Spirit in Action
Haiti, Africology, Imperialism & Vodou
Patrick Bellegarde-Smith teaches in the Africology Dept of UW-Milwaukee with special expertise in Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil and Haiti, where he grew up and where he was initiated as a voodoo (or vodou) houngan (priest). Patrick has collaborated on and written a number of books including:
Haiti: The Breached Citadel
- Broadcast on:
- 13 Jun 2010
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeet. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. I'm hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream of as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ We've got a real treat for you today for Spirit in Action. As regular listeners, no doubt no, the Northern Spirit Radio Project is not about the flash news sensation of the minute, which is so prevalent in the US media. No doubt important subjects do make their way into the mainstream media. But too often, the so-called news is terribly shallow or simply sensationalism. This year's earthquake in Haiti and the mass of suffering and loss of life there did bring some very helpful focus to that small Caribbean nation, though it also brought out masses of reporters looking for sensationalist angles instead of deep insights. One of the people those reporters looked to is Patrick Belgard-Smith, not only for his decades with the Afro-College Department of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, but because he was born in Haiti and includes Haiti is one of the countries he is focused on in his study of Afro-ology. But the big draw for some of the populist pursuing journalists is the fact that Patrick Belgard-Smith is also a voodoo priest. He'll join us by phone in a moment because of his expertise in the culture, politics, and religion of the people of Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, and other nations. And in the hope that he can increase our understanding of and help us along a path of healing spirit. Patrick Belgard-Smith is of UW-Milwaukee's Afro-College Department, and he joins us from Milwaukee. Patrick, I'm so pleased you could join me for spirit in action. I'm glad to be here. It's such a beautiful day. How does the temperature in Milwaukee compare to Haiti where you grew up? Well, it's lovely today. We're going to hit, I think, 70 degrees here. And I grew up in Port-au-Prince, which is very, very hot. And especially humid. I can take heat, but humidity, I cannot take. So for much of my life, I felt was common to feel uncomfortable. So I had to come to the Midwest to find that the joys of winter. Do you actually experience the Milwaukee climate, and in particular, winter as a joy? Some people don't, maybe especially if they've grown up in a tropical climate like you have. Well, actually, I found myself in the winter. I love winter. I know it's not going to last forever. And it feels so much better towards the end of it. In the Caribbean, where I lived pretty much most of my life, it was nice every day. And I got tired of nice. Nice, has its limits. Well, I think Milwaukee is fortunate to have you there, teaching in UW-Milwaukee's Afro-Cology Department. Of course, an important part of your expertise is Haiti, where you grew up. But you've also done particular study in Venezuela and Cuba. What's your drive? What's your interest? Why do you study these places and these cultures and these people? Well, I'm from the Caribbean. And certainly, Cuba is a part of the Caribbean. And after I left Haiti, I realized that I was actually Caribbean men as much as I was a Haitian. And now my nation extends from Cuba to Trinidad. Well, Venezuela happens to be part of the greater Caribbean, I guess, Colombia as well, part of the coastline in Central America, certainly, in the Blue Fields, Nicaragua, and the athletic coastline of Mexico. But I also study Brazil. I try to go to Brazil every single year. I have developed some very close friendships there, as well as in Cuba and elsewhere. So now the planet is becoming my world, and it's becoming my nation. There's a lot of rich and wonderful places to visit. Among the countries that you named, there is a variety of languages spoken-- Spanish, French, indigenous, Pigeon, French, English. And in Brazil, there's Portuguese. Do you speak all of these languages, or just how do you get around? I'd like to say that I'm illiterate in three languages. English is my third language. And I learned it as a freshman in college. I spoke no English, and I had to learn it very, very quickly to survive freshman English at the University of the Virgin Islands, where I first went to school, way back in the '60s. So I'm dating myself, I guess. In terms of Portuguese, I can understand the fair amount of it. It took me several tries to be able to read it, actually. I would come down from my room to the lobby of the hotel where I was staying year after year, and I would religiously pick up the paper and look at it. And, of course, it made no sense to me. One day, 24 hours later, I do have and I start reading it. All of a sudden, the day before I couldn't read it, that I could read it, so I felt very proud of myself. You teach in the Department of Anthropology. What's the purpose of this program? I mean, I have some ideas and I read on the website what they say about it. What brought you to this study? Why is it important to share this with the world? It's a rather unique program in the United States. We were the first ones created, actually. Well, there is a little bit of a dispute, and so we might want to split the difference, actually. We are more than 40 years old, listed as the official first Black Studies Department in the US, San Francisco State. We come second, but actually, the legislation enacting the department