during his dictatorship, appointing certain oungans as its representatives, Hurbon wrote.
By 2003, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Salesian priest who became Haiti’s first democratically elected president, recognized Vodou as one among Haiti’s official religions.
Despite the formal recognition, Vodou stays shunned by some Haitians.
“When you say you’re a Vodouist, they stigmatize you,” said Kadel Bazile, a 42-year-old civil engineer.
Until recently, Bazile was a practicing Catholic. But when he lost his job and his wife left him nearly two years ago, a friend suggested he try Vodou.
“What I find here is spirituality and fraternity. Being here is like being with family,” he said while attending a May 1 ceremony to honor Kouzen Zaka, the lwa of harvest.
He identifies essentially the most with Erzulie Dantor, the divinity of affection represented by a Black Madonna with scars on her right cheek.
“That is the spirit who lives in me,” he said. “She goes to guard me.”
As the ceremony began, Bazile smiled and moved to the beat of the drums while dancers twirled nearby, their long earrings swaying to the rhythm.
Vodou is attracting more believers given the surge in gang violence and government inaction, said Cecil Elien Isac, a 4th-generation oungan.
“Whenever the community has a giant problem, they arrive here, because there is no such thing as a justice in Haiti. You find it within the ancestral spirits,” he said.
When Isac opened his temple years ago in Port-au-Prince, about eight families in the realm became members. Now he counts greater than 4,000, in Haiti and abroad.
“We have a bunch of intellectuals who’ve joined,” he said. “Before, it was individuals who couldn’t read or write. Now it has more visibility.”
Credited with that turnaround are thinkers like Jean Price-Mars, whose 1928 book, “Thus Spoke the Uncle,” visualized Vodou as a faith, “without making the Haitian elites blush,” wrote sociologist Lewis Ampidu Clorméus.
“Until the Twenties, Haitian Vodou was generally considered a string of superstitions, witchcraft and ritual cannibalism,” Clorméus wrote. “Talking about Vodou constituted a shame for Haitian intellectuals.”
Vodou has since change into a key ingredient in Haiti’s wealthy cultural scene, inspiring music, art, writing and dance.
It’s unknown how many individuals currently practice Vodou in Haiti, but there’s a well-liked saying: “Haiti is 70% Catholic, 30% Protestant and 100% Vodou.”
Vodou also has countless lwas, although Ogou Je Wouj — the god of red eyes — has grown more significant to Haitians given the dearth of security within the country, said Erol Josué, a singer, oungan and director of Haiti’s National Bureau of Ethnology.
Ogou Je Wouj is a manifestation of the god of war and is believed to wield a machete.
“They want power of their body and of their mind,” Josué said of those that seek the god.
While spirits infuse believers with energy and hope, Vodou priests warn they don’t perform miracles.
“We’re praying, but we’re also taking precautions,” Isac said. “There are lots of lwas to guard you from kidnapping, but in the event you walk through certain areas, no lwa goes to guard you.”
On a recent afternoon, a whole bunch of Haitians gathered on a steep hill and squeezed right into a small church to have fun St. George, a Christian martyr believed to be a Roman soldier revered by Catholics and Vodouists alike.
They offered him money and prayers in hopes they might make it through Haiti’s deepening crisis.
“It’s very essential to be here,” said Hervé Hyppolite, a chef who practices Christianity and Vodou. “You find force, courage and likewise protection.”
Surrounding him was a sea of individuals clad in khaki and red, the saint’s colours. Some held candles as a handful of ladies danced nearby,
“St. George!” the priest leading the celebration yelled. The crowd shouted in response, “We need you!”
Josué, the singer and oungan, noted that some young people becoming Vodouists are attempting to vary traditional prayers or certain practices, but he said oungans and mambos usually are not embracing the push.
“We make them understand that those spirits are a logo of resistance of the Haitian nation,” he said. “There’s lots of substance in Vodou that may result in a renaissance of Haiti.”
___
Associated Press reporter Evens Sanon contributed to this report.
___
Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely liable for this content.
