Vodo’s status in Haiti is linked to the country’s political history as much as to anthropology’s. During the slavery era, it was known as witchcraft and forbidden. Starting with independence in 1804, it experienced several waves of persecution from Catholicism. The paradigm of an opposition between idolatry and the true religion, or between the primitive and the civilized, prevailed among the elite and in the state. Vodoo was thus taken to be a cult destined to become extinct sooner or later. Democracy and laicism are requisites for vodoo to be recognized as a form of worship equal to Catholicism or Protestantism. As the outcome of a reconstruction process whereby slaves recovered a sense of identity, vodo has stored memories of the struggle against the slave trade and slavery.