Voodoo and Politics in Haiti

Papa Legba

Michel Laguerre's Voodoo and Politics in Haiti is one of the more interesting studies of the intersection of Haitian Vodou and politics that warrants a follow up, perhaps with greater historical detail and a chapter on Vodou and politics in the 21st century. Beginning with the colonial era and the role of Vodou in sustaining and providing a meeting ground for enslaved people to interact and plot the eventual liberation of the colony, Laguerre argues persuasively for the importance of colonial-era Vodou (or Vodous, given the great religious diversity of African captives in the 18th century). The rest of the book consists of chapters exploring marronage, secret societies, pilgrimage to Saut D'Eau in its folk Catholic and Vodou dimensions, the Duvalierisation of Vodou, and the necessity for the Haitian government to commission a study into Vodou and provide some of the basic protections to the populace so that secret societies are less necessary. 

As a reflection of the religious and spiritual values of the Africans, and something understood by colonial authorities as a threat to the security of Saint Domingue, Vodou, and the related phenomenon of marronage (but one wonders if the Bahoruco maroons really did interact with Indians if, by the time of large-scale French slave trading to the island, there were probably not indigenes around outside of the Creolized, Spanish-speaking colony's population), are presented as revolutionary. Due to the limited Christian evangelization in the colony and the huge demographic transformation as Saint Domingue became a slave colony with blacks vastly outnumbering the French, Vodou and marronage became even greater threats to the established order. The connection to maroons is also made explicit by the detailed use of archival and other written sources that attest to the frequency of religious leaders as heads of maroon bands. Likewise, the Vodou or religious leaders were significant among the slaves on the estates, too. By continuing to preserve and practice values that were in opposition to those of the French and providing a space for slaves and maroons of different backgrounds to congregate, it is no surprise that Vodou leaders were also vital during the Haitian Revolution itself. 

The period after Haitian independence, however, does not receive the same kind of detail. While mention of the occasional persecution of Vodou practices by various Haitian governments appears in the text, the full history of the relationship between the state and the "Voodoo church" is not explored. Undoubtedly, Vodou and some of its priests were consulted by different heads of state and other politicians skillfully exploited or observed Vodou practices for popular appeal and control. For instance, President Salomon is cited as an example of a Haitian president who consulted a Vodou priestess and was a believer. Others made donations to temples and even before Duvalier, surely endeavored to tap into the network of Vodou temples. But the necessity of presenting Haiti as a civilized state to the rest of the world, anti-Vodou crusades of the Catholic Church, and the Western cultural orientation of Haiti's elite (both black and mulatto) ensured that the state either ignored, persecuted or never officially recognized Vodou as a religion. Surely, the full history of how Vodou was an influence on the Haitian state before Duvalier remains an importance question, particularly for administrations of leaders such as Soulouque, Antoine Simon, Salomon, Nord Alexis, Hyppolite, and others. Vodou was also very much a part of the ongoing resistance of the masses to abusive or exploitative authorities through the piquet uprisings (those black anarchists, to paraphrase one source) and the caco resistance to the US Occupation. 

Unsurprisingly, the masses continued to consult their Vodou leaders and further developed the related secret societies, such as the Bizango (named after the Bissagot). Secret societies such as the Bizango operated like a government, providing a measure of security and protection to members against rival Vodou communities or even defending the land and property of peasants in their jurisdiction from avaricious elites or the civil authorities. Amazingly, secret societies like Bizango even issued passports for their members and adopted or adapted titles that display the political history of Haiti. Although the actions and operations of secret societies, which were an outgrowth of colonial-era maroon communities and Vodou, sometimes pursued actions that a modern state would not approve of, Laguerre adopts a reasonable approach that sees their presence as ongoing and necessary in a Haiti without a central government capable of providing the same degree of security to its membership. 

