Despite the rapid growth of evangelical Protestantism in Haiti, most Haitians are both Voodooist and Catholic, and they experience no contradiction in this dual allegiance. Voodoo’s prominence in Haiti is chiefly explicable by the large proportion of Africans in its population when the country achieved independence in 1804. Countervailing Christian influences were present from the beginning of French colonization in the seventeenth century, but were never strong. The dynamics of Voodoo’s coalescence from a variety of African religions and the chronology of the black population’s adoption of Catholicism remain largely uncharted territory. Hence one welcomes a work offering a historical approach to the subject by an author who has done fieldwork in Haiti and Benin (an area that has greatly influenced Haitian Voodoo).
Leslie Desmangles’ main thesis is that the syncretism between Catholicism and Voodoo is best described as symbiotic: no real fusion has taken place between the two faiths; they merely coexist in a mosaic pattern. This point is hardly controversial, but Desmangles illustrates it well. The parallels between Catholic saints and Voodoo deities are based generally on superficial visual similarities in their respective iconographies. Catholic elements are always interpreted in an African fashion and are not well integrated into Voodoo ritual. The pret savann (bush priest), who reads Catholic prayers at Voodoo ceremonies, is unknown in some parts of the country; regrettably Desmangles does not specify which.
The extent of the author’s field work is not apparent, but it seems to have contributed little to a text that relies heavily on the classic works of Maya Deren and Melville Herskovits. The book focuses on Fon and Yoruba culture, ignoring most other parts of Africa, notably the Congo, whence came most of Haiti’s population. It adds little to existing knowledge.
Why did Fon culture become dominant in Haiti? Does Catholic influence correspond at all with the area of former Jesuit activity? What of those Central African slaves who were exposed to Christianity before they left Africa? Does the Ibo rite survive in areas where Igbo slaves were most numerous? The Faces of the Gods does not even pose these sorts of questions. Its historical framework is astonishingly rudimentary and inaccurate. It displays exceedingly limited understanding of the colonial period, and it incorporates a farrago of errors on various other topics. Even the folkloric Bouki and Ti Malice get mixed up. Major works by Gabriel Debien, Jean Kerboull, and John Thornton are overlooked. The archival research is entirely perfunctory, and many of the works cited cannot have been read very carefully.
