An
engraving–probably made from a contemporary artist’s sketch–shows the
eight Haitian “voodoo” devotees found guilty in February 1864 of the
murder and cannibalism of a 12-year-old child. From Harper’s Weekly.
It was a Saturday, market day in Port-au-Prince, and the chance to
meet friends, gossip and shop had drawn large crowds to the Haitian
capital. Sophisticated, French-educated members of the urban ruling
class crammed into the market square beside illiterate farmers, a
generation removed from slavery, who had walked in from the surrounding
villages for a rare day out.
The whole of the country had assembled, and it was for this reason that Fabre Geffrard
had chosen February 13, 1864, as the date for eight high-profile
executions. Haiti’s reformist president wished to make an example of
these four men and four women: because they had been found guilty of a
hideous crime—abducting, murdering and cannibalizing a 12-year-old girl.
And also because they represented everything Geffrard hoped to leave
behind him as he molded his country into a modern nation: the
backwardness of its hinterlands, its African past and, above all, its
folk religion.
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