dorcas dennis.
spirituality after crime and in-justice
cohort. 2023-24
project. Spirituality After Crime and In-Justice: Embodied Vodou Discourse and Praxis in South Florida
location. South Florida: Little Haiti and Pembroke Road-Miramar; Miami
medium. research report
Halouba in Little Haiti (2011) - image courtesy of the author
“I would like to do something one day,” Manbo Ingrid mused, her face puckered with concern. She paused briefly as if she was reflecting on how exactly to say what she had on her mind. Then she started into the explanation of a Haitian Vodou tradition known as Kanzo in which a person can make a pact with a lwa (Vodou deity) in which the deity would offer spiritual assistance to them in an endeavor. The person would be motivated to complete the task because the lwa may be offended if they stopped mid-way through. Ingrid explained how this tradition could be useful to a generation of Haitians born and brought up here in America. She added, “They go through a lot...! Once you are with this dark skin color, it does not matter where you come from or your qualifications… You are black, period! All they see is your skin tone; you are the same as anyone else with a black skin type and prone to crime and laziness! You lack the capacity for knowledge... You are simply dangerous, criminal, violent, and not fully human. And if you say you are Haitian, it is worse! To them, you are a brute and evil itself because of their misrepresentation and sometimes misunderstanding of our cultural tradition--Vodou…! She paused with a deep breath and continued. “But I want us, especially the young ones, to distinguish ourselves positively… And I will use Vodou to do it!” She added:
The young ones born here must be prepared for everything the system throws at them, and we need to equip them well with all the necessary resources... We Haitians have nothing but our culture, Vodou... I am going to organize a small fete (ceremony) for these kids. Each would determine a range of highly respectable professions they would want to go into... Then I will invite the lwas, and these young ones will make a pledge/promise before the lwas that they will do all within their means to succeed in these endeavors… The lwas will give them blessings and caution them about the dangers of reneging on their promises... This way, they will not mess up their lives and become the evil they want them to be. [1]
Ingrid shares her thoughts on the Kanzo, an initiation tradition in Haitian Vodou, and how it is useful and can be retooled to mitigate challenges Haitian Americans, especially the young ones born and raised in America, go through due to their black bodies. This mission has occupied her role and status as a Manbo within the community.[2] Since 2012, she has organized ceremonies (fete) where the young and even older folks in the community pledge to pursue respectable professions, including those in the sciences, law, business, and engineering, and seek spiritual assistance from the lwas. She currently runs a Vodou Holistic Center and has social media platforms where she educates the community about the two parallel cultures of Haiti and the United States and ways to negotiate their place. In addition, she organizes annual travels for the community to connect with both the motherland-Ginen in West Africa and the homeland-Haiti, especially the second and third-generation Haitian Americans. The purpose is to foreground their sense of place, belonging, and identity to heal their experiences of displacement and imposed negative labels.
I have known the manbo, a stunningly beautiful mixed-race woman in her sixties, since graduate school when I started conducting fieldwork research among the Haitians in Miami’s Little Haiti in September 2011. Ingrid arrived in Miami in the 1980s as one of the “boat people.” She was 16 years old then and is always quick to share why and how her heritage, Vodou, has helped her to overcome the obstacles she had faced in the USA as a Haitian migrant, a black female, and a person who identifies with Vodou. As long as I have known Ingrid, she has always talked about her empathy and compassion for the Vodou community, especially the second-generation youth (including her two daughters, who have recently finished college). She always talks about finding appropriate and appealing ways to educate the younger generation, foster accountability in their social lives, retool the tradition to prevent forms of youth violence and crime, and contest the labels the American imperial hegemony imposes on black bodies in America, especially those from Haiti who practice their tradition to mitigate the negative impact on their lives.
Manbo Amelia Ingrid Llera
This digital exhibit is part of an ongoing project and a forthcoming book project on Spirituality After Crime, Violence, and Injustice. It provides a window into the experiences of the diaspora Vodou community and the compassion-based resilience efforts of Manbo Ingrid in negotiating discourses of justice, criminality, and violence, contesting injustice and criminalization, and preventing forms of crime and violence in the Haitian Vodou community in Miami-Florida, USA.
crime and criminality: the haitian american experience.
