Responding to Pat Robertson on Haiti

An article by Frank    7 Comments

It’s time to enter the discussion about Pat Robertson’s comments relating to Haiti.

The comment from the infamous televangelist that has caused much furor in the media and around the internet can be viewed over on Youtube. In the clip, Pat Robertson makes a connection between Haiti’s poverty and suffering and a “pact with the devil” that was supposed to have taken place during the Haitian slave revolt in the 1790’s that removed them from under the control of the French.

Pat Robertson and his ilk have a very simplistic view of good/evil, God/satan and humanity’s connection and interaction with these things. This is evidenced in Pat’s inability to communicate the complexities of the Haiti situation, instead reducing the issue to a simple good vs. evil problem where good people are those who would traditionally be identified as Christian with no recognition of evils they may commit and evil is recognized as anybody who identifies as anything else, with no recognition of evils perpetrated against them or the good that they pursue.

What Pat Robertson was referencing with his statement about the Haitian pact with the devil is the legendary Bois Caiman Ceremony that is believed to have taken place in August, 1791. This was a ceremony that took place following another meeting where those higher up in the salve hierarchy had gathered and agreed that a rebellion was necessary. There are many scholarly arguments around whether the Bois Caiman Ceremony actually took place or was invented by a French writer to denigrate the slave population of the time. Whether it happened or not, it forms a large part of Haitian identity and is often looked to as the birth of the nation. Over the years the legend has grown to epic proportion and it is almost impossible to determine fact from fiction.

Understandings of what took place at the Bois Caiman Ceremony are many and varied as would be expected with a meeting held so long ago that was secretive and unrecorded. The predominant understanding is that Dutty Boukman, along with an African born Voudou priestess, presided over a ceremony with a gathering of slaves whose sole aim was to gain freedom from the French. Some accounts state that it was prophesied at that meeting that a few of the slaves present would lead a resistance movement that would overthrow the French and bring independence to the slave population.

It is believed that to affirm the movement towards freedom, a pig was sacrificed and an oath was taken to enact revenge on the French slave owners and throw off the god of the white oppressors, a god they associated with tyranny and corruption. It is understood that the pig represented the free spiritual power of the forest and their ancestors. Various accounts state that attendees drank the blood of the pig to seal their loyalty to the cause. Some believe that human blood of the attendees was mixed into this drink.

The deal supposedly took place with the Petwo of Haiti who are a family of spirits that formed in Haiti during the harsh slavery. These spirits are recognized as neither good nor evil.

One account that is quite telling and throws much grey into how we perceive this historical happening, whether it is real or not, gives us a call that should make us ask some questions about how we understand such things. The account, which includes the killing of the pig and drinking its blood and tells of Boukman in heroic proportions, gives this chant from Boukman as the rallying cry towards the fight for liberation:

The god who created the sun which gives us light, who rouses the waves and rules the storm, though hidden in the clouds, he watches us. He sees all that the white man does. The god of the white man inspires him with crime, but our god calls upon us to do good works. Our god who is good to us orders us to revenge our wrongs. He will direct our arms and aid us. Throw away the symbol of the god of the whites who has so often caused us to weep, and listen to the voice of liberty, which speaks in the hearts of us all. [1]

This account is easily open to dispute as are any facts anyone tries to attach to the ceremony and this particular call is rendered slightly differently according to different writings and is sometimes given as a direct prayer, but it quickly draws into view the problem of simplifying good and evil.

Even if the ceremony took place with all the happenings that would offend our modern sensibilities and at first glance seem “evil”, is it not understandable that slaves of the time would rally around anything that detached them from the practices of those who violently oppressed them? If the Christian God, whom the French spoke of loyalty to and seemingly were devoted to, was associated with oppression, tyranny, violence, abuse and degradation of the slaves themselves, then is it not understandable that the slave population would rebel against the god that had been shown to them, the god of their oppressors and turn to that which they knew more intimately and felt more like something they could associate with freedom and liberation?

Far from being a pact with the devil, the Bois Caiman Ceremony, if it happened and however it happened, demonstrates a people yearning for freedom; rebelling in their humanity against evil and all they associated with it, including a grossly distorted image of God. They were rebelling against a picture of a god that was the designer of their destruction and if indeed the devil is to be seen as the personification of evil, then in the story as it is seen through the historical eyes of the Haitians, where was the devil more present? Was he in the power of the French and the image of god they demonstrated, or in the pursuit of freedom and the practices therein of the Haitian slaves? The historical context quickly makes the discussion more complex than Pat Robertson gives it credit for in his oversimplification of Haiti’s history.

Indeed the complexity can be pointed to throughout Haiti’s history since its “discovery” in 1492, down through the Spanish control, the wiping out of the indigenous population, the mass importation of African slaves from which the modern population is descended, the historical pillaging of its natural resources to prop up the wealth of Europe and the USA, the massive financial debt it has shouldered through the irresponsible high interest loans from western nations to despotic and corrupt Haitian politicians, the US military occupations, the ongoing political interference, environmental degradation and yes, the superstitions of the population that make doing honest business a hard grind because of lack of trust.

Evil in Haiti’s situation is not to be laid at the feet of a group of slaves who fought for freedom over 200 years ago and in so doing rebelled against all that their oppressors stood for, including the representation of God the French held high, but is to be found in a complex web of events throughout history and in all of the peoples who have taken part in shaping Haiti into what it is today and contrary to some thoughts held, the earthquake is completely separate from these human evils, it is an act of nature where two tectonic plates that rub together and need to release pressure from time to time have done exactly that.

Where human failings enter discussions about the earthquake is where humanity’s pursuits have left the nation in a place where it would be so dramatically devastated by such an event.

If Haiti is to truly move forward then we must not follow the likes of Pat Robertson and reduce those human failings to simple black and white discussions about good and evil that condemns the historical few while exonerating those who have had a part in perpetrating the current systemic problems. The pursuit of real justice for Haiti in this mess calls us to see all the grey and work to right the wrong at every level, even where it involves calling western nations to account for their historical part in ripping the nation of Haiti apart.

As we stand with Haiti, may that nation finally see God not as the oppressor and tyrant, but as the liberator and defender of the poor, hungry, sick, thirsty and needy.

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[1] James, C.L.R. (1989). The Black Jacobins. Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. (2nd Ed., Revised) New York: Vintage Press. P86-87