What the occupation exported.
The United States occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. William Seabrook's The Magic Island appeared in 1929 and White Zombie in 1932, and between them they created the English word voodoo and the zombie film. Haitians have spent a century since being asked about pins and dolls, which are not part of the religion.
The United States occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, and one of the occupation's lasting exports was a fiction. American Marines and journalists produced sensational accounts; William Seabrook's The Magic Island in 1929 introduced the zombie to English-language readers, and Victor Halperin's White Zombie in 1932, starring Bela Lugosi, established the film genre. Voodoo entered English as a word denoting curses, pins, dolls and reanimated corpses — a set of associations with essentially no relationship to Haitian practice, in which the pin-stuck doll in particular has no place. The commercial and cultural afterlife has been enormous, and Haitians have spent a century being asked about it. The specific harm is not only insult: the caricature supplied a justification for occupation and later for discrimination against Haitian migrants, and it continues to appear in coverage of Haiti during crises.
The same ground, other faiths
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