Bedeviled Haiti (Part I)
If ever there was a poster-child for religious intolerance, it would have to be Pat Robertson. His narrow-minded, bigoted pronouncements, based on heaven-knows-what, are appalling.
However, because even the most insane blubberings may have a grain of truth at their root - I decided to research this 'pact with the devil.' I found an amazing story.
In March 2009, The Stockholm Review of Latin American Studies published an article by Markel Thylefors, entitled “Our Government is in Bwa Kayiman:” A Vodou Ceremony in 1791 and its Contemporary Significations [PDF file]. It is the 'Bwa Kayiman' (also Bois Caiman) to which Robertson and his Protestant brethren (for generations) refer in their diatribes against the Haitians.
To understand the significance of this event, one must understand the history of the people of Haiti. Nearly all native Tainos were killed by disease and European settlers; with a small population escaping to the mountains. Only after most of the Spanish left for richer gold finds, did the population begin to recover. When the French claimed the western portion of Hispaniola in the late 1600s, they brought African slaves to work their plantations. (Many escaped, during uprisings, to the mountains where they met the last generation of Tainos.)
These slaves, it is believed, were primarily from tribes and areas along the Atlantic coast that practiced Vodun, or Vodou (anglicized to Voodoo). Horror movie cliches aside, Vodon is a belief-system not dissimilar to Christianity. There is belief in a supreme being, unreachable by man, and lesser beings with whom man communicates and asks for intercession. (It has been compared to Christ and the saints, by some scholars.) Harsh treatment of the slaves meant the need for constant 'resupply' from Africa, which kept African culture (and Vodou beliefs) strong in the slave population.
It is in August of 1791, in an uprising that began the Haitian Revolution - leading to the abolition of slavery and the independence of Haiti - that histories begin to diverge. It is a long-held belief that a Vodou ceremony was held on August 14, 1791 at Bwa Kayiman, in which slaves were incited to rise up against their owners.
The most frequently cited version describes a meeting of over 200, presided over by a man named Boukman. A black pig was sacrificed by a tall, black woman (priestess) and the blood was drunk by all present. A raging storm where 'lightning shot across the sky' figures in most tellings, as well.
This is the beginning of Haiti - the Vodou Haitian creation story, if you will - that has and does incite Protestants to angry crusades. But, is it true?
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