came first at UW-Milwaukee through the University Senate way back when the San Francisco State jumped the queue and actually created the physical space before we did. So we can split the honor of being the first Black Studies program here, but 2WM is unique in that, from the very, very inception of that program, it was international in scope. There are virtually no programs in the United States that are that way. The faculty members have always come from the African diaspora. We have African-Americans, Ethiopians, Ghanaians, Haitians, Jamaicans, African-Americans who specialize in Malawi, for instance, we have two white faculty in the department. And we have always stressed the international dimension of Black Studies, because the history of people of African descent does not start in 1619. It certainly does not start with slavery. It started thousands of years before, so we covered the entire African continent, and we covered the Caribbean, North America, Latin America. It's interesting because I go to Canada several times a year. I have family there, and I also go and do speeches and scholarly presentations, and people there beg me to introduce the course about Afro-Canadians. There is a thriving community of African-Adians, but we have no such course here, so this is something that we ought to think about. So we learn a bit about Africa, and I'm sorry to say it's true, but most people in the USA are essentially illiterate when it comes to international matters. A lot of people barely knew about Haiti until the earthquake happened. And now there's a lot of people very concerned about Haiti, at least in a fleeting way. Your program is opening up consciousness to that, connecting us to more of humanity. Is that one of the aspirations that you have in the program, or is it just sharing something that's dear to your soul? - Yeah, yes indeed. For instance, we have a course on the Black family, and we don't start it in the city of Milwaukee, or in the United States. We start it in West Africa and Central Africa. We do a rapid stop in the Caribbean. We go to Brazil, and we end up in the city in Milwaukee. The Black family certainly has root cells where around the world, and we have interesting similarities and differences that can be observed. One of the things also that the department is doing as of next semester, but unfortunately, I will have retired by then, is we're starting our first PhD program with about seven students, and an expanded faculty base. And so that's going to be interesting, because we'll be training, actually, the next professors for the United States on abroad. It will be having African students, will be having African-American students, and white students as well. So it's going to be very diverse, and I'm very proud to say that my department was very forward-looking in thinking about all these things, and what needed to be done over a long period of time. And we've been at it for 40 years. You mentioned to me earlier, Patrick, that you had planned to go to Haiti, and you were intending to be there, actually, at the time that the earthquake hit. What happened there? Well, I am actually, I guess, suffering a little bit from survivor guilt. I was invited to go to Haiti and to do lectures in all the prevention of capitals, as well as border prints itself, because I have a book that has come out in French. One of my books was recently translated in French language, and they wanted me to introduce it to the Haitian intellectual public. But I had already made plans to be in Cuba that period of time I had already purchased my ticket. There was a possibility that I could have taken a plane from Santiago de Cuba into border prints without direct flights, and so I might have been there when the event happened. But instead, I felt tired, and I came back home to Milwaukee, so I was not there. I was sorry to note that a number of your extended relations suffered because of the earthquake, and a number of them died. You have my condolences and prayers. Speaking of prayers, you have an added dimension to your experience in that your experience with the voodoo religion. I mean, I think it's the indigenous religion, you say, of 100% of Haitians, but I know very little about it. I know a bit about voodoo as it existed in Togo, where I was in the Peace Corps in West Africa, but I'm not sure it's the same thing. So what does that mean? I think the word is Ughan or Ughan. How do you say it, what you are? Ughan would be a male priest, a female priest would be called Mambo, and incidentally, there are more female priests than male priests, and there are as many female deities as male deities. There are no differences established in Haiti on the basis of sex or gender. And so it becomes a rather democratic, but certainly Togo is part and parcel of what occurred in the Caribbean, in Haiti, specifically, over the last 500 years, under the core of Haitian culture, is an older homie, presently the Republic of Benin, and also in the Yoruba lands in western Nigeria, with hefty, hefty dose of the spiritual systems coming in from the Macongo areas, from the Congo basin, from Angola, and the two Congo republics. Haiti has really amalgamated all those systems to create its own, so in a very old sense, we can use the anthropological term that Haitian would do certainly is a creole religion, but its foundation, its foundation, is 100% African from west and central Africa. - And since you're a Ughan and you're a priest in Voodoo, so what does that involve? I mean, do you have to go to a seminary or what? - Oh no, no, no, this is very, very different. Those are spiritual systems, more so than a religion. Actually, the religion does not have a name. We call it that, because foreigners have called it that, 'cause ultimately, at the