Demonizing Democracy:
Christianity vs. Vodoun, and the Politics of Religion in Haiti
By Richard Sanders, editor,
Press for Conversion! and coordinator,
Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade.
(See also "What
is Vodoun?"
and "CIDA’S
Affinity with Elite and Blindspot for Vodoun.")
When it comes to politics in Haiti, religion is often the unspoken elephant in the room.
Understanding the pivotal role—for both “good” and “evil”—played by religious institutions in the struggle for political power in Haiti, can help to explain much about the slavery, dictatorships, propaganda and betrayals that have all-too-often characterised this country’s tormented history.
Revolution!
To begin with, Vodoun is credited or blamed—depending on one’s religious and political worldviews—for playing a major part in the overthrow of France’s colonial regime in Haiti. In 1791, when slaves gathered to organize another uprising, they performed a Vodoun ritual and
“sealed a sacred pact, swearing to die rather than live under the misery of the slave system. ... [A] week later, a slave rebellion began, quickly spreading across the whole colony. The rebellion became a revolution, and, over the course of twelve years,...half a million black slaves fought and defeated the armies of France, Spain and Britain. Slavery was abolished, and, in 1804, Haiti became the world’s first black republic.”1
This proud Haitian history is seen rather differently by some Christians, like Reverend Tom Barrett, the American editor and publisher of Conservative Truth. Within two weeks of the 2004 coup that violently and illegally deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on the bicentennial of Haiti’s founding, Barrett used his fundamentalism to desecrate Haiti’s heritage, demonize its most widespread and beloved religion, and to sanctify the vicious regime change that had just robbed Haitians of their duly-elected government:
“[T]he nation of Haiti was dedicated to Satan 200 years ago. On August 14, 1791, a group of houngans [Vodoun priests] ...made a pact with the Devil.... They sacrificed a black pig in a voodoo ritual [and]....asked Satan for his help in liberating Haiti from the French. In exchange, the voodoo priests offered to give the country to Satan for 200 years and swore to serve him. On January 1, 1804, the nation of Haiti was born and thus began a new demonic tyranny.”2
Origins of the Conflict
Barrett’s bigoted ethnocentrism is nothing new. It belies a religious conflict with deep roots that are gnarled together through the five centuries since European crusaders brought genocide, slavery and Christianity to the New World. Their first point of contact with America was Hispanola, the island on which Haiti is now the western portion.
Sponsored by the Catholic monarchs of Spain, Christopher Columbus and his conquistadores “discovered” Haiti in 1492. The island was soon a source of gold and slaves for Europe and as his journal notes:
“From here one might send, in the name of the Holy Trinity, as many slaves as could be sold.... [I]t appears that we could sell four thousand slaves, who might be worth twenty million and more.”3
Because Catholic law forbade the enslavement of Christians, Columbus would not allow the baptism of native people.4 Three decades later, with the brutal annihilation of the island’s entire aboriginal population, its Christian conquerors began importing shipments of African slaves to Haiti. Thus began the horror-filled history of the infamous transatlantic slave trade.
