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Vodou Research Paper

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What do you know about Vodou? Your first thoughts are probably voodoo dolls, zombies, and witches with semi-racist accents, but little of that actually represents Vodou. First and foremost, Vodou is not black magic; “Voodoo Dolls” are a Hollywood invention made to sell movie tickets. Vodou is, in fact, a syncretic religion combining aspects of Roman Catholicism, West African Vodun, and a little bit of Native American spirituality. The means by which this synthesis arose is actually quite amazing. The history of Vodou is one of preservation, adaptation, and transformation in the face of fervent, Catholic hegemony.
Over the 16th and 17th centuries, Spain and France fought over the island of Hispaniola (relatively big island in the Caribbean) …show more content…

In the woods of Bois Caïman, slave representatives from several plantations all met under the cover of darkness to perform their rituals and complain about their masters. In the heat of the moment, a slave named Cécile Fatiman, reportedly possessed by the spirit of Ezili Dantor (essentially the Black Madonna), did what any sane person would do and sacrificed a black pig. In the course of these events, everyone there pledged to free themselves of their white oppressors. What followed was the most successful slave revolution in history, with the Africans managing to completely overthrow the French government in Haiti. For a brief time, Vodou prospered in the Haitian republic. Europe, however, refused to recognize the young nation and boycotted it, believing that the Haitians won through the use of devil magic. The Haitian economy, subsequently, collapsed. Desperate to appear as good Christians, the revolutionaries distanced themselves from Vodou, and eventually outlawed it in Haiti as a whole. Once again, Vodou went underground and did so up until 1987, when a constitutional amendment declared legal discrimination a hindrance to religious freedom. These turbulent times for Vodouisants scared many practitioners, causing them to immigrate throughout the Americas, with many settling in New Orleans. As the Vodou faith dispersed, each region began to develop

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10,000 Haitian immigrants flood Louisiana in 1809-1810 and bring their ancient African religion & Voodoo Their arrival marked the beginning of “organized Voodoo” in Louisiana. It gave a “pure” Voodoo stream as the Haitian blacks had retained their ancient worship almost completely.11 And they appeared to have strengthened the ranks of Afro-Creole spiritual practitioners by merging seamlessly into the already existing Louisiana Voodoo traditions.12 They also may have contributed to the fact that Haiti and Louisiana share the term “Vodou” (regardless of how it is spelled) as the defining term for their Africa-derived syncretistic traditions with French Catholicism.13 Interestingly, like the parallel Pentecostals, many of these Haitians were “snake worshippers” and devotees of Voodoo.14

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Straight from the east side of Scotland is where Cinqo Slash, full-blood Mexican who grew up in Scotland. Cinqo lived in an orphanage in Oxgangs which was known as a 'unit '. However, at this point in Cinqo 's life he was known by the alias of 'Soapy '. Cinqo didn 't feel like he was living the life he wanted due to being the only different person in Scotland, because all the other kids had a 'stabby stabby ' attitude about them; always caring blades, you could spot them a mile away, Nike and Adiddas tracksuits, joints hanging out their mouths as the pollute the streets with their 'waccy bacci '. With Cinqo living in a unit and not a real father figure to teach him how to be a man, he was gathered into a gang, a feared gang among the parts he stayed, passed down by their pre-accesors; they called it Bar-OX, we called it mYo.

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1462 Words | 6 Pages

Word count: 1476 Above: A painting of the Battle of Puebla, which took place in the Second French Intervention of Mexico (hereinafter called the Second French Intervention). Unknown Name, Public Domain. Further information found in bibliography.

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950 Words | 4 Pages

¥ The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), alluded frequently as "a world-authentic procedure in its own privilege," was a slave revolt that occurred in what was then the French state of Saint-Domingue. It finished with the disposal of subjugation and the establishing of the Republic of Haiti. The Haitian Revolution is comprehensively known as the main slave uprising that prompted the establishing of an American state free from subjection and ruled by non-whites and previous captives. With the expanding number of ¥ Haitian Revolutionary Studies in the most recent couple of decades, it has turned out to be clear that the occasion was a vital turning point in the histories of the Atlantic World.[3] The legacy of the Revolution was that it tested long-held

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774 Words | 4 Pages

Due to these dumb and unfair rules it had left the Haitians quiet and hopeless. In the story it states, “Under her breath, my mother is cursing this monster cursing this monster who drags thousands of women out on the hot streets to venerate

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485 Words | 2 Pages

This chapter addresses the central argument that African history and the lives of Africans are often dismissed. For example, the author underlines that approximately 50,000 African captives were taken to the Dutch Caribbean while 1,600,000 were sent to the French Caribbean. In addition, Painter provides excerpts from the memoirs of ex-slaves, Equiano and Ayuba in which they recount their personal experience as slaves. This is important because the author carefully presents the topic of slaves as not just numbers, but as individual people. In contrast, in my high school’s world history class, I can profoundly recall reading an excerpt from a European man in the early colonialism period which described his experience when he first encountered the African people.