base of it all, all human groups, all ethnic groups have created their own religious system, all of them, and so everybody from that popular people practiced pretty much the same thing. There were no such thing as worldwide religions that would do battle and fight to honor adherents, neither Islam nor Christianity, certainly, if you go back early enough, and we have to remember that Islam is brand new. It's a new kid on the block. Christianity is barely 2,000 years old, barely 2,000 years old, so it is a fairly new child. Now that these two religions certainly have come battle, it's got many adherents from all over the world, but in Haiti, the phrase that you will hear most often is, do you serve the spirit? And the answer is yes or no? Yes, I serve the spirit. Vodu is one dance. Now it is applied to the entire system itself, and it is in juxtaposition to the other world religions, if you will, that have gotten into the Haitian space, and now also divide up the Haitian people. And so from that standpoint, you needed a word to differentiate it from what came in later, such as Christianity, for instance, and especially in its most virulent form now, Protestantism, but not of mainstream churches, the Americans of command. And they have established Protestant churches since the first US military occupation of Haiti in the 1920s, in the same way that they have also invaded Africa, in Central America, and Latin America for that matter. So you have a battle between the Catholic Church and the Protestant groups, and both get together to disband or try to get rid of the national religion, Vodu. So just to be clear, when you say Protestant churches, you're not referring to Lutheran or Methodist or Presbyterian, you're referring to the more evangelical, I guess, more conservative fundamentalist and of Christianity. And they'll help substantially by the American federal government, but of course, first and foremost, my private groups in the United States. There were some Protestant churches established before the US occupation in 1915, but very few Haitians were members of it, and it was members segment of the Haitian upper class. The Palestinian church, the Anglican church, was there, for instance. The Methodists were there. The Lutherans were never there, but now what we have in the countryside are those groups coming in from the United States, and they are also swarming throughout Cuba. When Americans are not allowed into Cuba, the only Americans who get through are these people. We're the blessing, of course, of the federal government, and they are everywhere. Now, Catholic faith has gotten small and small in Haiti, whereby it used to be 90% of the population, and now it is barely 60% of the population. Protestants are about 40% and getting stronger by the day. However, this is a saying that has a real impact back home. There's a Haiti, it's 60% Catholic, 40% Protestant, and the one who doesn't vote do. Because people who flee, for instance, the Catholic religion of will do and go into Protestantism, still fear it, still believe in it, they just decide to move away, and sometimes they just don't move away, and the dead of night they will go see a priest, they will go see the hunger and the dead of night when push times show. And we see this in West Africa as well, by the way, in terms of people who've been Islamized, in terms of people who are Christians. They go to the Marabu in the dead of night. They still believe in the old ways. This was, after all, good enough for grandmother. I think that mutual understanding is essential to peace in the world, and peace and justice are near and dear to my heart. There are so many misunderstandings in myths and attempts to mislead people about what voodoo is or isn't. Could you dispel some of the myths for us, please? - Yeah, it's really interesting because what we think of voodoo is what Hollywood gave us in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s. And it was very much in terms of providing irrationality or basis for the US Marine Corps being in Haiti for 19 years, we had to justify it somehow as we've formed since earlier on justified slavery on biblical terms. And so the stuff that we hear about, the stuff that we think about zombies, dolls with pens sticking in them, that kind of thing do not necessarily have a tangible reality in Haiti. I found out eventually that dolls with pens, which I've never seen in Haiti, come from German and British witchcraft. But after all, in the 1920s, what did Hollywood have to work with? They knew nothing of Haiti, barely where it was. And so they had to make things up. And those things have continued merrily down the decades. But we'll do, let me say this, and then we'll get into some of the religious, some of the meanings of all this. We'll do occupies a similar place in Haiti as Judaism does in Israel, as Hinduism does in India, as Shinto does in Japan. Those separate Judaism, Haitian Voodoo bears a very, very strong similarity to Hinduism and to Shinto in Japan. As a matter of fact, one of the women who trained me, I was trained exclusively by female prison in Haiti, was a woman of the upper class, who actually had a master's degree from the London School of Economics. She became a mumbo early on in her life. She taught classical ballet in Haiti. And when she became too old to do that, she taught yoga in Haiti. And she studied Hinduism for about 25 years, the last 25 years of her life. And she kept telling me you need to look at Hinduism. It's just like what we do. And since then I have found out that she was indeed telling me the truth. And Shinto is not be cried. And certainly they're not ugly films made about it. But then again, we have come to gradually respect the Japanese and Japanese culture, but anything that's max of