UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies · PDF fileBelow: 10. A symbol (veve) for Ogou Feray, a Vodou spirit concerned with justice and the * : . " ?? ?' -- * * . * * * ''''' October

Art and Resistance: Haiti's Political Murals, October 1994Author(s): Karen McCarthy BrownReviewed work(s):Source: African Arts, Vol. 29, No. 2, Special Issue: Arts of Vodou (Spring, 1996), pp. 46-57+102Published by: UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3337366 .Accessed: 11/06/2012 18:53

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Art and Resistance Haiti's Political Murals, October 1994

KAREN McCARTHY BROWN

46 african arts spring 1996 46 african arts * spring 1996

he poor people of Haiti danced in the streets all night after Jean- Bertrand Aristide, Catholic priest, liberation theologian, and social

activist, won the 1990 presidential election. It had been Haiti's first truly democratic election. Aristide had entered the race late, when the field was already crowded with candidates. Among them was Marc Bazin, who was backed and funded by the United States of America. Aristide nevertheless pulled 67 percent of the popular vote. His electoral victory felt like the end of a nightmare, the successful resolution of a four-year period of brutal power struggles that had followed Jean-Claude Duvalier's 1986 ab- dication of his role as Haiti's "President for Life."

There was an enormous outpouring of artistic energy in response to Aris- tide's 1990 election. Walls and fences were painted from one end of Haiti to the other with colorful portraits of Aristide (Figs. 6-8) and of Haiti's revolutionary heroes Toussaint L'Ouverture (Fig. 9), who led the only successful slave revolution in the history of transatlantic slavery, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who declared Haiti's independence on January 1, 1804, and became its first head of state.1 Young Haitian men painted all kinds of murals across the city of Port-au-Prince, from the poorest areas to the wealthy neighborhoods, and out into the countryside.

The surge of hope and energy occa- sioned by Aristide's election was short- lived. He served less than one year as President before being removed from office by a coup d'etat. During the three years that the coup leader, General Raoul Cedras, headed the government, Haitians lost more than freedom of expression. The "de facto," as Haitians came to call the putschists, did nothing to better the lives of the people; they concentrated only on shoring up their own power. Violence was a daily affair that periodi- cally spiraled in intensity. These were times of unusual brutality, when people

Opposite page, top left to right: 1-3. Images of roosters, Jean-Bertrand Aristide's symbol on the 1990 presidential ballot, proliferated on the streets of Haiti after Aristide was restored to office in October 1994. The number 5 in the mural on the right refers to his number on the ballot. Photos: Martha Cooper, January 1995: left & center, Port-au-Prince; right, St. Marc.

Opposite page, bottom: 4. Mural painted by Charlemagne Celestin in 1994, documenting the 1988 massacre at the Church of St.-Jean Bosco. Photo: Martha Cooper, Pont Rouge, Port-au-Prince, January 1995.

rarely felt secure, even within their own homes. In the poorest sections of Port- au-Prince, where Aristide had the most support, there were long stretches of time when new corpses were found in the streets each morning. Much of the violence perpetrated by the de facto and their hired thugs was arbitrary, and deliberately so. It was intended to debil- itate the population, to cultivate a vague and pervasive fear, and thus to discour- age any organized resistance.

Despite severe repression and constant fear, the majority of Haitians continued to support Aristide, and some of the young political artists even found ways to express this support. In the Bel- Air section of Port-au-Prince, an area

known for pro-Aristide sentiment, several houses were renumbered with the same new address: "5." Aristide's position on the ballot had been number 5. In the countryside, peasant farmers re- painted small gingerbread houses in the clear red and deep blue of the post- Duvalier flag. Paintings of innocent bu- colic scenes containing prominent depic- tions of rambunctious waterfalls began to pop up in unlikely places; the name of Aristide's party is Lavalas ("The Flood" or "The Deluge"). In one spot just out- side Port-au-Prince, a guerrilla artist wrote simply: "Ari..." In the city of Gonaives, a seat of rebellion against Haiti's many exploitative leaders, a veve (Vodou symbol) for Ogou Feray ap-

Right: 5. Auto mechanics created this cele- bratory pyramid of tire rims painted in the col- ors of the new Haitian flag. The central rim welcomes Aristide home. Photo: Martha Cooper, National Route 1, Pierre Payan, January 1995.

african arts spring 199647 african arts * spring 1996 47

Clockwise from left: 6-8. Portraits of Jean-Ber- trand Aristide in murals on National Route 3 out- side Cap Haitien, near Croix-des-Bouquets, and on Carrefour road. Photos: Martha Cooper, Jan- uary 1995.

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peared on a fence. Ogou is a Vodou spirit concerned with justice and the righteous use of aggression (Fig. 10).

Art on the Occasion of Aristide's Return

After the 1991 coup, the United States attempted to restore democracy in Haiti by sponsoring a multinational trade embargo. During the third year of de facto rule, the embargo became much more severe, and Haitians, especially the poor majority, suffered terribly as a result. The coup leaders nevertheless refused to give way until a few hours before 20,000 U.S. troops landed in Haiti in late September 1994.

In the twenty-four to forty-eight hours surrounding Aristide's return on October 15, 1994, thousands of murals appeared throughout Haiti. They sprouted over- night, like flowers in a desert landscape. Most of the artists signed their works, a simple act that a few weeks earlier could have cost them their lives. One mural on the road to Carrefour even provided detailed directions for finding the artist. "Ask for me in the pharmacy across from the little market...."

Murals were not the only works that appeared that day. People painted the trunks of the trees and even the rocks surrounding their gardens. They also painted hundreds of images of roosters; the rooster, connected to the military Vodou spirit Ogou, had been Aristide's symbol on the 1990 presidential ballot (Figs. 1-3). Hundreds of triumphal arch- es were woven from palm fronds and

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flowers to mark the entrances to side streets and neighborhoods. Next to the highway and in front of their homes, people created elaborate installations-it is difficult to know what else to call them (Fig. 11). Along the road near the small town of Pierre Payan, auto mechanics constructed a decorative pyramid of tire rims, painted in the signature red and blue of Haiti's new flag (Fig. 5). A central rim carried a message: "Bienvenu Titid" (Welcome Aristide).