French settlers started occupying the island in 1625 and Spain was eventually forced to cede Haiti to France in 1697. Because French colonists knew that Vodoun was a “focus of resistance to and a rejection of Christian, white supremacy,” they “tried, without success, to stamp it out.”5 France enforced its Code Noire laws stipulating that “All slaves in our Islands will be baptized and instructed in the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman religion” and that
“We forbid any public exercise of any religion other than the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman; we wish that the offenders be punished as rebels and disobedient to our orders.”6
The Revolution Betrays Vodoun
After Haiti’s revolution, the colony’s all-white Catholic clergy—who had always been sent from Europe—went home and the Vatican cut all relations with the new republic.7 During “the Schism,” the U.S., Britain, France and other world powers placed an economic embargo on Haiti. And, Vodoun faced repression from Haiti’s elite which treated it as a pariah religion. It wasn’t long before the laws of independent Haiti expressly banned Vodoun practice. This was the case from 1835 until 1987.8
After its slave-led revolution, Haiti’s more prosperous classes still
“sided with French culture. From the colonial period on the Haitian mulatto and black bourgeoisie have embraced the Catholic religion, European culture, French language and Western ways.”9
But, while Haiti’s elite still
“looked to France and to Catholicism for its cultural and religious identity, ...the majority of the population, living as peasant farmers..., developed a way of life and a system of beliefs drawing on African traditions.”10
In 1860, the Vatican restored relations with the Haitian state and Catholicism was decreed as Haiti’s official state religion. With the signing of this concordat, “the Church began a long on-again, off-again campaign against Voodoo.”11
Anti-Vodoun Pogroms
These periodic campaigns to uproot and “cleanse” Haitian society of its African religious heritage were genocidal cultural pogroms, involving horrible acts of cruelty perpetuated against Vodoun practitioners. One particularly vicious period occurred during the direct military occupation of Haiti by the U.S. Marines (1915-1934). At that time, the Americans, “with the support of the French Catholic clergy,” attempted “to eradicate the practice of Vodou.”12
Eventually, this history of persecution “culminating in an all out war” called the “anti-superstition campaign.”’13 This drive against Vodoun reached a frenzied peak between 1939 and 1942.14 Colluding with Haitian authorities, the Catholic Church targeted Vodoun priests as “the principal slave of Satan.”15 One French missionary who “enthusiastically welcomed” this effort was Roger Riou, whose autobiography describes how he led groups of vigilantes who demolished sacred Vodoun symbols and places of worship. Riou was among those who also ignorantly blamed Vodoun for “Haitian poverty and underdevelopment.”16
This Catholic crusade was to
“‘cleanse’ the country of ‘abominations’ and ‘superstitions,’... destroy vodou temples; burn cult icons, drums and sacred objects; and imprison recalcitrant Vodou priests and priestesses... [E]very Catholic was enjoined to take an ‘oath of rejection’ and to publically repudiate vodou practices as satanic.”17
In the process of waging this “all out physical, holy war,” Vodoun leaders were jailed, beaten, “some say killed,”18 and
“[t]housands of pre-Columbian artifacts kept in the hounfò [Vodoun temples] were either destroyed or shipped to [museums in] France.”19
Christ’s “Chosen One” plays the Devil
It was not long before Dr. François “Papa Doc” Duvalier entered the scene, declaring himself “President for Life.” Adept in the use of religious symbolism, he even “instigated a graffiti campaign which baldly claimed that ‘Duvalier is a god.’”20
During his brutal dictatorship (1957-1971), “Papa Doc” cunningly manipulated popular Vodoun beliefs to tighten his grip on power. Tapping into deeply-seated Haitian fears by “exploiting his knowledge of Vodou,” he “deliberately emulated Bawon Samdi,”21 the Vodoun Spirit of the Dead:22
“With his black clothes, top hat and other-worldly aura, he aped the style of Baron Samedi, a particularly malevolent voodoo deity.... Image became reality, as the fact that Papa Doc resembled this spirit edged into the conviction that he was actually a god in human form.”23
Besides employing Vodoun symbols to create a climate of fear,24 Duvalier used gestapo-like death squads to terrorize his opponents. Soaked in Vodoun imagery, these Tontons Macoutes were named after a Haitian bogey man that punished children.