Where Laguerre's study exceptionally shines is the chapters on Saut D'Eau and the "Voodoo church" under the Duvalier dictatorship. Saut D'Eau, first developing as a pilgrimage site due to Fortune Morose seeing the Virgin Mary near today's Ville-Bonheur, was clearly linked to the Soulouque administration's search for a new pilgrimage site and further legitimation for his coronation. Furthermore, the separation of the Dominican Republic made Haitian pilgrimage to Higuey more difficult. Thus, the convenience of developing a pilgrimage site within Haiti itself and one that could be adroitly exploited by Soulouque to justify declaring himself emperor made it more likely for Saut D'Eau to become an important territory in Haiti's spiritual map. In addition, Soulouque, who earlier tried to use apparitions of the Virgin in Port-au-Prince, may have been influenced by the type of popular devotion to the Virgin Mary that was already evident in the band of Romaine the Prophetess as well as Frere Joseph among the piquets. These two religious leaders, one from the era of the Haitian Revolution and the other part of the piquets, both drew upon the Virgin Mary for spiritual succor and justification of their causes. Laguerre does not go into any detail here, but this suggests that the cult of the Virgin Mary was already of some significance in Haitian popular Catholicism and folk belief. Soulouque, by seeking to align himself with it, was able to exploit popular beliefs derived from Catholicism as well as Vodou practices.

Laguerre's real contribution of a detailed overview of pilgrimage at Saut 'Deau is revealing. Damballah, Ayida Wedo, and the Virgin Mary share the space in a characteristically Haitian fashion. The "Voodooists" collect donations, give alms, congregate at the sites associated with Damballah and Ayida Wedo, and will even pay for masses. Other pilgrims focus on the Catholic Church, attending services, giving alms, visiting the area near the tree the Virgin first appeared at, fulfilling vows, and asking for the intercession of Mary. The Catholics and Vodouizan both believe the site is holy and seek miracles, cures, or use the pilgrimage as an opportunity for building community, relationships, or aiding the less fortunate. Residents of Saut D'Eau benefit from the pilgrims renting homes and buying local goods. The gamblers, prostitutes and mendicants congregate in the area to make money, too. Pilgrims coming for spiritual reasons also benefit, or believe they do. Those coming from the same village or town travel together, strengthening bonds and representing friends and family at Saut D'Eau. Ultimately, the pilgrimage tradition affirms the status quo and has been used by Haitian leaders, who send donations, to sustain popular legitimacy. Nonetheless, Saut D'Eau's history and the cult of the Virgin Mary in Haiti can have an anti-establishment dimension.

The other gem in Laguerre's study is the chapter on Vodou and the Duvalier regime. While the Duvaliers, especially Francois, is often remembered as an ethnologist and someone who exploited Vodou for political purposes, Laguerre's explanation of how the regime actually accomplished that is revelatory. Instead of viewing Vodou as completely decentralized, Laguerre argues that it is better to understand Vodou temples as networks. These networks come in different forms, but basically point the prominence of houngans or manbos of central temples which also possess satellites. The satellite temples may not always follow the leadership and guidance of central ones, but they usually do because the central temple may have been led by priests who trained the satellite temple priests. A shrewd politician who understands this could, therefore, increase their political power by focusing on exploiting the priests of central temples. These central temple leaders then, as macoutes, beneficiaries of Duvalier's government, and spies, could greatly increase the likelihood of Duvalier winning more votes or neutralizing centers of opposition. 

The Vodou priests who went along with this process were allowed to continue their practices (although some allegedly incorporated Francois Duvalier himself as a lwa) and, as Tonton Macoutes, protect their own temple network from others while also exploiting their position for status and power. This role of the Vodou priest as a broker, especially in electoral politics, made identifying, coopting, or enforcing the cooperation of central temples a key pillar in the Duvalier regime's rise and longevity. Thus, even though Duvalier himself may have not been a practitioner of Vodou and never gave the "Voodoo church" official status, he (or those in his administration) knew how to "Duvalierize" Vodou as one of the major institutions of the country. Like the Catholic Church and other institutions, the Duvalier dictatorship exploited their understanding of Vodou and Haitian social structure to weaken or eliminate sources of opposition in all corners. It was not his mystical power per se that made this happen, although Duvalier undoubtedly understood how to use that for political ends, that was the basis for Vodou's politicization. Understanding how Duvalier excelled at this to a greater extent than past Haitian political regimes is one of the key elements of the dictatorship. Surely, as admitted by Laguerre, Francois Duvalier's sour relations with the Catholic Church and the ideological currents underpinning noirist and ethnological schools of thought provided a context for this. But how did this process work in rural Haiti, where Laguerre's direct evidence is slighter than that of Port-au-Prince?