Africa does not get much respect. Attack it is denigrated. And the word denigrated means a great deal. But Haitian voodoo is really rooted in science and scientific understanding. In fact, there is a Haitian Protestant physician who has written an excellent piece for a book I edited, talking about quantum physics and the place of voodoo inside quantum physics. Now I'm not a scientist and I don't pretend to understand the intricacies of any of this. But it is rooted in our understanding of the cosmos. And the most significant statement I think that you all here in Asia will do. And this is something that you will hear in the countryside. If you look into the cosmic mirror, the image that looks back at you is the image of God. And this is sufficient for me to look at it again. And of course, there are a large number of statements that people will make about their indigenous religion. But this certainly resonates in my mind. And it resonates in my mind as well. So how long did your training take? What did it involve? My training is not over. I have been a priest for the last 20 years. I anticipate I will still be learning my trade and my skill long after my death. You don't go to school. You are initiated that those are the religions that demand initiation. So that not every human being is at the same level in terms of his or her road. We have different roads. We have different specialties. And we keep learning. And we never stop learning. Is this impossible? We don't get a degree. We'll recognize our priest throughout the Haitian territory and throughout the Haitian diaspora. But our training is individualized to fit each and every person. There are hierarchies within each and every temple of course. And in Haiti itself, there are tens of thousands of temples. There's never been an actual census for us to know exactly how many. And what's a ceremony that you might have like? You did mention that people would be going out at night to various ceremonies. I assume there's daytime ceremonies as well. What's a kind of typical ceremony? Some ceremonies can last an entire week. Ceremonies go on cycle. There are ceremonies that we do on a daily basis. There are some that occur on a monthly basis. There are ceremonies that occur once every seven years. There are ceremonies that occur once every 70 years. And most Haitians, the lifetime expectancy, is barely 60 years if you're lucky. So that people who see that 70-year ceremony will not be alive to see the next one. So there are cycles within cycles within cycles. Some of them can last a very long time. And they eat several days. And typically, we do this at night because people have to work during the day. There are farmers for the most part. Or they have work downtown if they live in the cities in Haiti. And also, remember that this develops very much. So during the time of slavery, nighttime was when enslaved Africans were able to move away for a few hours without perhaps being noticed. Nighttime becomes important to us because that's when we were able to get away. I'm just curious about something else that I've noted when I was in Africa. The weak cycle that we're used to using here in the US is a seven-day cycle. And when you mentioned 70 years and these things happen in different periods, is the indigenous cycle is the native Haitian week a seven-day week? Or are there cycles that are otherwise? Yes, it is a seven-day week. And these are the kinds of things that we have also inherited from French colonialism because, for instance, typically, the slaves had a day off on Sundays. And also, because it was absolutely forbidden for slaves. Wherever they were in the British Caribbean and the South in the United States, elsewhere to practice their own religion, if and drumming was forbidden for periods of time in all of those Caribbean islands and in the south of the US, so that people had to hide their daisies and their religious ideas and concerns, for instance, behind the Roman Catholic saints. And so the day of that popular saint as enshrined by the Roman Catholic Church became the day in which that popular African daisy was also celebrated. And so that you have a coming together of the liturgical necessities, the calendar of what is essentially a West African faith into a Roman Catholic calendar. This is also true of Cuba. This is also true of Brazil. But in Brazil, people are moving away from the Roman Catholic saints because they said, look, we had to hide. We had to dissinulate because we were not allowed to practice our faith. Now there's the persecutions of far less. They're picking up again, by the way, with the evangelical Christians, what beating up people in the streets of Brazil now. But we don't have to adopt the Roman Catholic Church. We can dispense with them now that the state is not actively pursuing us. And Haiti, we still keep the saints to a certain extent. But we know nothing, nothing of that saint, except the clothes that he or she is wearing. The colors are appropriate. Or they have an accoutrement. They're holding in the hand. It's simple that relates directly to an African daisy. So we don't know the life of that saint. And we don't care about the life of that saint because it's not the saint. It's the law, LWA. In Cuba, they're holding on to the saints, a bit more firmly. That Cuba has a lot more people of European descent who are practicing Santeria. And it's really interesting to me is that since the Cuban Revolution of back in '59, the religion that has gotten the strongest in Cuba is Santeria. And it is practiced overwhelmingly by white Cubans as well. They won't admit that to you. But you have to go back to Cuba twice a year, or three times a year, as I used to do. And they eventually were pregnant and, oh, yes. I've been doing it all my