In slum areas such as Cite Soleil, where as a young liberation priest Aris- tide once preached to his congregation about justice and hope, people made altars in the street. Everything of beauty was brought out of the small houses improvised from tin, mud, cinderblock, and even cardboard. Someone set a chair in front of one such house with a red-pat-

terned cloth draped across it. Propped against the back of the chair was a framed photograph of the deceased mother of the woman who lives there. In front of another home, a worn yellow flowered sheet had been spread over the ground; on it, artfully arranged, were fragments of mirrors, a vase of dusty plastic flowers, a rosary, a picture of Aristide, and a white- skinned doll with tangled hair.

Residents swept the streets, paths, and alleys clean. Curbs and cement stoops, where there were any, were whitewashed, and then elaborate artworks were assembled right on the bare earth, often directly in the flow of foot traffic. The installations and altars most- ly disappeared within a few days, but the thousands of murals created in the same forty-eight-hour period have had much greater longevity.

In the fall of 1994, art was a primary response to liberation. It mediated between terror, a powerful force that had shaped daily life in Haiti for three long years, and the sudden absence of terror. Art helped to restructure life toward normality. It accomplished this by al- lowing Haitians to begin to piece together, in a public forum, their own historical narrative, their own version of who they are, what they have been through, and what they have accomplished. Haitian artists told these multiple stories in the most democratic of languages, that of visual imagery.

Only about one-quarter of the population reads and writes, so these murals provided a venue for genuinely inclusive public discussion. Yet, perhaps more to the point, freedom of expression had been effectively denied to Haitians during the thirty-year dictatorship of Franqois and Jean-Claude Duvalier, and little improved

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on this score during the four years that followed "Baby Doc's" ignominious departure. The explosions of art on walls and billboards that attended first Duvalier's 1986 departure and then Aristide's election (1990), inauguration (1991), and return to office after the coup (1994) were the direct result of the recovery of this cherished human freedom.

The Murals as Historical Texts

In Kreybl, the first and only language of most Haitians, the murals are called foto, photographs. Many of the mural artists of 1994 see themselves as being like photo- journalists preserving a historical record. One mural along National Route 1 near the turnoff for Croix-des-Bouquet was meant to depict, in one cumulative image, the time sequence of the United States military invasion (Fig. 12). Pointing, in his painting, to a line of planes and helicopters, Paul Emile Fils-Aime of Impasse Malo Sathe gave me a precise recounting of events: "About 7:00 A.M. a white plane...big...came first, followed by two in army camouflage. Then two helicopters dropped down and landed at the airport. Then came twelve [more] helicopters, and by 10:00 or 10:30 the marines started dropping down from them." Sliding his hand down from the sky filled with aircraft, the artist called attention to the lower half of the painting, which was a schematic drawing of the Port-au-Prince airport: "When the two helicopters landed at the airport, soldiers ran out and fell to the ground, with their rifles ready...."

Other murals have historical significance of a different sort. During the time of de facto rule, people were not free to speak out against government officials, or soldiers, or members of paramilitary groups such as FRAPH (Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti); nor could they directly accuse the thugs who

Left: 9. A portrait of Haitian revolutionary hero Toussaint LOuverture. Photo: Martha Cooper, National Route 1, Gagotte, January 1995.

Below: 10. A symbol (veve) for Ogou Feray, a Vodou spirit concerned with justice and the righteous use of aggression. Photo: Martha Cooper, Gonaives, January 1995.

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did the dirty work for these groups. Furthermore, for a long time after Aristide's return there was no function- ing judicial system. Thus, even with Cedras gone, the agents of terror could not be brought to justice. As a result, in the small and closely knit neighborhoods from which Haitian towns and cities are composed, people had to tolerate neighbors who were known torturers, mur- derers, thieves, and rapists.

The mural artists contributed to see- ing that the worst of the stories of suffering and the most nefarious of the crimi- nals would not be forgotten. For example, Charlemagne Celestin, who lives in Pont Rouge, just on the edge of Cite Soleil, painted a picture of an infamous event that occurred before Aristide's election (Fig. 4). On September 11, 1988, an armed gang of thugs wearing red

armbands broke into the Church of St.- Jean Bosco in Cite Soleil. At the time Aristide, then the parish priest, was saying Mass. At least a dozen people were killed. Even a pregnant woman was not spared: she was stabbed in the stomach. Miraculously, she survived, and so did her child, a little girl who became a symbol of Haiti's fragile hope. The attackers also burned the church to the ground. Celestin, who was among the people gathered for Mass in St.-Jean Bosco at the time of the massacre, feels that his painting helps to preserve the record of human-rights abuses committed in Haiti. Other mural artists specifically compared what they did to the work of a truth commission set up by the Aristide government and charged with preserving evidence of crimes committed during the period of the de facto.2

Putting the Egg Back into the Chicken

Not all the murals deal so directly with painful subjects. Humor has long been an important resource for artists in Haiti. Shortly after the 1991 coup, the president of the Haitian Chamber of Deputies,

11. Murals and festive decorations bedeck the streets upon Aristide's return to Haiti. Photo: Karen McCarthy Brown, Carrefour road, Bo- losse, October 1994.

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who was not an Aristide supporter, gloated that Aristide would never return to the presidency because a coup d'etat was a lot like a chicken laying an egg. "You cannot put the egg back in the chicken," he gloated. Judging from the 1994 murals, among which can be found hundreds of images of chickens under- going precisely that delicate operation (Figs. 13-17), Haitians seem to have responded with a resounding "Oh, yes you can!"

In some of these paintings an innocu- ous little egg is slipped smoothly back into a tranquil bird. In others the egg is huge, and the prospect of putting it back is clear- ly daunting to the chicken. Chickens cry out "OH!!!!" and "Papa, make it go in!" One determined little chicken announces grimly, "Map reziyem. Kitel antre" (I am resolved. Let it enter). In yet others, particularly those in the north of Haiti, the re- egging operation is wounding. Many of the wall paintings in and around Cap- Haitien show the chicken bleeding, at times copiously (Fig. 13). More than one artist told me this represented the suffering of the poor under the embargo that assisted Aristide's return to Haiti.

In the many murals devoted to the theme of putting the egg back into the chicken, there is also an ongoing debate about who actually executes this delicate, miraculous maneuver. In some an anony- mous black hand slips it back in. In at least one other, a white hand holds the chicken while a black hand does the job. One found in the center of Port-au-Prince depicts a white hand wearing a U.N. bracelet of flags (Fig. 14). In a few murals a gun seems to be required to give the egg a push on its way back in, but in a Cap- Haitien version, a simple hammer accom-

plishes the same job nicely (Fig. 15). Sometimes Aristide's name is written on the egg; in other images, it is Aristide himself who performs the operation (Fig. 16). And there is a least one mural, on a side street off the Carrefour road, in which Jesus himself puts the egg back into the chicken (Fig. 17). Apparently this artist thought only God could accomplish a miracle as big as President Aristide's return to Haiti. What remained unspo- ken, but was equally clear, was the opin- ion that it would be a mistake to give the United Nations or the United States army sole credit for such a miracle. "Jesu sove Haiti," one artist declared. Simulta- neously a plea and a statement of fact- "Jesus, save Haiti!" and "Jesus saves Haiti"-this one seemed to do better than others at articulating the uncertainty of the moment.

