Wade Davis - The Serpent and the Rainbow

The military have their own parallel subdivision of the country, and while it is somewhat different, the important point is that at the lowest level the two systems come together, making the rural section the basic level of local government. It is within these rural sections that at least 80 percent of the Haitian population lives.

There is a curious and important paradox in the governing of these rural sections, however, and it hinges on the role of an official outside the hierarchical organization of either form of government. Gerry Murray, one of the most thoughtful anthropologists to have worked recently in Haiti, has pointed out that the rural section in no way coincides to a community or village, but rather describes “an arbitrary administrative lumping of many communities for the purposes of governance.” The rural peasants themselves identify not with their section but with their own extended families and neighbors in its lakous, the familiar compounds made up of clusters of thatched houses one sees all over the country. In other words, neither institution of the government, the civil or the military, recognizes in any juridical sense the actual communities in which the vast majority of the rural peasants live and die. To reach these people the national authorities depend on one man, the chef de section , an appointee from within the rural sections who is expected to establish networks of contacts that will place his eyes and ears into every lakou in his jurisdiction. This he does, but in a very special way.

Although the chef de section derives his authority from the central government, the basis of his power is not his official status so much as the consensus of the residents of his own section. He does not act alone, but rather heads a large nonuniformed force of local peasants that in turn derive their extrastatutory authority not from him but again from their own people. The chef de section can be quite helpless without such popular support, and historically efforts of the central government to place outsiders in the position—most notably when the American occupation forces attempted to replace vodounists with literate Protestants—have always failed. Haitian law provides for the chef de section to retain certain assistants, but as Murray indicates, “the particular form the structure of police control will take in a particular region will be largely governed by local traditions and by adaptive adjustments to local social reality on the part of local law enforcement officials, who are themselves intimately familiar with this reality.” What this implies is that the official government, in order to reach the peasants, must tap into their own traditional networks of social control, in the person of the chef de section.

Who is this chef de section? Above all he is himself a local peasant. Typically he maintains his own fields, is polygynous, and serves the loa. In many instances he is a prominent houngan. His behavior, personal values, and expectations are not those of a bureaucrat, but rather those of a leader of the traditional society. Although technically he receives a salary from the capital (and sometimes the money actually arrives), he depends financially on his own land, and like the African patriarch he considers it his right to recruit unpaid labor for his fields. This service the community members willingly provide, in effect as compensation for the hours he must spend attending to their affairs. It is his task, after all, to investigate conflicts and convene the informal tribunals at which virtually all local disputes are said to be resolved. With their power thus rooted in their own jurisdictions, the chefs de section remain relatively unaffected by political upheavals in the capital, and as Murray points out they retain, sometimes for indefinite periods, virtual unchallenged control of their areas. Threats to that power and their position, then, come not from Port-au-Prince but from dissatisfaction among their own people, so it is with them that the loyalties of the chef de section lie.

In brief, though the institution of the chef de section serves as an interface between the two separate worlds that make up the Haitian reality, the man himself is a member of the traditional society, and the network of contacts he taps is the network within that society. It was, therefore, by no means a trivial discovery to learn from Rachel’s uncle Robert Erié that in most instances the chef de section was also the president of a Bizango secret society.

Jean Baptiste surprised us by turning up dressed in the uniform of an army corporal and driving a military vehicle, looking like all the anonymous soldiers one runs into at the scattered roadside outposts in Haiti, the ones you catch napping behind their desks when their subordinates lift you from your car for a passport check. Yet within moments of stepping off the street into the privacy of his home he again assumed the air of quiet dignity and authority that had so impressed me the night before. He spoke freely, answering every question we put to him, and as we listened the nefarious facade of the Bizango crumbled piece by piece.

“No, no. It was an accident. Children are the little angels. They can do no wrong. Children do not fall within the sanction of the society. What you saw was an unfortunate victim. Another society needed to take someone, but the coup l’aire fell upon her by mistake.”

“Who did they want to take?”

“That is their business.”

“It could be anyone?”

“Not at all. Listen, you must understand that the Bizango is just like a normal government. Everyone has their place. It is a justice.” Jean Baptiste reviewed each member’s grade. The leadership consisted of the emperor, presidents, first, second, and third queens, chef détente, and vice-president. This ruling body was known as the chef d’état-majeur. There were other queens—the reine dirageur , who was generally the emperor’s wife; the flag queens; and the flying queens. Other lesser positions read like a list from the French civil service-prime minister, conseiller (advisor), avocat (lawyer), secrétaire, trésorier, superviseur, superintendant, intendant, moniteur, exécutif. Military titles included general, prince, brigadier general, major, chef détente and soldat. Finally, there were three positions of note: the bourreau, or executioner, whose task it was to enforce the collective decisions of the society; the chasseur, or hunter, who was dispatched to bring culprits before the society; and the sentinelle, who was positioned at the gate as a scout to prevent unwelcome individuals from entering a society gathering.

According to Jean Baptiste, his was but one of as many as a dozen Bizango societies in the Saint Marc region alone. Each one maintained control over a specific area and was led by a founding president known also as the emperor. In time members of the society’s hierarchy might launch out on their own, establishing their own bands still within the umbrella of the original leader, and as a result within any one Bizango territory in Saint Marc there might be as many as three societies operating. Each principal society was supposed to respect the borders of its neighbors, and disputes if necessary could be taken before the one selected by all the society emperors to reign as the emperor of the entire region.

The purpose of the Bizango, as Jean Baptiste insisted on reiterating, was to maintain order and respect for the night. To its members and their families it offered protection, and since almost everyone had some relative initiated, the Bizango became the shelter of all.

“For the sick, or the troubled,” he explained, “it is a wonderful thing, whether you have money or not. But it is only good because it can be very bad. If you get into trouble with it, it can be very hard on you.”