Should we deduce the decay of Haiti from a pact with the Devil ?

In May 2009, the Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste published an interview with a pastor in Port-au-Prince, formerly Reverend Gregory Toussaint, which reads in part:

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The Nouvelliste (LN): It is a pleasure for us to meet you again, Pastor Gregory Toussaint. But it is with great concern since we are asking questions about the motive for the initiative “dechoukaj de Jezabel”. Why do you want to eradicate this spirit?

Gregory Toussaint (GT): I mean the answer to that question is my thinking in terms of theological and philosophical. For me, the Bible is the ultimate source of truth. All experiments provide a framework for interpreting life. In this sense, the Bible speaks of two kinds of minds. There are some who serve God, angels, and others who have rebelled against God are called demons. When you look at the characteristics of Jezebel, the latter falls into the category of demons. Therefore my theological approach.

There are also patriotic reasons. This spirit is somehow responsible for the ills of our country. We know that Roger Dorsainville reports the ceremony of Bois-Caiman occurred on the night of 14 to 15 August 1791. It reminds us that it is a hougan named Boukman and a voodoo priestess named Cecile Fatiman who presided the ceremony. An American writer in his book entitled "Our Lady of Class Struggle," says Cecile Fatima was possessed by Erzulie Dantor at the ceremony. She had a black pig that murdered thereafter. Then she had left the blood of the animal falling into a container. She gave drink to the assistants who were the pioneers of the Nation. In the Eastern world, this is called a "blood pact. "This pact has an eternal value (...). That means, when Cecile Fatima gave blood to drink to the ancestors, it was not with her that the alliance has been concluded. But the spirit who rode her to say Erzulie Dantor. So that night, the whole nation, through the ancestors had made an eternal pact with Erzulie. Erzulie Dantor is a demon, and if Haiti had made a pact with her, it means our country at the dawn of history, had made an alliance with a demon. This explains, in a sense, the fundamental evil of our country.

L.N. Why do you link Jezebel to Erzulie Dantor specifically?

GT: Jezebel is unbiblical for a spirit, that is to say a demon who has demonstrated for the first time in Babylon. With the confusion of languages, the men had been scattered in various parts of the earth and brought with them the worship of this spirit under different names. Thus, we succeeded in Egypt to know the name of Isis; in China, as Shing Moo, in Rome as Venus and in Greece as Aphrodite to Phoenicians as Astarte, at Ephesus, as Artemis. In Africa, it had several names, but we are four of Mami Wata, Yemanja, Oshun and Erzulie. The Africans were held at home kept the name Mami Wata. During the colonial period, those who had been transported to Brazil had, themselves, kept the name Yemanja, who had been deported to Cuba kept the name Oshun. And finally, those who were brought to Haiti does opted for the name Erzulie.

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The statements of the theologian-philosopher-patriot from Port-au-Prince are documented in a book: Jezebel laid bare, where the God-man says without qualification that his abolitionists ancestors had made a pact that night of August 1791 with a Satan’s minister, Jezebel “spirit of sensuality that encourages people from fornication, prostitution, homosexuality, lust and incest”. That whole line is the theological merits of trade of the "Reverend" Gregory Toussaint.

We know from the story of Antoine Delmas (1793) later published in the History of the Revolution of Saint Domingo, and from the memoirs of General Benedict Pierre Rameau, grandson of Cecile Fatiman, the woman who were at the ceremony of Bois Caiman was a mambo, mulatto daughter of an African woman from Guinea and a Corsica prince. His history says she was sold with his mother in Santo Domingo and she also had two brothers who disappear after being sold as slaves in Cape French. She later married Louis Michel Pierrot (1761-1857), lieutenant of Dessalines who will become a President of the Republic of Haiti. This is a woman who lived a worthy life of 112 years, that the God-man of Port-au-Prince want to reduce as a witch cryptic inhabited by a demon, the source of Haitian ill-being. Such methods recall nothing so much as the heresy trials that some zealous prelates of the Middle Ages in Europe were subjected to women. By a sleight-skilled password, Gregory Toussaint manages to make the founder’s event of the Republic of Haiti, the memorable night that gave birth to the first black republic, after all, one that opened the way for the emancipation of Blacks, a dark satanic ceremony where the demons of hell were featured. How does not even believe it? Everyone knows he was a voodoo ceremony. The devilishness of this wicked religion of African slaves was well known throughout the colonies slavery, is not it?

Without a doubt, this temptation to remove the abolition of slavery and the birth of the first black republic in all its African spiritual and traditional roots decided the choice of words that Benito Sylvain employed in his Memory 'Work of Blacks Social Rehabilitation” he addressed to Pope Pius V June 28, 1905. It says this: "The black race has strong ties to Christianity who freed them from slavery and relieved them from the moral decadence. At the time of the birth of Christ, a Black man appeared behind the Magi kneeling before the manger in Bethlehem. The day of the Crucifixion, it was a black slave, Simon of Cyrene, who had the honor of carrying the Cross made so heavy by the iniquity of men. While fourteen centuries later, despite the most severe admonitions of the Supreme Pontiff, the Christian nations of the West, invaded by the devil of greed, were stained by the horrors of trafficking and slavery, the flag sanctity of the God of love and peace, there came a fact worth remembering: some black slaves, already exhausted by the fatigue imposed on them by day, some to be punished the next day, were each up 'ten or twelve miles at night to go to the Catechism, the call of the Missionaries. Because the Catholic religion did not provide the only hope for the poor souls doomed to depression, but it gave them a positive benefit in giving with the baptism of godfathers and godmothers to people without families. Refused to human society, the slave was in the priest a confidant, a friend, he received the ineffable altar honors of equality before God. As it was easy to imagine a better life than his miserable present life, he yearned for the sky promised his virtues, and the words of the Gospel, sounding like an echo of a distant homeland, caressed her delightfully vague dreams of future freedom. The Church in a word, was in fact a place of refuge and a home, it was the only corner of the colonial world where he could enjoy a rest and a relative well-being " .