The Murals as Commentary on the 1994 U.S. Invasion

For the most part, Haitians welcomed the U.S. troops with real gratitude and generous praise. They were rescued. When I went to Haiti three weeks after the invasion, people I did not know stopped me in the streets and hugged me. They thanked me profusely simply because I am a U.S. citizen. My Haitian friends said that the arrival of the troops made it possible for them to sleep through a night, a luxury they had not known for three years.

Some of the murals painted in mid- October convey this gratitude directly and, often, in English: "Thank you Amer- ica" appeared along the Carrefour road beneath a painting of a helicopter and an American flag (Fig. 18); "Thank You

12. Mural by Paul Emile Fils-Aime depicting the sequence of the 1994 U.S. invasion. Photo: Martha Cooper, Impasse Malo Sathe, January 1995.

U.S.A./ No we never forget it" showed up along National Route 1. Other mes- sages came in Kreyol. The legend beside a picture of an American eagle grasping the plane that returned Aristide to Haiti was "Mesi Etazini Pou Retou Pe Titid" (Thank You, United States, For Returning Father Titid).

Young men, in some cases very young men, were transfixed by the splendor of U.S. military hardware. They absorbed the images of double- and single-rotor helicopters; rifles, sidearms, and semiau- tomatic weapons; airplanes and aircraft carriers; jeeps, medical emergency vehicles, and armored vehicles. They sorted out the various types of uniforms, boots, and helmets, and committed each to memory. Martha Cooper, the photogra- pher with whom I worked, and I came across young boys of seven and eight using chalk to draw remarkably accurate images of tanks, trucks, and helicopters on the Cap-Haitien water tower, while their older comrades worked out their algebra homework on the other side of the big silver tank.

In Limbe, men in their twenties painted elegant reproductions of soldiers and military vehicles on practically every blank wall in the small mountain town (Fig. 19). Because of a charismatic and controversial local politician, the United States had anticipated organized resistance from Limbe, and so the town was flooded with troops. But there was no resistance. It was fascinating to walk through the streets of Limbe just a few weeks after the invasion and see the U.S. Armed Forces through local eyes. In these murals, the soldiers are not pre- sented as menacing, and there is virtually no violence. What intrigued the people of Limbe was the racial and sexual mix of the soldiers and, again, the mag- nificence of the equipment. The reaction to the latter should not be surprising. Even though nearly 80 percent of people in Haiti live in rural areas, very few farmers can afford equipment more sophisticated than a mule or a hoe.

On their arrival U.S. soldiers were in- structed to treat the paramilitary group FRAPH as a legitimate political party, but FRAPH had a worse record for intimidation, torture, and murder than any other organization in Haiti, with the possible exception of the army.3 In down- town Port-au-Prince, at a spot where sidewalk mechanics work on Haiti's tap-taps (painted buses), there is a mural that sets the record straight (Fig. 20). It depicts the arrival of U.S. troops just as a FRAPH member is beating a young boy. The boy is on his knees and

50 african arts * spring 1996 50 african arts * spring 1996

Clockwise from top left: Images like these proliferated after Aristide's return. They dis- pute the opposition's conventional wisdom that "You cannot put the egg back in the chicken" (i.e., that the deposed Aristide would never recover his presidency).

13. In many Cap-Haitien murals, putting the egg back in the chicken is shown to be a painful operation. The bleeding chicken has been said to represent the suffering of the poor under the eimbargo that prPcedti Aris- tide's return. Photo: Martha Cooper, Cap- Haltien, January 1995.

14. A hand with a U.N. bracelet of flags inserts the egg. Photo: Martha Cooper, Port-au-Prince, January 1995.

15. The egg is put back in the chicken-with the help of a hammer. Photo: Martha Cooper, Cap-Haitien, January 1995.

16. Here, Aristide himself will execute the maneuver. Photo: Martha Cooper, Pont Rouge, Port-au-Prince, January 1995.

17. It takes Jesus to put the egg back in. Photo: Martha Cooper, Carrefour road, January 1995.

blood is pouring from his head. The soldier stops the FRAPH member with a warning: "Ey ey flap demoklasi, demoklasi" (Hey, hey FRAPH, democracy, democracy.) The bully speaks not to the soldier but to the young boy when he says with

heavy irony: "Se papa w wap tan'n, e byen" (It's your father you're waiting for, oh well).

In this mural, the enormous difference in power between Haiti and the United States is configured in the idiom of fami-

ly. There is a seemingly omnipotent "father" and a helpless, bleeding child, knocked to his knees by a neighborhood bully. The use of this idiom represents a familiar kind of Haitian cultural judo. A Haitian who neglects the responsibilities

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of the parental role, or abuses the power that comes along with it, can theoretical- ly be shamed into compliance with a respectful and preferably public speech in which the offender is frequently re- ferred to as "father" or "mother." Refer- ring to the United States as "father" is thus a call for it to act responsibly. In Haiti, reality-based politics begins with acceptance of the inevitability of U.S. involvement, and with acceptance of the gross disparity in power between the two nations. Slotting the United States into the father role requires deference and praise on the Haitian side. To some that may look like groveling, but it increases the likelihood that the United States will act in a benevolent manner.

To note that people were grateful to the United States and that they experienced the arrival of the military as a fatherly res- cue is not to deny that there was consider- able ambivalence among the people about having these soldiers on Haitian soil. This current episode in Haitian history still rais- es deeply conflicting emotions; shame vies with relief, comfort with fear. Some of the murals which, on the surface, seem decep- tively simple can in fact reveal great ambivalence. For example, one of the most striking images shows a great, wide- winged American eagle swooping in over the Haitian coastline (Fig. 21). In the beak of the eagle is a bird perch and, somewhat primly perched upon it is Aristide's emblematic rooster. On the shore a crowd of Haitians, drawn in loose, impressionis- tic lines, welcomes the rescuer and the rescued. Each bird carries a flag in its claws. The difference in size between the two flags mirrors and extends the startling contrast in the size of the two birds, and thus underlines the power difference between the two nations.4

Only after working with the first image for some time did I notice that the bird perch is actually a simple loop of rope that loosely, but effectively, binds the rooster's wings. Even if roosters were great fliers, this one could not take off from his perch. In fact, when the picture is examined yet more closely, it is unclear whether Aristide's rooster still has wings. Many people have suggested, without actually employing the metaphor, that the Haitian leader had his wings clipped

Top: 18. Haitian gratitude for the U.S. invasion that ousted the military regime is expressed in this mural on the Carrefour road. Photo: Martha Cooper, January 1995.

