Word: voodoos
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...voodoo ceremony--most Haitians are Catholic, but voodoo practice is widespread--shows another form of the people's life-affirmation. The sacrifice of animals and the drinking of hot blood are brutal aspects of voodoo, but in essence the ceremony is a celebration. The villages gather together around the pounding voodoo drums, and the dancing and singing are frenzied...
...stripped to the waist, both black as the night, dance with torches in each hand. They pass the torches over their bodies and let the flames lick their faces. They walk on hot coals and seem to wash their bodies in the fire--which does not burn because the voodoo god protects his dancers...
Suddenly the spirit of an evil god possesses a young girl, who falls violently to the ground and rolls, screaming, onto the fire. The two dancers rush forward, pull her back from the flames, and hold her until the voodoo priest can drive out the spirit...
...voodoo may be lunacy, the religion may be primitive, and the market place unsanitary. But one can not help wondering if the Haitian people aren't able to relate to each other in a way that most Americans have forgotten...
Their loyalty, of course, has a basis in fear, the political fear of the vicious Tonton Macoute and the mystic fear that Duvalier's own voodoo practice has generated. He takes the name "Baron Samedi"--one of the manifestations of the voodoo deity--and in 1963, when he popularized the story that he had engineered Kennedy's assassination through voodoo, many Haitians believed...