But Duvalier also cleverly drew heavily upon Christian traditions as well. For instance, the regime’s
“most famous propaganda image shows a standing Jesus Christ with his right hand on a seated Papa Doc’s shoulder with the caption ‘I have chosen him.’”25
Despite his open pretence at being a Vodoun spirit, most of Haiti’s Catholic elite avidly supported Duvalier’s reign of terror. As Aristide wrote:
“In the 29 years of the Duvalier family dictatorship,...bishops and Macoutes walked arm in arm, defending the same causes, but using a different vocabulary to mask their collusion for the benefit of the oligarchy.”26
Not mincing his words, Aristide identified Duvalierists within the Church hierarchy, like Archbishop Francois-Wolff Ligonde, who he called “a zealous servant of Macoutism.”27 For example, in 1980, Ligonde happily presided at the opulent Catholic wedding of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier.28
In 1986, Duvalier Jr. was finally driven out of Haiti with the help of Vodoun adherents and progressive Catholics alike. Although in the following year a new Haitian constitution stripped away much of Catholicism’s status as the country’s official faith, the Church retained “its traditional primacy among the country’s religions.”29
New Threats:
Communism, Liberation Theology and Democracy
Among the Catholics who helped rid Haiti of the Duvaliers, was Father Aristide from the “Popular Church” known as Ti -légliz.30 This widespread grassroots movement, inspired by Latin American liberation theology, melded “the teachings of Christ with inspiring the poor to organize and resist their oppression.”31 This “Little Church” movement was equally threatening to wealthy, foreign-backed political elite and the Catholic establishment that went on to promote Duvalierism without Duvalier. On the day after “Baby Doc” finally fled, Haiti’s Bishop François Gayot warned in a mass that “From now on, the danger we have to watch out for is communism.’”32
Many in Haiti’s elite saw Aristide as a communist threat and he was also denounced with that label by the U.S. government.33 Undeterred, Aristide continued to point the finger at “the major centers of power in Haiti including the President, military, judiciary, elites and Church hierarchy, and beyond, to the United States.”34
This behaviour was far too radical for the Catholic hierarchy and in 1988, Aristide received a “written warning not to take part in politics” from “the Vatican, the Salesian Order, the Papal Nuncio [the Pope’s representative in Haiti]..., and the CHB [Conference of Haitian Bishops].”35 Aristide’s Salesian order soon clamped down with a decree accusing him of “incitement to hatred and violence, and a glorifying of class struggle.”36
Despite this, Haitians empowered Aristide in the undisputed landslide victory of 1990 when he became Haiti’s first fairly-elected president. This led the Duvalierist Archbishop Ligondé to warn from the pulpit of Port-au-Prince’s cathedral that Haiti could soon become “an authoritarian police regime.” He asked: “Is a Socialist Bolshevism going to triumph?”37 The right-wing American Heritage Foundation was also outraged, saying Aristide “may be steering Haiti toward a communist dictatorship.”38
With liberation theology thus “elevated to public policy,” Aristide faced an array of “powerful forces in Haiti, including the Catholic hierarchy, the military and the elites.”39 Political powers in Washington and the CIA’s covert forces based in Langley, Virginia, were also in league with these rabidly antiAristide forces:
“When asked why the CIA might have sought to oppose Aristide, a senior official with the Senate Intelligence Committee stated that ‘Liberation theology proponents are not too popular at the agency. Maybe second only to the Vatican for not liking liberation theology are the people at Langley.’”40
Exorcising
Haiti, Twice:
Two Anti-Aristide Coups
Not surprisingly, Haiti’s fledgling democracy did not last. Within months, Aristide was overthrown in a CIA-backed coup that killed thousands. Haiti’s junta was so vicious and so blatantly undemocratic that only one state in the whole global community gave it diplomatic support. It was not the U.S., but the Vatican that “became the only state to recognize the military regime.”41 And, Church authorities in Rome “never spoke out against the dictatorship nor called for the return of President Aristide.”42 In fact, when a widespread international movement demanded the rightful president’s return to power, the idea was opposed outright by Haiti’s eleven bishops. They openly stated that any U.S. intervention to restore Aristide would be “scandalous and immoral” and “makes us tremble with indignation.” So, not only had the Catholic “hierarchy...tried to prevent Father Aristide from running for office,” and then “condemned his presidency before he was even sworn in,” they also “supported the military leaders who overthrew him and opposed American efforts to restore him to power.”43
Despite opposition from Haiti’s Catholic bishops, President Bill Clinton did empower U.S. Marines to return the diminutive priest to power in 1994. However, this was only after Aristide had agreed to implement some of the business-friendly dictates of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. While in Haiti, the U.S. military did not even try to disarm the elite-backed death squads. However, they did seize 160,000 secret documents from offices of the death squad and military rulers that were the American government’s close allies in Haiti. By stealing and withholding these records detailing decades of state-sponsored violence in Haiti, the U.S. thwarted efforts by Aristide’s government to bring these American-backed terrorists to justice.44
Over the following years, before the next coup against them in 2004, Aristide and his Lavalas party government managed to champion many causes on behalf of Haiti’s impoverished majority. One of the actions that particularly upset Haiti’s Catholic elite, was Aristide’s willingness to invoke the obvious truth that Vodoun is an “ancestral religion” and “an essential part of national identity.”45 But his government’s offence was thought to have gone even farther when it gave official recognition to Vodoun as a legitimate religion. The Catholic hierarchy “reacted with alarm” that Vodoun practitioners would be legally allowed to perform baptisms and marriages.46 The bishop of Port-au-Prince, Msgr. Joseph Lafontant condemned the policy as “excessive,” calling it “an obvious mistake.”47 Other Christians have been far less diplomatic.
