CELEBRATING MAY10 25 YEARS!

by LAUREN (Robi n ) D E R by CSW Male Heroism, Demonic , and Memories of Violence in the Haitian-Dominican Borderlands1

1 Male heroism, conitinued from page 1 ast , I spoke with Gumercindo Sebala alias “el ranchero,” who told me Lthe story of a harrowing trip home on his motorcycle to the tiny provincial central frontier town of Bánica, Dominican . Bánica is located right on the banks of the river, which is the official border between and the . Like most residents, Sebala is a small-scale subsistence farmer who raises pigs, goats, and . It was night and he was on his motorcycle when he was forced to stop due to a very large tree—perhaps a Ceiba— which had fallen across the road, blocking his way. He got off his bike confounded by the tree since it was a species that is not quickly as it had appeared. When he arrived goats and to amass wealth. Strongmen such common in the region today, looked around, home, he told his landlady about the episode, the Dominican dictator , the only to be accosted by a beast he could who asserted with complete confidence that Haitian outlaw Charlemagne Peralte, and the not immediately recognize. He had trouble it had been a bacá, an evil spirit prepared by notorious Tonton Macoutes have been said 2 identifying the creature that jumped onto the someone for purposes of sorcery. to have had such powers of transformation. trunk. Resembling a dog or a , he finally This essay seeks to interpret a particular They are hot spirits, which are difficult to concluded it must have been a jabali, a kind version of stories about a highly feared control, and often entail a sacrifice; they can of feral boar with long whiskers that was phenomena called bacá—imaginary hybrid even turn on their owners. In the Dominican common in the into the 1970s. Thinking beasts that steal farm , harvests, central frontier town of Bánica, told to himself lo mato o me mata (“I kill it or it kills and cash through shape-shifting. Created me stories about sheep that meowed, goats me”), he grabbed his gun just as the by sorcerers, bacás are spirit creatures that with pigs’ tails, person with pig ears, and bulls disappeared, vanishing into the night as enable people to become dogs, cats, pigs, and which cried like a baby—animals which were 3 MAY10 CSWupdate Interviews, Bánica, Dominican Republic, July, 2009 Translated transcription of stories about Creole vs. Gringo Pigs; swine fever massacre 1979; and a bacá sighting, in which it appeared as a jarabali or creole .

“El Ranchero” Sebala – the others were better quality? – Exactly. Tastier. Let’s take an example. The Gringo chicken and the Creole chicken don’t have the same taste. One has to have an example. They don’t taste the same. That’s it. Those (Creole) pigs are the ones with the best tasting . Because the Creole pigs have such taste that if you taste some today, you want to keep on eating it. That’s the truth. – like the Gringo chicken? – yes, and the Creole fowl. That’s how they are, and that’s how we are too. If I know someone’s selling Creole chicken, I will buy it all up. If Pipil over there has killed a goat, I will ask him, Pipil, is it a creole goat or an Americano? Give it to me – even if it’s only the feet, head, the , and I will buy it because I really like creole goat. Click on image to watch video. – the taste is really good. – The swine flu has always existed here. We call it cacedó. But Ramón Alcantara what happened was that the wanted to sell their – so was it the same to care for the two types of pigs? product. So they killed the ones here to replace them with white – no, these (Gringo pigs) sometimes do not like to eat scrapings pigs. of yucca, mango. They (Creole pigs) ate everything. Sometimes – Were there protests, or did people hide their animals, because I these don’t eat household leftovers. would think that people were desperate, especially the poor? – so like Gringos they are spoiled? – there were national protests and municipal protests. And some – yes that’s it! people hid them (their pigs) in the mountains, very hidden, and even today, there are people who have these pigs hidden in the hills. There was a path that not everyone entered – but they

