by Wade Davis
The peristyle was similar to others we had visited, with a single centerpost and three sides of bamboo and thatch running upon a solid wall of wattle and daub. A tin roof on top of flimsy rafters seemingly supported by the web of strings displayed what must have been a hundred faces of President Jean-Claude Duvalier and ten times as many small Haitian flags. Three doors in the wall led to the inner sanctum of the temple, and there were two exits—the doorway we had entered through, and an open passage at the other end through which Herard had left. The benches were full, but people continued to arrive—the men stolid and unusually grave, the women determined, and everyone wearing fresh clothes: cotton beaten over river rocks, hung out to dry on tree limbs, pressed with ember irons and liberally scented with talcum powder. As at other vodoun gatherings I had attended, there were more women than men. Many of them arrived with pots of food that were hastily carried to charcoal cooking fires flickering beyond the far end of the enclosure.
But there were other symbols before us I had never seen: the black skirting around the pedestal of the poteau mitan; and the color red in the cloth that entwined the centerpost, on the wooden doors that led into the bagi, and in the flags whose significance I finally understood. Red and black—the colors of the revolution: the white band in the French tricolor ripped away and the blue in the time of François Duvalier becoming black, the color of the night, with red the symbol of transition, lifeblood, and rebellion. On the wall hung paintings of the djab—the devil—gargoylelike with protruding red tongues pierced by red daggers and lightning bolts, and with the inscriptions beneath, again in red paint dripping across the whitewash, “The Danger of the Mouth.” There were figures of other strange spirits—Erzulie Dantor, the Black Virgin; and Baron Samedi, the Guardian of the Cemetery. Arched across one of the entrances to the bagi, again in red but this time etched carefully in Gothic script, was yet another inscription, which read “Order and Respect of the Night.” Finally, at the foot of the poteau mitan lay a human skull wearing a wig of melted wax and crowned with a single burning candle. Herard Simon, defying all our expectations, had brought us to a gathering of the Bizango.
Rachel’s hand touched mine, and her eyes led me toward an imposing figure standing alone by the rear exit, beckoning us to his side. We followed him outside, past the cooking hearths and across a small courtyard, until we reached Herard and another man sitting together on the lip of a well.
“So,” Herard began, “you are where you want to be. Salute the president and ask what you will.”
It had happened that quickly. Stunned, we groped for words in the darkness. Herard leaned back, both hands resting on the hilt of his wooden sword. The president lifted his face to us and spoke in soft, velvety words. “Mes amis, has the djab seized your tongues?” His tone was gentle and surprisingly kind.
“It is Monsieur … ?” Rachel began.
“Jean Baptiste, mademoiselle, by your grace.”
“It is my father, Max Beauvoir, who brings us to you. He serves at Mariani. Perhaps you have heard him on the radio?”
“I know your family, Rachel. I am of Saint Marc, and your uncle will tell you of me. But what is it that has led you to me tonight? Your father has shared his table with me, but now sends his daughter as an envoy to the Shanpwel?”
“There are things a child of Guinée must understand,” Rachel said. She began a brief summary of our previous activities, but was abruptly cut off by Herard.
“These things are well known. He doesn’t have all night.”
“Women,” she went on hesitantly, “have their place in the Bizango?”
Jean Baptiste didn’t answer. His eyes looked beyond us, sweeping the compound.
“Rachel,” Herard interceded again, “are you not the daughter of your father? Women have a function everywhere. What kind of society wouldn’t have women?”
“The people say,” she tried again, more boldly, “that the society can be as sweet as honey or as bitter as bile.”
The president lit up. “Ah, my friend,” he sighed, “she is already a queen! Yes, this is so. Bizango is sweet because it is your support. As long as you are in the society you are respected and your fields are protected. Only the Protestants will hate you.”
“And bitter?”
“Because it can be very, very severe.” The president paused and glanced over toward Herard, who nodded in affirmation. “Bizango is a great religion of the night. ‘Order and Respect of the Night’—that is the motto, and the words speak the truth. Order because the Bizango maintains order. Respect of the night? As a child, Rachel, what did your father teach you? That the night is not your own. It is not your time, and you must not encounter the Shanpwel because only something terrible can occur. Night belongs to the djab, and the eyes of the innocent must not fall upon it. Darkness is the refuge of thieves and evildoers, not the children. It is not a child that should be judged.” The president looked up. “It is time,” he said softly, excusing himself. “Stay with us now and dance. Tomorrow you will visit me at my home in Saint Marc.”
The drums began, and as we passed back into the tonnelle small groups of dancers swirled before them, challenging each other to greater and greater bursts of effort. The appearance of Jean Baptiste had a sobering effect, and as he began to sing the dancers drew into a fluid line that undulated around the poteau mitan. Knees bending slightly and bodies inclined backward, they answered him with a chorus that praised Legba, the spirit of the crossroads. Salutations to other familiar loa followed—Carrefour, Grans Bwa, Aizan, and Sobo. It struck me that this gathering of the Bizango was like the beginning of any vodoun service. Women continued to mingle about, and the old men on the cane-bottomed chairs passed bottles of clairin peppered with roots and herbs. An hour went by, and although the atmosphere became charged with activity no spirit arrived. Instead, just before eleven o’clock, a cry went out from the president and was answered by all present.