Center: 19. A detailed rendering of a U.S. Army jeep, painted in the Limbe market. The people of this small mountain town were fascinated by the sophisticated military equipment brought to the island. Photo: Martha Cooper, Limbe, January 1995.

Bottom: 20. An American soldier warns a member of the hated paramilitary group FRAPH who is beating a young boy. Photo: Martha Cooper, Port-au-Prince, January 1995.

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21. Detail of a mural showing the American eagle returing the Aristide rooster to Haiti. Photo: Martha Cooper, Carrefour road, Bolosse, January 1995.

in the process of dealing with Washing- ton. A parallel joke, current in Haiti around the time of Aristide's return, was that the United States brought him back with "de pye nan youn gren soulye" (both feet in a single shoe). This absurdly crip- pling image is meant to refer to the agree- ments that Aristide was forced to make with the United States while living there in exile. Among other things, he had to consent to an economic development scheme that will make it virtually impos- sible to restructure the economy in any significant way, even though Haiti's class profile is probably the most lopsided in the hemisphere.

There are also older historical reso- nances in images of Haiti overwhelmed, bound, grounded, and controlled. When U.S. troops set foot on Haitian soil in September 1994, it was not for the first time. There is a generation of people alive in Haiti today who remember the departure of the U.S. Marines in 1934. They had been in control of their country for nearly twenty years. During that time they had disarmed the population; built the contemporary army and limited the use of arms to that body; rationalized the national bureaucracy, thus unwittingly paving the way for the efficient Duvalier dictatorship; built a national road system; massa- cred people who resisted the occupation; and in general exposed the Haitian population to a good dose of North American racism. The Marines conscripted peasant laborers for road-building projects, and not until the U.S. press began to object to the reinstatement of "slave labor" did they stop such practices as roping the workers together and marching them to and from the job (Maclean 1993:50). Memories of such events, in part, account for the layers of shame and dread beneath the joy with which Haitians welcomed "Operation Restore Democracy."

Haiti's Transnational Culture

Haiti is a small country, approximately the size of the state of Maryland, but it currently has a population of more than 6 million people. Another 1 million have left. The portion of the diaspora that settled in greater New York, approximately 500,000 persons, is the largest Haitian immigrant community in North America. There are also sizable Haitian populations in Miami, Boston, and Montreal. Diaspora communities have been built up in successive waves whose timing is invariably linked to political and economic developments back home. The first wave of immigrants to the United States came in the late 1950s, after Franqois Duvalier became president, and it

seriously depleted Haiti's professional population. Recent immigrants have tended to be poor and unskilled.

The U.S. Haitian diaspora, or Tenth Department,5 contributes at least $100 million a year to the Haitian economy, mainly through small cash transfers immigrants make to friends and family back home. Furthermore, large numbers of Haitians in the United States and Canada go back to Haiti to visit on a reg- ular basis, and a significant percentage of the exile population harbors dreams of retiring in their natal country. All of this contradicts a common U.S. percep- tion that there are hordes of Haitians, with one-way tickets, who want to settle in the United States.

Haitian culture is thoroughly transnational in character, and never has it been more evident than in the period of Aris- tide's presidency. The artworks that greet- ed Aristide's 1994 return exhibit a broad range of styles moving from Haiti's well- known "naive" painting, to images that have their roots in the spray-painted T- shirts and subway graffiti of Miami, Bos- ton, and New York City. Academic painting also seems to have been a resource for the painters of the 1994 murals. The influ- ences of Surrealism, Photo-Realism, and even Abstract Expressionism are all detectable in the artworks created on the occasion of Aristide's homecoming.

One also sees a potpourri of languages in these murals; sometimes a single work makes use of more than one language. English and Spanish are spoken in the world of young Haitian artists, as well as French and Kreyol. The languages even more than the artistic styles constitute tangible evidence of the significance of frequent contact between the diaspora communities and Haiti itself. This is not

simply a matter of one-way influence from such things as U.S. television, now easily accessible in urban Haiti. Haitian transnationalism is a much more complex, interactive process. The waves of immigration crash out of Haiti and then seep back, gently but steadily, from the United States, Canada, France, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. The end result is a flexible, hybrid culture, one that has many incarnations and many centers. A significant number of Haitians now move easily between two-and sometimes three-different cultures.

It is also apparent that people in Haiti are currently developing a broader, more global sense of history. For example, the explosion of art created in 1994 for President Aristide's return reveals a popular attempt on the part of Haitians to place themselves within the larger stream of black history.6 A mural in Martissant, some distance out the Carrefour road away from the capital, proclaims in day- glow green and in English: "Black His- tory Is My History." There is a connection between such a claim and a common theme of 1994 mural painters: the gallery of black heroes. Those who qualified for this gallery include not only Toussaint L'Ouverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Charlemagne Perrault, the leader of the caco guerrillas active during the U.S. Marine occupation, but also Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King (Fig. 22). And, responding to the tastes of another kind of audience, a black Rambo makes more than one appearance in the 1994 parades of heroes (Fig. 23).

The recent expansion of the historical reference field in Haiti is not simply about claiming a place in the narratives of Western culture; it is also about claiming Haiti's particular past. The 1994 murals

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contain multiple references to slavery, as well as comparisons of slavery to the more recent type of terror the de facto government used to control the populace. At the same time there is also some explo- ration of the indigenous culture. A tawny Native American woman rising up out of the map of Haiti is a surprisingly frequent presence in the 1994 murals. Perhaps this Indian woman is Anacaona, a Taino Arawak "queen" and warrior who is said to have been burned at the stake by Spanish explorers in the late fifteenth century (Fig. 24). Or perhaps she is more like a piece of heroic sculpture, a metaphoric reference to an entire people. One mural, in the center of Port-au-Prince, brings together Anacaona, Nelson Mandela, and Charlemagne Perrault.