Demonizing the Diminutive Priest
Rev. Doug Anderson, an American raised by a missionary family in Haiti—who was himself a missionary there until 1990—responded that “Haiti is the only country in the entire world that has dedicated its government to Satan.” And, Rev. Tom Barrett proclaimed that Haiti’s leaders “make no attempt to hide their allegiance to Satan,” it is “a government of the devil, by the devil, and for the devil.”48
Christian efforts to literally demonize the Haitian masses, their uniquely syncretized African religion and their choice of government are of course patently ridiculous. However, these slurs are potent linguistic weapons in the arsenal against Haitian democracy and Vodoun. And, such attacks are not restricted to religious fanatics in the U.S., they have also been wielded by their Haitian allies.
Just before the coup in 2004, when U.S.-backed former military, police and death squad members were terrorising the country,
“rebel leader Guy Philippe accused Aristide of sacrificing children in a voodoo ceremony—a fabrication presented as fact on some private radio stations.”49
Playing to the farcical prejudices that permeate the Haitian elite’s view of both Vodoun and Aristide,
“Philippe told a mob of his supporters he had discovered small coffins which contained dead babies. He said President Aristide had sacrificed the babies in a ‘black voodoo ceremony.’ Haitian radio [owned by the county’s corporate elite] reported the story as a fact.”50
Witch hunt by the Enemies of Democracy
When Aristide and thousands in Haiti’s popular government were then illegally removed from power, the elite’s outrageous propaganda was actually taken seriously by the coup-empowered regime. The de facto government’s CIDA-funded “Department of Justice” even used these outrageous rumours to arrest and illegally imprison prominent supporters of Aristide’s Lavalas government. In mid-2004, a U.S. human rights delegation to Haiti reported that:
“Members of Fanmi Lavalas have been using the word witch-hunt to describe the ongoing repression of Lavalas.... We were shocked to find that this term can be taken literally. While we were in Haiti, a wild story was being circulated by the media and Haitian authorities. It claimed that a baby was sacrificed during a ceremony attended by many members of Lavalas in the year 2000. While we initially took this to be at the level of tabloid sensationalism, it became clear that this ludicrous charge is being pursued by the current de facto authorities.
“On three occasions individuals have gone on National Television, reportedly at the behest of the Minister of Justice, to describe their participation at this so-called ceremony. Despite the fact that the stories told by these individuals are not even consistent,... Haitian authorities are using these out of court, unverified statements as the basis for issuing arrest warrants for Lavalas officials. These charges are also the justification for continuing to hold [prominent Lavalas activist and community leader] Annette Auguste.”51
Two particularly virulent enemies of Haitian democracy who have pushed these absurd, religious smear campaigns are Yves A.Isidor, a professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, and Raymond Joseph a former Wall Street Journal financial reporter who became the 2004 coup-regime’s ambassador in Washington. Isidor, who accused Ms. Auguste of being Aristide’s “voodoo medium,” said she bathed him in human blood to place a curse George W.Bush and to ensure the election of Al Gore in 2000. Isidor’s grotesque story was later embellished by Joseph who said that as part of their Vodoun ritual, a newborn baby was crushed with a heavy pestle in a giant mortar.52
The most well-connected figure who aided and abetted this particular psychological warfare campaign is Stanley Lucas, director of the right-wing Washington Democracy Project’s program on Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2007, this long-time Haitian representative of the U.S. government-funded International Republican Institute, disseminated extravagantly detailed slander regarding the alleged Vodoun infanticide that was supposedly engaged in by President Aristide and his closest political allies.53
To establish his credentials and lend credibility to these outrageous lies, Lucas’ website displayed dozens of photographs of himself posing with business executives, Premier Jean Charest, U.S.-backed heads of state, Afghan “tribal leaders,” U.S. senators, congressmen, ambassadors, three former U.S. Secretaries of State, a former National Security Advisor, a former CIA director, and other such so-called “friends” of Haiti.54
184 Ways to Destabilize Haiti
