17216: Lemieux: Daily Times of Pakistan: Haiti marks day of the dead (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

Haiti marks day of the dead

Passing under a crumbling archway that reads Thou Art Dust,
voodoo practitioners flocked to Haiti’s largest cemetery to
honor the guardian of the dead with rum, thunderous music
and lewd behavior designed to awaken mischievous spirits.
Followers visit the tombstones of relatives and pay their
respects to Baron Samedi, the god of the dead, and to his
lascivious, sardonic offspring, Gede. To show they are
possessed, followers often rub hot pepper juice on their
bodies. Some hold swearing contests steps away from the
gates of the capital’s sprawling municipal cemetery.

Two-thirds of Haiti’s 8 million people are said to practice
voodoo. Earlier this year, Haiti’s government officially
sanctioned the faith as a religion, allowing priests to
legally perform baptisms and marriages.

“The Gedes helped us win our independence,” said voodoo
priest Desaville Espady, 38, dressed in a white robe with a
silver cross on a thick chain hanging from his neck. “We
pay homage to our ancestors, and they cure us of our ills.”


Gede was the name of a West African tribe that disappeared
during the slave trade.

Voodoo followers integrated some Christian rites into their
practice before Haiti won independence from slave-holding
France in 1804. The slaves, forbidden from practicing their
African rites, disguised their gods in the trappings of
Roman Catholic saints. The Catholic Church frowns on voodoo
and, in the 1940s, tried unsuccessfully to eradicate it.

Practitioners believe in a supreme god and spirits linking
the human and the divine. Many believe their spirits will
return to Africa when they die. The bodies of slaves were
buried without ceremony. Men and women say they are
possessed by Gede. Dressed in mauve kerchiefs, white pants
and white or violet dresses, they wander in a mystic trance
through the cemetery, spouting obscenities and asking for
money.

“The cult of the dead is one of the first steps of
resistance against slavery and a foundation stone of
voodoo,” Haitian sociologist Laennec Hurbon said.

Encumbered by political problems, Haiti’s economy has been
in a slump since 1980. The poorest nation in the Americas,
the Caribbean country’s population has declined for two
years, and life expectancy dropped from about 53 years in
2002 to about 49 years in 2003. Most people survive on less
than $1 per day.

Because of deepening poverty, voodoo, which often requires
pricey offerings of alcohol and food to the spirits, has
lost some followers. —AP




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