4 MAY10 CSWupdate know the mountains, and they know every corner, nook pitch black. and crevice. – a pig? and they put them there, and even today that type of pig – I could not say what kind it was. It was an animal but I could not still exists. distinguish what type. For example, you are here, and it goes – are they wild? “prrr” and away it goes. That’s what happened to me. – not really – they are kept tied up. They tie them up or put – like a ? them in a pig pen and they keep them there. And those – something like that. And it went like this… are the best tasting pigs. – It flew? – no. Bacá Sighting – I had my gun ready to kill it. I always have my firearm just in case. – I was coming on my motorcycle from San Juan to here, If I go out during the day or at night – not with a bad intention, of and I saw a large stick in the road – but not your average course. It was a strange thing, though. It had a large snout (pico) stick – it was huge – and I said how does a stick of that as if it was a jarabali – one of those pigs – one of the wild pigs that size appear in the road? Here there are no large trees – no had the whiskers. Ceiba of that size. I stopped to see what it was. I thought, – yes, that has large teeth. I kill it or it kills me – I am always prepared – it kills me – that’s it! or I kill it, right? So something is strange if I’ve never seen – and that has long hairs on either side of the mouth, those long such a huge branch before, right? So I see it. And I say, whiskers. ok, let’s see what it is. I am always armed, not with any – so maybe it was a wild Creole boar? intention but – you never know – to defend myself. And I – that’s what I say – that it was a . So I thought it was a saw an animal – and I am looking at it and it at me – and jarabali – one of that kind of wild pig. That’s what we call them. then it hopped like this, like this – and I am thinking what But it never stopped. is going to happen now? And on top of a huge stick. And – a jarabali is a cimarrón pig. afterwards, when I arrived here, Alicia, who still lived here, – and that has long whiskers around the mouth. And I was said, “well, that was a bacá.” This was Alicia’s home then. watching it and it disappeared. I didn’t know why. It must have – Did you see the animal? left very fast. That’s what I think. – yes. – What kind was it? – that I cannot say – a dog, a goat. I could not tell. It was

5 MAY10 CSWupdate really bacás or spirit animals. I heard haunting Prince killed a woman said to have been a most popular changelings in these tales, wood stories about how invisible visitors were lougarou, poised to suck children’s appeared regularly in the bacá narratives I eradicated and how virile men fought off these in the dead of night. These narratives are have collected. In one story, a thief turned beasts during struggles in the bush.Ranchers reflective of a highly tangible notion of evil, into a tree stump during a hurricane so as to and butchers told of bacás that eviscerated one evidenced as well in beliefs that bad avoid capture by the police. Such powers of their herds and drained their cash. I even dreams occur due to the entry of a wicked metamorphosis are most often said to emanate encountered a curandera (healer) who boasted presence into the body, which is why it is from Haiti. Scholars have noted the effects of that she could make one for me. considered preferable to sleep sideways or on Haitian peasant economies, Bacases are a particular subset of shape- face down. but they have not yet considered how the shifter lore in the Dominican campo; others Wood and animals are key natural symbols decline of the wilderness (el monte) has include galipotes and tuntunes. The version in Bánica; the very name of the town derives created anxieties associated with diminishing of bacá narratives interpreted here are from the term for ebony because of access to everyday forms of magical protection specific to the central frontier region, where the rich forests that sheltered the area into from evil. Indeed, shape-shifter lore about they appear as a local variant of Haitian the eighteenth century. The town’s patron demonic cattle arose in the early conquest lougarou lore in which the core feature is the saint is Saint Francis, of animals. period during another ecological crisis, anthropomorphism of the object—the stick, Indeed, is the national wood and when grief over Indian deaths in rock, or dog is actually a person. In Haiti, such is considered sacred, as is the Mata de Piñon, was channeled into Nahua narratives about accusations that beef was actually human flesh which is said to be able to bleed like a person turning them into horses. landed several people in jail on cannibalism and can be used to protect a house from evil From a Dominican perspective there is a charges in the 1870s. Bacá narratives can be spirits and natural disasters (although in Haiti it nationalist resonance to these bacá narratives adapted to fit new rumor paradigms as they is also used to capture spirits and bottle them since are renowned for their superior arise, for example, morphing into a version of into zombies).4 There is a mahogany (caoba) sorcery powers and are thus seen as ultimately the , a black dog with a penchant forest in los Haitises where if one tries to cut responsible for bacás and their thievery. for attacking goats when those rumors spread the trees, the earsplitting sound of drumming Located in Haiti for much of the nineteenth across America.3 And rumors surfaced