The Language of Vodou as Subtext in Political Murals

The language, the general aesthetic sense, and particularly the images of Vodou, the Africa-based religion of the majority of Haitians, pervade the culture and, as a result, influence the political discourse. Among the 1994 murals, several in and around Port-au-Prince pictured a U.S. soldier disarming a Haitian soldier or a Tonton Makout7 with the help of a dog (Fig. 25). The U.S. forces that arrived in Haiti in 1994 brought dogs trained to sniff out weapons. This fact is no doubt the most obvious reason why dogs are in the murals. Yet I am convinced that these dogs are polyvocal symbols, because in the Vodou temples there is a strong connection between dogs and the warrior spirit Ogou.

Ogou (there is one and there are many), like all Vodou spirits, has both constructive and destructive aspects to his personality. He is a brave and noble warrior, a loyal and true friend, but he is also a drunkard, a braggart, and a liar. Ogou condenses into himself the multiple

and complex lessons about things military that Haitians have learned throughout their troubled history. Just one brief example: Jean-Jacques Dessalines was a brilliant soldier who became Haiti's first head of state. He announced the independence of the new republic, and it was he who purged the country of its remaining whites at the end of the revolution. For these acts, he was enormously popular, but as the country's leader, Dessalines quickly instituted an economic recovery plan that returned people to a condition nearly indistinguishable from the slavery they had just escaped.

The most common way those who serve the Vodou spirits relate to their spirits is via someone possessed by them. When Ogou "mounts" one of the faithful and takes over that person's voice and body, he acts out the melancholy truths that Haitians have learned about the uses and abuses of military power. One way he does this is by an elegant "dance" with the sword that is handed to him on his arrival in the Vodou temple. First he attacks an "enemy" by running about the temple and clanging his sword on walls and windowsills. Then he toys with the sword, amusing himself by threatening those who are standing closest to him. Finally, he turns it on himself, lodging the point in his solar plexus and, if possible, bending the blade a bit. The lesson is both simple and deep: the powers of guns and steel liberate, betray, and all too often lead to self-destruction. Just as betrayal is only one step behind military victory, so Ogou's drunkenness, lies, and bluster hover just beneath the controlled exterior of a noble soldier. This is where the dogs come in.

A song for Ogou Achade says: "Baton pase nan me mwen, Achade/ Pou chyen raje mawde mwen" (The club passes into my hand, Achade/ Because the mad dog bites me). Yet while the soldier Ogou provides the weapon to fight mad dogs,

22. Martin Luther King, included in the Haitian gallery of black heroes. Photo: Karen McCarthy Brown, Port-au-Prince, October 1994.

the source of trouble is sometimes Ogou himself. Another song, this one for the Ogou known as Sen Jak (St. James), makes this point perfectly clear. It has a simple lyric and an energetic, even jaun- ty melody: Sen Jak pa la/ Se chyen ki la (Sen Jak isn't there/ It's a dog who's there). This much Haiti's irritable, starved dogs and her equally irritable, corrupt soldiers have in common: they tend to turn on their own people.

This Vodou reading of the significance of the dog-and-soldier theme in the 1994 political murals was reinforced when someone told me the following, probably apocryphal, story. A small contingent of U.S. military personnel was ordered to go to the south of Haiti not long after their arrival on the island. They took some of the weapons-sniffing dogs with them. The trip was long, and it was hard on the animals. When the dogs were unloaded in the town of Jeremie, they went berserk and attacked their masters. With this vignette, contemporary Haitians repeat not only a Vodou theme, but also a historical one that dates back to the days of their successful slave revolution. In her recent book Haiti, History and the Gods, Joan Dayan describes how French soldiers trained dogs to attack slaves by starving them and giving them only black flesh to eat. In the last years of the long war of independence (1791-1804), when a group of such dogs accompanied French soldiers to the southern town of Petit-G6ave to engage the rebel army there, the dogs turned and went after the French soldiers rather than the rebels (Dayan 1995:155).

Aristide: Between Catholicism and Vodou

Jean-Bertrand Aristide, no longer a priest of the Catholic Church,8 is conversant, like virtually all Haitians, in two religious symbol systems: Catholicism and Vodou. Nearly 80 percent of Haitians are Catholics who also serve the African spirits that their ancestors passed on to them. These spirits are thought of as neither gods nor demons, but they are sometimes called "angels." The spirits are more intimate with the living than it would ever be appropriate or, even possible, for Bondye (God) to be.

Because Vodou is so central to the life of ordinary Haitians, Aristide inevitably made use of its perspectives and its images to communicate with his political as well as his religious followers. For example, when Aristide was still a priest, he wore a liturgical stole that had Catho- lic images embroidered on one side and Vodou images on the other. And he

54 african arts * spring 1996

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54 african arts ? spring 1996

exhibited a special genius for communi- cating via symbols that could go both ways, just as he still speaks in parables that sustain multiple interpretations. In his days as a parish priest, it was cus- tomary for him to release white doves inside the church during Mass. Such a

dove appears in many of the 1994 murals. At once the Catholic Holy Spirit and the Vodou sacrificial dove used to cleanse the faithful of ill fortune, the white dove is a brilliant choice. Like the Christian cross that can simultaneously be read as the African crossroads, the

23. This black Rambo joined the company of historical and contemporary black heroes who appeared in the 1994 murals. Photo: Martha Cooper, Limbe, January 1995.

white dove is a thoroughly and effort- lessly bilingual symbol.

One particularly polished mural shows Aristide standing before the U.N. His Vodou red rooster stands protectively behind his right shoulder, while the inclusive white dove hovers above the left. Other murals capture more of the tension and the awkwardness endemic to his position straddling Vodou and Catholic worlds. One shows a youthful Aristide between a vigilant rooster and a persistent Jesus who holds out a rosary to him (Fig. 27). The legend across the top translates as "The Will of the People...The Will of Aristide." Aristide looks straight ahead, at the viewer, but Ogou's rooster and Jesus seem to be caught in a solemn staring match.

In another mural, a group of Haitians, some light-skinned and some dark, are at sea during a serious storm (Fig. 28). Their boat is made from the most sacred of Vodou drums, the asoto, the one believed to be the voice of the ancestors. Lasiren, a Vodou sea spirit, here ap- pearing in the form of a large pink fish, pushes the boat from behind while the radiant head and shoulders of Jesus hover benevolently above. Interestingly enough, neither Lasiren nor Jesus has arms. Nevertheless the Vodou spirit manages to do a little "hands-on" work while Jesus offers a more distanced sort of support. She pushes the boat with her body. This interpretation is consistent

Above: 24. This woman may be Anacaona, a Taino Arawak "queen" and warrior, said to have been martyred by the Spanish in the fifteenth century. Photo: Martha Cooper, Port-au- Prince, January 1995.

