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“During Rara there is a man who puts straw all over his body.  He dances and he lies down at the crossroads and frightens people.  Children are afraid.  That’s a juif (Judas).  Also, they sometimes make statues of wood and straw, called juif.  They dress them properly.”  But then Luc added:  “When the Mardi Gras (masks) are burned, they burn them too.  When they burn everything they go to communion and confess their sins.  The day after Mardi Gras they burn them, they call that Paques [Easter].  They do that after Mardi Gras too.”

This account strikingly conflates Mardi Gras/Carnival before Ash Wednesday with Rara between Ash Wednesday and Easter, as well as Easter (Pâques) with Ash Wednesday.  There is Catholic communion and confession, but no awareness of a connection of the “Judas” with the Crucifixion or other meanings of Easter.  There is magic, as in reference to rain making.  Taking these scattered elements of the festivals in which he has participated or of which he is aware, he weaves his own pattern.

While Carnival is a widespread tradition rooted in European Catholicism, Rara is uniquely Haitian.

References:
Elizabeth A. McAlister:  Rara!:  Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and its Diaspora.  Berkeley:  University of California Press, 2002.

For the European folk background of Carnival, see Carnavals et Fętes d'Hiver Paris:  Centre Pompidou, 1984. 

 

 

 

 

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Page last revised: July 31, 2007

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