will emerge until stopped.5 Dogs seen century and a central theater of war during recently with a vengeance as tent dwellers swinging in hammocks or in rocking chairs the and its aftermath, amidst the post-earthquake ruins of Port au are said to be bacás. While animals are the Bánica has long supplied meat products to 6 MAY10 CSWupdate the Haitian side of the central frontier, which area, as well as French-derived traditions of may provide clues which reveal resonances is too mountainous to sustain livestock; the loupgarou. which are not available to the conscious mind although today Dominicans sell beef and Given the fantastic nature of these shape- of the informant.9 rice to Haitians who supply Dominicans with shifting beasts, I originally assumed that I I would like to consider bacá talk as a goat, pig, and guinea fowl. In addition to the would need to use a folklorists’ methodology genre of embodied historical memory of the disappearance of the forest, bacá narratives to interpret them and that I would be past, one that is conveyed by the history and must be contextualized within cultural searching for story kernels, genres, and poetics of the particular forms these spirits economies of difference that emerged within variations alone. But I want to argue that these inhabit, from dogs, pigs, cattle and extinct the broader history of transborder circuits of stories can be read as a form of historical species of wood. As such they are popular markets, migration, and religious pilgrimage evidence, even if as a genre they are not oral recollections of a landscape and economy in the Haitian-Dominican borderlands. The tradition as such, since their historicity resides which came to an abrupt end with the small-holder economies of Bánica and the in their poetics—the historical meanings USAID-induced swine slaughter of 1979 when corresponding Haitian town of Biassou are that have accrued to formulaic elements or U.S. officials feared that a swine flu epidemic heavily reliant on pastoralism—cattle, goat, key symbols, rather than their narrative.6 could threaten the domestic industry and sheep, and pig—which informs the cultural Witchcraft can thus provide a standpoint ordered that all pigs on the island be killed. meanings of animals where people reside from which to reflect on different kinds of If history is always a story about power, these intimately with their beasts and for whom historicities.7 Following Carlo Ginzburg, one haunting tales represent suppressed subaltern animals occupy much of their imaginative might read these key signs metonymically, histories of a desire for a time and a place and accusatory discourse; those who still as “the verbal condensation of a historical when life was far easier for the rural poor in harbor a view of themselves as at the mercy process.”8 Thus reading these texts as historical the borderlands, as well as the surfacing of of natural forces, and thus an enchanted view evidence requires removing elements from certain memories of trauma from the colonial of animals as representing the power of an the narrative sequence within which they are past.10 These were animals might be termed often inscrutable nature. The bacá has several embedded and tracing the historical context what Rosalind Shaw has called “embodied crosscutting genealogies since shape-shifter which over time has accrued certain meanings memories” of the montero economy one beliefs are prominent in African as well as to key symbols like varnish on a brass plate. that provided free access to the hunting of Amerindian cultures such as the now-extinct Drawing upon Freud, one might say that wild pigs, goats and cattle in the forested Taino and Arawak who once inhabited this inadvertent or minor details in these stories interior and which sustained this region and 7 MAY10 CSWupdate its poor for centuries until the 1950s. These throws her interpretation in obliquely from The work of the Devil? phantasmic ghosts represent popular desires the margins, women are highly guarded about These narratives might be classed within the to hold on to the last vestigial traces of the free their bacá observations. This is probably due genre of Latin American devil-pact lore except range economy of monteria which provided to the important role Catholicism plays in this for the fact that bacás are also said to protect ready subsistence for the poor for centuries, community, and the fact that women typically one’s crops or beasts, so they are powerful while they are also histories of run the cofradias or religious brotherhoods but not necessarily negative, which is why I trauma from the colonial terror unleashed for San Francisco and other regional patron am hesitant to term them devil pact narratives upon the free peasantry; while simultaneously saints. Honorable personhood for women which has a univocally