61

Dialoging with the Urban Dead in Haiti

Katherine Smith

0RUHWKDQ¿IW\\HDUVDJR0D\D'HUHQREVHUYHGWKDWIRUWKHDGKHU-
ents of Vodou, “the metaphysical world of les Invisibles is not a vague,
mystical notion; it is as a world within a cosmic mirror, peopled by the
LPPRUWDO UHÀHFWLRQ RI DOO WKRVH ZKR KDG HYHU FRQIURQWHG LW´1 Since
Deren’s time, the means of sustaining life have changed dramatically
for most Haitians. The population has shifted increasingly to urban cen-
ters, most notably Port-au-Prince, which has roughly doubled in size in
the past two decades. Rural land in the mountains and plains has been
eroded to the point that the production of agriculture has been seriously
compromised. Cities lure youth with the hope of jobs, and as potential
launching points to search for livelihood abroad. Foreign remittances
now make up the largest part of the national economy, and most food
is imported. In spite of all this, the service of the lwa (spirits of Vodou)
and the dead remain strong, though not unchanged. So how do Vodou-
ists understand the quotidian life of the dead today? What image does it
UHÀHFWRIWKHZRUOGRIWKHOLYLQJ"
The land and the dead are two resources that are deeply intercon-
nected in Afro-Haitian spiritual practices. Most Haitians do not call
these practices “Vodou” per se, but identify as either sèvi lwa (serving
the spirits), Katolik fran (straight Catholic), or Protestant. In rural Haiti,
the service of the spirits and the dead is inherited through family and
based in the eritaj, or ancestral land. Tombs and familial cemeteries
demonstrate a claim to the land, and are also the receptacle for offerings
of food during the month of November when the dead are celebrated.
What happens though when the family is removed from the land and
from their ancestors to the city?
As a set of beliefs and practices, the service of the lwa and the dead
in urban Haiti is still primarily concerned with addressing the everyday
needs of its adherents, mostly love, money, justice, and healing. The most
marked difference between the religious life of rural and urban life in
Haiti is how and where the dead are interred. Karen McCarthy Brown
(1991) describes the experience of displacement that characterizes the
Port-au-Prince necropolis: “(T)he urban cemetery reiterates the city it-
self; all kinds of people are thrown together within its boundaries. Baron
Samdi’s partisan help is no longer available. If we take the Port-au-Prince
cemetery as a measure, then the answer to the all-important question,
:KRDUHP\SHRSOH"%HFRPHVHOXVLYHLQGHHG´
62 Katherine Smith

Within the massive urban necropolis, the landless and disenfran-

chised seek the dead as a resource to cope with any number of everyday
tragedies. For many of them, the location of their own dead may be
unknown because it is common that families without means will rent
a tomb temporarily before the remains are taken to a common charnel
house. The collective imagining of the dead, then, happens not just as a
family but as a city. The Port-au-Prince cemetery becomes the national
lakou, and the dead are celebrated publicly November 1st and 2nd during
the holiday for Gede, a popular trickster spirit. But outside the public
holidays, in the everyday world of the dead, the cemetery is a center for
the economic and spiritual life of a small cadre of ritual specialists. For
them, the world of the dead is imagined as structured and hierarchical,
as a city unto itself.

The Urban Necropolis

(VWDEOLVKHGLQWKHVWKH3RUWDX3ULQFHFHPHWHU\¿UVWLQWHUUHG
British soldiers killed by a yellow fever epidemic during the Revolution.
In the nineteenth century, the burial ground developed into an orderly and
idyllic sanctuary for the dead. Much like its contemporaries in Paris and
London, it featured grand boulevards lined with trees and marble mau-
soleums. It was an idealized vision of bourgeois society: the gingerbread
mansions of Bwa Verna were tawdry compared to its stately mausoleums.
Then called the Cimetière Extérieur, it was removed from the city center
and the messier world of the living. The poor were buried in the cemetery
DVZHOOEXWVHSDUDWHO\7KHWUXO\GHVWLWXWHZHUHEXULHGLQSRWWHU¶V¿HOGV
RXWVLGHWKHFLW\¿UVWLQ.ZD%RVDODQGODWHULQ7LWDQ\HQ2
Under Francois ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier (1907-1971) the cemetery’s
infrastructure was modernized with the introduction of electric lights and
signage. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century Port-au-Prince
grew exponentially, more than doubling again in its closing decades. The
cemetery is no longer peripheral, but sits just south of the city center; it
is Port-au-Prince’s only truly civic space. Today, however, the wealthy
suburb Petionville has its own private cemetery and crematorium, and
the city’s bourgeois no longer need to come downtown. Nonetheless, the
Port-au-Prince cemetery is still the largest and most active burial ground
in the country. If the world of the dead resembles the world of the liv-
ing then for its magnitude alone the Port-au-Prince cemetery is Haiti’s
capital necropolis.
All of the sprawling conurbation’s social and physical geography is
UHÀHFWHGLQWKHFHPHWHU\:LWKLQLWVFRQ¿QHVWKHUHDUHVOXPVVXEXUEV
DIALOGING WITH THE URBAN DEAD IN HAITI 63