Although the mention of an increase in the Haitian migrant population in America sparks fierce political debates about why they are arriving and how they are prone to violence, crime, and Voodoo— a stereotyped imagined religion of danger – there is less discussion of how well many of the Haitian Americans (both legal and undocumented) do and why they have relatively low crime and incarceration rates (Cardenas, 2023; Nielson and Ramiro, 2006; Miami Herald, March 2024). Haitian migrants in Miami who adhere to Vodou inhabit two parallel worlds when it comes to questions of crime, violence, and injustice. They live at the crossroads of two distinct worlds: one informed by Vodou's discourse and practices and the other by the American legal and criminal justice systems. On the one hand, they navigate the intricate web of Vodou beliefs and practices, guided by their Manbos (priestesses) and Houngans (priests), who foster relationships of responsibility and accountability. On the other hand, they grapple with the American legal and criminal justice system, which the available literature argues engenders injustice, discrimination, and criminalizing of their black bodies (Wilderson, 2020; Fanon, 2008 (1952); Nsele, 2020; Alexander, 2010; Rothstein, 2017; Devon, 2015; Abu-Jamal, 2017; Hattery, 2018; Pachter, 2017)—a stark contrast to the mystical realms of Vodou.
This digital exhibit demonstrates ways these worlds intersect, collide, and coexist in the context of the lives of Haitian American Vodouizans in Miami, particularly the displaced Halouba (Vodou Temple) community that has regrouped and is led by Manbo Ingrid. The exhibit shows ways the Haitian Vodou religious discourse, iconography, and ritual practice provide counter-hegemonic cultural mechanisms to negotiate, prevent, and redress violence, criminality, and structural injustice targeting black bodies—a way of contesting the criminalizing of the migrant black body and community in the USA.
The exhibit begins with the experiences of Haitian Americans, particularly those who practice Vodou in Miami. It ends with the efforts and roles of their ritual experts, mainly Manbo Ingrid, in creating spaces that enable these migrants to navigate their way in the parallel justice system confronting them in the diaspora, to help them draw from the tradition in preventing forms of crime, violence, and injustice, and contest the imposed labels of blackness. In contrast to narratives that migrant religions serve to only provide a sense of identity and placemaking in the host nations and that black migrant women have nothing to offer, this exhibit offers a lens into the role black migrant women play in providing safe spaces for resolving disputes and healing rifts. These migrant women also help to maintain harmony by using culturally familiar resources to shield and protect the vulnerable migrant community (as they assimilate and learn the culture and systems of the new home) from forms of crime, violence, and unjust criminalization. More importantly, they act as proactive ethical thinkers for the community.
negotiating dual systems of justice in south florida.
South Florida, with its vibrant cultural tapestry, is a melting pot of traditions, beliefs, and practices—including those from the Caribbean. These traditions provide migrants and original residents of South Florida with a diversity of options for meeting their cultural, spiritual, and social needs. Among these, Haitian Vodou stands out as a rich and complex spiritual system that has woven itself into the fabric of the Haitian migrant community. While the Haitian community in South Florida is dispersed throughout the Dade and Broward counties, Miramar, a self-contained Haitian migrant settlement in South Florida, is one of the hubs of its life.
Observations and interviews were conducted at the Vodou Holistic Center on Pembroke Road, Miramar. This is a regrouping of the Vodou community that was displaced and lost their rights to the popular Halouba Temple and Botanica in little Haiti because of Miami’s gentrification program in 2016. There were also follow-up visits to the homes of Ingrid Llera, a respectable Vodou priestess (Manbo), where members of the Vodou community often hang out and organize important ritual ceremonies, including trial-by-ordeal, vow-making, and apology. She is also the founder of the Vodou Holistic Center. The research involved trips to Little Haiti in Miami to ascertain and document factors that contributed to the group’s relocation and regrouping and how this impacted their ritual praxis or informed their emphasis on crime, violence, and justice in their practices. Ingrid mentioned that any unjust displacement of a community is a recipe for the destruction of that community and a ticket for the youth to engage in crime and violence, contributing unknowingly to the constructed narrative and meanings of the black body.