negative moral channeling some of the virile pride freedmen requires a discursive strategy of distancing timbre.14 In Bánica, there is another genre of felt as powerful hunters in the mountainous oneself as far as possible away from these bacá narratives in which wealth generation is interior.11 They are not unchanging static creatures and their stories, especially since more central which more closely conforms to images, however, but represent a “process uttering their name could conjure them into the devil-pact model; like witchcraft narratives of historical sedimentation” that shapes being. Bánica has one of the oldest Catholic those accused are community outsiders either a vision of moral community, yet one churches in the country, and I have not yet by regional provenance or class. Stories about which is constantly revised to meet new met a woman who would confess publicly export free-trade–zone owners and politicians circumstances.12 to believing in bacás. While loath to head on fall within this rubric, or the dog of Consuelo Yet as we shall see, there is a strong confrontations with the demonic, they will Ingenio which was said to change form and gendered dimension to these stories. Mary admit to being indirectly affected by them. size and was seen all over the place which Crain in her research in has argued This was apparent in stories I heard just after many said was José Mota’s bacá.15 Or the that similar devil pact tales are women’s stories the Haitian earthquake (which some said had assembly zone in Santiago owned by someone of resistance to wage labor exploitation; been caused by a bacá) that the presence of from the large regional town of San Juan de women play a more veiled role in this case, evil—in addition to the restless spirits of the la Maguana which was found to have been however.13 Due to the strong presence of unburied dead—were causing nightmares and the scene of mysterious deaths and blood in the , women are loath to keeping people awake at night. the toilets; or the tale of an alcalde () locate themselves as protagonists or even who was said to have had a “muchachito” or narrators of these stories of the demonic. small black man who smoked and was actually As in Sebala’s story in which his neighbor a bacá which made his large herd of cattle 8 MAY10 CSWupdate in Haiti grow while his neighbor’s failed; helped generate wealth as well.17 Yet my motifs.21 This perspective also reduces his bacá eventually causing the suicide of bacá narratives are not always about wealth the essence of these tales to a popular his cousin who was his political rival. The generation, and thus could also be seen as commentary on markets and inequality, centrality of blood imagery, desiccation a vision of evil as wily and inscrutable. Early thus indicating the presence of a culture and unnatural death—what Dundes calls modern British witch trials also reported the of “generalized reciprocity.”22 Yet this view the “bloodthirsty revenant” —render these devil appearing as a dog, cat or fly.18 Latin avoids the question of the specificity of the stories a different substream of the bacá American tales about witches frequently demonic vehicle—why are one particular genre, however, one more akin to vampire involve their ability to transmogrify, often into set of beasts are invoked rather than others? stories than shape-shifter tales, even if the birds, enabling them to locate children in What is it about certain animals—dogs or pigs two forms are related. These tales also order to suck their blood.19 In the British West in particular—that make them more prone conform to Freuds’ insights about why the Indies, women with supernatural powers are to emplotment in demonic tales than other “beloved dead” become “demons” since said to transform into animals, particularly cats beasts? Michael Taussig has urged scholars those accused are usually blood kin. By or dogs by ingesting potions; not surprisingly, to attend to the vivid detail of devil pact contrast, Dundes would describe bacá tales they are also wealthy and said to grow in narratives, yet no one has yet has taken on as “memorates” that is, personal stories of power via eviscerating the life blood of the centrality of the beast itself in new encounters with supernatural creatures told others.20 Scholars may be imposing a binary representations of evil, a fact with particular as true. 16 moral vision upon a corpus of belief that salience in contexts in which pastoralism Bacá stories clearly form part of a actually expresses a more complex vision, one provides the backbone of economic life.23 transnational genre of Latin American lore, which presumes the existence of a range of An important context for bacá tales is and certain formulaic elements can be invisible supernatural forces, not invariably of the forest itself, a space of enchantment found