Our Lady of Class Struggle: The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Haiti.

Brown, Karen McCarthy

Our Lady of Class Struggle: The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Haiti. By Terry Rey. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World, 1999. x + 362 pp. $21.95 paper.

Terry Rey has written an ambitious and deeply problematic book on social class and religion in Haiti. Rey draws on Pierre Bourdieu's argument that, in a classed society, religion inevitably reinforces divisions between peoples. Differences between the haves and the have-nots, for example, will be reinforced because the religion of the dominant group (religiosite dominante) justifies the status quo, while the religious practices of the underclass (religiosite dominee) tend "to impose upon the subjugated the recognition of the legitimacy of the domination," which is in fact a "misrecognition" of the arbitrary nature of this domination (Bourdieu in Rey, 24). Using Gramsci, Rey also investigates forms of resistance generated by religiosite dominee. He argues theologically and historically for Mary's connection to liberation and justice issues. In Latin America and the Caribbean, "Mary's concern for the downtrodden is a crucial theme, surely one of the most powerfully attractive aspects of the symbol of Mary for the under-classes" (87). Marianism is thus an ideal focus for Rey s neo-Marxist study. Devotion to Mary is prevalent among strict Catholics, as well as those who blend their Catholicism with African-based Vodou. "The elite," like the poor who are the great majority of Haitians, turn to the Virgin Mary.

Our Lady of Class Struggle comprises a religious history of Haiti (Catholic and Vodou); a history of church doctrine concerning Mary, along with feminist commentaries; a fascinating recounting of the political uses of Mary in Haitian history; a confused discussion of the relation between the Virgin Mary and the Vodou spirit Ezili; and analyses of questionnaires on Marian devotion administered to the elite and the poor, with a case study of one Mary devotee from each group.

Rey's field research as well as his use of the ethnographic work of others form the pivot of the book's major problem. Certainly there is a small percentage of wealthy Haitians whose devotion to Mary has no tinge of Vodou. Yet given Rey's focus (the role of the Virgin in class struggle and resistance), he had to deal with the complex relationship between Catholicism and Vodou that characterizes the religious practices of the poor. This includes identifying the Virgin Mary, through image and iconography, with either Ezili Freda, a feminine spirit of romantic love and luxury, or Ezili Danto, a fierce mother figure.

In chapter 5, "The Promiscuous Virgin," Rey takes up the challenge of the Catholic/Vodou connection. Unfortunately, he quickly digresses from the important (and interesting) questions about the Mary/Ezili identification and gets lost in a quibble over scholarly terminology. Is this a case of syncretism? If so, should it be classed as "synthesis," "assimilation," or "dissimulation"? Rey decides it is "symbiosis." To what end, we do not know. Rey concludes this chapter by declaring the Vodou dimensions of Mary--insignificant for his project. "The identification between Mary and Ezili in Haitian popular religion, is merely visual and emotive and does not fully penetrate to a cognitive level" (221). "This identification is, in the final analysis, highly superficial" (231).

Rey works in a hectic, indiscriminate way with the several ethnographies on Haitian Vodou currently in print. He gets information wrong, quotes things out of context, and misses nuance in arguments. Rey's fieldwork is equally problematic. He went to the Saut D'eau pilgrimage, the largest Marian event on both Haitian Catholic and Vodou calendars, yet he seems to have missed the most basic facts: the overwhelming majority of people who attend the festival do so as servants of the Vodou spirits, and the spirit central to this popular pilgrimage is Ezili Danto, not Ezili Freda. It is especially regrettable that Rey overlooked Danto because many of her chracteristics, including her incarnation as a revolutionary fighter, support his view of the role Mary traditionally plays in the southern hemisphere.

I first went to Saut D'eau in the mid 1970s, traveling there in a densely packed bus. The passengers were in a festive mood, and, on the long trek up the mountain, we sang Vodou songs for Ezili Danto. When we rounded the final bend in the road and the church came into view, all shifted automatically and without comment to more stately Catholic songs for Our Lady of Mount Carmel. So, the question is not whether Ezili Danto is the Virgin Mary. The answer to that is both yes and no. The real question is: "Which name for her should be used in which circumstance?" This is the question that reveals the social class issues and the power politics. When a white anthropologist asks about the Mary/Ezili relation, the interviewee knows to give the Catholic, that is to say, the proper answer. This is how Rey can report that 84 percent of the poor persons he interviewed claimed "Mary and Ezili were entirely distinct and share nothing in common." Even Rey admits that datum is unreliable (273).

Our Lady of Class Struggle entices in its promise to build bridges between Haiti's religious practices and its political economy, between the hard realities of economics and the elusive stuff of religion--devotion, vision, and desire. While there is plenty of insight in Rey's work, the book's promise is overwhelmed by its problems. Our Lady, originally a dissertation, lacks methodological focus, is over-theorized, needs more discipline in the use of sources, and exhibits a prose style that is way too wordy. It needs editing badly; there are many mistakes, including incorrect dates, and the index is also meager and unreliable.

Karen McCarthy Brown Drew University