The source relied upon by Lucas for his fable, called “Aristide and the Baby,” was a lengthy 2004 interview on Vision 2000, one of Haiti’s right-wing radio stations. Vision 2000 is owned by Reginald Boulos—president of Haiti’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, is a multimillionaire of middle eastern heritage who helped lead Haiti’s most powerful anti-Aristide alliance—the Group of 184 (G184). The G184’s efforts to destabilize Aristide’s government took many forms but their biggest and most widely-publicised protest campaign was the so-called “Caravan of Hope.” This marathon anti-Aristide drive to promote their CIDA-funded “social contract,” culminated in a highly provocative incident staged at the Catholic Church’s meeting centre in Cité Soleil, one of the poorest areas of Port-au-Prince.55
Many of Haiti’s Catholic bishops publicly called for Aristide’s resignation after the so-called “Black Friday” incident in late 2003, when Aristide supporters were falsely blamed for initiating a violent confrontation at the university. (See “Black Friday”.)
The CIA’s World Factbook provided a list of Haiti’s main “Political pressure groups.” This CIA list of major groups that had opposed Aristide’s widely-popular government, predictably included the G184, the “Roman Catholic Church” and the “Protestant Federation of Haiti.”56
During the lead up to the 2004 coup, the G184 included numerous member organizations with obvious Christian affiliations, including:
Christian Foundation for the Social Development of Destitute Haitians
Christian Youth Action for Rural Development
Christ-King Youth Association
Development Association of God’s Chosen
Ecumenical Human Rights Center
Mother Theresa Foundation for Democracy
Organization of Young Haitian Christians
Peace and Justice Commission of the Catholic Church
Village of God Women’s Association
Youth Association of the Philadelphia Church of God at the Airport.57
One of these—the Ecumenical Human Rights Center—is run by Jean-Claude Bajeux, a founder and leader of the anti-Aristide, Konakom political party who coined the phrase “Operation Baghdad.” This label was used to great effect in a major propaganda effort by pro-coup forces to blame Lavalas activists for crimes that they did not commit. (See “Operation Baghdad.”)
Just before President Aristide was kidnapped and exiled in February 2004, foreign military forces occupied Haiti. Then—in collusion with the country’s religious, corporate and political elite—these foreign powers started an unconstitutional regime change process. The principal step in this illegal transition was to create a hand-picked clique called the “Council of Sages.” This seven-member council was appointed to select a new Prime Minister to replace the Lavalas Party’s Yvon Neptune—who was soon illegally arrested. (See "Prime Minister Yvon Neptune: CIDA’s Top Political Prisoner") The council’s undemocratically appointed Prime Minister then chose his Cabinet which quickly began to dismantle Aristide’s entire legitimate government. Officially represented on the coup regime’s so-called “Council of Sages,” which unravelled Haiti’s democracy, were official representatives of the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches.58
Vodoun: Haiti’s Whipping Boy
Unlike Haiti’s Catholic and Protestant churches, the Vodoun religion was not party to the illegal regime change of 2004. Quite the opposite. As the religion of the vast majority of destitute voters who had legally empowered Aristide through landslide electoral victories, Vodoun was obviously not supportive of the unconstitutional coup that deposed his government.
This contrast exemplifies the distinct roles that these religions have long played in Haiti’s agonizing history. As Max-G. Beauvoir, the founder of the Péristyle de Mariani, Vodoun Temple in Haiti, has put it:
“Roman Catholic priests and Protestant pastors of the many Christian denominations have set up the social climate in which the Vodoun populations of that country had to live.”59
Beauvoir goes on to explain that although Vodoun is Haiti’s primary religion, it has always been forced into a subservient role “by the imperialist and the neo-colonialist Nations of the Western hemisphere and their financial institutions.”60 This, he says:
“explains more than sufficiently the reason why an atmosphere of intolerance, of absolutism and of despotism has permeated all the political structures resulting in the condition of endemic underdevelopment which characterizes Haiti today.”61
Vodoun is still widely portrayed as a backwards cult characterised by “black” magic, devil worship and even human sacrifice. As a result of such sensationalised depictions of Vodoun as primitive and evil, this religion’s adherents have been subjected to prejudice not by Haiti’s wealthy elite, but by global audiences under the potent spell of Hollywood-inspired mass culture.
