We are going back to Brazil tomorrow. BO has planned some activity with human rights organisation for this afternoon. They warn us that there may be some groups here who are for the occupation and they would want to discuss with us. The discussion was held in a large school in Port au Prince. (.) About a hundred people listened as Toninho read the letter once more. Padre Joseph discussed with those who stand for the presence of Minustah “to fight violence”. He said that the first violence was to have no food, and that the neoliberal plan sustained by Minustah fomented violence. A peasant exposed the massacre of 139 people committed by a large estate owner in 1987, which has never been looked into. (.)
Several speakers raided the troops. We waited for those who would defend the occupation, but they did not turn up. Finally a historian spoke, one of the founders of the Haitian CP and she defended the presence of the troops “until conditions are met for the reorganisation of the armed forces”. Toninho answers that if occupation helped improvement in the country, Haiti would be the most developed country on earth. The opposite is true: the disaster is the outcome of occupations and pro imperialist dictatorships governing all these years.
We left in a hurry for we had a top-of-the-list cultural commitment: we wanted to know the voodoo. The father of Raquel Dominique, the representative of BO who has recently been to Brazil, is the head voodoo priest. That is where the dance and the music come from as well as an important part of their cultural traditions. Religion is just a part of it as everything else is the base for Haitian culture. It has been an important part of the Negro resistance in the days of struggle against slavery and for independence. Meetings to organise struggle were camouflaged with religious celebrations, as was when the first big Negro revolt was organised in 1791, led by Burcman, a gigantic Negro from the whereabouts of Le Cap (—)-
Max Boudoir has white hair, proud bearing and charming style. Gege, teacher at Sao Paulo and also Negro, asks about the most widespread image of voodoo, with dolls pricked with needles to hurt somebody. Max laughs and says that this exists only in Hollywood and that it is an invention of imperialism. I checked on that: there is nothing in the voodoo that has anything to do with it. It is a coarse lie meant to demonise Haitian Negro culture.
The totally white clothes are clearly reminiscent of candomble of Brazil. Around a great tree – as for all the voodoo ceremonies – drums are beaten at a fast rhythm. The singing and the dance begin to honour Simbi Ogun, the divinity of the waters. The song tells the story that comes from Africa, it describes the crossing of the sea on the slave boats and their arrival and then the slave work. They sing in Creole: “I cannot understand how God cannot understand how they humiliate us”. That is when something happens that in candomble we know as the “incorporation of a spirit”. In voodoo, the “spirit is the waking of the awareness, the birth of a leader for the struggle. A woman rolls around the tree. They tie handkerchiefs round their arms and hold large knives in their hands.
Now we can see the voodoo in a completely different form. Down came the white man’s mystification in the service of domination. The voodoo is rich culture and it is once again used as a tool of resistance of a nation.. Rachel, a leader of the BO, dances amidst the women in white. She invites us to dance as well. All of a sudden our entire team is dancing. After the dance, Gege makes an emotional thank-you speech in the name of all of us. Max Bouvouir hugs him and sings “ibose” (brothers). Men and women in white come to hug us singing “ibose”