Urban Life in the Caribbean: A Study of a Haitian Urban Community

Michel Laguerre analyzes the low-income Belair neighborhood of Port-au-Prince based on field research in the mid-1970s. Looking at Haitian urban communities in the midst of the Duvalier dictatorship in a Caribbean primate city that can also be generalized through dependency theory for other 'Third World' primate cities, Laguerre's work is relevant to broader Caribbean Urban Studies or History. Moreover, Belair is the oldest neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, stronghold of the urban proletariat since the 19th century, but divided into two separate communities: 1. Lower Belair full of middle-class homes, full of shops, streetlights, and institutions and 2. Upper Belair, consisting of poor, shack housing, mostly treeless, fritay social events on Friday nights, open Vodou practice, lakou family formations, borlette lottery numbers.

Laguerre's work brings to life the lively albeit marginalized population of Upper Belair. They can be seen as part of a localized dependency theory within the context of the primate city of Port-au-Prince. Or, to paraphrase Laguerre, Upper Belair suffers from an internal structural dependency on the Haitian elite and the Haitian state. Removed to the periphery of socio-economic status or social mobility, the retailers and laborers of Upper Belair depend on wealthier wholesalers in Lower Belair or other middle-class and elite neighborhoods of the city. Even the numbers game played by residents of Upper Belair is placed in a dependent relationship upon wealthier owners, often of Arab descent. Fortunately, the community pooled resources together through the sangue, a system of rotating credit that facilitated access to outside capital or loans.

In terms of political power, Belair is also lacking. Instead, the dreaded tonton makout represent the state and dominate the neighborhood politically and socially (many a makout were also Vodou priests with sway and other sources of power in the area). The author also explains how Vodou was central to Duvalierism in Belair because it was through Vodou that many lakous and families were oriented, which meant using the houngan as a makout and neighborhood spy reinforced the authority of the state. Laguerre also suggests that those representing Duvalier in Belair had an incentive to not start new projects or innovative programs because a rise of their popularity in the neighborhood could be interpreted as a threat or attempt to make Duvalier look bad.

In terms of job prospects, most men were unemployed, a few toiled as skilled workers or artisans, and some found factory jobs outside the neighborhood, but this only perpetuates their dependency since the forms of employment available to residents were often low income to begin with. The rural lakou also survived rural to urban migration in Belair, becoming a dispersed urban family structure. But infiltration of the lakou through Vodou priests, local officials, and the broader dependency of the community on the rest of the city weakened any attempts to overthrow the existing order. The genius of Duvalierism was its ability to infiltrate nearly every aspect of Haitian society, and in slums like Upper Belair, that included Vodou, which stood at the center for many families and community functions.

Through the lens of dependency theory, one can clearly see how Upper Belair is symptomatic of broader patterns of Haitian, Caribbean, and 'Third World' dependency and underdevelopment. As in the previous review I wrote for The Military and Society in Haiti, a fascinating project to continue Laguerre's research in Belair would be of interest for post-1986. Without Duvalier, how has that 'liberated' political discourse and action in the neighborhood? Are there any new ways in which areas like Belair of Port-au-Prince are, presumably, still on the periphery? From personal experience in Port-au-Prince, it seems importers and wholesalers still pull the strings while the neighborhood retailers and consumers pay more with less means.

The Military and Society in Haiti

“This book is a structural and hermeneutic analysis of civil-military relations in Haiti as canvassed through the magnifying lenses of a social anthropologist. My interest in studying this aspect of the security system in Haiti began to develop after the collapse of the Duvalier dynasty, when I reached the conclusion that one cannot understand the behavior of the Haitian political system without paying attention to the military. After all, it is an empirical fact that the majority of Haitian presidential regimes have been headed by generals. This observation leads us to study the military not simply as bureaucracy but also as government.”

Laguerre's analysis of the role of the military in Haitian society is rooted in an equilibrium theory of civil-military relations wherein the stability of  a political system capable of preventing military intervention is the result of 3 sets of balanced relationships, premised on 3 relationships: between military and civil society, between the military and civil government, and between the civil society and civilian government. Grounding his approach in this equilibrium theory, Laguerre's structural analysis is encompassing of the dynamics of civil and military society in Haiti. 

In order to examine the exchange between the military and civil society in Haiti as an interstate system, Laguerre studies the historical evolution of the military in Haiti, which, as he illustrates, was never powerful enough to act on its own without civil society (just as distinctions between civil and military rule were often blurred or unclear). Indeed, Laguerre discusses numerous examples of the overlap in this interstate system of Haiti, such as Masonic groups, military officials holding power in civil society and vice versa, family ties, businesses, and professions.