Intellectually, I wanted to understand how both ritual experts and members of these communities navigate the dynamic and hyperlocal understandings of issues of criminality, religion, and justice in one geographic location. This digital project is part of my larger mission to create public scholarship and awareness of ways religion provides preventive resources against forms of crime, injustice, and violence, stewarding justice, and contesting labels of the criminalized black body.
To offer an example, a battered Haitian migrant wife has two options in seeking justice. She can report to the police, press charges against the husband or partner, and go to court. Alternatively, she can report her predicament to the Manbo or Houngan (Vodou priests), who have many immediate remedies—one of which is to find the abusive partner and force him to go through a trial-by-ordeal ritual. If he refuses, he will face the anger of Erzulie Danto, the goddess who protects wives and children in abusive relationships and whose punishments come in the form of recurring failures in life, illness, or even death. An underlying sense here is that the Vodou system of justice is immediate, cheaper, spiritual, and more effective as a deterrent compared with the American Criminal Justice system, which is slow and offers no guarantee of justice for a minoritized victim.
This phenomenon raised several related questions that I explored in this project. One question is, how do Haitian migrants use these two systems, when is one preferred to the other? And how, for instance, does the American system of justice deal with cases whose roots are believed by the victims to lie in the spiritual realm – e.g., a death believed to have been caused by the spiritual slaughter of the victim by a Vodou lwa (spirit) or bocor (sorcerer)? Another question has to do with the predicament of Haitians and other migrants who see themselves as victims in the American legal and justice regime—people incarcerated, facing deportation, or facing huge fines, etc., and how they press the resources of Haitian Vodou into service in seeking a solution. A third question has to do with the tensions that come with Vodou practice in Miami because of mainstream restrictive laws and ordinances that make it possible for Vodou ritual specialists to be arrested and ritual processes to be interrupted when they are viewed as contraventions of American laws and ordinances such as described in detail in the Madison Historical Review (Newman, 2023), Danielle Boaz’s 2023 Spotlight Analysis on Vodou and Santeria, and in a blog post by Nadege Green.
In a sense, Vodou is practiced under the constraints of American alienating policies for marginalized cultures and consequently has remained largely invisible. How do these legal barriers condition Vodou practice, and how do Vodou ritual agents and practitioners negotiate them? Essentially, these Haitian migrants find themselves straddling two worlds—the mystical and the legal. How do they reconcile Vodou’s teachings with the American justice system? How do Manbos and Houngans navigate these dual systems, ensuring both spiritual integrity and legal compliance? These questions formed the basis of interactions with the community.
In seeking answers to the questions, the exhibit fills an important gap in our understanding of transnational religious flows and how migrants mobilize their indigenous spiritual technologies to dispense justice in their host communities. While researchers have focused on how these religions help migrants navigate the migration process and maintain connections to their homelands and other diasporic destinations (De Witte, 2010; Olupona, 2007; McCarthy Brown, 2001; Tweed, 2006, 2021; Saunders et al., 2016; Cook and Butz, 2019), how the religions of African and Caribbean migrants carry with them address issues of crime, violence, and injustice in the West is understudied. Immigrants of African descent, especially, face challenges in their newly adopted homes in the West, including forms of injustice and racial profiling.
These migrants have a cultural tendency to view these vicissitudes, including questions relating to crime and justice, as diseases because, for them, disease is any condition that impedes the smooth flow of life. To redress the dis-eases, they fall on their indigenous religious discourse and ritual technologies as they are suspicious of the official facilities offered by the host community’s system of justice and crime because of how the justice system deals with African Americans and blacks in general.
erzulie dantor and order.