life. But you had to meet them for 15 years before they admitted that to you. Well, speaking of Cuba, I mentioned this to you before, but I would like some advice. I'm going there in October with a group of Quaker folk dancers. So it's not only evangelicals going there. It's those of us with a more open and liberal theology as well. Where are the places in Cuba where I should visit? What should I do to get in touch with the important roots there? Well, I would suggest not limiting yourself to Havana. Everybody goes to Havana. And very unfortunately, this is what we know of Cuba. That's the capital city, obviously. It's also, to me, a very Latin American. If you go east, and Cuba is a very, very long country, it reminds me a bit of Chile, because it is skinny and long. And 900 kilometers east of Havana, you'll find Santeria go to Cuba. Santeria go is the second largest city. We have more than half million people. It is also the African section of Cuba, whereby Havana is very Latin American in its field, and it's in the architecture. Santeria go is very Caribbean. And that was the ancient capital of Cuba. That is also the cultural center, the core of Cuba. So there is a great deal to be seen there. And of course, along the way, there are absolutely magnificent cities to be seen. So when you get closer to going, and if you are lucky enough to end up in Santiago, I will give you some pointers in terms of Santiago itself. That's absolutely marvelous. And in Santeria go, by the way, Santeria is not as well developed as it is further west. What you find, for instance, in eastern Cuba is a heavy, heavy Asian presence that has been there for the last 200 years. And those hundreds of thousands of Cuban citizens of Haitian descent still speak the Haitian language, still practice their vaudue. And it's interesting to see little kids in the mountains, in this year Maestra, speaking in Haitian to each other. I'm fascinated by that. There are also hundreds of thousands of Cubans of Jamaican extraction. These groups have come to work in the sugar fields. And they have kept the English language as well. That region of Cuba is quite diverse and absolutely magnificent. If you've just tuned in, this is Spirit In Action. And I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeat. This is a Northern Spirit Radio production. And that means you can also go out to our website, northernspiritradio.org. To hear this and other programs again, you can find links to our guests. And you can leave us a comment, and we'd love to hear from you. We're visiting today with Patrick Belkard Smith. He's in the Department of Afrochology at the University of Wisconsin, down in Milwaukee, as opposed to up here in Eau Claire. We don't have one up here yet, Patrick. That's unfortunate. You mentioned the department there in Milwaukee was one of the first two in the nation. Are there a lot more now? There is certainly a department of Afro-American studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. It's been around for a while. I don't remember exactly what it was created. So it's our sister department in terms of Wisconsin. There are hundreds of Black Studies Department carrying different names, of course, throughout. We have not agreed on the name. And most Black Studies Department, so Afro-American Studies Department, or African-American, or Africana, they do essentially be in the United States and very little else. Because, for instance, in Madison, you not only have Afro-American studies, but you also have African studies. At UWM, we've never had African studies outside of my department. So we have united those two segments and made them whole. In many other places, you will have African Studies standing independently of Black Studies. And Black Studies is unjuly narrow. At Harvard University, for instance. The emphasis has been clearly. And because of the faculty members available there in literature, they do other things too. But there is an emphasis on literature. In my department, yes, we do literature. We do psychology. We do politically, economy, and economics. And we do history. And we do everything with a focus on people of African descent, wherever they may be. You've participated and written a number of books. A couple of the most recent ones from 2006 were Haitian voodoo, spirit, myth, and reality. And another one, invisible powers, voodoo, and development in Haiti. And I'm very interested in the possibility of indigenous religion, indigenous culture, indigenous people taking power to develop the country. What perspectives do you have on that with respect to Haiti, or the other countries where you've traveled and studied? Well, in Haiti, certainly, we're essentially one large ethnic group of 8 million people, where essentially we're all related by blood. In the country of 8 million, we can, indeed, talk about 6 degrees of separation. And whether you are a member of the upper class, which is about 1% of the country, and it is that upper class that created the mayhem of the last two centuries, that's a different issue. All you are a member of the middle class, which is perhaps about 7% to 10% of the Haitian population, or even part of the very large urban working force or peasantry. We are all related. And upper class families have connections, blood connections with the countryside, which they may admit to or not admit to. Medwell cousins under the skin. And certainly, when you have such a unity, all Haitians pick Haitian, for instance, which is, by the way, not a language derived from French at all, but it has West African grammatical and syntactical roots overlaid with a mostly French vocabulary, but not exclusively French, goes down to African words, Portuguese words, Dutch words, and a large number of English words now dating from