“Those who belong!”
“Come in!”
“Those who don’t belong!”
“Go away!”
“The Shanpwel is taking to the streets! Those who belong come in, those who don’t go away! Bête Sereine! Animals of the Night! Change skins!” A man with ropes across each shoulder like bandoliers came hurriedly across the tonnelle carrying a sisal whip and took up a position just outside the exit. The door slammed shut, and the dancers rushed into the bagi.
“Seven cannon blows!”
From outside came the deep penetrating moan of a conch trumpet, followed by seven cracks of the fwet kash, the whip. Moments later the dancers reemerged from the bagi and, encouraged by steel whistles, took up marshal positions around the poteau mitan. On one side stood the men, dressed uniformly in red and black, and across from them the women, clad in long red robes.
With the president standing to one side and all the members in place, a woman with a high, plaintive voice sang out a solemn greeting asking God to salute in turn each officer of the society. As they were called, one by one men and women stepped out of rank, stood before the group, and then, following the slow, almost mournful rhythm of the prayer, moved to form a new line still facing the poteau mitan. Their titles were mostly unfamiliar to me: secrétaire, trésorier, brigadier, exécutif, superintendant, première reine, deuxième reine, troisième reine. Suddenly a whistle broke the tension, eliciting shrill ritual laughter from the ranks. Unaccompanied by the drums, and with the members formally bowing and curtsying in time, the society began to sing:
I serve good, I serve bad,
We serve good, we serve bad,
Wayo-oh!
When I am troubled, I will call the spirit against them.
Then came a song of warning, set off from the last by whistles and the cracking of the whip:
What we see here
I won’t talk,
If we talk,
We’ll swallow our tongue.
The singing continued until three people reemerged unexpectedly from the second door
of the temple. One was the secretary, only now he carried a machete and a candle and wore a black hat covered by a sequined havelock. Beside him came a woman, perhaps one of the queens, cloaked in green and red, and following these two a woman in red with a small black coffin balanced on her head. The rest of the society fell in behind her, and singing a haunting hymn of adoration, the small procession circled the poteau mitan, eventually coming to rest with the woman laying the coffin gently on a square of red cloth. An order went out commanding the members to form a line, and then the secretary, the president, and one of the women walked ceremoniously to the end of the tonnelle, and pivoting in a disciplined military manner returned as one rank to the coffin.
President Jean Baptiste, flanked by his two aides and speaking formally in French, officially brought the assembly to order.
“Before God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, I declare this séance open. Secretary, make your statement!”
Holding his machete in one hand and a worn notebook in the other, the secretary exclaimed, “Gonaives, twenty-four March nineteen eighty-four, Séance Ordinaire. By all the power of the Great God Jehovah and the Gods of the Earth, and by the power of the Diabolic, of Maître Sarazin, and by authority of all the imaginary lines, we declare that the flags are open! And now we have the privilege of passing the mallet to the president for the announcement of the opening of this celebration. Light the candles!”
One by one each member solemnly stepped out of line and in graceful gestures of obeisance paid homage to the coffin, leaving a small offering of money and taking a candle, which was passed before the flame burning at the base of the poteau mitan. A line of soft glowing light spread slowly down one side of the tonnelle, and the society members, their heads bowed and their hands clasping the candles to their chests, began to sing once more. Three songs, each an eloquent call for solidarity. The first posed a potent question:
President, they say you’re solid,
And in this lakou there is magic.
When they take the power to go and use it outside,
When they take the power who will we call?
When we will be drowning, what branch will we hold onto?
The day we will be drowning, who will we call?
What branch will we hold onto?
Then, as if to answer this lament, the second song continued:
Nothing, nothing can affect us,
Before our president,
Nothing can hurt us,
If we are hungry, we are hungry among ourselves,
If we are naked, we are naked among ourselves.
Before our president nothing can harm us.
The final song was raised in defiant, raucous voices with the feet of all members stamping the dry earth, raising small clouds of dust:
I refuse to die for these people,
This money is for the djab,
Rather than die for people, I’d rather the djab eat me,
This money is for the djab,
I will not die for these people!
By now the tension in the rank had become palpable, and the president had to slap a machete against the concrete base of the poteau mitan to restore order. At his command a man later identified to us as the treasurer advanced with one other to count the money, and with an official air they announced, “Sixteen medalles—sixteen gourdes”—a sum of less than five dollars. The president stepped forward reciting a Catholic litany blessing the offering and seeking the protection of God for the actions of the society. As his final words expired, the drums exploded, breaking open the ranks at long last. Other songs rose in strange rhythms, with one of the four drums played lying on its side, giving the staccato sound of wood striking hollow wood. The drums ceased as suddenly as they began, and once again attention focused on the president, now standing alone by the poteau mitan, his hands cradling a weeping and terrified baby. His own voice, high and soft with reverence, was soon joined by all the others:
They throw a trap to catch the fish,
What a tragedy! It is the little one who is caught in the trap!