Right: 25. A U.S. soldier with a dog disarms a Haitian soldier or a Tonton Makout. Dogs were brought in to sniff out weapons, but in Vodou they are also linked to the warrior spirit Ogou. Photo: Karen McCarthy Brown, Port-au-Prince, October 1994.

african arts * spring 1996 55 55

A '

_ .~~~~~~~4

african arts * spring 1996

with Vodou understandings of the quite different roles of the spirits and of God, and it also makes it abundantly clear that Haitians, when in trouble, rely on the spirits as their first line of defense.

Aristide and the Young Men of Haiti

In the 1980s, when the political winds were just beginning to shift in Haiti, Jean- Bertrand Aristide was among the most outspoken of the liberation priests.9 Given one of the poorest parishes in Port-au- Prince, the Church of St.-Jean Bosco locat- ed in the squalor of Cit6 Soleil, Aristide turned it into a pulpit for calling the corrupt Haitian government to account for the sufferings of the poor. Father Aris- tide's special ministry was to the homeless boys of Port-au-Prince. During the time he served as parish priest for St.-Jean Bosco, many people commented that he was always surrounded by a crowd of bois- terous young men. Aristide founded a residence for homeless boys in Port- au-Prince, and during the period when the coup government was in power, "Aristide's boys" in that facility actually became the targets of political assassins.

Life has been hard on young men in urban Haiti for a long time. Poverty, soil erosion, and political corruption have pushed them off the rural family land and into the city. Once in Port-au-Prince, urban poverty, working hand in hand with various international economic

development schemes, has further distanced these young men from the resources they need for personal dignity and financial security. In the Haitian countryside gender roles are clearer; there, boys seem to know how to become men. In the city, the path to full manhood is much less clear, mainly because there are so few jobs.

Even before Jean-Claude Duvalier resigned from the presidency, unemployment among young men in the city was alarmingly high. Eighty percent was a rough estimate often quoted. As I write, unemployment among this sector of the population must now be close to 90 or 95 percent. Even when the usual sorts of piecework jobs return to Haiti, few will be available for men. Foreign employers prefer women. Poor women are usually the ones who raise the children in urban Haiti, and this makes them more "responsible"-or should we say more pliable?-employees.

Young men in Port-au-Prince wander the streets. They become obsessed with soccer; they drink and carouse and play the lottery. Meanwhile U.S. television demonstrates the accouterments of manhood: guns, fancy cars, stylish clothes, and, above all else, money. These sig- nals of masculinity are way out of reach for almost all young men in Haiti. Throughout the 1980s and into the '90s there was only one certain way that a poor youth in the city could earn money: he could offer his services to an aspiring polit-

ical candidate or a corrupt army officer. In other words, he had to become a hired gun or an enforcer, playing a bit part in Haiti's long drama of political and economic corruption. The U.S. news media usually called these violent young men "thugs." A title preferred by Haitians is sanmanman (the motherless ones). The name makes the point that anyone who would turn on his own people in exchange for money and social prestige can no longer claim to be a part of any family.

In striking contrast to the sanmanman, the young artists who painted the 1994 murals remained connected to families or, too often, to whatever was left of their families. They also maintained a responsible relationship with their communities. The artists' collectives are in themselves experiments in democracy. Community leaders often requested that these youths produce political art for the community, and it was the communities themselves who paid for paint and other supplies. One group of neighbors at Impasse Malo Sathe also decided, by voting, who would paint what and where.

There was a time shortly after Aristide's departure when every poor young man in Port-au-Prince was under suspicion as an Aristide supporter. This brought on an exodus of biblical proportions of youths from the city. Those who did not have the means to leave went into hiding, moving from house to house. They spoke of themselves as mawon (maroons), a name given to runaway slaves in an earlier epoch of Caribbean history.

While poor young men were suspect just because they were who they were, those who had painted murals in the 1990-91 period were hunted with real vigor. Charlemagne Celestin and Vladi- mir Moliere, along with the eleven other members of the Pont Rouge artist's collective, were forced to spend all three years of Aristide's exile in an exile of their own. Mawonaj (the condition of being a maroon) is what they called it. At one point, a gun-wielding thug, aggrieved by a mural Celestin had painted in 1991, held his weapon to the artist's head and forced him to remain on his knees for more than an hour. Another group of five artists in Bolosse, members of an artists' collective called Toute (Everyone), also spent three years as mawon. They reported that every member of their group had been beaten at least once during the time of the de facto for graffiti writing and other related offenses. During that period, making art was a truly dangerous profession.

From September 1991 to October 1994, thugs, FRAPH members, Makouts (the titles do not really matter) pursued and

26. Aristide's triumphant rooster alongside a decapitated guinea hen, a symbol of the Du- valier regime. Photo: Martha Cooper, Carrefour road, January 1995.

56 african arts spring 1996 african arts * spring 1996 56

Above: 27. Aristide, until recently a Catholic priest, straddles the world of Vodou and the world of Catholicism. This image of the Hai- tian leader caught between the rooster of Ogou and a beckoning Jesus reflects his sit- uation. Photo: Martha Cooper, Cap-Haitien, January 1995.

Right: 28. A pink fish representing Lasir&n, a Vodou sea spirit, pushes a boat made from the sacred asoto drum, while a benevolent but removed Jesus looks down from above. Photo: Karen McCarthy Brown, Port-au-Prince, October 1994.

abused the mural painters of Port-au- Prince. What makes this subplot of the larger story of the coup against Aristide so poignant is that the two groups, pur- suers and pursued, were drawn from a common pool-young, unemployed men from eighteen to thirty years of age living in the capital of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.10 These young artists, unlike the thugs who murdered Aristide's parishioners at St.-Jean Bosco, did not sell their souls.