the first US occupation back in 1915. Everybody speaks the Haitian language. Everybody. Maybe 15% of Haitians know what was the official language, exclusively until 1997. French, very few Haitians speak French. But well, speak Haitian. We all understand vaudou. We're all related in that sense. But both the Haitian language and the Haitian religion have been denigrated. They were persecuted. Both the language and the religion. Going to school, for instance, in photographs, me and my classmates were forbidden to speak Creole. But of course, what are you going to speak to your maids? And the gardener and the chauffeur who don't speak French. So you have to resort to it, obviously. And we know it. And we have come to cherish it. And so you will have to use both the language and the religion in order to develop socially, politically, and economically, because you cannot deny a Haitian culture to Haiti and think that you're going to democratize the country. That's going to develop a health in democracy. Democracy cannot be anchored when you're denying the presence of Haitian culture altogether. Certainly, you talked about the 1% of the population that causes so much havoc in the country. What we think of as corruption in the United States is probably not seen as corruption by a lot of people. You get a job for your cousin. Here, that's a great sin in Africa where I lived. That's, of course, how you work. And it's not corruption. Yeah, we have a name here. That's nepotism. Yeah, and how does that work in Haiti and what are the hopes for the future there? Well, it's interesting because if you go back 100 years ago in Western Europe, proper, and certainly before that, you were talking about the same levels of corruption. You're also talking about, if you go back 200 years in France, French people did not speak French for the most part. The majority of the French population did not speak French. 200 years ago, all no Haitians spoke the Haitian language. Not all the French spoke French. And there was a good deal of corruption in those places as well. We had an attempt at coup d'etat, a military government that tried to take over in France under President Charles de Gaulle. And we're talking about what? Not that long ago, certainly. We're talking about military dictatorships, and dictatorships in places like the Portugal Salazar of Franco and Spain. And so the natural evolution of people coming into their own takes a while, certainly. But you see, politics becomes corrupt when foreign interests come into a country and seize the industrial and the commercial areas. That happened in Haiti, where the Haitian elites were strongly ensconced in commerce and industry until the Germans came in in the 1870s. The British came in, the French came in, and the Americans came in pushing the Haitian elite out of the private sector. So the only recourse now is to go into government full strength and make money out of it. What is not corruption in the private sector is corruption in the public sector. Cuba had the most corrupt government until 1959, because the Americans, the private sector in the US, had control of the Cuban economy at close to 100%. We controlled everything in Cuba. So the Cuban elites had no choice but to make its money in government. And it had the reputation of being the most corrupt government in Latin America. I'm sure that others would vie for that title, because they were all corrupt. But if you have foreign interests taking over your businesses, where you can be corrupt legally in businesses, then you've got a problem, because you still have to feed your family. And my grandfather, for instance, had been in politics all of his life. He was a cabinet member under the American occupation forces. He had seven children, to feed young children. And the American military establishment in Haiti that controlled the country forced the Haitian government to take a loan, a bank loan in the United States. And Haiti has never wanted to take a bank loan from anybody. And so what the American authorities did is they cut off the salaries of all Haitian government officials, starting with the president and his cabinet, so that the eventually cabinet gave in. So, okay, then we'll take a loan. I've got seven kids at home. So there were pressures applied for me that way. You mentioned something that I imagine some of our listeners have no idea was there. You said the American occupation, how much of its history has Haiti been occupied by the US? Well, before the occupation that lasted between 1915 and 1934, the US had invaded Haiti 19 times within a very short period of time, under the slimness of excuses. In 1915, the US had met up its mind several years earlier that it had talked about Haiti and had drafted actually documents where there was a blank space. In those days, we used typewatters, a blank space for the actual date that the US would invade. It desired to invade, partly the excuse was given that German businessman in Germany was too powerful in the Caribbean area and certainly too powerful in Haiti. So it had to be stopped. We had to move the Haitians away from Germany. So it invaded that way. It invaded at the same time the Dominican public and occupied it for a number of years between 1916 and 1924. It invaded Nicaragua. It invaded, well, of course, before that, there were incursions into Mexico. And in fact, the American landmass grew enormously when the US in 1948 and after was able to gobble up 50% of Mexico. 