The baby’s mother stood by the president’s side, and as the others sang tears came into her eyes and ran in rivulets down her cheeks. With gentle gestures Jean Baptiste led her and the baby around the poteau mitan, and then he lifted the child tenderly above his head to salute the four corners, the four faces of the world. As he turned slowly, the society members beseeched him:
Save this little one,
Oh! President of the Shanpwel!
Save the life of the child we are asking,
Oh! President of the Shanpwel!
Save the life of this child!
Yawé! Yawé!
The unbroken circle of the Shanpwel closed around the body of the president, and one by one they lifted the child from his arms and bathed it with a warm potion of herbs. Then, the treatment completed, the drums resounded once more, and the members of the Bizango danced long into the night.
Sunlight has a way of diffusing mysteries, and the next afternoon, as Rachel and I sat near the waterfront of Saint Marc waiting for Jean Baptiste, all we could think about was the heat and the surge of flies hovering about us. It was as if all the lurid tales of the Bizango had given way to this: a shoreline and the smell of fish, briny nets and cracked tar rising to mingle with the dust of the city. No babies had been slaughtered the night before, nobody had been transformed into a pig, least of all the two of us, who rather had been treated graciously as honored guests. Quite contrary to the image I had been given, the gathering of the Bizango had impressed me as a solemn, even pious, ceremony that revealed among other things a strict hierarchical organization modeled at least superficially on roles derived from French military and civil government. Whether this was a purely symbolic hierarchy or something more remained to be seen.
We had spent much of the morning trying to find out more about Jean Baptiste, speaking with Rachel’s uncle Robert Erié, at one time the prefect for Saint Marc. Mr. Erié is a kind, generous man, and though a large landowner and leader among the local bourgeoisie, he is clearly respected and liked by the entire community. Though unaware of Jean’s position as president, Robert Erié knew the man well. He had in fact employed Jean as a chauffeur for the entire time he had been prefect. A diligent and competent driver, Jean was remembered as being a good man, quiet and discreet, but not particularly influential in the traditional peasant society of Saint Marc. Although I said nothing about it, it had struck me as significant that the president of a secret society should be employed in such a capacity. During the colonial era many of the slaves who eventually became important leaders of the revolution had worked as coachmen, an ideal position from which they could spy on the ruling authorities.
Speaking with the former prefect had offered an unusual insight into how a prominent official appointed by the central government interacts with the traditional society. Despite his ignorance of Jean’s position, he knew about the activities of the Bizango in some detail. As prefect, he explained, it had been his responsibility to know what went on in the region under his jurisdiction. As an official he didn’t condemn or even judge what the societies did. They were his friends, and he moved freely among them, “drinking his drink,” as he put it, “without problems.” But they in turn had the responsibility of keeping him informed. No ceremony, for example, should be held without the prefect’s preknowledge. Erié considered this a matter of courtesy, not coercion, and stressed that during his entire time in office he had not once taken steps to interfere. Nor, he added, could he imagine a situation when this would be necessary. This easy relationship between the representative of the urban-based authorities on the one hand and the traditional leaders of the vodoun society on the other is no accident, I was to learn. On the contrary, it is mandated by the very nature of the contemporary government in Haiti.
The civil government of Haiti is divided into five départements, and each of these, in turn, is divided into a number of arrondissements, with
each one headed by a prefect appointed directly by the president of the nation. Each arrondissement—there are twenty-seven in all—is composed of communes led by the equivalent of a mayor assisted by an administrative council that is based in a village. Beyond the edge of the village itself, the land of the commune is divided into a number of sections rurales.
The military have their own parallel subdivision of the country, and while it is somewhat different, the important point is that at the lowest level the two systems come together, making the rural section the basic level of local government. It is within these rural sections that at least 80 percent of the Haitian population lives.
There is a curious and important paradox in the governing of these rural sections, however, and it hinges on the role of an official outside the hierarchical organization of either form of government. Gerry Murray, one of the most thoughtful anthropologists to have worked recently in Haiti, has pointed out that the rural section in no way coincides to a community or village, but rather describes “an arbitrary administrative lumping of many communities for the purposes of governance.” The rural peasants themselves identify not with their section but with their own extended families and neighbors in its lakous, the familiar compounds made up of clusters of thatched houses one sees all over the country. In other words, neither institution of the government, the civil or the military, recognizes in any juridical sense the actual communities in which the vast majority of the rural peasants live and die. To reach these people the national authorities depend on one man, the chef de section, an appointee from within the rural sections who is expected to establish networks of contacts that will place his eyes and ears into every lakou in his jurisdiction. This he does, but in a very special way.