Embodied Stewarding of Justice and Accountability in Vodou
Within the Haitian migrant community, Vodou serves as more than a spiritual practice, a symbol of identity, or a mental health resource—it is a preventive measure and a protective force. Manbos and Houngans engage in rituals, seeking guidance from the lwa (spirits) to prevent criminal acts, violence, and injustice. The belief is that Vodou can shield individuals and communities from harm, acting as a spiritual deterrent against actions or omissions that constitute an offense that may be prosecuted by the community or the state and is punishable by law.
The Haitian Vodou tradition features a diverse pantheon of deities that embody values such as justice, protection, and familial love. These figures offer a familiar and culturally relevant means of addressing interpersonal conflicts, violence, and injustices within the Haitian American community. Among the lwas, Erzulie Dantor stands out as a champion of justice and protection, particularly for women, children, and the marginalized. Her fierce and maternal nature is symbolized by her jeweled dagger and wedding rings, which represent her unwavering commitment to defending her children and fighting against injustice. Ultimately, Vodou serves as a guardian against unlawful acts and a steward of justice for the vulnerable.
Vodou administers accountability and reparative justice. When disputes, domestic issues, or forms of injustice arise, they turn to the lwa for guidance. These spiritual intermediaries mediate conflicts, ensuring fairness and balance. In doing so, they bridge the gap between earthly justice systems and cosmic order. The transformative journey for anyone seeking redemption from Erzulie Dantor reflects the potential for Vodou rituals to facilitate individual and group reconciliation, accountability, and growth in values within familial and community contexts. She is revered as a catalyst for personal transformation. Through the Dantor ritual of apology, vow-making, and public affirmation of familial responsibilities, the individual or group undergoes a process of self-reflection and recommitment to his/her role under the watchful gaze of Dantor. She is also significant within the context of interpersonal relationships, domestic crimes/violence, and justice-seeking, and she offers insights into the complexities of spirituality, identity, and social cohesion within the Haitian diaspora community and by extension, the larger host community.
Unlike the mainstream legal structures, which may be perceived as biased, discriminatory, or inaccessible to marginalized migrant groups, Vodou offers a swift, affordable, and spiritually resonant means of addressing grievances and enforcing social norms.
To the Haitian Vodouizans in South Florida, their tradition is not only a religious belief system but a cultural framework through which they navigate social relationships and address social injustices. By invoking the guidance of the lwas like Erzulie Dantor and embodying the ritual ceremonies of apology, vow-making, and a public affirmation of familial responsibilities, the Haitian community reclaims agency and asserts their cultural identity in a foreign context—contesting the stereotyped labels of blackness.
The community, specifically the ritual experts such as Manbo Ingrid, represent the embodied memories of ancestral traditions that are passed down orally and learned through close, lifelong apprenticeship. While some written texts and graphic writings do have a place in their worship, Caribbean diasporic religions rely heavily on memory. Experiences of crime, violence, and injustice are juxtaposed in discourses of power, justice, and collective identity for a pantheon of spirits, memorized, retrieved in ritual, and embodied in daily life. Collections of esoteric knowledge (Konesan) are memorized and recited by the initiated during sacred Vodou initiations, divinations, possessions or ‘mounting,’ and consultations of the lwas, such as Erzulie Dantor, where bodies, minds, and spirits are synched to access memories, present diasporic experiences, and future premonitions. Below is an example of the ways Erzulie Dantor stewards justice and accountability.
erzulie dantor in stewarding justice and accountability.
An Embodied Memory
During an invitation to Ingrid’s house for a Vodou ceremony in Miramar, among the tens of people in the gathering was a worried-looking man in his fifties. He had come to see Ingrid because his wife had reported his abusive behavior and neglect of his children. He had also come because he was experiencing insurmountable and unexplainable misfortunes, which he understood and interpreted as a Vodouizan, were warning signs from the lwas about his injurious behavior. Ingrid, with the help of her daughters and other community members, all dressed in colors of white, pink, red, and blue dresses, was busily arranging assorted fruits, cakes, rum, and other ritual items on a table draped in white, blue, red, and pink lace clothing at the corner of her living room. It was as if she was setting a table up for a feast. The man who had come to see Ingrid had purchased the food items to pacify Erzulie Dantor, the lwa Ingrid consulted for the man’s wife.