Given the general suffering of the populace over the three years of the coup government, and the specific persecu- tions of those targeted as political artists, it is remarkable that there are almost no

fantasies of revenge in their murals. The 1994 murals are sentimental, provocative, critical, insightful, witty, earnest, and pro- fane. The closest thing to violence that I saw in them was the decapitation (Fig. 26) and spit-roasting of a guinea hen, the

symbol of Duvalier and also of all the thugs and sanmanman Duvalier left behind in Haiti when he emptied the national treasury into his suitcases and ran away in February 1986. O

Notes, page 102

african arts spring 1996 57 57 african arts . spring 1996

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BROWN: Notes, from page 57

1. Alan W. Barnett (1989) reports on the 1986 murals. The 1990 murals are covered extensively by Nicola 1994. This volume also has many beautiful color reproductions. 2. There are artists not involved in mural painting who are also working to preserve and interpret the record of violence against the people of Haiti during the time of Cedras's leadership. One type of painting is found only in the informal, still clandestine market. They sell small easel paintings that depict particular crimes and particular, recognizable crimi- nals. These works are hard to locate, and the few examples of the genre that I have seen are, understandably, unsigned. 3. Toto Constant, the head of FRAPH, has been shown to be a long-time CIA employee, and some news sources claim that the United States had a role in the creation of FRAPH. See, for example, Nairn 1996. 4. A striking contrast can be found in a mural, similar in style, probably executed in 1991. A photo of it, taken in 1993 by Phyllis Galembo in Port-au-Prince (see Brown 1995:88), shows an Aristide rooster irreverently pecking the head of a large American eagle. This mural was painted during the time when U.S. efforts to influence the presidential elections met with strong criticism from most Haitians. Yet it would be a mistake to think that this critical edge is entirely missing from the 1994 American eagle mural. 5. This is the term currently used to refer to the entire Haitian diaspora. Haiti itself has nine administrative departements. Those who have emigrated make up the tenth. Aristide's original cam- paign for president and his activities while in exile were in part financed by the diaspora community. After the coup, President Aristide appointed a Minister of the Tenth Department. 6. Something similar occurred during the presidency of Francois Duvalier, but in Haiti this earlier movement was most- ly confined to the intelligentsia. Nevertheless, Duvalier's self- understanding, particularly in his early political career, was often articulated in the terms taken from international philo- sophical noirisme. 7. Tonton Makout, Uncle Strawsack, is a figure in Haitian folklore who picks up errant children and stuffs them in his sack. The name was also given to Francois Duvalier's paramilitary group, the VSN (National Security Volunteers), as well as to his secret police. Duvalier, not only literate in the symbolism of
































































































1. Alan W. Barnett (1989) reports on the 1986 murals. The 1990 murals are covered extensively by Nicola 1994. This volume also has many beautiful color reproductions. 2. There are artists not involved in mural painting who are also working to preserve and interpret the record of violence against the people of Haiti during the time of Cedras's leadership. One type of painting is found only in the informal, still clandestine market. They sell small easel paintings that depict particular crimes and particular, recognizable crimi- nals. These works are hard to locate, and the few examples of the genre that I have seen are, understandably, unsigned. 3. Toto Constant, the head of FRAPH, has been shown to be a long-time CIA employee, and some news sources claim that the United States had a role in the creation of FRAPH. See, for example, Nairn 1996. 4. A striking contrast can be found in a mural, similar in style, probably executed in 1991. A photo of it, taken in 1993 by Phyllis Galembo in Port-au-Prince (see Brown 1995:88), shows an Aristide rooster irreverently pecking the head of a large American eagle. This mural was painted during the time when U.S. efforts to influence the presidential elections met with strong criticism from most Haitians. Yet it would be a mistake to think that this critical edge is entirely missing from the 1994 American eagle mural. 5. This is the term currently used to refer to the entire Haitian diaspora. Haiti itself has nine administrative departements. Those who have emigrated make up the tenth. Aristide's original cam- paign for president and his activities while in exile were in part financed by the diaspora community. After the coup, President Aristide appointed a Minister of the Tenth Department. 6. Something similar occurred during the presidency of Francois Duvalier, but in Haiti this earlier movement was most- ly confined to the intelligentsia. Nevertheless, Duvalier's self- understanding, particularly in his early political career, was often articulated in the terms taken from international philo- sophical noirisme. 7. Tonton Makout, Uncle Strawsack, is a figure in Haitian folklore who picks up errant children and stuffs them in his sack. The name was also given to Francois Duvalier's paramilitary group, the VSN (National Security Volunteers), as well as to his secret police. Duvalier, not only literate in the symbolism of Vodou, but a Vodou priest himself, chose a uniform for the VSN, blue denim pants and shirt, that recalled the outfit of one of the most loved and familiar of the Vodou spirits, Kouzin Zaka. These days "Makout" is a general term applied to all kinds of people who benefit from the corruption and violence that still plagues Haiti. 8. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced to resign from the priesthood shortly before he was reinstated as Haiti's president in the fall of 1994. He agreed to resign after a long and heated debate with Rome about the nature of his priestly calling, and he said

Vodou, but a Vodou priest himself, chose a uniform for the VSN, blue denim pants and shirt, that recalled the outfit of one of the most loved and familiar of the Vodou spirits, Kouzin Zaka. These days "Makout" is a general term applied to all kinds of people who benefit from the corruption and violence that still plagues Haiti. 8. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced to resign from the priesthood shortly before he was reinstated as Haiti's president in the fall of 1994. He agreed to resign after a long and heated debate with Rome about the nature of his priestly calling, and he said




that this act was one of the hardest things he ever had to do. See La Verite! En Verite! (1989), a record of Aristide's exchanges with the Vatican about his vocation, working with the poor of Haiti. 9. Until about twenty-five years ago, virtually all Catholic priests in Haiti were white, from France or from French-speaking Canada. Once significant numbers of young Haitian men came into the priesthood, the Church's role there took a dra- matic turn. The leadership of the Catholic Church remained conservative, as it has throughout the Caribbean and South America, but the young Haitian priests, Aristide among them, launched the Ti-Legliz (Little Church) movement. A version of liberation theology movements around the globe, it concentrated on the social-justice dimensions of the Christian tradition. In the terms of liberation theology, these priests made "a preferential option for the poor." In other words, they chose to see the world as much as possible from the perspective of the impoverished majority of Haiti's population. 10. Even though I repeatedly asked, I could not locate a single woman mural painter, and while there were some older men involved, they tended to function as father figures and art instructors for the actual painters.

References cited

Barnett, Alan W. 1989. "Revolution on the Walls," Art in America 67,7 (July).

Brown, Karen McCarthy. 1995. Tracing the Spirit: Ethnographic Essays on Haitian Art. Davenport, IA: Davenport Museum of Art and University of Washington Press.

Dayan, Joan. 1995. Haiti, History, and the Gods. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Maclean, Frances. 1993. "When the Marines Went to Haiti," Smithsonian 23,10 (Jan.): 44-55.

