The Dark Countries

VOODOO has of recent years been so burlesqued that foreign writers are suspect in Haiti to-day. Even serious study is often impeded, for the authorities fear misrepresentation and the peasants fear betrayal. It is therefore remarkable that Professor Melville J. Herskovits should have been able, after only three months’ residence, to write his Life in a Haitian Valley (Knopf, $4.00), though he came to his task thoroughly experienced in germane research.

As an anthropologist he has done a creditable job, for he has shown the Haitian Negro in full, not against a background of Voodoo alone, but against his entire heritage. His custom from birth to death is recorded meticulously, his culture assessed at its actual worth. Magic, the rites requisite to the worship of the gods, the twins, and the dead, the division of honor and labor between Christian and pagan deities, are all considered in admirable detail. It must be understood, however, that the author’s observations pertain specifically to the commune of Mirebalais, only thirty-five miles on the bus route from Port-au-Prince, and are therefore invalid denials of custom elsewhere. But it is equally true that he has managed, in spite of language difficulties, the limitations of locale, and immediate experience, to present one of the best-rounded pictures of Haitian life we have had to date.

Voodoo proper he saw rather darkly, mainly because other investigators had so infuriated him that he desired to veer as far as possible from anything resembling ‘sensationalism.’ He has veered so far, indeed, as to maintain that Voodoo ritual is well disciplined, that Voodoo dances occur on Saturday nights or fete days only, by government authorization, and that Voodoo is pronounced ‘Vodun,’ a spelling he employs throughout the book.

Now this, I submit, is fanciful. ‘Vodun’ has a definite significance in Dahomey, Africa, but in Haiti the word has been ‘Vaudoux’ (from the Creole French, Anglicized to ‘Voodoo’) since the eighteenth century, and is still so pronounced, as any student of Haitian literature, or any attentive visitor to the island, can readily ascertain. The use of ‘Vodun’ in the text is misleading. Despite this assertive literary tic, however, and the continual and almost audible gnashing of teeth with which Professor Herskovits refers to more sanguine, if less scholarly, authors, the book is highly readable and of distinct value, particularly for its correlation of African survivals with the transitional influences — church, politics, and acculturation — integrating Haiti to-day.

Max Miller’s lively curiosity was not confined to the waterfront of Mexico, nor to any front at all, while he was gathering the material for Mexico Around Me (Reynal & Hitchcock, $2.50). It led him to the mountains, the hidden lakes, the slums of cities, and pushed him against his will beneath the surface of the Mexican scene. He wished to ignore history and social motives; he did n’t want to become involved with Mexico, but he soon found that even the most superficial traveling presented problems, as old as the country itself, which could not be ignored. That is the trouble with being an ace reporter; the eye is quicker than the recording hand.

His journey was an escape from guidebooks and all the ‘ views ’ and ‘sights’ they recommend. People were more exciting than places: the planters of Chiapas with their strange notions of hospitality, the peons, the dominant women of Tahuantepec, the broken women of the streets where ‘the lamps are more for throwing shadows along the cobbles than for throwing light.’ His friend the old Indian Colonel, whose chest was a sieve of bullet holes, was the best of guides, as expert at finding bars as at producing, in remote, primitive villages, the relatives of that great Zapata with whom he had fought.

Max Miller followed humbly the ancient warrior, never knowing to what goal he was being led. Once it was to lay a wreath on Zapata’s grave, Miller carrying the wreath, and the Colonel his formidable armament. Again it was, almost, to a bandit feud of the Colonel’s own contriving, because he felt the American doubted his past exploits. And again to the most extraordinary place, to a village only half an hour’s drive from Cuautla, where there were no tourists, no guides, no beggars, and no lottery ticket vendors at all.

Zapata, the leader of the agrarian revolution, Miller felt, was a prodigy in Mexico because he sincerely fought for the people and lived modestly among them, until he was done to death by guile. It is largely due to him that the Indians now are regaining their land, but the general would roll in his stony grave were he to know how they are exploited by union racketeers. For Mexico is a maze of unions. There is even a Union of Tenants so powerful that landlords can scarcely collect their rents, and there is a Union of Prostitutes.

It is easy to see the unusual, Max Miller claims; every guide will thrust it under your nose. So very adroitly he presents the unusual in usual things, the circus, the bullfight, the Christian edifices vainly trying to grow from the ruins of ancient temples. He reveres nothing, not even syntax, but his book is filled with tales conversationally and dramatically told, and there is one concerning a secret convent which is as artful a horror story as any I have read. Whoever is bored with Mexico Around Me deserves no quarter from professional guides,

HASSOLDT DAVIS