Rara Festivals have great religious significance, and what makes Haiti 's religion unique is the blending of Voodoo and Catholicism. The festivals are centered on the desire to show and emphasize the power of the protective Iwa god of Voodoo. However sometimes the rara parades can have political and social significance. The celebrations can then be characterized as performing three roles: serving as a revitalization movement, fostering communitas, (Turner and Turner 1982) and acting as a liminal phase (Desmangles 1992).
Revitalization movements are characterized by the call for social change and it is clear that rara festivals help achieve this goal. Rara festivals do not always just have religious significance, sometimes they have political or social meaning. Rara festivals can serve as a form of media expression and way for people to voice their opinions to large crowds (Desmangles 1992). Rara parades give the peasant sector a chance to form a collective organized group, which is normally powerless in society, see Figure 3. This situation can encourage the mockery of the politically elite (Averill 1994).
Anthropologists consider the liminal phase to be a time between change, when there is a great sense of communitas. Communitas is defined as, “a bond uniting people over and above any formal social bonds, in communitas there is a direct, total confrontation of human identities which is rather more than the casual camaderie of ordinary social life” (Turner and Turner 1982: 205). The most important function of rara festivals is to create communitas among the Haitians. Before the festivals neighborhoods begin stirring up excitement as they practice songs, and the feelings of loyalty are renewed (Averill 1994). By spending long amounts of time traversing the rural roads of Haiti the bonds between people are strengthened. Because the nature of these festivals have a religious air they are markedly different from times spent together doing daily tasks.
The liminal phase is described as being a “sort of social limbo” and “cultural guidelines of secular conduct are now erased or obscured” (Turner and Turner 1982: 3). It has been described how rara festivals can create change Haitian society and this concept enforces the idea of liminality. “They provide passage from one sociopolitical phase to another, and thus facilitates political change in Haiti ,” (Desmangles 1992: 194). The peasants are separated from society, away from the capital city of Port-Au-Prince , and then transcend into the city streets during the rara marches. The atmosphere during the parades is one of fervor, energy and has few social constraints which gives it its liminal nature.
Like most religious festivals, rara festivals are public, systematic and social (Turner and Turner 1982). Celebrations are clearly public because bands parade down common roads and onlookers are welcome to observe. Although the combinations of bright costumes, homemade instruments and sporadic movements make the marches look chaotic, there is order. The social aspect of the festivals is important because it often brings together hundreds of people which may have different backgrounds. The festivals function according the “instrument of social control theory” which claims that celebrations can “divert a societies attention away from oppressive social realities” (Averill 1994: 217). Bringing all these people together is important now and was in the past. In the past it helped to bring unity to the slaves which were often from very different parts of Africa and did not speak the same languages. “The slaves tried to resume their cultural and religious traditions, which represented a force for their survival” (Hurbon 1995: 28). Also the number of followers in a rara parade measure the health, vitality and wealth and congregational strength of a group (Earthy Family 2004). Therefore Haitians are encouraged to participate in rara parades, although the desire is already in most Haitians, since it serves as a way to break from the daily struggles of life.
By serving as a religious, political and social force in Haiti 's culture and combining two religions, rara festivals embody many Haitian ideals. It then shows how important these festivals are to the people of Haiti , without them the unity and moral of Haitians would decline.