HOW TO SAVE 230,000 SOULS

When it happened our eyes went goopy. Poor Haiti -a land beshitted by nature and political incompetence- finally at its knees with its capital crushed by a 7.0 earthquake. They came like crusaders fighting over what was left of the airfield tarmac, whilst the Americans soon enough took over the control tower. 27 days later a man was found under the rubble of a flea market surviving on little more than water and possibly fruit. The world’s press continues to fight it out to paint the most discerning picture: The naked man walking through the shattered streets of Port-au-Prince, the little boy people stop by to listen to, singing his heart out using a 7up plastic bottle as a guitar, or the Haitian sisters snow-ball fighting in their new home in the outskirts of Syracuse.

Surprisingly the little understood faith of Voodoo, and subsequently its relationship to death hasn't been mentioned. This seems odd as Voodoo would usually be the first thing you associate with Haiti. Funeral rites are among the most sacred of all ceremonies to Haitians, who have been known to spend more money on their burial crypts than on their own homes. Death is an important factor in understanding ones lineage and future. During times of slavery, despite the tendency of the slave owners to give their dead slaves only the most perfunctory of funerary rites, slaves managed to succeed in taking over the Catholic rituals. The mass of the dead became the only means of asserting and recovering their lost human dignity. By respecting their dead, their connection to their spiritual home is not lost. Families forever stay connected to their ancestors.

Now the problem emerges, as the images soon followed the mass burials with hundreds of unidentified contorted bodies lumped together. Relatives began fast-tracking ceremonies and cracking open old tombs in the famous Port-au- Prince cemetery in order to create space. According to Voodoo credence, not being able to give an honest burial, especially following such sudden deaths, can only lead the soul to stay trapped between this world and the invisible one – as such damming future generations.

What then for the over 230,000 souls lost in-between? To best explain this quandary we got in contact with Max Beauvoir, the supreme master of Voodoo himself. An eloquent man, Max Beauvoir studied chemistry in New York and then biochemistry at the Sorbonne. His grandfather chose him, upon on his deathbed, to succeed as a grand Houngan. Not free from controversy Beauvoir is said to have profited from Western exoticism-seeking alternative tourism and is also said to be linked with François Duvalier, or Baby Doc, the dictator who fled the country in 1986 after a popular uprising against him.



LC: How do you hope to bring peace to most of those over 200,000 souls that haven’t been given a traditional burial?
MAX DE BEAUVOIR: We are in the process of doing this. And it is set for the 12 February. All religions will come together in a communal way to bring the final rest to the lost souls, so that we may send them below water to be cleansed. So that they can come back in next life refreshed. It will be a long ritual of one year and one day. Because the soul cannot die: it is always alive even if the body is crushed.

LC: How will this extraordinary event take place? Will there be sacrifices?
BEAUVOIR: There will be no sacrifices. Just water to purify and guide the souls on their way. We hope to do it in front of the demolished presidential palace. All religions will be invited; Protestants..Catholics.. The president will be there too.

LC: But you speak of water, will that mean water will be central to the ceremony?
BEAUVOIR: You and I will not go in any water. The spirits will. The souls are everywhere, and we must guide them. You see we are connected by spirits not by people. But you know this is too difficult to explain via the phone.

LC: How can voodoo still expect to be a sort of social glue in the face of such a disaster?
BEAUVOIR: Voodoo people made what this country is. The glue is already there. The glue is our identity, we cannot question it.

LC: However many people oppose voodoo, do you think some will see this as a point to review Haitian culture?
BEAUVOIR: Many people oppose Voodoo. But nobody can alter it because it is a part of us, without it our identity would be lost. I think our identity will have to be more solid. We must look to fortify our society because it is broken.

LC: What do people need at the moment? How can they be empowered?
BEAUVOIR: Through integrity. By joining the body and soul you work to get strength. But without integrity there is no strength.

LC: What do people fear now? I have read that many fear the ‘loup-garou’ a werewolf that eats children, and that lots of murderers and other hardened criminals have escaped from prison...
BEAUVOIR: No!...Never... There have never been wolves. These are the bad things that Christians create to prevent cohesion between the Haitian people. The only thing people are scared about, and haunts them still, is another earthquake.

LC: Is there a fight for power?
BEAUVOIR: No fight. I fear people who cross the river do not change horses while in the middle of the stream. We have to support our government. We have to support the bastions of our society, because our reality cannot change.