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1156 Words | 5 Pages

It was taken by inconsiderate barbarous tyrants of France. So, Haitians took matter into their own hands. The Haitians wanted the French out of Haiti once and for all. No exceptions. They went to drastic measure to have Haiti French-free.

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The Louisiana Purchase was a purchase of the Louisiana Territory bought by President Thomas Jefferson from France without saying anything to anyone except he had the help of Robert R. Livingston, and James Monroe, who went to France to make the deal for Louisiana Territory. Jefferson bought approximately 827,000 square miles of land for $15 million dollars. This was the biggest purchase that had been ever made. He thought this was the best decision for the future growth of the United States. This purchase of the Louisiana Territory seemed like a good thing for the United States, but not everyone was happy about it.

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1244 Words | 5 Pages

However, Haiti was an entirely unexpected circumstance. Haiti was a province of France and was misused for its monetary purposes and as a noteworthy market slave exchange. Consequently, it was under a remote control that had no goal of giving rights or freedom to the slaves. So, when France began writing its Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, it started many minor slave rebellions, eventually causing

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781 Words | 4 Pages

L’Ouverture hoped to gain full independence and liberation of slaves on the entire island of Haiti. However, France had no intention of letting Haiti go free. When Napoleon Bonaparte sent troops to reclaim Haiti for France, he failed because his troops died from yellow fever. As a result, the independent nation of Haiti was born. The outcome of the Haitian Revolution was in favor of the slaves on the island because they gained their freedom from the French and Spanish.

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1335 Words | 6 Pages

The Dominican government started cultural campaigns and used the Catholic Church as an attempt to fight against Haitian Voodoo, this with the purpose to enforce Dominicans cultural ideals and to remove any Haitian sentiment. In October 1937, the intensification of this racial conflict resulted in mass killings in which Dominican dictator, Trujillo, massacred more than 25,000 Haitians along the border. “Trujillo’s soldiers used their guns to intimidate but not to kill. For that, they used machetes, knives, picks, and shovels so as not to leave bullets in the corpses” (Wucker 48). If they would use machetes and knives, there would be no prove that the soldiers were who assassinated these people, instead, it would be easier to

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629 Words | 3 Pages

A large portion of the population in Haiti follow the Roman Catholic Religion, however, there is an understanding that Voodoo may be the National Religion of Haiti. In the

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995 Words | 4 Pages

Additionally, Haitian slaves, free people of color, and French planted continued to pour into Louisiana following the Haitian Revolution. Exposure to revolutionary ideas were undoubtedly a major contributing factor in the Revolt of 1811, which consisted of slaves from St. Charles, St. John the Baptist, and Orleans parishes revolting against the brutal work on sugarcane plantations. This revolt led to the introduction of new slave codes, similar to the French Code Noir, to restrict the rights of enslaved

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546 Words | 3 Pages

Equiano’s narrative not only opens doors to ending slavery, but gives us some clear insight about the many struggles the slaves endure. “Equaino Olaudah was born in the mid-1700s, in the tribe of Ibo in the village of Essaka (Benin) from the kingdom of Benin which is southeastern Nigeria, West Africa”. According to the author, “Equiano was captured by black slave raider at age 11or 12, then he and his sister were kidnapped. After he and his sister were kidnapped, they were separated, he spent months in the administration of a dark ruler, whose treatment of him was mellow compared and the ruthlessness of the British slave merchants to whom he was sold before long. “He was taken to Barbados in West Indies by the slave merchants, however, he was not sold there, the traders took him to America, he was bought by a Virginia plantation owner in America”.

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1187 Words | 5 Pages

To start, the Haitian Revolution was started due to a variety of factors. But probably the most important one was slavery and oppression that was forced upon peoples from Africa who were imported to Haiti (Then Saint Domingue) and discriminated against even if they were free, just because of the color of their skin. To give context, from the years before 1791, slavery was incredibly harsh against slaves. The perpetrators of the cruelty were the French because they viewed themselves as superior and sons of the French Revolution that overthrew an oppressive government in France.

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