Speak of the Devil

"Chez les Mackandas" by Jonny - from an online gallery by Goucher College

One of the most pressing questions we have in this production, if not the most pressing question of this production is, "Who is the devil in Haiti?"

It's been a question that's certainly stymied me through the majority of my research so far. What's so tricky about this question is shedding the preconceived Protestant-informed notions of good and evil so relentlessly hammered into the contemporary American mindset to see things from a Haitian point of view. Pat Robertson provides a great example of this:

(What Robertson is talking about is the Vodou ceremony led by Houngan Dutty Boukman, which is widely regarded to have sparked the Haitian Revolution)

Massive cultural generalizations and oversights aside, I began my search for the devil in Haiti in Vodou, looking for anything that resonated with the Devil in the context of Walcott's text.

Maya Deren's Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti has proven to be an invaluable resource in this regard. In it, Deren illuminates the loa (spirit/Gods) of Vodou and reveals their attributes, likes and dislikes. The loa that jumped out at me was Ghede, the loa of Death and Lust.

"Life for Ghede [aka Baron Samedi, aka Brav Ghede] is not the exalted creation of primal ardor; it is a destiny -- the inevitable and eternal erotic in men. He is lord of that eroticism . . . therefore beyond good and evil and is beyond the elations and despairs of love. . . if anything he is amused by the eternal persistence of the erotic and by man's eternally persistent pretense that it is something else. . . He may invent variations on the theme of provocation, ranging from suggestive mischief to lascivious aggression. His greatest delight is to discover some one who pretends to piously heroic or refined immunity. He will confront such a one and expose him savagely, imposing upon him the most lascivious gestures and the most extreme obscenities. Thus he introduces men to their own devil, for whoever would consider sex as a sin creates and confronts, in Ghede, his own guilt" (Deren 102-3.)

Whoa! Sounds just like the Devil in Ti-Jean! But what is important to remember is that while Ghede/Baron Samedi represents what some may see as the worst in people, it still represents something about people. He's a loa to be feared and respected, but not one who is inherently evil.

"Baron Samedi" by Andre Pierre.

I've since shifted my focus from Ghede and the loa and rooted my search for the Devil in Haitian folklore. Two stories that stick out in particular to me are the variations on My Beauty/Juliana/Adelina compiled in Suzanne Comhaire-Syvain's Creole Tales from Haiti. In this tale reminiscent to Europeans of Cinderella, a mother agrees to give a "Thing" her hated step-daughter in exchange for help doing laundry, carrying plates, etc. Time after time, the little girl is able to outsmart the Thing until she has exhausted her resources and calls on her faraway brothers for help.

The other tale, The Valley Where the Sun Never Shines, involves a family's struggles against a loup garou, an evil sorcerer who can change their physical form. In this story, a couple has four boys, but after each one is born, the loup garou masquerading in their home as an old woman to help around the house drugs the mother and stashes each child away in the Mapou tree (more on those to come) to fatten them up. By the time the mother gives birth to the fourth child, she is already thrown out of her house by her husband for her negligence - for the loup garou takes on various disguises to tell the husband that the wife traded the baby for XYZ thing. Eventually the matter is solved and a happy ending put in place.

"Loup Garou au Table" - Keven Si

Needless to say, there's a lot there, but I keep feeling like I'm missing the heart of the matter. These are all spirits and creatures that are like the Devil, but who are just shy of achieving true Diablitude. Is there just no Devil in Haiti? Or is he too dark to keep in books?