A statue of Toussaint Louverture stands tall on the corner of 62^nd and North Miami Avenue. Considered a father of the Haitian Revolution, the vigilant figure watches over the now rather quiet neighborhood. Still grappling with rampant gentrification and the coronavirus, many shops have gone out of business, sidewalks are scarcely populated, and the Cultural Complex, the center of Little Haiti’s cultural happenings, remains closed until further notice.

Louverture’s revolutionary bravery often overshadows that of Dutty Boukman – a West African Maroon leader and Vodou priest brought to the shores of the then French colony from Jamaica. On the 14^th night of August 1791, Boukman helped lead a religious ceremony, which would ignite the 12-year Haitian Revolution that resulted in Haiti’s independence. Although religious institutions in South Florida have been limited during the pandemic, many of the community’s practitioners of Haitian Vodou continue their reverence.

“You see this, Papa [Legba], he’s the one at the gate, he’s the one that has to let you in for anything spiritual,” explains priestess Marie Lebrun, pointing at a figurine at the front of her store, Twa Zom Fo Botanica.

Haitian Vodou derives from religious traditions of present day Benin, Tobo, and Nigeria, in which followers believe in a supreme creator and many intermediary spirits or deities who influence the facets of human life and death. Through the transatlantic slave trade, these spirits became known as loas and even took on the faces of Roman Catholic saints, as varying African languages, traditions, and spiritual practices merged with those of Europe. This was not only syncretism, but it was also a means of disguise and survival.

“No business from the tourists right now,” says Laider André, Vodou priest and owner of 3×3 Santa Barbara Botánica. “Sometimes you can find 2-3-5, but in the beginning it was a lot – 20, 25. Tourists always come here everyday, and right now, no.”

Botánicas, or shops in which herbs, candles, figurines, and other religious needs are sold, can be found on many corners around Little Haiti. Often playing Kompa or Rasin music on speakers, they attract tourists and practitioners alike.

“We have artisana, we have things people like to buy,” says Lebrun. “Tourists can come buy some stuff. But for the pandemic, we don’t have that many people.”

Lebrun attributes the significant slowing of her small business to a lack of visitors to Miami during these times.

“I’m going to go for the loan, but I haven’t get it yet,” Lebrun says. “Someone start it for me and it was really great, but it was finished when they finished for me. I didn’t get it.”

Both André and Lebrun have been in business for almost 20 years, but during the past six months, some visitors in the community have sought their help for an unusual reason – to combat the pandemic.

“They have been coming for the virus,” says Lebrun. As a Vodou priestess it is a duty of hers to help the sick.

“You have to get blessing hands to help somebody,” she says. “It’s not something you can buy.”

Priests and priestesses, or houngans and manbos are ordained with many roles in their religious communities. They provide herbal remedies, spiritual guidance, lead rituals and ceremonies, and serve as messengers between the spirits and humans beings.

“You have to be gifted from your mom’s stomach before you’re born,” says Lebrun. “When you get a certain age, when they want you to serve, then you start seeing some things. They keep telling you what to do next…until you get there. And when you get to work, they ask you to work.”

With the virus limiting physical contact, houngans and manbos are finding other ways to deliver their messages.

“If you’re meeting with a priest or priestess a lot of things are done via video call or text message,” Vodouist and folkloric dancer Tanayiz Bertrand says over the phone. “Instead of them doing it for you, they give you the instructions on doing certain things for you to do it yourself, and so things are done virtually.”

Bertrand grew up in a household in which both of her parents were professional and folkloric dancers. She says religious group practices have reasonably changed during the pandemic, as group meetings now happen both virtually and partially in-person.

“If I was in a société, in a specific society or spiritual house we would get together on certain days and talk about our experiences and take notes and just talk about our daily life; things that we’re experiencing, anything that we need to learn as far as rituals and what they mean and everything with all the materials that are being used in different rituals,” says Bertrand. “And also history lessons, because in Vodou, even when it comes to folklore dance, there’s a history lesson behind all of these things.”

Music and dance play an important role in Haitian Vodou. Along with offerings and vèvès, or symbols associated with each loa, music and dance are used to invite loas to join rituals and ceremonies via the body of a practitioner. Vodouists believe they may have direct communication through the physical embodiment of a loa.

“If you’re going to a dans, which is a ceremony, you come with your mask on and they limit the amount of people,” she says. “Also there have been times where you probably had to cancel a ceremony.”

Bertrand says travel restrictions have hindered ceremonies, but most home practices have remained untouched.

“Every morning before I leave my house I jete d’lo or pour libations to acknowledge my ancestors,” manbo and owner of Ayizan’s Corner, Tracy Lotus Badesi wrote in an email. “I continue to pray every day, light a candle in honor of Zanzet Yo (Ancestors) and let them guide my walk through these uncertain times.”