Dantor is a mirror reflection of the lives of women, children, the abused, and people on the margins. The deity, also known as mami Dantor, is represented as a powerful and protective mother figure, fiercely guarding her children and the neglects of society—maternal in nature. She is the female principle of love that protects, often depicted in Vodou lithographs as a fearsome-looking black woman in a blue satin robe and veil, her arms folded across her chest in which is implanted a jeweled dagger, while protectively holding on her left arm, a black child referred to as Ti Jean Petro dressed in pink.[3] On her right cheek are two parallel scars. Her fingers are adorned with wedding rings of assorted styles. These representations and objects connected with her envisage her persona as a loving and caring mother holding up her child, hurt but ready to fight fiercely with the dagger in her hands to protect her child. She is a symbol of justice and will forcefully fight to protect her children and the vulnerable—those suffering from domestic violence. This is because, in the Vodou mythology, she is a single mother, divorced from three marriages; she was married to a drunken husband, Ogoun, an abusive husband Agwe, and Damballa (other Vodou lwas), who was never present as a husband. So, the sense is that she mirrors women, children, and men in such situations, and offers models of domestic violence as well as how they should deal with or control such situations.
According to the man’s wife, she contemplated reporting the case to the law enforcement agents, but upon second thought about the plight of black-bodied men and the American in-justice system that does not tilt in their favor, she feared this might lead to either deportation of the father of her children or incarceration by virtue of his skin color. She added that she did not have money to hire a lawyer, and even if she did, such cases could drag on. Instead, she reported the abuse to Ingrid, who consulted Erzulie Dantor because she knew Dantor provided quick and cheaper judgment and solutions. Vodou has a social control and justice mechanism that members view as more equitable and devoid of racial biases or injustice but seeks justice for the innocent, vulnerable, and marginalized. It is based on the principle of protection of the vulnerable. It is spiritual, color-blind, and just under its patron, Dantor, the mother of Haiti. From the narrative shared here, you would see the reluctance of the wife to involve law enforcement due to fears of racial bias and systemic injustice within the American legal system and ways the balance does not tilt in favor of even the innocent black body, more so, a Haitian one. This underscores, in part, the disillusionment and mistrust that marginalized groups may harbor towards mainstream legal institutions, prompting them to seek alternative but familiar cultural avenues for justice and resolution.
During the consultation, the man was told that Dantor was not happy with him for constantly abusing the mother of his children and sometimes abandoning his family. This abusive behavior pattern was interpreted as a violation of the pact he had made with Dantor some years before he traveled to the US from Haiti. If he wanted his life back on track, he was advised to mend his broken relationship with his family and the lwas. First, he had to sponsor an expensive fete (ceremony) for the lwas, particularly Dantor, during which he would have to apologize to her family and the Erzulie pantheon openly. Then he had to take a vow to take diligent care of his family publicly amid other devotees, who are the witnesses.
That evening in the Manbo’s home, Dantor appeared at the fete and mounted Ingrid as one would mount a horse (Deren, 1983).[4] She had a dagger in her hand and appeared to be terribly angry. She could not speak but made coarse noises or sounds. Houngan Pierre, the Manbo’s partner, interpreted in Creole. As Dantor lunged at the man with her dagger, he sank to his knees, crying out and begging. Dantor had a gooey substance in a container she held with her other hand and, in a gesture reflecting her anger, dumped the foul-smelling substance on his head and massaged it all over him as he lay prostrate on the floor rolling in anguish. Dantor left him there and went to address the other members present before returning to him to issue her final orders before departing. Her orders were simple but fierce and firm. “Take good care of your wife and children! Henceforth, I will be watching you! Make sure to abide by the agreement… If I receive any new complaint from your family, I will remove my love and protection over you forever… and you know what will happen”! (speaking in Creole). The people who had gathered nodded as if to agree with Dantor’s caution. Here, Dantor embodies the disposition of her suffering adherents who report to her.
