Talk:François Mackandal

Untitled
I propose that the article distinguish between Makandal's powerful reputation in Haitian national history and the far more limited knowledge historians have of the man and the movement associated with him. --Altaar (talk) 16:54, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 11:37, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Myth of the one-armed revolutionary, myths in general
There are a lot of myths about Mackandal, and in the past few years there have been more and more English-language websites with a sincere interest in the history.

e.g., http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/haiti.html e.g., http://www.macandal.org/

However, I believe that the story of Mackandal having only one arm falls into the class of folktakes or fables about the man.

While the man's story has tremendous historical importance, it is also peppered with myths and elements of the supernatural.

Those are worth including mention of in an Encyclopedia article, but they should be marked as folklore.

I honestly cannot recall reading any historical claim that Mackandal had only one arm, and I've seen many portraits (viz., semi-historical depictions) of the man, as both revolutionary and martyr, and I can't recall any of them showing him with one arm.

Of course, there's the possibility that I'm wrong, and this is either an historical fact or a very well-known fable (that none of the authors I read dealt with...) --but this is why citations are needed.

Hey, guess what: the portrait of him on that coin, shows his left arm (viz., the one the text of the article now suggests had been cut off). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.243.38.46 (talk) 09:20, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Poison?
Echoing some of the previous concerns about separating fact from legend, the only evidence that exists to suggest that Macandal ever poisoned anyone is that white slave owners killed him because they believed he did. He never confessed to poisoning, even under torture, although he did confess to other crimes. If he did distribute poisons, there is a good chance that they were meant to be protective or curative charms, not meant to kill. And there are alternatives to explaining most poisoning deaths (even those alleged today). For instance: E. Coli was not discovered until 1885. Or: manioc leaf contains cyanide which can poison a person if not cooked correctly. Etc, etc. Accusations of poisoning come up in many slave societies, almost always slave owners accusing slaves. Almost always there is no more evidence than the accusation. In this case of white planters accusing an African maroon, there is no real evidence that poisoning ever happened. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.220.159.20 (talk) 15:12, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

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External links modified
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