Ouidah and Its Historical Legacy
While spiritual tourism in Bénin might be a relatively new phenomenon, the history of foreign involvement in Vodún spans more than three centuries. I chose Ouidah as the ideal locale to examine Vodún’s global reach because of the city’s long-standing position as a multiethnic and multinational port; its 350-year connection to the Americas; and Vodún’s centrality to Ouidah’s landscape. Ouidah rests on the shore of the Republic of Bénin, the former West African “Slave Coast,” and on the coast of the present-day Bight of Benin along the Gulf of Guinea. With a population of approximately 92,000 people (as of 2012), Ouidah is a modest but vibrant town. Yet, despite Ouidah’s relatively small population, its particular precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial histories have made the city an important cosmopolitan player in Africa’s long-term global flows (cf. Hannerz 1990). As one of West Africa’s largest former slave ports, Ouidah has occupied an important international geopolitical space for nearly 350 years.5 The former kingdom of Xweɖá, from which present-day Ouidah drew its name, was conquered in 1727 by Agajá, the fourth ruler (axɔ́sú) of Dahomey.6 As a result, Dahomey took control of Xweɖá and the smaller kingdom of Savì—which lay seven kilometers to the north of Ouidah. Today, in part because of Ouidah’s political past, the town has become an ethnically rich area where one can find people who identify as Ajǎ, Gùn, Xweɖá, Maxí, Fon, and Yorùbá (Nàgó)—most of whom are Fɔ̀ngbè speakers. In addition to Ouidah’s local diversity, the city has also been influenced greatly by its historical connection to Portugal and Brazil. In 1818, Francisco Felix de Souza, a Brazilian man born to a Portuguese father and a Native American mother, aided Gakpe, the Dahomean king’s brother, in a coup d’état, which resulted in Gakpe taking the throne from Adándózàn (r. 1797–1818). Gakpe then took the name “Gezò” (r. 1818–58) and became the ninth—and most infamous—ruler of Dahomey (Bay 1998: 166–78). From 1820 until his death in 1849, de Souza sold African slaves to European buyers on Gezò’s behalf.
In 1835, during the height of Gezò’s reign, the Brazilian region of Bahia experienced a slave uprising that led to the “Great Revolt” (also known as the “Malê Revolt”).7 In the aftermath of the failed revolt, the Brazilian government deported back to West Africa those people of African descent who were suspected of having inspired the revolt. According to Robin Law, “the re-emigration then continued on a more or less voluntary basis through the rest of the nineteenth century” [and] “in the immediate aftermath of the rebellion … one party of 200 free blacks were deported from Bahia … to Ouidah” (2004: 179–80). This large influx of returnees to Ouidah from Brazil—and, for different reasons, from other lusophone countries such as Madeira, São Tomé, and Angola (Law 2004: 185–90)—greatly, and permanently, influenced the social and political lives of the people of Ouidah. For example, Portuguese architecture, with its distinctive “shuttered windows, ornate mouldings, colonnades and verandahs” (Law 2004: 187), still decorates the landscape, and descendants of Francisco Felix de Souza still inhabit Ouidah today.
An increase in the Portuguese and Afro-Brazilian presence in Ouidah was not the only cultural change that was supported and encouraged by the reemigration of ex-slaves from countries such as Brazil. Because Yorùbá captives had made up a large majority of Africans who were sent from Bénin to Brazil, Ouidah experienced an upsurge of Yorùbá-speaking peoples returning to the area. This, coupled with an influx of domestic Yorùbá slaves who worked for households such as that of the de Souza family, further added to Ouidah’s unique ethnic and national diversity. The incorporation of these diverse peoples into the kingdom of Dahomey points to the “Fon propensity to embrace and adopt influences from many directions: Europe by way of the Atlantic coast, Akan areas to the west, Yoruba-speaking lands to the north and east, and to a far lesser extent, Islamic West Africa to the north” (Bay 2008: 4).
As far back as documented history reveals, Fon society has always been one of inclusivity, absorption, and flexibility—a mentality that continues into the present, as Béninois become important players in the transnational and global flow of African religious ideologies such as Vodún. Contributing to Vodún’s expansion, Ouidah has been marketed as the “spiritual capital of [Bénin] with a thriving and lively Voodoo culture” (Butler 2006: 114), and it is highlighted on a “Cradle of Voodoo” tour provided by Explore, a British “adventure travel” company, as the home of Bénin’s “ancient snake cult.” Because of Ouidah’s long-standing and sometimes tumultuous relationship with the West, its position as an international and multiethnic border zone, coupled with its centrality to “Voodoo tourism,” makes the city the most compelling space in Bénin to observe the interplay between local religion, international tourism, and processes of globalization and transnationalism.8
Ouidah and Its Contemporary Importance
Despite Bénin’s current interest in spotlighting its Vodún heritage as a marketable international commodity, Vodún has not always enjoyed this national prestige. In 1890 the French invaded Dahomey and formally dethroned Gbɛ̀hánzìn (r. 1889–94) in 1892; after two years of hiding, Gbɛ̀hánzìn surrendered to the French in 1894, officially making Dahomey a French protectorate. After forcing Gbɛ̀hánzìn and his family into exile onto the West Indian island of Martinique, French officials installed their puppet king, Agoliágbò, as Dahomey’s twelfth and final local ruler. In 1898, Agoliágbò subverted French authority by objecting to an annual tax. The French reacted in 1900 by forcing Agoliágbò into exile in the Congo, and the kingdom of Dahomey was subsequently abolished.
Sixty years after France took control of Dahomey from Gbɛ̀hánzìn, Dahomeans were able to negotiate their full independence from France on August 1, 1960. After some years of political and economic turmoil, in 1972 Mathieu Kérékou gained control of Dahomey through a military coup d’état. Kérékou began making swift and exacting changes to Dahomey, including a 1973 ban on “all [Vodún] ceremonies for the duration of the rainy season” (Joharifard 2005: 23). Two years later, the Kérékou regime began forbidding the “wearing of traditional ceremonial clothing” and “ultimately required anyone holding a [Vodún] ceremony to acquire explicit authorization from local government officials” (23). In addition to these restrictions, the cloistering of Vodún initiates (an important part of Vodún initiations) was made illegal, animal sacrifice was tightly regulated, important secret societies were banned, and sacred forests were destroyed (Joharifard 2005). Following these regulations, in conjunction with Kérékou’s broad “war on Vodún” (Elwert-Kretschmer 1995; Strandsberg 2000; Joharifard 2005), in 1974 Kérékou announced that the country would adopt a Marxist-Leninist style of government, and in 1975 Dahomey was renamed the People’s Republic of Bénin.
After fifteen years of communist rule, in 1989 Bénin’s Marxist-Leninist government was abandoned and the country began transitioning to democracy, which, in 1990, led the National Assembly to choose Nicéphore Soglo as Bénin’s prime minister. In 1991, Soglo became Bénin’s first democratically elected president in a multiparty election. President Soglo swiftly lifted Bénin’s anti-Vodún laws and began working with international organizations such as UNESCO, the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, and the Getty Institute to build and design La Route des Esclaves, a historically informed journey beginning at Francisco Felix de Souza’s former home and ending on the beach, where international visitors could explore Bénin’s slaving past (Forte 2007; Araujo 2010; Landry 2011). Vodún quickly