from to , such as the classic Faustian type. cast as feminine, and one which harbors the highly suspicious bull with teeth. Scholars of devil pact narratives have alluring female wood sprites. As in , Stories in which the wealthy are said to have identified the genre via the plot or moral of where Peter Sahlins reports the woods made their money by turning their workers the stories—the wealth or “bitter money” were anthropomorphized as a “feminine into animals have surfaced in Colombia that is generated which carries a satanic cast. supernatural being,” Dominican forests have and Nicaragua, and Gould reports a tale They thus classify the tale on the basis of its long been inhabited by ciguapas, for example, of an enchanted burro which purportedly narrative genre rather than its constitutive which are mute indian women with long 9 MAY10 CSWupdate hair who walk with their feet backwards.24 potent home-made Haitian rum. They are families who constitute a kind of local They appear to be wereanimals but in a private because people are aware that they aristocracy, to their field hands. I have heard different sense than the bacá since they are are not rational explanations, which is why bacá stories recounted by former síndicos themselves hybrids; people without language they are termed boca del chivo or disparates, (rural ), as well as elementary school or clothes covered with long hair or fur, stupid beliefs. They are male not only in teachers, pig farmers, day laborers and the innocents who live in a pre-edenic state. performance setting, but also in content. . Class marking in this poor rural They are mischievous and kidnap people They are prototypically stories of bravery in community is not altogether clear, however, often using them to sire offspring. Upon their relation to an adversary of untold proportions since, for example teachers are poor but return, then, their victims are blessed with since the bacá at first glance appears to be a have symbolic capital. Sebala for one, is “poderes” thus they maintain a connection to creature but it is actually of the spirit world, today an indigent pig farmer, but he named lo mas allá—the world of the spirits. Trees are a small demon able to wreak untold havoc. his children after his favorite philosophers, gendered as hembra and macho and female They are also traveler’s tales, usually cast as including Socrates, Thucydides, and Hegel, is the unmarked category, a fact that indicates encounters on roads; yet as Hyde has noted, a cosmopolitan gesture. Of course, men that the forest is a feminine space.25 El monte given his abilities to vanquish a demon, the have a wider spectrum of movement than (the wilderness, the bush) is associated with protagonist is not a mere mortal but rather most women do, and these stories take fertility, and menstruating women can ruin himself divine.28 Thus in telling these trickster place on the road and cast the narrator as a harvest, cause disease in livestock, and tales, notwithstanding the comraderie of his a virile protector of family and nation from spoil eggs, just as lesbians are said to cause mates (since these stories are not told in public diabolical forces.30 Men are also intimately earthquakes.26 Since mountains historically but rather among close friends) the protagonist linked to their animals, whether they are have been wooded, they are also seen as is also engaging in “crab antics” which cast cattle ranchers or raise fighting cocks or pigs; sacred, and can demand cash or goods.27 him above his peers.29 In a context in which it is the men who are primarily responsible It is important to note, however, that these the logic of conjuring is taken for granted— for herding the animals from pen to , stories are the subject of a particular form of that uttering the name of Satan can invoke it and men slaughter the animals when its time story telling. Bacá tales are resolutely male –these are stories told in private. to them. For the poor whose lack of drinking stories. As such they are most often As male stories, they also span the class income means that they cannot adequately told at night, in private, among groups of men, spectrum in this rural community, from the provide for their family these narratives may and accompanied by plenty of beer or kleren, descendents of the founding cattle ranching also help heal a “wounded masculinity” by 10 MAY10 CSWupdate casting the protagonist in a heroic mode.31 southern border towns of Pedernales and maintenance, they were an ample and secure Given the preponderance of female out- Jimaní were central to the effort in 1978, protein source; they also could be used as migration from the Dominican campo today, while later outbreaks occurred in Dajabón credit to secure a loan. combined with the lack of available land, and the province of Elias Piña where Bánica is Although