50% of Mexico is now the United States. And so there was this expansionist behavior. That was manifest destiny when it comes to North America. There was territorial expense elsewhere in the Caribbean. And of course, most of the Caribbean was occupied, were colonies of England and France. But certainly the countries that were independent were fair game to the United States at that point. And the occupation of Haiti is a turning plate in Haitian history. There's before the occupation and there's after the occupation. Everything changed during the occupation. Haiti was tied economically to the US at that point. Before that, it was doing business with Germany and France. But the US began paramount at that point. And it has, of course, remained so 12 the Caribbean, of course, and Trinidad, Jamaica, and elsewhere. Now, by the way, while talking about Haiti, before January 12, 2010, and Haiti after January 12, 2010, that is when, of course, we had that event. And back home, I've talked to a lot of my colleagues and friends and family members. They don't talk about the earthquake. They talk about that event or what happened to us, that thing. Nobody wants to say the word. We've been traumatized, to that extent. It has the response of the international community, including the USA, been positive or negative. I think there were just an immense number of soldiers from the US that went there to help out. Is that a pretext or is that a fact? The first responders were Cuban doctors. They were about 600 or so Cuban doctors in Haiti. They've been there for the better part of 10 years or more in the countryside, and they were the first to respond. It's interesting to note that CNN would mislabel every time they spoke to a Cuban doctor. They refused to identify that person as a Cuban doctor. They said he was a Spaniard from Spain. The US also took drastic measures to try to stop landing of Venezuelan and Cuban claims in Haiti. Now Cuba and Venezuela have been lifelong friends of the Haitian Republic for the last 200 years, very close connections, very close political relationships for 200 years. The US was angry at that, quite angry at that, as a matter of fact. The American public came in beautifully. There was obviously a grid of money contributed to the Haitian victims. Canada also came in in other countries as well. The Gaza Strip sent help, Turkey sent help. It was absolutely magnificent. The problem is with governments. About 75% of Canadian federal assistance coming out of Ottawa returns to Canada in terms of goods and services that must be purchased in Canada. Out of every dollar spent by the American government, 3 cents went to the Haitian government. 33 cents out of that dollar went to support the 22,000 American soldiers in Haiti that landed soon afterwards. There was no need for soldiers, none whatsoever. In fact, the Haitians did not riot. We expected them to riot. We were begging them to riot. They did not riot. We did finally get riots in Chile, but not in Haiti. And there's some cooperancy and I kept saying, where are the riots? We expect riots. We cannot give water out because there'll be riots if we give water. So water was withheld for several days from the Haitian public because we expected riots. The riots never came. Come on, you guys. We need riots here. We found them in Chile, but we didn't find them in Haiti. And so we had 22,000 US soldiers at one point. They're fewer now, obviously. But there was no reason for the soldiers at all. We needed doctors, which is what Cuban gave us. Cuba did not give us soldiers. It gave us doctors. Let's say thank you to the Cubans and all the other people who, out of the goodness of their heart. It is so easy for even well-meaning people to do things that are hurtful to other folks. And in that vein, I want to ask you about attitudes in the United States. You live in Milwaukee. And Milwaukee has been listed as one of the most segregated cities in North America. It's so different from where I visited up in Canada, how they integrate their cities. And Milwaukee has very separate communities. Have we made significant strides in the US? And in Milwaukee, how does it feel to you? I've read before I answer that question to respond to the statement that you made previously. I need to remind people that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But also keep in mind that in Haitian people do, hell does not exist. Heaven does not exist. Sins do not exist. So we look at the divine in very different terms than Christians or Muslims or Jews. Look at the divine very, very, very differently. But yes, Milwaukee is one of the most segregated cities in the United States. Has been so forever actually. Although the black population in Milwaukee took a very long time to form. If you go back maybe 60, 70, 80 years ago, maybe the population, African American population, it's about 3%. Now it's about 36% and very much concentrated in certain districts of the city. The state of Wisconsin is a very, very, very European derived state. Because the overall population I think on the black population is perhaps 5 or 6%. On my campus, which is an urban campus in a state university, about 8% or so of the students are black. But 8% is the tipping point, which is interesting. I don't know if it's been explained well enough by sociologists. But 8% is sacred in terms of racial politics in the US. When in neighborhood goes 8% African American, all the whites flee or pretty much all of them flee. And we didn't matter here, so it becomes a non-black neighborhood. My university is about 8% African American in this city. That is 36% black. In other words, blacks are underrepresented on this campus, black professors as well. And so what happens there is that throughout the state of Wisconsin, people are addressing UWM as, oh my god, Z-black campus, Z-black campus. You're sending your daughter to Z-black campus. Are you sure you want to do that? It's Z-black campus with 8%. Well, you need to remind them that 92% of the student body is not black, and most of them are white, because we have very few Native Americans