Istwa Nou

Haiti is mountainous in a way that numbers make plain. Morne la Selle, the highest point in the country, rises to 8,793 feet, and ranges of that order cut the territory into compartments. In 1801 the terrain was explained to Napoleon by crumpling a sheet of foolscap and setting it down, a demonstration meant to show that flat maps understate the distances involved. Barriers of this kind favour whoever is already in the hills. During the American occupation about 1,200 miles of road were built by 1934, and much of that network fell out of use afterward, so that irrigation works and mill machinery installed at great expense were later abandoned and forgotten. The effect over two centuries is a rural majority living beyond the reach of the capital, keeping habits of household organisation and worship with West African roots that no urban authority was in a position to interfere with. Apartness in Haiti is a physical fact before it is a cultural one.

Vodou joins West African religious practice to Catholic ritual and imagery, and by the Heinls' account something close to the whole population takes part in it whatever they write on a form. Kreyol is the language of about eighty five percent of Haitians and the only language most of them speak. For most of the country's history the state was administered in French by an elite that could use it, which meant the official life of the nation was conducted in a language the nation did not share. Two consequences follow. The population held on to forms of family authority, mutual obligation and worship that came from West Africa, and it held on to them inside a system that officially disapproved of all of them. Outsiders reading Haiti in French or English have consistently missed what was happening in front of them, and Haitians have had good reason to let them. The Heinls put it plainly: dismiss Vodou and you have foreclosed any serious understanding of the country.