hunting was prototypically a male livestock and well remunerated work for rural located.36 Worse still, the pig slaughter arrived pastime, interestingly the creole pig massacre men, one could also say that these stories after a series of draughts that had left the had an important gendered component to enable men a heroic performance one that population even more dependent on livestock it. Irrespective of the popular prohibition aims at persuading the audience that the male than ever.37 against killing female swine, especially the protagonist may be immobile but they are Until then, creole pigs had been the pregnant and their offspring (which are still capable of male virtues such as protecting mainstay of the peasant subsistence taboo to eat), many of these were killed, a their families and communities from danger.32 economy. Not only was the black boar a fact which outraged owners who railed that For this reason, the performative dimension of key symbol to Haiti, the chosen sacrificial “this was the only thing to sustain a family.”40 bacá storytelling and the genres of male self- object at Makandal’s bois caiman vodoun Moreover, some of the most strident resistance fashioning it enables is as important as their ceremony, the event which started the was from women who were outraged at the content.33 Haitian revolution. The French term marron governments’ orders and preferred to kill and The free range economy of which became maroon for runaway slave eat their own pigs rather than hand them monteria continued into the 1970s throughout came from the puerco cimmarón (wild pig) over to the troops.41 Women, of course, were the country until the arrival of swine flu in who was the originary primordial forest the primary care takers for the family hogs 1979, when it struck in the Artibonite valley.34 creature on both sides of the island.38 Creole which were tied up in the patio and lived USAID spent $30 million in the pigs were extremely well adapted to their off household leftovers, and probably stood slaughter of all pigs on the island, hoping that environment, thriving on palm fronds, worms to loose more from their husbands from this this would curtail the disease from spreading and grubs, they disposed of household food source of family income. (See photograph on north to the U.S..35 Given the importance of remains, their excrement providing fertilizer page 1.) feral swine to poor subsistence farmers in the for the conuco or garden plot, and their During the swine fever slaughter, women border, it should not be a surprise that this rooting loosening the soil for planting. For may have been particularly irate since they region was devastated more than any other an initial cost of less than $10 their offspring had fewer other options for generating by the pig eradication program in 1978. The could sell for $250.39 For virtually no cost in cash than men and thus were even more 11 MAY10 CSWupdate dependent on their pigs than their menfolk. In stations in border towns such as Barahona, —became the largest net their pitiful complaints to the authorities they Pedernales, Neyba and Jimaní.44 food importer in . Given the wrote that “we are women who live off pig This essay asks that we read these bacá dramatic erosion in food security since 1979, production” who are now destitute. The pig visions as embodied historical memories, it might not be a surprise that the creole pig assault cut to the heart of the family, perhaps which like dreams, require deciphering. continues to haunt the border, a poignant even more so since the rate of serial polygyny They are flashes of memory which seek to reminder of better days for the campesinado. and thus female-headed households in the repossess elements of the past and reanimate In over 50 hours of interviewing I have not yet border was higher than elsewhere, so there or reemplot them in historical time.45 These met one person who received a white U.S. were more women headed households with bácas may have been embraced during replacement pig, although I have been told a single income stream. One women from the food crisis that developed right after that these were much more difficult to handle Villa Vasquez wrote that she had received the creole pig slaughter in the 1980s, as than the mansa or gentle jabali. Indeed, I a voucher for reimbursement for the loss of Reagan’s Basin Initiative intended was told that due to their viciousness, you her pig but when she went to the Agricultural to transform the Caribbean from a food had to watch them constantly; they were so Bank she was told there was no money left sustaining economy into one that produced ruthless, they would even eat a small child. and she wrote “please pay as soon as possible, nontraditional products for export, a vision Indeed, these tales of gringo man-eating pigs I am a poor widow with seven children