The post The Spirit of Little Haiti appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

Iraida Iturralde, a Pedro Pan, is shown in a 1962 photograph from Yvonne Conde's book "Operation Pedro Pan." The snapshot, taken by a Miami Herald photographer, captured Iturralde on her way to Saint Vincent’s Orphanage in Vincennes, Ind. Photo by Emily Canal.

Iraida Iturralde remembers watching the buildings and landscape of Havana, Cuba melt into colorful blurs from the airplane window. She was a scared seven-year-old leaving home for the first time and unsure if she would ever return.

“The minute the plane took off I went berserk, because it was my first drastic separation,” said Iturralde, who works with the Cuban Cultural Center of New York. “What went through my mind was, ‘is this the last time I am going to see Cuba?’”

In January of 1962, Iturralde and more than 14,000 other Cuban children were airlifted from the island and taken to the United States. The exodus, Operation Pedro Pan, came on the heels of Fidel Castro’s communist revolution. With support from the Roman Catholic Church and the U.S. government, children whose parents opposed the revolution were taken out of the country.

“It’s the type of thing you learn to live with and turn it into a positive thing,” Iturralde said. “But there is something there that never heals.”

It has been 50 years since Iturralde’s mother sent her older brother, sister and Iturralde to the U.S. Her brother was separated from the family first. Iturralde and her sister, Virginia, arrived next.

After plans to stay with relatives in Florida fell through, Iturralde and Virginia stayed at specified camps in Homestead, Fla. Iturralde described one camp, called Florida City, as a collection of bungalows that divided the children by sex and age. Refugee Cuban couples were paid by the government to care for the children.

“There was a party going on and that was the first time I saw someone dancing the Twist,” Iturralde said.

Iturralde and her sister were then sent to Saint Vincent’s Orphanage in Vincennes, Ind., rumored among the children to be one of the worst places for the Pedro Pans.

“Kids used to say it was the worst place ever,” Iturralde said. “Where we were sent turned out to be just as bad.”

At Saint Vincent’s, Iturralde said she dealt with difficult nuns who struck her and grew frustrated with the language barrier. She explained how the Cuban children rallied together to overcome the hardships.

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Iturralde, who now lives in West New York, N.J., said she has been searching for her foster parents online. So far, she has been unsuccessful.

Luisa Yanez, an interactive reporter with The Miami Herald, helped create a social networking site for people like Iturralde to connect and cope with their experiences. She said it has helped Pedro Pans tell their stories and find the people they met more than 50 years ago.

“Its therapy and closure and finding new friends,” Yanez said. “It does a million things that we didn’t think of when we created it.”

Yanez said the network, called Operation Pedro Pan, was created in 2009 for the 50th anniversary of the airlift. George Guarch, the arbitrator between the U.S. authorities and Cuban children, collected a comprehensive, hand-written list of names at Miami International Airport. The list was saved and housed at Barry University in Miami. After three months of work, The Miami Herald launched a searchable directory of names where people could connect with each other by sharing stories and photos.

“We are trying to create our own Ellis Island record for Cuban exiles,” Yanez said. “The database has taken on a life of its own and become a town center for all these Pedro Pans from across the country to find each other.”

A profile page on the site offers a Pedro Pan’s name, date of birth and the day they arrived in Miami. The site has 1,511 registered Pedro Pans and has been viewed nearly 3 million times.

Eloisa Echazabal, an assistant to the president in the medical campus of Miami Dade College, helped Yanez create the database. She said the event is a vital part of Cuban history and more people have learned about the airlift since the 50th anniversary and the website’s launch.

“This is a way for people to learn about this important part of history of Cuba and the U.S.,” said Echazabel, 63, of Miami, who is also a Pedro Pan. “And to learn how beautiful freedom is and when they loose it bad things can happen.”

Echazabel landed in Miami in 1961 when she was 13-years-old. She said the website also helps Pedro Pans piece together the details of their experiences, which can be hazy since the ages of the children varied drastically.

“There are 14,000 different types of stories,” Echazabel said. “I just learned to live through it, but I did cry many evenings and there is a lot of stuff I don’t remember anymore.”

Yanez said the network is the second of its kind in modern history. She said the only similar forum was created for Jews who escaped from Germany during World War II.

“There is an emotional hook to this database,” Yanez said. “Being a Pedro Pan, you are always a Pedro Pan, and that horrible experience marks you for life.”

Iturralde went back to Cuba four times, the last time in 1980 after her grandmother died. She said before she returned for the first time in 1979, she had a reoccurring dream that her body flew back to the island.

“I used to dream that I was floating down and landing in Havana,” Iturralde said. “It was my return, and I after I went I knew there was no way I can live there under this system. I never had the dream again.”

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