What’s more, unjust portrayals of Haiti’s most prevalent faith have long been used not only for religious persecution but for political witch hunts as well. The Vodoun label has thus provided a convenient pretext for scapegoating enemies of the corporate oligarchies that dominate Haiti.
The U.S. government’s State Department report on “religious freedom” during the 2004 coup period is a case in point. It ignores Haiti’s savage climate of oppression, and does its best to whitewash the situation with a heavily-cloaked allusion to the intense bigotry and oppression faced by Vodoun’s adherents. It states that “In many ways Roman Catholicism retains a position of honor” and that “Voodoo continues to be frowned upon by elite, conservative Catholics and Protestants.”62
Even the most cursory perusal of the role of Christianity in Haiti’s political history amply reveals that the country’s elite, and its colonial masters abroad, have done much more than merely “frown upon” Vodoun. The proponents of this African-based religion have, for centuries, been demonized, enslaved and blamed for a litany of crimes. And, Vodoun has been used as an excuse for the political persecution of those who dare to challenge the structural violence of Haiti’s status quo.
However, despite being subjected to centuries of brutal, near-genocidal attacks aimed at eliminating it, Vodoun continues to thrive. It is, without doubt, one of the most powerful unifying forces within Haiti’s rich cultural tradition, particularly among the continually disenfranchised poor who compose most of the country’s “civil society.”
Ever since Vodoun played a central role in bringing together Haiti’s enslaved masses in a successful revolution against colonial oppression, the potential has been there for it to restore the country’s historic role as a leading global force for justice and democracy. This is the key to understanding why Vodoun has long been vilified and demonized as a dangerous and threatening force by the domestic and foreign elites who hold Haiti’s democracy in such utter contempt.
References
1. Charles Arthur, “Reappraising Vodou,” Haiti Briefing, May 1998.
http://haitisupport.gn.apc.org/28b.html
2. Tom Barrett, “Government of the Devil, by the Devil, and for the Devil,” March 11, 2004.
http://www.americandaily.com/article/95
3. Howard Zinn, Howard Zinn on History, 2001. p.101.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=E0hkS_SYI5AC&pg=PA101&lpg=PA101&dq
4. Lisa Abend and Geoff Pingree, “Christopher Columbus: Man of Mystery,” Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 17, 2006.
http://www.avenir.com.mx/article.php?story=20061018082207579
5. Arthur, Op. Cit.
6. The Code Noir
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/317507/the_code_noir_as_a_french_colony_limited.html
7. Bob Corbett, Selected Voodoo terms
http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/voodoo/terms.htm
8. Kate Ramsey, “Performances of prohibition: Law, ‘superstition’ & national modernity in Haiti,” Dissertation Cultural Anthropology, Columbia Univ. 2002.
http://digitalcommons.libraries.columbia.edu/dissertations/AAI3048220/
9. Corbett, Op. cit.
10. Arthur, Op. cit.
11. Corbett, Op. cit.
12. History of Haiti
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Haiti
13. Corbett, Op. cit.
14. Ramsey, Op. cit.
15. David Nicholls, From Dessalines to Duvalier: Race, Colour, and National Independence in Haiti, 1996. p.182.
16. Roger Riou, The Island of My Life: From Petty Crime to Priestly Mission, 1975, p.145. Cited in Bob Corbett, “The anti-superstition campaign and Roger Riou in Haiti,” October 28, 1996.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/348.html
17. C.Hurbon, Voodoo - The Search for the Spirit, 1995, p.57. Cited in Brian Morris, Religion and Anthropology: A Critical Introduction, 2006.