Due to social segmentation along class, color, and regional lines, the interstate system exhibited some of the weaknesses of the Haitian state apparatus that allowed factions from the military and/or civil society to capitalize on or spark political instability. Furthermore, as a result of the Haitian Revolution, this military state system emerged as the earliest political model, which evolved into a series of military dictators who ruled in Port-au-Prince but used lower ranking military leaders to administer the rest of the country, a process that contributed to regional competition and coups.

Thus, the various coups that characterized Haiti from 1843-1915, or perhaps, the political instability throughout its history, can be seen as rooted in the failure of a balance between military and civil society, civil society and civilian goverment, and civil society and civilian government. Indeed, Mimi Sheller has made similar arguments about the problems of the Haitian state system from the Revolution to now: the failure of the civil society and civilian government to subordinate the military appartus to civilian interests. Nothing serves to demonstrate this better than directly from Laguerre describing the 19th century military in Haiti on page 18:

The central argument is that because the army served both as the government and a bureaucratic institution of the state and because of the militarization of civil society, the coup d’etat was the outcome of an alliance between regional military units and segments of the civilian population under their aegis. The coup d’etat came about during a crisis period when the government was loosing its support from at least a regional military unit and a segment of the general civilian population; Therefore civilian support is seen as an important factor for the success of a coup d’etat.

Changes wrought by US Occupation eroded some of the militarization of civil government and strengthened political centralization of the military and government in Port-au-Prince (US Occupation also professionalized the military, profoundly transforming it from the largely unprofessional 19th century Haitian army). This played a role in the weakening of regional demarcations that contributed to instability and the frequency of coup d'etats. Laguerre argues that the rise of civilian militias under Duvalier further counterbalanced the supremacy of the military, but Baby Doc's changes in Duvalierism brought the military/state dynamic further into the center, thereby paving the way for the military to eventually have the power to stage another coup in 1986.

Laguerre's book adequately and with great detail eludicates the motivations and structural inadequecies that fueled political instability and the lack of democratization in Haiti. The conflict over the 'spoils' of the presidency, the willingness of civil Haitian elites and power-brokers to form coalitions with certain military leaders for power, the high rates of coups and rebellions, weaker military centralization and professionalization encouraged corruption, and the need to maintain and protect Haitian sovereignty in the first place (though the Haitian military was for more engaged in attacks on Haiti rather than external enemies) combined to prevent Haitian democratization and development. Foreign businesses and legations backing coups, and civil elites willing to side with various factions of the military also contributed to the predicament of cyclic coups and regional conflicts that characterized Haiti before 1915. Laguerre describes the military/civil relationship as being altered by Occupation, but the basic systemic problems remained in place or worsened as centralization in Port-au-Prince and the reconstituted Haitian army (Garde) were more organized, but no less corrupt as the institution took on a bureaucratic form.

This is not to suggest the military could not assume a 'guardian' relationship with civil society, and the 1940s and 1950s saw just that as broad-based military-civil coalitions unseated Lescot and propped up successors. According to Laguerre, Papa Doc depoliticized the military by attaining supremacy over it, and through his paramilitary organization, was able to draw in military and civilian society. By 1986, the military-civil dynamic reverted to a stronger military, which is partly analyzed by Laguerre for the late '80s. One would love to see read Laguerre's opinions on what followed in the 1990s with Raoul Cedras, the elimination of Haiti's army, and conditions on the ground today as Martelly has voiced a wish to revive the Haitian army. An interesting follow-up to Laguerre's work on Haiti from Aristide to Martelly would be enlightening since former military officials and paramilitary groups have clearly engaged in human rights abuses and violence for political ends. The same dynamic continues as descendants of the Haitian military with civil class and political allies continue to subordinate the development of democratization.

Other interesting aspects of the text abound. Laguerre even discusses the role of Vodou in the Haitian military (as a source of power, divine providence and legitimacy for military leaders such as Merisier Jeannis, Hyppolite, and Henri Christophe). Specific praetorian guards, military specialization, military academies, the institutionalization of corruption and abuse, and how the militarized governance fostered endemic instability are convincingly explained. One can see how Firmin's goals in reforming Haiti's politics failed in the face of increasing instability and economic decline, and how even he was forced to take a military title for his unsucessful attempts to become President.