NP but tangentially M&D-related

[Doug Millison]

This was posted recently on the maps.org list:

It is my understanding that the New World introduced the Old to smoking.
Till the introduction of tobacco, Old World ingestion of cannabis (and opium
poppy products) was almost exclusively by eating--exceptions in the
literature are I believe rare. Altho specialized cannabis preparations are
still eaten in North Africa and Asia, smoking cannabis (or opium poppy
preparations) has almost completely displaced these traditional practices
over the last several centuries, with unstudied transformative impacts on
cannabis' role in religious experience. Tobacco, and smoking, spread so
rapidly in the Old World that few realize that both are "new" there. In most
parts of the Old World cannabis is typically smoked in a mixture including
tobacco, whether in the the kif of the Maghreb or the chillum smokes of Asia
or the spliffs of Europe. SubSaharan Africa is a notable exception.

On the other hand, there was no hemp native to the New World, and its spread
there following Columbus' introduction was as rapid as that of smoking in
the Old. I believe the avidly tobacco-smoking Taino Indians of Quisqueya
(Hispaniola), along with cannabis-familiar Wolof and Mande runaway slaves,
were the first people to combine the practices and smoke cannabis. These two
groups joined forces to resist Spanish hegemony in mountain redoubts of the
Cordillera Central from 1503.

Haitian vodun is a choreography of Red Black and White spiritual practices
syncretized by these Taino renegados and African cimarrones, and their
offspring (called zambos by the Spanish). Their marron descendents inspired
and led the 1791 Saint-Domingue Night of Fire slave uprising inaugurating
the Haitian Revolution. Following formal independence in 1804 the marrons
integrated into Haiit's ex-slave majority population, carrying into the
mainstream well-evolved forms of vodun and all kinds of other
Indio-Afro-Euro survivals, creolizations and inventions.

During my 1992-3 stay on Hispaniola I was surprised to find cannabis use
generally unknown outside the cities, and its seed unrecognized by Haitian
peasants, at least in the south. Cannabis smoking appeared to be a
relatively new introduction, typically associated with Jamaica and the
Rastafarian-Roots movement, and cannabis sources were reportedlly imported
from Jamaica. I did not witness cannabis used alone. It was combined with
tobacco in cigarets. It was still a predominantly secular, or at least
non-vodun practice, tho it seemed on the cusp of joining alcohol as a
ceremonial spiritual intoxicant on the periphery of vodun, but I did not see
it offered to the lwa deities. Cannabis was also smoked secularly, and
surreptitiously, by young urban men in a cigaret composed of cannabis leaf
sprinkled with crushed "roche"--translucent crystaline chips of cocaine
"base" (a non-snortable intermediate form between paste and powder/crack; I
don't think it is known in the States as a consumer preparation)--introduced
to Haiti concomitant to semi-officially sanctioned transshipments of
Colombian base destined for the States. The military junta of Raul Cedras &
cohorts maintained loyalty from the police in part by granting them a de
facto sole domestic distributorship of this cocaine base tapped from the
pipeline through Haiti.

The cannabis-cocaine cigaret was known as a White Lady. Haitian Kreyol
utilized the untranslated English words, further supporting my informants'
reports of the recent introduction of both drugs, and their association with
English-speaking Jamaica and the US. White Lady use was then just being
incorporated by certain houngans into ceremonial use serving Ogu Feray (lwa
of iron & war) and his spirit wife Ezuli Freda (mulatta lwa of love & sex),
the two compulsive lwa dramatically ascendant in those troubled times.

I didn't see cannabis integrated into long-established vodun practice, but
then I haven't seen it all. I suspect any religious use of cannabis in vodun
is marginal, shallow or narrow. Alcohol and tobacco are the lwas' drugs of
choice.

Please note: I am responding directly because I am not a member of MAPS, but
an occasional viewer of the forum. If you feel a reposting to the forum
would be of service to members, you have my permission.

Timothy V. White
timwhite at rockisland.com

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