So there you have it the archetypal purifier: water. The souls are meant to return to water so that they may return refreshed. I kept close tabs for the 12th, a month after the earthquake. The mass prayers of Evangelists overshadowed any voodoo practice. I was told voodoo believers were gathering around ponds, in processions with Simbi the spirit of rain. Now the dark nights are overfilled with the fears of unleashed daemons. Women in the makeshift camps said to keep machetes under their beds in fear of sexual predators. The random wafts of the faceless victims still under the rubble a reminder of death’s hand and the spirits consumed still in the disaster. Fear now enters at a far deeper psychological level as believers feel the lost spirits may persecute on retribution of their past, wherefrom demons take over bodies rendering them powerless. Cases are alert for paranoid schizophrenia.







appeasing the spirits - voodoo



a christian burial

The Voodoo Warp Hole

Lights camera action!
If ever there was a case to make the final porn of misery, it is now. The vultures are flying up above, contorted corpses sent like foot-and-mouth cattle into giant mud pits. Exclusive footage of the orphan holding onto his short life between the cracks of two giant granite walls, he’s gonna make it! Amazing he actually had food down there.

The NGO’s and nations from up above compete for airspace; while the Americans add they aren’t controlling anything they are just the guiding force. The world’s eyes finally glance towards the direction of abject poverty that it usually cares to turn a blind eye to. Besides they’re already changing the channel.

But what for Haiti, a place hidden in the imagination. That forever pariah state living endlessly with its past, for which the quake has now also shattered.

Half the country believes in voodoo and the other half say they don’t but they do. Death becomes an important factor in understanding ones lineage and future.

As slaves, despite the tendency of the slave owners to give their dead slaves only the most perfunctory of funerary rites, slaves managed to succeed in taking over the catholic rituals. The mass of the dead became the only means of asserting and recovering their lost human dignity. By respecting their dead, their connection to their spiritual home was not lost. Families must forever stay connected to their ancestors.

What of the souls of the 100,000 or 200,000 dead? What of the souls of those that were killed and then laid on the road side as though they were earthquake victims?

How does voodoo present itself now where people begin to think in the wake of zombies, where bodies are reverted into their former slave condition, rid of the freedom a proper burial?

Passive Domination - China in Latin America

--THE CHINKS ARE COMING--

Washington does not see Chinese economic penetration of Latin America as inherently antithetical to American interests, though there is now genuine concern over how the accelerating interactions might lead to military or strategic cooperation at a later stage.

The deployment of Chinese peacekeepers in Haiti—the first in the Western Hemisphere—has particularly inflamed these anxieties. Beijing has already attempted to sell arms to Venezuela. The Chinese government also reportedly conducts intelligence activities in Latin America through visitors, students, and front companies, and there are concerns about the PRC using Cuba as a listening post to monitor developments in the United States.

Given the rapid expansion of trade, commercial, and investment ties between the countries of the region and China, it is important to understand Beijing’s motivations. The Chinese regime is engaged in a prolonged commitment to Latin America. The principal and overriding goal is access to the rich reserves of foodstuffs, minerals, and energy resources. Differing to how the Europeans once traded, limiting commerce with other nations during the 18th and 19th century, the US General predicate of free-trade-open-to-all could now come to haunt them as the Chinese begin to beat them in their own game of import and export.

Latin America is clearly at a rush to build infrastructure to suit not only China but the whole of Asia – for the past ten years Asia’s growth has been growing at a steady 10% compared to Europe’s 3%. Similarly Latin Americans are told persuasively that Red China and other success stories such as Vietnam are the land of the triumphant peasant revolution.

Rivalry with Taiwan plays into China’s courting of Latin American countries, with its continuing political objective is to isolate the island. China actively will court those 12 countries in this Hemisphere that recognize Taiwan diplomatically. Against this backdrop, conservative voices in Washington argue that the United States has a vital interest in aiding Taiwan in maintaining its alliances in Central America and the Caribbean, if only to check the expansion of Beijing’s geopolitical reach.

Funny and interesting cases of China courting Latin American countries -

GRENADA - And though in 2003 Grenadian Prime Minister Keith Mitchell said that maintaining ties with Taiwan is “practical,” by 2005 he had changed his tune, signing a joint communiqué declaring support for the “One China” policy. In exchange for ending this 15-year relationship with Taiwan, Grenada received support from China for rebuilding and expanding its national stadium for the 2007 Cricket World Cup; the construction of 2,000 housing units; new hospital facilities; agricultural support; a $6 million grant to complete projects previously financed by Taiwan; and an additional $1 million scholarship fund. In February 2007, Grenada committed one of its most grievous errors in recent memory when officials accidentally played the Taiwanese national anthem at the inauguration of a new national stadium built by China at a cost of $40 million. Prime Minister Keith Mitchell watched in horror as the planned moment of triumph descended into an unmitigated diplomatic fiasco, and he quickly ordered an investigation into the matter, saying that “it has saddened and ached my heart.” Other Caribbean countries were both amused and troubled by the incident, which they viewed as a cautionary tale that reflected the region’s delicate balancing act.

HAITI - The PRC contributed 125 riot police to MINUSTAH, the Brazilian-led UN stabilization the fletcher forum of world affairs force deployed in Haiti, and then subsequently leveraged its permanent member status on the Security Council to prevent Taiwanese Premier Su Tseng-chang from attending the inauguration of Rene Préval in May 2006. Since MINUSTAH is currently the principal force preventing a complete disintegration of the security situation in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian government had no choice but to bend to Beijing’s will. Haiti, the poorest and most vulnerable nation in the Western Hemisphere, is thus caught in a war of attrition between China and Taiwan that threatens to undermine international efforts to bring the country back from the brink of state failure.

