Crown Heights Brooklyn, New York - Flatbush Avenue is the main street of the neighborhood for a large portion of Haitian Immigrants who have come to New York City in search of a better life. It's a busy street, full of grocery stores, barbershops and independent shops which sell everything from peppermint herbs to wood carvings. The sounds of compas and meringues compete with each other through stereo systems and most of the talking you here is in Creole. Tabitha Pierre-Louis is the daughter of such immigrants.

Tabitha Pierre-Louis plans on forming a neighborhood voodoo watch group in Brooklyn

"They came here during the mass migrations of the 70's and 80's," says Pierre-Louis, "when everyone in Haiti was trying to get away from Duvalier regime. Most came here with nothing but the clothes on their back."

But some Haitians also brought the religion of voodoo and it is this that Pierre-Louis is most concerned about.

"Most of the voodoo users are satisfied with using voodoo to help. They pray and sacrifice to the group of loa spirits called the Rada which are the helping spirits. But recently some have turned to the Petro. These loa are dangerous. They can be called on the hurt your enemies, to cause harm."

And it is a Petro loa that Pierre-Louis claims attacked her father and his store in January. Her father, Edovard, runs the a small grocery store and has been recently hospitalized with respiratory ailments.

"My pappa was fine but in January a group of men came into the store and demanded that he pay tribute to them in order for them to keep his store safe. Pappa refused. He's dealt with people before like this and he was not afraid of them. As they were leaving one of them grabbed his head and yanked out some hair. The next week things started happening around the store that could not be explained. Shelves would collapse, spilling cans, the freezer stopped working, and finally my father had trouble breathing. He was taken to the hospital in early February."

Pierre-Louis approached a local man named Philias Sonno, who was known in the neighborhood as an authority on voodoo. He asked for a personal possession of Edovard's. Tabitha gave him a shirt which he used in a ritual. Afterwards he said that her father had attracted the attention of a powerful Petro spirit. He believed that the strands of her father's hair were used in a ritual calling of the spirit.

"This spirit come to harm Edovard." "Sonno told me through an interpreter, "Someone put that loa onto him. The only way Edovard will get better is if the person that sent the loa, calls him off."

Pierre-Louis now aims to do just that. "I'm getting together with other people in the neighborhood and we going to find out who these men are. We going to make them stop what they doing. If we find out who the priest is we're going to stop him or her to. They can't bully the neighborhood around like this. We got to stick together."

So far Tabitha has circulated flyers and plans on holding a meeting in the next week or so. She says that other Haitians are hesitant to help her but will come around.

"When this starts happening to them, then they will get as mad as me."

sources

interview with Tabitha Pierre-Louis, February 21st, 1999

interview with Philias Sonno, February 19th and 21st, 1999

photo by Derek Barnes