Exposition, noyade sacrée, réparation. L'infanticide rituel : un facteur réducteur de la prévalence des personnes handicapées au Bénin

Exhibition, sacred drowning and repair are three rituals of Voodoo's cult, still practiced in Benin. Exhibition essentially dedicated to badly built children is a passive ritual. It allows to rid Beninese traditional society, to stay in agreement with ancestor and divinities while abandoning these children in the sacred forest and simultaneously to erase anguish stigmata. This type of infanticide presents eugenic goal of the likeness with the exhibition practiced in the ancient Greco-Roman civilization. Sacred drowning is achieved in a festivity ambiance dedicated to Tohossou cult (waters divinity) during which the badly built child is drowned; he then becomes a divinity to venerate. Strong of his ancestry, he protects henceforth the family and the collectivity. The grief of the parents is then sublimated. Repair is reserved to the “children born wizards” abnormally either by a dystocic presentation (podalic or occipitosacred) either “while killing their mothers” in per or postpartum, or by starting the teething by the superior jaw. These “violent” and/or “abnormal” behaviours condemn these children to a brutal death bringing quietude in these tribes. Thus, exhibition and sacred drowning while eliminating systematically badly built babies, would be an important factor of reduction of the number of congenital disabled in Beninese cultural era. Some wizards' children protected by non governmental organizations preserved of exhibition or repair escape the death; nevertheless, they cannot resume living in their origin tribes. We propose hypotheses to interpret these rituals.