PARAGUAY - As the sole Taiwanese ally in South America, Paraguay is another possible candidate for withdrawal of support. Paraguay’s membership in Mercosur prevents it from signing a free-trade agreement with Taiwan without approval from all other Mercosur members, which presents a serious obstacle to the deepening of bilateral trade. Even without formal diplomatic ties, China already buys a good proportion of Paraguay’s soy crop while supplying about one-fourth of its imports, so normalized relations would undoubtedly bring significant trade benefits. Paraguayan recognition of Taiwan is in many respects a “holdover from the rabidly anti-communist Stroessner regime.” Given that Stroessner’s dictatorship has been out of office since 1989, officials in Asunción may just decide at some point that the time has come to eliminate this relic of a policy.

PANAMA - Speculation surrounding potential “swing states” also tends to center on Panama, one of the most strategically significant countries in Central America, where President Martín Torrijos invited Beijing to aid in the expansion of the Panama Canal. Panama’s voters approved a referendum on this massive infrastructure project last October, which will surely create new economic openings for Chinese construction companies. Relations between Taipei and Panama had cooled visibly when Torrijos assumed office; Torrijos turned down Chen’s request to visit Panama during a trip to Latin America in 2005. Much has also been made of the fact that Hutchinson-Whampoa, a Hong Kong-based Chinese shipping company with historically close affiliations with the China’s People’s Liberation Army, already holds a 50-year lease on management of key port facilities at both ends of the canal. Panama is a significant leader in the region, so if the Torrijos government arrives at the conclusion that the benefits of a relationship with Beijing are just too overwhelming to ignore, the rest of the isthmus may well follow suit.

The links suggesting Hutchinson-Whampoa as a front company for Red China in Latin America are tenuous. The company deals in import and exports for many countries the world over. In response to fears the company replied, "We have no pilots. We have no tugs. We have no boats. We have no ships. We have no containers. All we have is cranes." Following Hutchinson’s Bahamas port takeover – it was noted that Hutchison employs about 500 Bahamians. Only five managers are not Bahamians, mostly British nationals. None are Chinese.

Household Slavery in Haiti

Wherever poverty, greed, corruption and government inaction coincide, people are traded as commodities - none more so than in Haiti where slavery takes on a quotidian form. Sometimes even modest aspirations -- to provide one's children with an education, for example -- can perpetuate slaving practices. In rural Haitian villages families are known to hand over one or more children to a ''courtier,'' or middleman. Although fear, shame, and regret pours out of the parents, the system in which unpaid child laborers are sent to middle-class homes as ''restaveks'' (Creole for ''rester avec,'' or stay with) is deeply entrenched in Haiti. Many of the children are physically and sexually abused. But with no jobs and no schools in the parents' calculus a question comes into focus: Maybe the middleman's promises of sending their children to school will prove true?

The custom reaches even further. Recently in Miami an ex-teacher was sentenced to 10-years in prison for the force labour of a Haitian minor. A Haitian herself, the case of Maude Paulin, has exposed a hitherto unseen network in human trafficking new to the United States.

The Ant Plague from Haiti

Dominican authorities are adopting all means to put a halt to a plague of devouring carnivorous ants at the doors of its border with Haiti. A spokesman said “all” instructions would be adopted, including revisions in food commerce.

The ants, whose scientific name is paratrechina longicornis Latreille have invaded 60.000 hectares in three departments of Haiti. The species is known to be ravenous and attacks cattle, game, chickens and any other thing unable to run.

Listin Diario - Santo Domingo:

Ha surgido un proyecto peligroso para los dominicanos, proveniente de la Organización de Estados Americanos que involucra a nuestra Cancillería y a la Junta Central Electoral, con la finalidad de auxiliar a Haití en la cedulación de los haitianos diseminados por todo el país. La vicecanciller Rosario Graciano dio declaraciones al LISTÍN aparecidas el 31 de julio. La noticia de esta cedulación ha tenido mala acogida entre los dominicanos. Una cosa es que por humanidad cedulen a familias enteras que durante años residan aquí, sentimentalmente ligadas a los dominicanos; otra cosa es que cedulen a los haitianos que al violar la frontera deambulan por el país. Entonces tendrían que cedular a millón y medio de ellos que están por todas partes. Este proyecto de la OEA, en caso de que así sea, sería sencillamente inaceptable, auxiliarían a Haití hundiendo a nuestro país. Estamos concientes de que en Haití se está pasando hambre, esto es tristemente trágico; lo que habría que hacer es tratar bajo todos los medios de lograr que la OEA se decidiera a ayudar a Haití en su tierra.