http://books.google.ca/books?id=PguGB_uEQh4C&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq=
18. What is Vodou?
http://www.neworleansmistic.com/spells/primer/whatisvodou.htm
19. List of Haitian Presidents
http://www.opamizik.com/board/viewtopic.php?t=1762&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=20
20. David Hawkes, “Voodoo Politics: Tyranny and Enlightenment in Haiti and Britain,” Bad Subjects, February 1997.
http://bad.eserver.org/issues/1997/30/hawkes.html
21. Andrew Reding, Democracy and Human Rights in Haiti, 2004
http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/globalrights/carib/2004-Haiti.pdf
23. Hawkes. Op Cit..
24. Reding, Op. cit.
25. Ibid.
26. Larry Rohter, “Mission to Haiti: Haiti’s Priest-President Faces a Hostile Catholic Hierarchy,” New York Times, September 28, 1994. \
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E03EED7103AF93BA1575AC0A962958260
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. International Religious Freedom Report 2003. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights & Labor, U.S. State Department.
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2003/24496.htm
30. Ibid.
31. William Blum, “Haiti 1986-1994: Who will rid me of this man?,” Killing Hope, 1998.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Haiti_KH.html
32. Anne Greene, “Religious Change in Haiti,” LASA Meeting, April 1997.
http://lasa.international.pitt.edu/LASA97/greene.pdf
33. Jean-Bertrand Aristide
http://www.answers.com/topic/jean-bertrand-aristide
34. Greene, Op. cit.
35. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, An Autobiography, 1993. p.71. Cited in Greene, Op. cit.
36. Ibid., p.105. Cited in Greene, Op. cit.
37. Rohter, Op.cit.
38. Michael Wilson, “Is Haiti Turning Into Another Cuba?,” Backgrounder Update, February 11, 1991.
http://www.heritage.org/Research/LatinAmerica/bu155.cfm
39. Greene, Op. cit.
40. Blum, Op. cit.
41. Greene, Op. cit.
42. Ibid.
43. Rohter, Op.cit.
44. U.S. Government Must Return Seized Haitian Documents, Human Rights Watch, September 16, 1999.
http://hrw.org/english/docs/1999/09/16/haiti1641.htm
45. Michael Norton, “Haiti Officially Sanctions Voodoo Cult,” St. Petersburg Times, April 11, 2003.
http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=9827
46. Origins of Voodoo
http://www.swagga.com/voodoo.htm
47. Carol J.Williams, “Haiti’s blessing for voodoo,” LA Times, August 4, 2003.
http://www.wwrn.org/article.php?idd=9521&sec=39&con=3
48. Barrett, Op. Cit.
49. Carlos Lauría and Jean-Roland Chery, Taking Sides
http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2004/haiti_7_04/haiti_7_04.html
50. Justin Felux, “Debunking the Media’s Lies about President Aristide,” March 14, 2004.
http://www.oplpeople.com/message/2139.html
51. Laura Flynn, Robert Roth and Leslie Fleming, Report of the Haiti Accompaniment Project, June 29-July 9, 2004.
http://www.haitiaction.net/News/hap6_29_4.html
52. Haitians Seized, Abused by U.S. Marines, Haiti Information Project report, May 13 2004.
http://www.blackcommentator.com/90/90_cover_haiti.html
53. Haiti: Aristide and the Baby
http://solutionshaiti.blogspot.com/2007_08_22_archive.html
54. Ibid.
55. “Dominican General Calls Haiti, with Destablization Growing, a ‘Threat’”, Häiti Progrès, July 16, 2003.
http://www.haitiprogres.com/2003/sm030716/eng07-16.html
57. Field Listing - Political pressure groups and leaders, The World Factbook, CIA
http://www.umsl.edu/services/govdocs/wofact2005/fields/2115.html
58. “Context Haiti,” Catalyst, Mar. 25, 2004.
http://www.catalyzerjournal.com/cnews/newsid/EplpkukFVlcgnHZCqO.php
59. What is the Temple of Yehwe?
http://www.vodou.org/whatis.htm
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. International Religious Freedom Report, Op cit.
The above article is from Press for Conversion! magazine, Issue
#63 (November 2008)
"
Previous issues of this
Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade publication include:
#62 "Putting the
Aid in Aiding and Abetting:
CIDA's Agents of Regime Change in Haiti's 2004 Coup"