Origin from 2005
In 2005, the houngan and biochemist Max Beauvoir launched the Federasyon Nasyonal Vodou Ayisyen, an organization meant to represent and defend Haiti's largely independent Vodou priests against persecution and public defamation. In 2008, Haiti's houngans and mambos came together to give the loose federation a central structure, renaming it the Konfederasyon Nasyonal Vodou Ayisyen, the National Confederation of Haitian Vodou, and selecting Beauvoir as its Ati, the confederation's supreme leader. Beauvoir held the position until his death in 2015, using it to press public officials on behalf of Vodou practitioners, including formally objecting to the hasty mass graves dug for earthquake victims in 2010. The confederation continues to describe itself as a civil body defending Vodou's practice from defamation and persecution.
Facts
Dates
StatusEstablished marks the 2005 founding and 2008 restructuring of a national representative body for Haitian Vodou's priesthood, not a claim that it speaks for every houngan or mambo in Haiti, since Vodou has no central hierarchy and other claimants to the Ati title have contested the position since Beauvoir's death. Cross-Tradition Connections
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Adds a fact not yet on this timeline: a national confederation formed to represent and defend Haiti's Vodou priesthood as a body, distinct from the legal recognitions, suppressions and disaster related events already recorded here.
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