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2003-04-03

2003-04-03: (The Haitian Government Officially Acknowledges Vodou as a Religion, Two Centuries After the Ceremony at Bois Caïman That Launched the Revolution…

Haitian

2003-04-03: (The Haitian Government Officially Acknowledges Vodou as a Religion, Two Centuries After the Ceremony at Bois Caïman That Launched the Revolution, the Spiritual Tradition That Had Sustained the Enslaved Finally Granted Legal Legitimacy): On April 3, 2003, the Haitian government officially acknowledged Vodou as a religion, two centuries after the ceremony at Bois Caïman that had launched the Revolution and two centuries after Dessalines had declared Catholicism the state religion while the majority of the population practiced Vodou. The recognition was a belated correction of a legal fiction that had persisted since independence: every Haitian constitution had declared Catholicism the official religion of a nation whose spiritual life was centered on a tradition the state refused to acknowledge. The 1860 concordat with the Vatican had imported European priests who launched systematic campaigns against Vodou. The Duvalier regime had weaponized Vodou for political terror. The 2003 recognition attempted to normalize what had always been normal for the Haitian people, granting legal legitimacy to the faith that had sustained the enslaved, organized the Revolution, and survived every attempt to eradicate it.