Nairn, Allan. 1996. "Haiti under the Gun: How U.S.-Backed Paramilitaries Rule," The Nation 262,2 Uan. 8/15):11-15.

Nicola, Mireille. 1994. fistis: Murs Peints d'Haiti. Paris: tdi- tions Alternatives.

La Vrite! En Verite!: Dossier de Defense Presente a la Sacree Congregation pour les Religieux et les Instituts Seculiers. 1989. Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Le Natal.

TSELOS: Notes, from page 65

1. My research on Rara costume began with my 1987 trip to Haiti and has continued up to the present. 2. I have not personally witnessed a Brule Carnival. This information was given to me in a personal communication with oungan Andr6 Jean in Port-au-Prince, April 14, 1995. 3. Personal communication, Gerald Alexis, April 13, 1992, Port-au-Prince. 4. Personal communications, all in Port-au-Prince, include those from Andri Jean, April 14, 1995; Francne Murat, April 15, 1992; oungan Sauveur St Cyr and mambo Gladys Maitre, March 15,1993. 5. Although the basic shape of the chasuble did not change after the beginning of the Baroque period, it grew shorter and narrower, evolving into the "fiddleback" style worn by Catholic bishops during the eighteenth century. 6. Personal communication, Gerald Alexis, April 13, 1992. 7. Personal communication, Gladys Maitre, March 15,1993. 8. An excellent description of the origins of the Vodou drapo and its ceremonial presentation appears in Polk 1995. 9. Personal communication, Eleanor Snare, November 6, 1992, Port-au-Prince. 10. Typical costumes worn by the indigenous Indians of the Caribbean are seen in Nunley 1988: fig. 84. 11. Personal communication, Gerald Alexis, April 13,1992. 12. Personal communication, Andre Jean, April 14,1995. 13. See note 8. 14. Personal communication, oungans Edner Pierre and Sauveur St. Cyr, and mambo Gladys Maitre, March 15, 1993, Port-au- Prince. When I encountered the band two years after meeting them in 1992, I learned that the young leader of the avant-garde had, in fact, died just after that first Rara. 15. My informants were Sauveur St. Cyr, Edner Pierre, and Andre Jean. 16. For example, she refers to the costume of the character Pitchy Patchy as derived from the vegetal attire worn as camouflage by maroons. She also mentions eyewitness accounts of Jack in the Green's palm-frond or vegetal fiber attire, saying that "the substitution of palm fronds for earlier evergreen branches echoes a strong West African masquerade tradition." 17. The extreme poverty especially prevalent in rural Haiti

probably accounts for this fabric-saving alternative (personal communication, Gary Downey, April 10,1995, Port-au-Prince). 18. Personal communication, Gerald Alexis, April 12, 1995, Port-au-Prince.

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Strathern, Marilyn. 1988. The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia. Berkeley: Uni- versity of California Press.

KONt: Notes, from page 91

1. This does not mean that a male scholar must do this kind of research. The issue here is that the barrier of secret trust must not be transgressed. 2. The author claims that Nyamanton also confirms her hypothesis and that "interviews with Nyamanton and Kojugu constitute the greater part of the data" in the book (p. 4). We do not have transcribed records of Nyamanton's interviews, as we do of Kojugu's, to support or reject any of the author's claims. A woman's body and body secretions are indeed required in male ritual work, as Nyamanton is suggested to be saying (pp. 16-17), but this still does not confirm the main hypothesis here. 3. It is true that the blacksmith, the hunter, and the musi- cian/speech artist who want to achieve fame and power in their respective domains before the socially acknowledged age of forty will have to pay the heavy price at an earlier age. They must ingest and wash with many types of medications before they reach the critical age offaya (fatherhood, fullness). In some professions such as sculpting or hunting, an individ- ual with such ambitions will have to start before reaching faya. In many cases, once a man has many children he rarely embarks on a pursuit of highly priced power. 4. In addition to this major contradiction, it is surprising that someone who once had or still has a "spirit familiar" would open up and give up information the way Kojugu did. 5. I have translated mako nya as "to arrange a need," as the author appropriately translates it in other passages of the book. She gives many good etymologies of mako, ranging from Bazin's (1906:379) to her own. However, it is important to understand mako as compared and contrasted with other simi-
































































































1. This does not mean that a male scholar must do this kind of research. The issue here is that the barrier of secret trust must not be transgressed. 2. The author claims that Nyamanton also confirms her hypothesis and that "interviews with Nyamanton and Kojugu constitute the greater part of the data" in the book (p. 4). We do not have transcribed records of Nyamanton's interviews, as we do of Kojugu's, to support or reject any of the author's claims. A woman's body and body secretions are indeed required in male ritual work, as Nyamanton is suggested to be saying (pp. 16-17), but this still does not confirm the main hypothesis here. 3. It is true that the blacksmith, the hunter, and the musi- cian/speech artist who want to achieve fame and power in their respective domains before the socially acknowledged age of forty will have to pay the heavy price at an earlier age. They must ingest and wash with many types of medications before they reach the critical age offaya (fatherhood, fullness). In some professions such as sculpting or hunting, an individ- ual with such ambitions will have to start before reaching faya. In many cases, once a man has many children he rarely embarks on a pursuit of highly priced power. 4. In addition to this major contradiction, it is surprising that someone who once had or still has a "spirit familiar" would open up and give up information the way Kojugu did. 5. I have translated mako nya as "to arrange a need," as the author appropriately translates it in other passages of the book. She gives many good etymologies of mako, ranging from Bazin's (1906:379) to her own. However, it is important to understand mako as compared and contrasted with other similar concepts in the Mande philosophy of social life. Meaning "need," mako derives etymologically from maayako (mogoyako), which signifies "personhood matter," or social requirements such as having children, cultivating a farm, feeling it necessary to have a blacksmith make a hoe for you, etc. Next to mako is sako (death matter), or an ideology for which one is willing to die. Another concept is that of dunko (in-depth matter), or indi- vidual selfish desires which are not always explicitly voiced or

lar concepts in the Mande philosophy of social life. Meaning "need," mako derives etymologically from maayako (mogoyako), which signifies "personhood matter," or social requirements such as having children, cultivating a farm, feeling it necessary to have a blacksmith make a hoe for you, etc. Next to mako is sako (death matter), or an ideology for which one is willing to die. Another concept is that of dunko (in-depth matter), or indi- vidual selfish desires which are not always explicitly voiced or




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