Debloke Ayiti

I seem to remember reading some time ago that American Christians were roughly divided into equal parts Catholic, mainline Protestant and "other", this meaning evangelicals and charismatics.  Seeing as I can't find that article anymore, it's probably not worth bringing up, especially as it appears to contradict the Pew Report on America's Religious Landscape.

In any event, this kind of survey seems fraught with pitfalls and I wonder about the figures.  Can there really only be 1.6 American who consider themselves atheists, for example?

Anyway, I read an article today which makes easy categorization difficult.  Moreover, it relates to posts we made a while ago about the earhtquake in Haïti.  Both Catholic and charismatic, with elements of Voudon thrown in, this brand of Catholicism defies many preconceptions; there are hundreds of Catholic charismatic groups with  followers estimated to number in the millions worldwide.  Popes themselves have embraced it.

Interesting read:  Suffering, Haitians Turn to Charismatic Prayer.

BTW, anyone else see the pun in a report on religion being conducted by a place named pew?

Things That Make You Go Hmmm...

One could be excused if, after waking up and looking bleary-eyed over a cup of coffee at the Washington Post online on the morning after the Grammy's, one murmured "what the...?" and for a moment wondered if a "cryptocracy" were in fact buttering us all up for the final act.

There's Beyoncé Knowles, bootylicious as hell, destiny's child, an object of worship by jack-booted militarized coppers. Clap your hands and say "yeah!" (Destiny's Child, Beyoncé's first claim to fame, took it's name from the Book of Isaiah: "A final thematic goal that Isaiah constantly leans toward throughout the writing is the establishment of Yahweh's kingdom on earth, with rulers and subjects who strive to live by his will." (Wicky-poo). Like, destiny.

Then there was this little article about how Haitians are clamoring for the US to "take over" the country.

The paranoid in us (for a blink) saw all this as not so subliminal propaganda. How we'd love the police and the miltary to simply take over, n'est-ce pas? The rationalist just said "whoa dad." Coincidence.

P.S.
At the risk of getting a bollocking from Galactic Jello, we'd also point out that Haiti seems to be as inundated these days with evangelicals as it is with soldiers; some of the former accused of child trafficking (33 kids, mwah-ha-haa--but seriously, probably just a misunderstanding); others finding a good opportunity to increase their numbers while undermining Voudon. Getting new recruits, blocking food aid to Voudon practitioners....

"We want the world and we want it now." Kingdom Come. Smells like....Destiny!

P.P.S.
We (Gid and Daurade) actually know a guy whose spent a lot of time in Haiti doing humanitarian work, one might even call him a missionary; he was born to missionaries and raised in Africa. But we emphasize the humanitarian because one would never know the guy was a Baptist and his respect for and interest in the culture of the Haitian people (including Voudon) has shone through in every conversation we've ever had about the subject. This despite nearly having been killed for being a werewolf! (True story) Just a quick note so as not to smear the people down there doing good work under terrible circumstances. Read the last link, though. If the Voudon high-priest in the article is right, the actions of these evangelicals merit nothing but our scorn....

Blood and Fire

Read the improved version (Blood and Fire v2) instead!

The Haiti earthquake has led to some reflections upon my own earthquake experience.

As a young lad I was living in a small housing development about 40 k north of Naples, Italy during the wild and woolly anni di piombo--the "years of lead." The many assassinations and kidnappings of those times were background noise for what was for me perhaps the most secure and idyllic period of my life.

Our housing development was then brand new and the construction sites of numerous new villas were our (forbidden) playgrounds. Soon after moving in I was given a tour of the sites, all of which had colorful names. The only one I remember was called the "wiggling worm" because of all the electrical sheaths hanging out of the walls. This was the Italian countryside; we could awake one morning to find sheep grazing in the field next to our house. On another day it might be water buffalo. No matter, I could leave the house in the morning and return in the evening and my parents never needed to worry.

Anyway, the earthquake struck in 1980 on November 23 and is known as the Irpinia earthquake. The quake measured 6.89 on the Richter Scale and killed over 2900 people. Thousands were injured an as many as 300,00 left homeless. It was a major catastrophe and fortunately, scared was all I got.

This veers into LoS territory because of the reputed miracle of San Gennaro, patron saint of Naples. The miracle involves the annual liquefaction of the saint's blood. The faithful gather three times a year to witness the event. Not surprisingly, if the blood fails to liquefy, it's interpreted as a bad omen and means bad luck until the next try.

You can imagine what comes next: the blood failed to liquefy on September 19, 1980. Then the quake struck two months later. Dots were connected; faith in the blessings and curses of the liquefaction were confirmed.

Like many "miracles," there are non-supernatural theories, but given that it hasn't been adequately researched, no conclusive scientific explanation has been offered:

"Whether these simple tests will be allowed to go ahead wholly depends upon the Catholic Church. At present however, given that the phenomenon has been replicated, it would be rather too naive to consider it irreproducible or unexplainable."

Our point with all this is that people will readily ascribe supernatural origins to natural phenomena, especially if the phenomena are poorly understood. This was the case in 1980 and, at least for one prominent American televangelist, the reason for the earthquake in Haiti.

Remember Pat Robertson:

"They were under the heel of the French ... and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you'll get us free from the French.' "True story. And the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal,'" Robertson said. "Ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another."

The name Gennaro, by the way, comes from the Roman god Janus, god of "gates, doors, doorways, beginnings and endings." If anything, the Haitian earthquake was the end of one thing and the beginning of another. LoS, for the attentive reader, has also over time become increasingly interested in the concept of gates and transitions (see "pillars" for example).