on campus. And not all that many Hispanics, actually. So for all intents and purposes, it is a white campus as far as I can tell. But this is not the perception, certainly. We are getting our students from all over the state now. And so people are admitting freely and classy. They're never seeing a black person till they got to UWM and they're walking. Because the living places in Wisconsin were double blacks and all. The only blacks they had seen on television this day in the class, which is kind of interesting. So it gives us something to work with and something very difficult to work with at times. There's another aspect I want to mention. You told me when I first contacted you that your inbox was quite full, 1,000 or 1,300 emails. A lot of them from the media, and they wanted an interview, because you know you're connected with Haiti. But of course, what they wanted to talk about was voodoo and blood sacrifices and such. And even though people don't think of that kind of approach as racism, I think it probably is. What's your reaction? Yes, it is. It's interesting that when Haiti is on its knees, or actually prone down on the ground, that's what we immediately seize upon. We want to talk about voodoo, V-O-O-D-O-O. We want to talk about zombies. We want to talk about Hollywood films from the 1920s and 30s. That's what we know. And it's interesting because the Wall Street Journal called me. I don't know that it did anything with this, because I didn't subsequently talk with them. But a woman there wanted to talk about blood rituals. And she wanted to talk about the worship of the dead. I usually am not at a loss for words, but it must have felt like an eternity, because my mouth was wide open. At the other end of the telephone, I did not know what to think, what to say, because I had never heard of blood rituals. I had never heard of worship of the dead. And it took me by surprise. CNN wanted me to talk about this death near there as well, and actually, and several groups of CNN have contacted me independently of each other. And they decided uniformly to boycott me at the end, because I hung up on one of 30 porters using a Joe Biden word at one point, and they had gotten access to my unlisted telephone number, which angered me also. But that's what they wanted to talk about. Now, in Chile, this did not come up. And I suppose that by that point, God had muzzled Pat Robinson, because he said the only reason that it happened in Haiti is because they have had a pact with devil. But a devil does not exist in the Haitian religion. Does not exist, very simply. And so perhaps what happened in Chile was because these people were Roman Catholics. And the very same Pat Robinson had said that Katrina had to occur, because a week after Katrina, there was going to be an LGBT parade down the streets of New Orleans. So God had to punish the entire city of New Orleans because of 700 gay people who are going to march down the streets. I don't know. Maybe the earthquake in Turkey was because they are Muslims, and it was followed by an earthquake in Taiwan, I suppose, because they're Buddhist. I don't know where that ends. But I thought it wasn't sensitive. It was, of course, racially motivated, even though they don't know that. And they don't understand it that way. They wanted something exotic. They wanted something erotic. And they had nothing to say. There's no worship of the dead. In fact, the dead are not dead. They're still with us in a different form. There's water vapor. And there's water. The dead are around. And there is, of course, the notion of incestorship, which is terribly significant for us. The incest is out there. And they're out there to help. But the 230,000 or so Haitians are perished in Port-au-Prince, in Leogan, in Sacramento, three cities that were hit in a major way. The 330,000 have gone into the real of ancestors. And I feel I feel better close to them, even though I did not know them personally. But I feel their presence. And that's fine. That's good enough for me. But I'm not talking about the worship of the dead. The word "dead" itself is a bit problematic. That's what that's concerned. Sometimes those kinds of attitudes make me angry. But more often these days, I experience a great sadness when I think of all of the mistaken well-meaning people. As you said, hell, which doesn't exist in Vodu, is paved with good intentions. But it does leave me very sad to think of all of the people who, given a little bit of good knowledge, I think maybe won't be as offensive and hurtful in the ways that they are. So I thank you today for taking the time with us, Patrick, to talk about reality on the ground, the reality of your experience growing up, and the hopes and aspirations of the people, not only of Haiti, but of course of Venezuela, Cuba, Brazil, so many good people, and hopes for what you're doing right there in Milwaukee. I want to mention our guest has been Patrick Belgard-Smith. He's author of a number of books and co-author of some, Haitian Vodu, Spirit, Myth, Reality, Invisible Powers, Vodu and Development, Fragments of Bone, Neo-African Religions in New World, so many good books. You can find him via my site, Northern Spirit Radio. Patrick, thanks so much for taking the time with me today for Spirit and Action. I am grateful that you invite me to talk in your program, and we can do that sometime again. I hope. I'll look forward to it. Thanks again. Thank you. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit and Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit and Action. [MUSIC PLAYING] With every voice, with every song, we will move this world alone. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world alone. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing. [MUSIC PLAYING]