What Is The Voodoo Religion? Characteristics, History And Myths
It is certainly one of the great myths of all time When we hear the word voodoo, voodoo religion or the famous phrase “I’m going to give you voodoo”, it’s not that we think of anything positive exactly. Throughout history this belief has been presented to us as something evil, something related to the devil himself and that serves to harm the people we hate, especially physically. It’s a kind of spell, so it’s understood.
However, for just over a decade now, especially noting the year 2003 – the date on which the Voodoo religion became official in Haiti – we have begun to clarify what really derives from this mythology that has been distorted to the point of ridiculousness. , as experts point out. Millery Polyné and Elizabeth McAlister are two experts in the field who have helped carry out different historiographic studies to demystify the “bad press” that voodoo suffers from.
According to Polyné, an American of Haitian origin who arrived in the State of Florida (USA) in the nineties, when he was only 14 years old, he was already impressed by the comments and prejudices that were being reproduced when his person was present when socializing. “Even I didn’t know my own religion in depth,” says the author. It was as a result of those paradoxical moments when he decided to take advantage of his curiosity and study African American and Caribbean history, where he teaches classes as a professor at New York University.
As usually happens in this type of case, where ignorance and a poor projection of a distant culture is unattractive to be investigated, we quickly internalize the first thing that is offered to us behind a screen, especially if it is a series or movie. There are also hundreds of thousands of literary works that have not exactly helped to dispel these black legends that still haunt the voodoo religion.
Nothing could be further from pure reality, All the fantasy that has been generated by the aforementioned industry has been blatantly refuted It turns out that the origins of voodoo must be found in the period of the 16th and 17th centuries, when the European powers continued their efforts to colonize overseas areas to continue trading with slaves and import wealth from the Caribbean islands, such as tobacco, sugar or rum.
From the hand of French missionaries, the voodoo religion is a direct descendant of Roman Catholicism, and some of its precepts are shared with Western Christianity. They have a God who commands spirits to work on the visible earth through the flesh and blood human being. Curiously, voodoo does not believe in heaven or hell They simply believed in the good work and peace that the ancestors had entrusted to those who professed this religion.
An intentional manipulation
History always repeats itself and, as is often stated, it is written by the victors. And this was not going to be the exception. Taking into account that voodoo comes from the colonial era and slavery, black people who suffered these injustices took refuge in a religion that allowed them to maintain any glimmer of hope and comfort. It was at this time that the French waged an entire propaganda battle to prevent any type of revolution that would allow the emancipation of their lackeys.
Indeed, the voodoo religion was at times a revolutionary act that put imperialist forces in check on more than one occasion of the moment. For this reason, some influential global forces such as the Church, Haitian politicians and white scientists began to organize a criminalizing narrative against this belief. Satanic rites, carnivorous ceremonies and idolatry of monsters is the image that was exported from the island to the West.
After Haiti’s independence back in the 18th century, the poor locals couldn’t shake all this talk. Having suffered all kinds of humiliations by the French, it was the turn of the North Americans who, curiously, became independent from the English empire shortly before the Caribbeans. Faustin Wirkus, admiral of the US army, saw enormous potential in the riches to be exploited within Haiti, as well as installing permanent naval bases to dominate the seas of Central America.
The Haiti tsunami
The memory of the fatal natural events that the island suffered in 2010 is still fresh, when on a calm day a gigantic wave engulfed the entire coast, reaching the area full of hotels and tourist resorts located on the seafront. Currently, the area is still considered catastrophic, as well as the poorest country in the world according to a United Nations report.
Nor on that occasion were Haitians spared from suffering insults and slander for their condition of practicing the Voodoo religion. Without going any further, the American evangelist and controversial Pat Robertson stated that the natural disaster had been a punishment from God for having made a pact with the devil in 1791. Some unfortunate statements that do nothing more than incite hatred and racism towards a already very unfortunate population.
