Kidnappings, looting and other attacks have shuttered Vodou temples, Churches and mosques, making it difficult for worshipers to practice their faiths.
The temple, or peristyle, supported its community through the brutal Duvalier dictatorship and the cataclysmic 2010 earthquake that killed 250,000 people.Martissant, a neighborhood on the southwestern edge of Port-au-Prince, has for years been a notorious battleground for warring armed groups. In 2021, gang members“This space was so important to me,” Erol Josué, a houngan, or Vodou priest, told The Washington Post. “The gang members lost their humanity. Nothing is important to them anymore.
“The Church is doing its best to accompany the Haitian people,” the archdiocese said in April, “and urges leaders and politicians to change their bearings to alleviate the weight of the suffering and misery of the Haitian people.” “In this community, religion is really important,” said Mickaël Payet, an emergency care delegate with the International Committee of the Red Cross. The ICRC works with religious leaders to mobilize aid and transport victims of gang violence to hospitals, he said, because “they are well accepted.”But in recent years, no one here has been immune from the carnage.
But the faith, which centers on devotion to lwa, or spirits, has long been misunderstood and stigmatized, first by the French enslavers, later by Americans during the 19-year U.S. occupation and, today, members of the Haitian political and religious elite.substandard sanitary practices of U.N. peacekeepers introduced cholera to Haiti in 2010, seeding an epidemic that killed almost 10,000 people, some blamed Vodou. Mobs lynched houngan, mostly with impunity.
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