The ceremony demonstrates a parallel or alternative mechanism of accountability performing culturally familiar justice. Through Dantor, Vodou practitioners access a cultural mechanism of social structure, control, and justice. Dantor epitomizes motherly love, which translates into fierceness, and that is what a woman needs to protect her children. These have emblematic significance for Haitians who are Vodou adherents in America. To these Haitians, tapping into this spiritual mechanism of social control in addressing forms of injustice is appealing because it is culturally familiar, quick, easy, and cheaper. It is also because they respect the power of the lwas. Vodou offers a context and resource for rethinking mainstream legal structures of legality and justice that can address human issues with the fairness that is required. This is because Vodou’s followers have come to recognize that the balance of power does not tilt in favor of black bodies regarding the dispensation of justice in the American Criminal Justice System. So, within the tradition, the lwas serve as alternative stewards of justice against forms of abuse and injustice where the victim is not victimized, discriminated against, or marginalized but empowered, defended, and protected.
kanzo.
Initiation, Counter Symbols, and
Redefining Blackness in Haitian Vodou
In demonstrating in this exhibit the ways Haitian Americans contest constructs of blackness and the unjust systemic criminalizing of the black Haitian American body, I share a story on Kanzo from my visits to Halouba temple in Little Haiti, Manbo Ingrid’s home, and Vodou Holistic Center in Miramar, South Florida. The community draws from embodied resources in Haitian Vodou as the grounds on which they stand to define, deconstruct, and negotiate their sense of blackness---from a place of power. This is despite the duress to which Vodou itself, as a tradition vilified in popular and public culture, is subjected.
Kanzo in the Halouba temple and Ingrid’s home
Reclaiming a specific Haitian cultural identity and
sense of blackness that is empowering.
Membership in the Haitian cultural tradition involves stages including Lave Tet, Kanzo, and Pridézey, corresponding to the progressive levels in understanding the mysteries and accessing resources of the tradition. The Lave Tet is a neophyte stage—the most basic initiation. It is a ceremony for cleansing and cooling the head to bring balance to the recipient, receive a spiritual name, and be baptized. It is also to determine and connect with one’s Lwa Met Tet—the divine spirit/energy that walks most closely with the individual, known as the Master of the head in a three-day Sevis Tet ceremony (Mojo, Kiwi 2024). It marks the beginning of one’s journey into the tradition as a hounsi senp (an initiated).
One who completes the Kanzo initiation moves to the next stage and is opened to deeper knowledge and values of the tradition, where he/she can function in a Lakou or the Vodou community as a Kanzo Senp, learn to separate facts from fiction, learn about his/her spiritual nature/self, and is prepared to embark on a life-long learning process of observation and communion with nature. Kanzo is a formal initiation into Vodou and its practice. It marks the beginning of leadership and mentorship in the Vodou spiritual journey. From this stage, one can be initiated into different levels of the tradition’s priesthood hierarchy. One who has been called to minister or see into the unknown and divine progresses to the Pridézey stage (K. M. Brown 1987, Beaubrun 2013).
According to Ingrid, a critical part of the Kanzo process is Bat Ge (to beat a war)—this is where with the help of the candidate’s spiritual guide—Manbo or Houngan—food fast and commune with the Vodou lwas for seven days, the neophyte beats a spiritual war to access mysteries in the tradition and about his/her spiritual nature and purpose. During the bat ge, the Houngan or Manbo secludes the neophytes and makes them stay in the temple under the guidance of their spiritual guides, who are also leaders in the tradition. The neophytes then undergo spiritual cleansing to ‘enter the womb’ of mother nature to be reborn with divine energies, assignment, status, and identity.
While fasting, they are to meditate upon the teachings of the tradition. Ingrid added that a ritual known as pile fey (the crushing of leaves) is done for the initiates throughout the initiation process. The specific herbs are selected by the manbos/houngans for each neophyte based on the neophyte’s spiritual nature, the leadings of the initiate’s lwa, and the neophytes’ divine purpose. The herbs are then crushed and ritually charged specially to empower that neophyte for real life outside the walls of the temple. During the seven days, all candidates are made to take special baths for at least two of the nights. The candidate is led to the officiating manbo/houngan who will use part of the crushed leaves to ritually cleanse him/her. The baths are done with old clothes on. These baths are symbolic of the death-to-the-old self of the candidate. The Kanzo initiation preparation process can be said to be the pathway that leads to the door of self-rediscovery of blackness within the Haitian Vodou system. It is the preparation for a journey into a world of performing a distinct black identity and embodying a specific black cultural heritage. It is also the preparation that leads neophytes into conscious awareness that they are a distinct category of blackness not controlled by the dominant hegemony on blackness. It is the preparation for a journey into a world of performing a distinct black identity and embodying a specific black cultural heritage.
Through Kanzo, Haitian Americans redefine their social identification of blackness in South Florida. Kanzo marks an important transition in which the initiate is reborn into a new culturally specific identity, role, purpose, and status—not criminalized or essentialized. It also marks the entrance and acceptance into a new community that identifies with the history and experiences of blackness but shields itself, even if only psychologically, from the dominant labels. Kanzo is a door into that strong sense of Africanness that is Haitian, deflecting the stereotyped labels of blackness that are tagged on black bodies in America. It makes them aware of their specific Haitian African identity, especially for those born in America. To these neophytes, the initiation is not only into Vodou but also into Haitian consciousness, heritage, and identity—a specific African and black provenance.
This creative use of Vodou to sow seeds of consciousness into a future-oriented mode of thinking about blackness – an Afrofuturism that aims to create a form of blackness based on cultural identity and heritage and promote self-worth and community liberation. It is about subverting stereotypes and representing oneself through one’s heritage. For American-born Haitians, Kanzo is a gateway to discovering their heritage and specific form of blackness – that is Haitian-American, and for Haitian-born Americans and even others, it is a channel for recovering lost knowledge because of slavery, colonialism, and imperialism. So, Kanzo provides counter symbols and serves as a subversive mechanism that redefines blackness. In the context of the rituals, the Haitians are transported to a world where these black bodies on the margins feel empowered, celebrated, and assured of the future, escaping, even for a few hours, the world that discriminates, criminalizes, and dehumanizes them.
conclusion.
The irony is that, despite its significance in preventing forms of crime and contesting injustice, Vodou faces prejudice and misunderstanding. Mainstream restrictive laws and ordinances often delegitimize and criminalize its practices. The clash between ancient spiritual customs and the American alienating Criminal and Legal System that criminalizes Vodou practices creates tension within the Haitian community (Boaz, 2023). Because the community has experienced and seen the plight of blackness in the ways the black body is criminalized, essentialized, and minoritized, it draws from Haitian cultural resources that are believed to ground the Haitian black community in its purpose and identity and enable it to deconstruct, redefine, and reify the Haitian cultural sense of blackness. According to Ingrid, the purpose is to provide Haitian Americans, especially the second generation, a sense of cultural identity that contests the imposed labels of blackness in America.
Essentially, the ritual experts retool Vodou’s resources to prevent forms of crime, violence, and injustice. Thus, Vodou functions as a resource for crime prevention and protection. It also serves as an important resource for enforcing accountability, responsibility, and justice, shielding the minoritized group from victimization. Haitian Vodou's discourse on justice is multifaceted, resilient, and adaptive.
By examining Haitian cultural embodied discourse’ interplay with the American legal system, we gain insights into cultural survival, community cohesion, and the pursuit of justice. This exhibit contributes to a broader understanding of how marginalized communities navigate complex justice landscapes. Through their agency, Haitian migrants and their priests actively shape and retool Vodou's discourse on crime and justice, negotiating the tensions arising from restrictive laws and ordinances that delegitimize and criminalize the community. Perhaps, in the dance of lwa and legal statutes, we find a path toward a more just and compassionate society.
Finally, the stories and practices described in this exhibit highlight a significant cultural and legal paradox. Vodou, with its deep roots in Haitian culture and history, serves as a cornerstone for community identity and resilience. Yet, it encounters challenges within the legal frameworks of modern societies that often fail to understand or acknowledge its cultural significance. The irony indeed lies in the fact that while Vodou is utilized by its practitioners to combat crime and injustice, it is simultaneously subjected to criminalization and marginalization. This dichotomy underscores the broader struggle of Haitian communities, particularly in the diaspora, to preserve their cultural practices amidst a landscape that can be unwelcoming or even hostile.
The works of scholars like Danielle Boaz and cultural commentators like Ingrid are crucial in shedding light on these issues. They help articulate the complexities of how Haitian Americans, especially younger generations, navigate their identities in a space where they are confronted with conflicting narratives about their heritage and the prevailing perceptions of blackness in America. The resilience of Vodou noted here, is evident in its adaptability and the way ritual experts retool it to serve not only as a spiritual practice but also as a form of social justice. It is a testament to the strength and ingenuity of the Haitian people who, through their spirituality, enforce accountability and provide protection for their community. This project offers a profound exploration of these themes, recognizing the compassion-based resilience of Haitian migrants and the nuanced role of Vodou in their discourse on crime and justice. It is a powerful reminder of the importance of understanding and respecting cultural practices and the potential for these traditions to contribute to a more just and compassionate society. It also underscores the need for continued dialogue and education on the intersection of cultural practices and legal systems. Only through such understanding can we hope to foster a society that embraces diversity and works towards true justice for all its members.
more pictures of manbo ingrid’s efforts.
videos.
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Vodou Holistic Center Video in Pembroke Road, Miramar
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Connecting with Africa to reassert identity and linking the diaspora community
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Connecting the Marginalized Vodou Community in Dahomey to the Diaspora community
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Educating the Haitian American Community about the cultural Heritage and place of the mother using social media in the Creole language, especially for those who are new and learning the dos and don’ts of the American culture and legal system.
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Education on Critical Rules of the Haitian Vodou and Life as Vodouizans in the Diaspora
notes.
[1] Interview with Manbo Ingrid at the Vodou Holistic Center, on 10/23/2023.
[2] A Manbo is a Haitian Vodou priestess.
[3] Ti Jean Petro—the lwa for wealth and power is the son of Dantor—the queen of the Petwo nation in Vodou.
[4] In Haitian Vodou, when a lwa possesses a member, the preferred term is ‘mount and ride’ (ghorala), as one might mount and ride a horse.
sources.
Abu-Jamal, M. (2017). Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? San Francisco: City Lights Books.
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gratitude.
This research was funded by a Fellows Grant from The Crossroads Project, a collaborative research initiative directed by Judith Weisenfeld, Anthea Butler, and Lerone Martin and supported by the Henry Luce Foundation and Princeton University.
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This digital curation explores the Haitian American Vodou community in Miami, the ways the community in their assimilation process, navigates America’s legal understanding of violence, crime, and justice and the community’s cultural discourse of the same, and the roles of their ritual experts, particularly Manbo Ingrid in helping the community prevent forms violence and crime, then negotiate, and contest imperially imposed criminality and injustice. The content may touch upon sensitive subjects, including domestic violence and injustice, and can be distressing. Please prioritize your emotional well-being while exploring. The information provided is based on publicly available material, interviews, observations, and scholarly perspectives. The digital exhibits aim to foster critical dialogue and understanding. This curation does not offer legal expertise or a substitute for legal advice.
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Citation: Dennis, Dorcas. “Spirituality After Crime and In-Justice: Embodied Vodou Discourse and Praxis in South Florida." SPIRIT HOUSE: A Crossroads Project. July 2024. Date Accessed. https://www.crossroads-spirithouse.org/dennis.
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