to in which cheap labor was the comparative are reminiscent of the vicious attack dogs take care of.”42 Nearly a half of all those who advantage of Haiti and the Dominican brought to hunt down runaway slaves and wrote in to complain were women, primarily Republic. Even USAID admitted they knew ravage them in the colonial period. These from the largest segment—the “humildes” this shift would cause tremendous rural urban tales of the bacá, as Luise White has said, and “gente pobre” (the humble poor) who displacement, increasing urban populations can thus uncover intimate layers of personal owned fewer than ten hogs.43 Which is by 75%; one which would generate an ample experience and emotions such as anger and why the governmental campaign to explain reserve army of labor which would keep its betrayal which are not always apparent in the rationale of the slaughter and eat more price down.46 As Haitian labor was supposed the cold historical archive.47 They also reveal pork was aired on the Dimención Feminina to shift to export free trade zones in the the central place that items such as wood (Feminine Dimension) and Nosotros en su capital, lower tariffs imposed by IMF “shock and pork have played in the social history of Hogar (We at Home) programs, alongside treatment” eventually displaced Haitian staple the central frontier, as commodities which Radio Guaracuya, and on popular rural radio foods as Haiti—the poorest country in the formed the basis of the subsistence economy, 12 MAY10 CSWupdate while maintaining the magic of the gift.48 As 1978), 602. Modernity in Dominican History, Stanford: 3. for more on chupacabras in , see elsewhere in Latin America, in Bánica the Stanford University Press, 2003. my essay “Imperial Secrets: Vampires and 12. shaw, Memories of the Slave Trade, 226. “hearth defines the home,” and indeed bonds Nationhood in Puerto Rico,” in A Religion 13. Mary Crain, “Poetics and Politics in the of family are indexed through where one eats of Fools? Superstition in Historical and Ecuadorian Andes: Women’s Narratives and who feeds you, and most of all, what’s for Comparative Perspective, edited by Steven of Death and Devil Possession,” American Smith and Allen Knight, Oxford: Oxford Ethnologist 18, No. 1 (Feb., 1991): 67-89. dinner.49 University Press, 290-312. 14. this was underscored to me in discussions Lauren (Robin) Derby is a Professor in the 4. Ken de Pree, Beware of the Baca! Folklore of with informants about how to classify the bacá Department of History at UCLA. She received the Dominican Republic, Samaná, Dominican which I would term sorcery yet which flattens a CSW Faculty Development Grant to support Republic: K. Du Pree, 1989, 25. into far more morally dubious term withcraft in this research. 5. Juan Guaroa Ubiñas Renville, El Mensaje de Spanish, a label they rejected as inappropriate. los sabios: Historias y leyendas educativas For a more devilish interpretation of the dominicanas, : Editora Manatí, bacá, see Christian Krohn-Hansen, Political NOTES 2002, 101-103. Authoritarianism in the Dominican Republic, 1. this essay is based on fieldwork funded by a 6. Jan Vansina, Oral Tradition as History, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. UCLA International Studies Center, the Center Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. 15. Juan Guaroa Ubiñas Renville, Mitos, creencias for Research on Women, and a Faculty COR 7. Englund cited by Rosalind Shaw, Memories y leyendas dominicanas, 193. Grant, UCLA, which have funded altogether of the Slave Trade: Ritual and the Historical 16. alan Dundes, ed., The Vampire: A Casebook, six short trips to Bánica and its environs since Imagination in Sierra Leone, Chicago: Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998, October 2008. I wish to thank Martha Ellen University of Chicago Press, 2002, 205. chapter 11, esp. 165, 159. Davis, Abercio Alcántara and Irma Mora 8. Carlo Ginzburg, Clues, Myths and the 17. Michael Taussig, The Devil and Commodity who have all been extremely helpful in my Historical Method, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Fetishism in Latin America, Chapel Hill: research. Thanks as well to Guaroa Ubiñas University Press, 1992, 103. University of North Carolina Press, 1980; Renville for his tales and encouragement, 9. Ginzburg, Clues, 101. Marc Edelman, “Landlords and the Devil: and Katherine Smith, who facilitated my 10. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Class, Ethnic and Gender Dimensions of interviewing in Port au Prince. This research Power and the Production of History, Boston: Central American Peasant Narratives,” Cultural is very much in progress and comments are Beacon Press, 1995. Anthropology 9, No. 1 (Feb, 1994): 67089; welcome. 