Showing posts with label popular culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label popular culture. Show all posts

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Law of Haiti admits and criminalizes the creation of zombies



HAITI - Haitians are 50% Catholic and 100% Voodoo priests - says a military member of Brazilian peace forces, that are working in the capital Port-au-Prince since 2004. The mysticism of the inhabitants of the western part of the island of Hispaniola, the Caribbean, is considered taboo by most of the western world and has little relationship with rag dolls targeted needles.

Haitian Voodoo has its root in Africa. The practices are widespread in the Caribbean nation, whose deep misery gives to gives the nation the worst Human Development Index (HDI) of the Americas.

Brazilian soldiers who are part of MINUSTAH (United Nations Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti), they remember of to have found in the street, at the beginning of the mission, pieces of human bodies, with chest cutted and eyes gouged out. Believe they were victims of voodoo priests, the "bokors", who practice black magic

The brazilian militaries still remember themselves having collected the testimony of an Italian priest who was kidnapped together a novice nun by practitioners of voodoo. The nun was raped repeatedly, including with sticks and wooden stacks, in a supposed religious ritual. The victims managed to escape when another bandits group attacked the firsts and was this episode that created the chance of escape

Apart from the rituals of death and purification, the voodoo includes the mystical transformation of humans into "zombies". This is one of the biggest fears for the secular society. The haitians believe that a zombie is created from the sorcery of the wizard, who would make himself a controler of his victim, able to manipulate the will the person's soul. For scholars of practice Vodouisants are, however, the alleged lethargy of zombies may be resulted from the application of tetrodotoxin, a neurotoxin found in puffer fish species.

Article 246 of the Haitian Penal Code makes clear reference to the poisoning made with the aim to produce a "lethargic" state in a person, the main characteristic of those Haitian zombies. "Are classified as envevenamento all attacks on a person's life, the effect of substances that can lead to death sooner or later, independent of the epoch when that these substances had been applied or administered, and whatever the consequences of this procedure.

If most of the practitioners od the Haitian voodoo practiced mixed with other religions such as Catholicism, after 2010 earthquake, when at least 220 000 people lost their lives and, mainly, with the worsening of the cholera outbreak at the end of last year, sorcerers of voodoo passed to be hostilized by the population. At Port au Prince the reaction against voodoo practioners can be something violent.

In houses whose roofs have a sort of scarecrow with red rags, at least 40 priests were murdered, says Brazil's ambassador to Haiti, Igor Kipman. Part of the population attributed to them the responsibility for the deaths of more than 3300 people that were victims from cholera.

SOURCE: BORGES, Larissa. Na polêmica do vodu, lei haitiana proibiria criação de "zumbis".
IN Terra Notícias - published in 01/21/2011
[http://noticias.terra.com.br/mundo/noticias/0,,OI4903622-EI8140,00-Na+polemica+do+vodu+lei+haitiana+proibiria+criacao+de+zumbis.html]


Friday, January 28, 2011

The cultural African hell – Curse of Twins


Gladys Bulinia: She lives alone with 10 of
her children, a few miles from Lake Victoria.


KENYA, Africa – Gladys Bulinia, 35 years old (in 2011), a woman of Kenya, is a person considered cursed in her community. The reason for this: She gave birth to six pairs of twins in each one of her pregnance periods. Were six times even now. She is very poor and has twelve sons. The problem is that this woman belongs to nation or tribe of the Bukusu and according the tradition of this culture, the birth of twins is a sign of bad luck. Six double of twins is an astral danger!

When became pregnant the first time, she was a high school student. Her boyfriend was too young to marry. Then, her family ordered her to leave the babies at the hospital for adoption.

The babies were rescued by the father of the her boyfriend. The grandfather decided to take care of the two. This man hasn't the same beliefsof the Bukusu. He is a Kalejin, a different ethnic group.

Five years later she married a primary school professor.Then it happened the first pregnancy and everything resumed. Were twins. And twins continued to birth. Five times. Ten children. In the fifth pair of twins, the husband put her out of home along with ten children. All of them were considered cursed.

Now, Gladys Bulinia is an abandoned woman that fight to sustain her family. She lives alone with 10 of her 12 children, a few miles from Lake Victoria, in a thatched house that has only a one tiny gunroom.

SOURCE: Após seis pares de gêmeos, mulher é considerada amaldiçoada.
IN O Diário – Maringá city/Paraná state – published in 01/27/2011
[http://maringa.odiario.com/blogs/luizdecarvalho/2011/01/27/apos-seis-pares-de-gemeos-mulher-e-considerada-amaldicoada/].


Thursday, November 26, 2009

Saints, from sacred to profane


The Saint Patience, by Marta Oliveira

SÃO PAULO ─ In this november, 26 [2009] ─ at São Paulo state, in the cultural space House of Portugal was inagurated the Itinerate art exposition Todos os Santos, do Sagrado ao Profano [All of the saints, from sacred to profane].

The exhibition gathers paintings by 28 artists were commissioned to create figures of the saints that inhabit the popular imagination. This exhibition shows the most popular between canonic saints, Some of these canonic saints, despite they recognized by the Catholic Church are saint that belong much more to the realm of the legend than to the History, as St. Expedit, Saint George, for example.

However, beyond these "official saints" the exposition includes images of very special saints. They are the saints who inhabit the language of the people in metaphors of good-humor and, also, the very personals saints that some of the artists.

Feelings, situations that are personified as thought figures that were conceived in the context of their own lives. Among these saints that don't exist can be found: The Saint Patience, The Ignorance Saint, The Saint of the Hollow Dick, Saint Never! At São Paulo, the exposition ends in january, day 6. After this, the exhibition will go to Cintra city, Portugal. SEE MORE HERE


Source: São Paulo recebe exposição de santos do imaginário popular
In Destak publicado em 11/26/2009
[http://www.destakjornal.com.br/readContent.aspx?id=17,48969]