{"id":7619,"date":"2004-03-27T09:42:13","date_gmt":"2004-03-27T09:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/aristides_real_sin.html"},"modified":"2004-03-27T09:42:13","modified_gmt":"2004-03-27T09:42:13","slug":"aristides_real_sin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/aristides_real_sin.html","title":{"rendered":"Aristide’s Real Sin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Turning his back on the spirits<\/a><\/p>\n

Voodoo is part of Haitian politics,” said hougan Philippe Castera, who lives in a shack but carries a cellphone. “The National Palace is filled with the spirits of the ancestors, and the president must be introduced to these spirits and deal with them.”<\/p>\n

According to a foreign diplomat, it was no secret that Mr. Aristide had adopted the rooster as his voodoo icon, and had several voodoo advisers on staff. He distributed money and food to hougans in the slums, an important element of his support base. <\/p>\n

Was he serious? “Until we all meet our loas [spirits], we’ll never really know for sure,” the diplomat said. “But what is clear is that Mr. Aristide understood that voodoo was part of the Haitian consciousness and he used certain symbols and references in his speeches.”<\/p>\n

He also had an unofficial priestess, named Sister Anne, who attended government rallies, handed out sticks to the crowd and urged people to demonstrate for the president. But after Mr. Aristide fled, she also went into exile, and other hougans involved with the government went into hiding.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turning his back on the spirits Voodoo is part of Haitian politics,” said hougan Philippe Castera, who lives in a shack but carries a cellphone. “The National Palace is filled with the spirits of the ancestors, and the president must be introduced to these spirits and deal with them.” According to a foreign diplomat, it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nAristide's Real Sin - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/aristides_real_sin.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Aristide's Real Sin - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Turning his back on the spirits Voodoo is part of Haitian politics,” said hougan Philippe Castera, who lives in a shack but carries a cellphone. “The National Palace is filled with the spirits of the ancestors, and the president must be introduced to these spirits and deal with them.” According to a foreign diplomat, it…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/aristides_real_sin.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2004-03-27T09:42:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Aristide's Real Sin - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2004\/03\/aristides_real_sin.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Aristide's Real Sin - 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7619\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}