15466: Hyppolite Pierre regarding Executive Order on Vaudou (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Hyppolite Pierre <hpierre@irsp.org>

It is still kind of intriguing to me, that the Haitian experts on Vaudou who
are on the list have not given their opinion on the recent "Executive Order"
by Haiti's president.

I would like to thank Kathy Grey (Mambo Rasin San Bout), for coming out and
once again making sensible suggestions. What I am hoping for, is that
Haiti's legislators will try to take up on this issue, and legislate on it.
I am sure that many of you may disagree with such a proposition but here are
some of the reasons why I would suggest we do this in Haiti.

Vaudou as a faith, encompasses both good and bad spirits; you use it for
what you need. We all know that a bókó is not a houngan, although they both
do or may have the same body of knowledge to either do good, or bad. How
then do we use the good in Vaudou to help the country move ahead, and
extirpate the bad from it? Do the legislators have open and also some closed
door hearings with the real experts in that faith, (i.e. the Mambos, the
Houngans, and the Bókós, and the intellectuals who've studied that faith
thoroughly), to see how they can separate the good from the bad to foster a
better cultural environment in Haiti for progess?

If you actually legislate on such an issue, and forbid people from using
Vaudou in a negative way, how then do you still preserve the
"negatively-used" knowledge in that faith? I personally believe that such
knowledge should still be preserved.

Although Vaudou is decentralized, as Kathy Grey explained, should not still
there be a large body that represents some kind of a central authority for
that faith? Otherwise, the danger is that anyone can do whatever s/he wants
in the name of that faith, while there is no one to either approve or
disapprove.

How do we from now on, preserve the artifacts used in a perystile, as
cultural icons? How do we make sure that Vaudou sites are preserved from
vandalism by mostly fundamentalist Christians, or some overzealous
Catholics?

As few of you may recall, a few years ago, Pasteur Joel Jeune, from a
Protestant Church in Waney 93, Rue Apollon, Carrefour, went to Bois-Caiman
and vandalized the site totally, thereby disrespecting the cultural and
historical value of a people.

How do we truly make Vaudou a respected and integral part of our culture,
which it needs to be? In other words, how do we truly make it "respectable"
to everyone by making morality one of the most important features of its
essence? So far as we know, one of the biggest problems to middle and upper
income Haitians (although we still do go to anba tončl when things are
rough), is that Vaudou is an evil force. How do you then help transform not
just the image, but the very focus of that faith from being a neutral and
potent force (because used for doing both good and bad), to an exclusively
positive force that can be used to help foster development in and of Haiti?

After all, no matter what we say or feel about Vaudou, it is truly an
integral part of Haiti's past and present history, culturally and otherwise.

Where are the experts on Vaudou on the list? Can you ladies and gentlemen,
guide us through here?

Best regards,
Hyppolite Pierre
IRSP
http://www.irsp.org