Greetings in the name of God/Goddess, the ancestors, and the lwa! We reach out to you and to the devastated Republic of Haiti, as a spiritual bridge between souls, hearts, minds and hands.

Like George Washington and the cherry tree, apocryphal tales concerning historical events or personages creep into oral history. I am sure that most American readers can tell you that George Washington is supposed to have said, "I cannot tell a lie, it was I who chopped down that cherry tree!" This makes the incident no less a figment of a propagandist's imagination, however - it never happened.

There are actually several different politically motivated stories about the events at Bois Caiman. Some would claim, variously, that the events at Bois Caiman were a "pact with the devil", or that these events never really happened, or that they happened in a very different way from what oral history reports. I intend to present a little bit both sides of the debate, as objectively as possible, so that Vodouisants of all backgrounds can be better informed about this issue.

In the commonly held history, the story is that on the night of August 13-14, 1791, a large gathering of two hundred Africans took place near Milot in the north of Haiti, on the Mezy plantation - although this gathering is also said to have taken place at Bois Caiman. The reason for this confusion is that there were actually two meetings, not one. The first took place at the Mezy plantation August 13-14 and brought together two hundred people who planned an uprising. The second took place one week later at Bois Caiman, and included speeches, prayers, song, a religious ceremony and the sacred sacrifice of a Creole pig. During the ceremony, participants swore a blood oath to rise up and defeat their colonialist enslavers; and to keep the planned uprising a secret until the day of it's execution.

Was the ceremony at Bois Caiman a "pact with the devil"?

We can safely reject that idea on the basis alone that "the Devil" does not even exist in most African religions. Remember that most of the adults at Bois Caiman had been born in Africa, not Haiti, and came from many different ethnic groups and religious traditions. The ceremony was led by two people - Boukman Dutty, an African who had also been in slavery in Jamaica, and Mambo Marinette (NOT Cecile Fatima as some revisionists with axes to grind have claimed). She became possessed by the lwa Erzulie Dantor, sacrificed a black pig, and all present took their oath.

When the uprisings finally began, the Africans set fires to the cane fields in which they had been flogged and driven to exhaustion. The fires were so big they were seen at night in Miami, Florida. The ashes fell in Cuba! Some Africans protected whites who were kind to them, and many whites escaped on ships to New Orleans. Many more were killed. In the savagery that followed, people like Jean-Jacques Dessalines committed unbelievable atrocities, even slicing open the bellies of living pregnant white women, and replacing the fetus with the severed heads of their husbands. These atrocities were not necessary to obtain victory, and are sometimes blamed for a "curse on Haiti".

Once Haiti won independance, the simple fact that they had done so was seen as "demonic" by the world powers of the day. The Africans, many of whom came from militaristic and imperialistic kingdoms in Africa, had organized themselves and effectively fought off the French, who at that time were the very terror of Europe! People, African and European, believed in the "divine right of kings", so anyone who rebelled was by definition fighting against God's will. Thus the Africans of Haiti must have been on the side of Satan, in this way of thinking.

Haiti was then put under embargo for seventy years, during which the African traditions of her people took deep root in new soil. Later Catholic and more recent Protestant incursions have failed totally to eradicate the Vodou religion, even though murder, rape and arson were the tools employed. At some point, some vile Protestant pastor started the calumny about the Bois Caiman ceremony, and it was repeated until it became a sort of sick Protestant legend, repeated in a process of self-hypnosis but never, ever supported by facts.

Among the Vodouisant ninety per cent majority of contemporary Haitians, however, the Bois Caiman events became part of the national mythology, and have been represented over and over in art, song, and drama. So important is this to the national identity, that on August 6, 1998, three Protestant pastors were arrested at the historical site of Bois Caiman, Bwa Kayiman in Haitian Creole, for violating a court order banning them from the site, in order to avoid confrontations between Protestants and Vodouisants. The pastors had planned to "exorcise" the spirit of Haitian national hero, Houngan Boukman Dutty, from Bois Caiman, considered the birthplace of the Haitian Revolution. Bois Caiman was then declared a public trust by the Haitian government under President Rene Preval.

The response to Pat Robertson's repetition of this tired slur, on national media, provoked strong reactions from many communities:

A response to Pat Robertson's slur, from Haitian-American activist Hans Mardy, a very powerful statement:

University of Miami scholar refutes "pact with devil" as fabrication - Kate Ramsey, a researcher at the University of Miami, told CNN that "the legend of a Haitian deal with the devil dates back to the decades following its independence in 1804. It began with a Roman Catholic campaign against Vodou, the Afro-Haitian religion widely practiced in Haiti, and spread as anti-slavery movements gained ground in the Caribbean, Europe and America."

If you want to help Haiti, yes, give to charities including Vodou Aid. But beyond that, tell your pastor, your elected representatives, and your friends and neighbors that Haiti has no "pact with the devil", that seventy per cent of all Haitians were seriously malnourished even before the 2008 hurricanes that destroyed Haiti's slow-growing staple crops such as plantain and breadfruit, which can take over a year to bear; that ninety per cent of all Haitians are Vodouisants, that Haitians are your family and mine, our near neighbors. Refute any and all slanders, give generously, and listen to what the Haitian people and the Vodou tradition have to tell you.

Peace and love,

Mambo Racine