11. Benjamin quoted in Fisher, Modernity Jeffrey Gould, To Lead as Equals: Rural Protest 2. see my The Dictator’s Seduction: Politics and Disavowed: Haiti and the Cultures of Slavery and Political Consciousness in Chinandega, the Popular Imagination in the Era of Trujillo in the Age of Revolution, Durham: Duke Nicaragua, 1912-1979, University of North (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009); and University Press, 2004, 140. For more on Carolina Press, 1990. Robert Debs Heinl and Nancy Gordon Heinl, monteria see Richard Turits, Foundations of 18. norman Cohn quoted in Elaine G. Breslaw, Written in Blood: The Story of the Haitian Despotism: Peasants, The Trujillo Regime and ed., Witches of the Atlantic World: A Historical People, 1492-1971 (Boston: Houhgton Mifflin 13 MAY10 CSWupdate Reader and Primary Sourcebook, New York: 26. labourt, Sana, Sana, 117. viajeros, siglos XV–XX, Santo Domingo: Editora New York University Press, 2000, 55. 27. labourt, Sana, sana, 162. Amigo del Hogar, 2002, 333. 19. Edgar martin del Campo, “The Global Making 28. lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes the World: 39. Michael Dash, ed., Haiti Anthology: Libete, of a Mexican Vampire: Mesoamerican, Mischief, Myth and Art, New York: North Point Princeton: Marcus Weiner, 1999, 105. European, African and Twentieth-Century Press, 1998. 40. to the president from Cornelio Florian Media Influences on the Teyollohcuani” 29. Peter J. Wilson, Crab Antics: The Social Recio, Sección de Boca de Cachón, Jimanó; History of Religions 49, No. 2 (2009), 107-40, Anthropology of the English-Speaking Peoples Letter to the president from 32 petitioners, stresses the primacy of European and African- of the Caribbean, New Haven: Yale University Tamayo, 21 Jan. 1979, MA, AGN. derived belief in his account of the origins of Press, 1973. 41. Interview, Bánica, July, 2010. the Nahua Teyollohcuani. 30. Mathew C. Gutmann, ed., Changing Men and 42. to Secretary of State for Agriculture, Informe 20. I.e. duppy women; see Jane Beck, To Masculinities in Latin America, Durham: Duke sobre el Sacrificio de Cerdos, from Héctor Windward of the Land: The Occult World of University Press, 2003, 137. Inchausteguí Cabral, Secretario de Estado sin Alexander Charles, 1979, 205 and passim. 31. Gutmann, Changing Men, 127. Cartera, 19 April 1979, MA, AGN. 21. Robert A. Georges and Michael Owen Jones, 32. light Carruyo, Producing Knowledge, 43. Most pig farmers had less than ten, about a “Folklore as Genre and Type,” in Folkloristics: Protecting Forests: Rural Encounters with third had 25-30, and a handful had 70-80 hogs An Introduction, Bloomington: Indiana Gender, and International Aid in (estimate from a sample of lists of “personas University Press, 1995. the Dominican Republic, University Park, PA: que perdieron sus cerdos,” MA, AGN). 22. Brackette Williams, Stains on my name, War in Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008, 82. 44. Receipt for $300 RD, Fondo Especial Para el my Veins: and the Politics of Cultural 33. Roger D. Abrahams, The Man-o-Words in the Desarrollo Agropecuario, 12 Feb., 1979; $240 Struggle, Durham: Duke University Press, : Performance and the Emergence and $375 RD, 23 April 1979; MA, AGN. 1991, 110. of Creole Culture, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 45. for more on this approach, see Andrew Apter, 23. taussig, The Devil and Commodity Fetishism, University Press, 1983, chapter 5. “Introduction,” Activating the Past: Historical 17. 34. “Proyecto Eradicación F. P.A.: Actividades Memory in the Black Atlantic, London: 24. Peter Sahlins, Forest Rites: The War of the para los Proximos 30 Dias,” Ministerio de Cambridge Scholars Press, in press. Demoiselles in Nineteenth-Century France, Agricultura, Archivo General de la Nación 46. Dash, Libete, 228. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994, (hereafter MA, AGN), Santo Domingo, 1979. 47. luise White, Speaking with Vampires: Rumor 48. Pérez describes ciguapas as either male or 35. CPTC_07-02.pdf (web document). and History in Colonial Africa, Berkeley: female but the example in his book is female 36. In 1997; see GUAOO_34_CSFSurvDomRep. University of California Press, 2000, 85. and I have never heard of one appearing as pdf (web document). 48. arjun Appadurai, “Introduction,” The Social male; Juan B. Pérez, Geografia y sociedad, 37. letter to the president and Secretary of State Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Santo Domingo: Editora del Caribe, 1972, of Agriculture, from a group of 105 petitioners Perspective, New York: Cambridge, 1996, 12. 242-243. from El Guayabal de Postrer Rio, MA, 21 Mar. 49. Mary Weismantel, Food, Gender and Poverty 25. José Schiffino, Riqueza Forestal Dominicana, 1979, AGN. in the Ecuadorian Andes, Ill: Waveland Press, Ciudad Trujillo: Montalvo, 1945. 38. Carlos Esteban Deive, Antologia de la flora 1998, 169. y fauna de Santo Domingo en cronistas y 14 MAY10 CSWupdate