Holy flattery does not excuse everything. Still, should remember that it is the Catholic Church, through the voice of Pope Nicolas V, promoter of the infamous Romanus Pontifex Bull, which, since 1453, promoted the intensification of trade in blacks' s Africa to the Americas? What about the inevitable curse of Ham and his famous interpretation suggests by most of the Christianity theorists? Should we even forget that it's a voodoo ceremony, religion demonized for its traditional African inspiration, not this boring catechism that "the words of the Gospel (...) stroked his delightfully vague dreams of future freedom" which enables the clock of the Black people in Haiti, and a happy spread in all the West Indies? Must we always play the dirty game of devout fanaticism to justify the unjustifiable? The allegations of the theologian-philosopher-patriot from Port-au-Prince fall in line with this dishonest, unhealthy and reverse tradition that sees the culmination of every move of African emancipation as a glory to Lucifer and always dresses the fine coat of the Savior to all enslavement and alienation attempts of "natives" souls. The ceremony of Bois Caiman is unfortunately not unique in this case.
The African-sorcerer, the African-demon, was a very popular theme in Christian literature of past centuries. Joseph Antenor Firmin spoke already about that in 1885 in his book Equality of Human Races. The Haitian anthropologist wrote:

"The type of white Jesus on the front of which reflect the calm and serene intelligence, morality sweet and pleasant, all of which contributes to form an indescribable charm of divine beauty, he was opposed to another, with all the opposite of what pleases and attracts in the image of the Savior. The devil is the symbol of the brutality, the spirit of rebellion and perversity. To highlight the opposition trenches deep, irreconcilable, between the two symbols, we naturally thought of the devil to a negro. From his wide mouth and nostrils came the fire and sulphurous smoke. In his black face, he looked like an Ethiopian fierce: his hair and beard bristled, writhed like snakes, his eyes red as fire flashed. The colored line in which I present here Satan, and make him face a little flattering, I admit, is not a fantasy dreamed up for the need of my thesis, as one might think. I only reproduce as much as I could, a description of the devil made by a Blasius Melanes, who lived, I think, about the beginning of the Middle Ages. His name rarely mentioned and even absent in most dictionaries of history, makes me believe that we are dealing with a pseudonym. (...). This image of the devil turned into a frizzy-haired negro, red eyes, nostrils open as forges throw flames at the enormous mouth became the very face in which the common people in Europe, are still seeing the Ethiopian race. So when they see a Black with features more or less regular, they look with a curiosity that borders on naivete or ignorance. For them, the negro has inherited the color of the devil (...). This tradition was most unfortunate influence on the minds of Europeans. "

One of the remarkable features of most historical leaders of Black people, wherever they are found, has always been the vision they showed to the issue of religion in which colonization, deportation, had soaked them. This is true for the Arab-Muslim world, it is also true of the Judeo-Christian. Joseph Antenor Firmin, born Christian by extension, give an analysis that has lost none of its value: "But there is another influence crippling strikes in the dark depths of his being (...), he wrote. We can let them continue their studies, but its progress is a cause of irritation for his white rivals. They are convinced that nature has endowed them with superior qualities, so whenever they will be overstep, they will miss no opportunity to avenge an act they consider abnormal. Rising throughout the height of the preeminence that absurd and arbitrary doctrine has created for them, they overwhelm the Black intelligent, if not contempt, but fools scorn and bitter sarcasm. In all its dealings, every hour, every minute, every circumstance, he will feel the conviction that White rivals has of its ethnic inferiority. He was overwhelmed with the weight of the curse of Noah. And the poor child believes in God and has no idea of the stringy exegesis of the Bible! I confess, for my part in my early youth, I was constantly struggling with the most painful reflections on reading this evil legend that we had done well to remove from all books for education, especially among Black people. Also, these early concerns have contributed much to my spiritual liberation. I had no hesitation to break with the theological beliefs of the day my mind was finally able to design their baneful influence on the destiny of my race. But it is not so for all my peers. "

It is unfortunate that two centuries later as pastors like Gregory Toussaint, expected to lead to enlightenment and emancipation of their countrymen, contributing instead to the brutalizing further in expressing any form of moderation vis-à-vis this Bible they believe unconditionally "ultimate source of truth." Certainly, there would have to say more about the parallels that coarse character of the Protestant movement in Haiti exhibits on Jezebel and entities such as Isis, Diana or Yemanja, parallels that suggest his profound negligence in the history of religions. Jezebel laid bare, is stupidity at its best, nothing more.

Kenya Suwedi