Finally, Janus also left us with the name of January, or doorway to the new year, month of the earthquake; "January" in Italian is "Gennaio".

One thing leading to another, I Googled "Parco Lagani"--my old stomping ground--and came across this blog, in Italian. Google translates it thusly, in other words, poorly, but you get the idea.

I was stunned by the way the old neighborhood has turned out, also by the fact that on this website (first photo) one can even see a picture of a duplex version of my old house! (Mine was a freestanding version exactly like the one on the left....

According to the blog, Parco Lagani began to decline in the wake of the earthquake with the arrival of many IDP's--internal refugees from the quake zone, mostly poor. When these people went back to where they came from later in the 80's, the houses remained empty, often as a result of structural problems due to the quake. Instead of paying for expensive renovations, the owners began renting to the migrant workers who flocked to the area. This was the country, remember?

Over time, Lagani became a kind of free zone, anarchic, where the police never went. African immigrants set up illegal stores, it became a center of drug trafficking; prostitutes who plied their trade in Naples made it their home.

Meanwhile, across the highway, there are luxury resorts for the rich. Reminds me of those reports of the cruise ship docked on a private Haitian beach where tourists frolicked in the surf while people were still being pulled from the rubble a few kilometers away.

The blog entry, from January 29, 2009, reports on the reaction of the enormous police raid on Lagani, in search of drugs and weapons. From what I gather it was a heavy-handed affair and is seen by advocates for the immigrants more as a form of harassment than anything else. "The police raid last Thursday was greeted almost with wonder by the locals, accustomed to living with widespread illegality."

Somehow it all ties together; race, class, divine retribution, displaced people.

Parco Lagani is part of the commune of Castel Volturno, a small city whose origins date back to before the Etruscans. Now, it's most famous for the 2008 murder of African immigrant (alleged) drug traffickers over turf and royalty disputes by members of the Casalesi clan of the Comorra. The massacre is also known as the Strage di San Gennaro because of the date, September 18, the day before San Gennaro's feast day. The day, you'll recall, that his blood failed to liquefy back in 1980. The Casalesi--this night excluded--generally keep a lower profile than most Comorra clans, focusing not so much on drug trafficking as on construction.

Interestingly, on the Italian Wikipedia, translated:

"Castel Volturno is best known for building development insane, and in most cases illegal, due to development policies derived from the reconstruction after the earthquake of the eighties. The municipality is also notorious for high crime rate. Castel Volturno is in fact highly sensitive to the power of the clans Camorra, and its name can be made to refer to some facts of crime news."

Oh how it all ties together. The earthquake led to a rash of substandard and illegal housing, most obviously connected to mafias specialized in the trade. These places were unsellable and unrentable to most Italians, so they got stocked full of the illegal immigrants who came to the area for honest work and work not so honest. Rivalries arose and, on a violent night in September, almost the feast day of San Gennaro, whose reticent blood indirectly brought them there, the Africans were gunned down.

So, recent riots in Calabria by migrant workers have a bit of background. These migrants work in orchards and are paid as little as a dollar a day. Again, the mafia is involved in this exploitative setup.

Displaced Africans are exploited and as in Haiti 200 years ago, they rebel. In the end, not much changes.

Authorities are already predicting that the widespread corruption in the wake of the Irpinia quake, which led to the aforementioned decline of Castel Volturno, could happen again in the wake of the 2009 earthquake in the Abruzzo region. Journalist Robert Saviano:

"What is a tragedy for this population," he wrote, "for someone else can become an opportunity, a bottomless mine, a paradise of profit."

The displaced poor are exploited and as everywhere else, are fucked in the end. Not much changes.

Double-faced Janus, looking to the future and to the past, god of transitions, namesake of San Gennaro, god of blood which changes, Naples and massacres, whistles an old refrain and relishes the truth found in a clichéd aphorism: the more things change, the more things stay the same.

chefsam | #22 | 12:44 on Mon, Jan.18 : If I don't believe in the tooth fairy, am I a sheeple?

I thought I was on the ball by Googling "haiti earthquake conspiracy". This fellow beat me to it. The comments at both sites are worth a read. Paranoid times.

The Devil in Pat Robertson

You may have heard about religious bigot televangelist Pat Robertson's claim that Haiti is cursed due to an old pact with the devil. Say what you want about dear old Pat, he's a sensitive fellow! In all fairness though, his organization is sending millions in medical aid to Haiti, according to a spokesman.

Revisionist historian Michael Hoffman uses the occasion to get in his digs at Zionism (calling PR a "crypto-rabbi" for example) but he at least gives some background on what PR was on about, seemingly rejecting the idea of a devil pact.

Hoffman cites the Louverture Project for his info. Apparently and perhaps apocryphally, like Washington's coin across the Delaware or the cherry tree, PR was referring to a voudou ceremony at Bois Caïman "widely accepted as the starting point for the Haitian Revolution."

Just for a dash of the conspiratorial, Corey D.B. Walker says in his book A noble fight: African American freemasonry and the struggle for democracy: "There are hints of connections between Freemasonry and the Haitian Revolution" (p.255) Haitians apparently joined Lodges in "great numbers" after independence.

But anyway, I'm not going to ride my hobby horse in the face of what is evidently a tragedy of enormous proportions. I have already received one email from a scammer soliciting donations to help the stricken.

LoS suggests that if so inclined, go directly to the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders.