Haitian-Americans' Voodoo Ritual Honors the Dead

November 29, 2008

Author: Jennifer Kay

Source: The Houston Chronicle

Wire Service: AP

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/religion/6137867.html

Goat meat stewing on the stove and sweet potatoes baking in the oven. Cooked fish, complete with bones and eyeballs. Spicy peppers soaked in bottles of rum.

The food is an offering to the spirits expected to dance among the revelers at Voodoo priest Erol Josue's Miami home that night.

Josue's belief: Provide spiritual sustenance to both the living and dead in Haiti and the U.S. to help the linked communities cope with disasters that have embroiled them the past year.

Worldwide economic turmoil, the ruin and death left in Haiti by four tropical storms and a school collapse that killed 90 all have left an imprint.

Josue's night-long celebration of the dead, a condensed version of the two-day festival in Haiti that opened November, was repeated in other homes in Haitian-American communities during the month.

Vodouisants believe the Gede, or the dead, rituals honor their ancestors and the spirits and help clear the pain of recent tragedies. About 1 million Haitians live in the U.S., most in Florida. Large communities are also in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.

"Artists and advocates for Haiti have been doing relief concerts to bring money for Haiti, which is very good, but as a spiritual person, as a priest, I think first of all we have to pay respect for our brothers and sisters, for those souls who have died," Josue said.