stately older neighbor-

hoods, and the Grand
Rue, or main street
[Fig.1]. One enters
through the main gate,
which reads Souvi-
ens-Toi Que Tu Es
Poussiere (Remember
That You Are Dust). To
the south, on the right
upon entering, are
Fig.1: A popular street band throngs the cemetery gates in Port- the poorer neighbor-
au-Prince which reads “Remember that you are dust.” Fet Gede, hoods of the cemetery
November 2008. (Photograph by author) including Stasyon Go-
nayiv, Kwa Bosal, and
the notorious Site Soley [Fig.2]. Like their sprawling namesakes, these
neighborhoods become mazes of small paths farther from the main arte-
rial. In the city at large, the poorer neighborhoods are lower, nearer the
ZDWHU'XULQJUDLQ\VHDVRQWKH\DUHPXGG\DQGRIWHQÀRRGHGZLWKZDWHU
that brings the city’s trash to their streets and clogs their gutters. The
wealthier denizens reside on higher ground to the east, where the earth is
drier and the air is slightly cooler. The cemetery is also on a slight incline.
The neighborhoods
to its east are elevat-
ed and drier, and as
this is the bourgeois
side, there are many
extravagant mauso-
leums. To the west,
the graves become
more crowded, and
the pathways are of-
ten nearly impassible
with mud.
In the area
called Kwa Bosal,
on the west side of
the cemetery, there Fig.2: A map of the Port-au-Prince cemetery. The higher grounds
is the Tonm Inivèsèl on the east side of the cemetery are named after the bourgeois
neighborhoods and suburbs in the hills above the city. September
(Tomb of the Univer- 2009. (Courtesy of the author and Tim Austin)
64 Katherine Smith

sals), which serves as a charnel house for remains that have been evicted
from other tombs. Families who cannot afford to buy a tomb can rent a
space in six-month increments. After a family has stopped paying, the
municipal staff removes the remains. People who have ancestors and
relatives deposited in the Tonm Inivèsèl pay their respects to the dead
with libations, cigarettes, and candles deposited at the base of the walls
of the tomb. The Tonm Inivèsèl is a powerful place to pray for the lost
who are living, dead, or whose fates are otherwise unknown. Yet it seems
to be common knowledge throughout the city that the cemetery staff
will easily sell remains from the Tomb, or bones that should have been
directed there. Buyers for this market include Vodou priests and priest-
esses, as well as malfektè and more recently, a collective of artists based
near the cemetery.
On the north side of the cemetery’s Grand Rue, the tombs grow more
elaborate. The Grand Rue veers east and there are even a few leafy trees
lining it. Some tombs are small chapels with altars intimate and aban-
doned. Other mausoleums resemble the wrought iron ornamentation of
New Orleans. Most of these have been left behind by families who are,
or were, wealthy enough to build them, but no longer venture downtown
to the cemetery. Heavy locks and heavy rust enshrine the entombed, and
the cemetery belongs now to pep la (the people) and their lwa.

The Urban Lakou

The cemetery has become a veritable national lakou (family com-
pound) as the country has urbanized and the population has become
increasingly centered in the capital. Traditionally, family life and
economy, as well as the service of the lwa, are organized around the
rural lakou$QWKURSRORJLVW*OHQQ6PXFNHUPDNHVWKHGLVWLQF-
tion between “domestic” (lakou) and temple (ounfò) to describe Vodou
when it is practiced through exogamous groups versus inherited through
GHVFHQWOLQHV+HLGHQWL¿HVWHPSOH9RGRXDVDSULPDULO\XUEDQSKHQRP-
enon, and the domestic service of the lwa (spirits) as a rural practice.
These distinctions are useful, but they do not account for how social
life is spatialized in the city. There, the lakou still structures life, but the
distinctions between domestic and private life are often more tenuous.
Hence, the Creole expression lari a se salon pep la (“the street is the
SHRSOH¶VOLYLQJURRP´GHVFULEHVWKHYLWDOLW\WKDWVSLOOVIURPWKHFRQ¿QHV
of the home and yard onto the streets. Necessity dictates that much of
life’s basic functions – bathing, socializing, eating, commerce and so on
– take place on the city’s narrow sidewalks.
DIALOGING WITH THE URBAN DEAD IN HAITI 65

The urban lakou is commonly viewed by Haitians as an impermanent

structure because the majority of Port-au-Prince residents identify as
being from somewhere else, even if they were born in the city. Statistics
underscore the peripatetic nature of life in the capital: according to the
 FHQVXV  SHUFHQW RI DOO UHVLGHQWV RI WKH:HVW WKH SURYLQFH RI
Port-au-Prince and its environs) were born outside their current town of
residence. In the city, introductions commonly begin with “where are
you from?” (kote ou sòti?) or “where are your people from?” (kote moun
ou sòti?), meaning where is your eritaj, or ancestral land. Regions are
also used as descriptors to index individuals in a context where people
are often anonymous to each other – as in, Li se yon moun Jeremie (“S/he
is a Jeremie person”). Religious communities based on their members’
region of origination are another means for people moving from the coun-
WU\VLGHWR¿QGFRQWLQXLW\LQWKHFLW\$V6PXFNHUQRWHV³7RVRPHH[WHQW
a temple society under the control of a Voodoo priest or priestess plays
the role of a surrogate family. … In temple Voodoo there tends towards
greater hierarchy and an elaborate division of labor.”5
Serving the dead in domestic Vodou is largely centered on ances-
tral tombs within the lakou which anchor descent lines to the land. The
elaborate tombs that are common in rural Haiti, and at times appear
grander than the homes of the living, not only ensconce the memory
of the deceased, they also legitimize claims to the land. Memory of the
individual deceased is maintained, in part, through ritual action. Tombs
may regularly be offered libations, or cleaned, but the culmination of the
veneration of the ancestors is the annual manje mò (feeding of the dead),
which should bring the dispersed family back together. Of course, family
members often do not have the resources to perform a manje mò every
year. Though conversions to Protestantism are increasingly common, and
may also impede or even end the practice, the service to the dead remains
a vital part of domestic Vodou. Smucker stresses that within domestic
Vodou, the service of the dead is fundamentally local, “They are tied
to the household, the lakou, and the natif natal (birthplace). In keeping
with the pattern of spiritual inheritance and earthly kinship, the dead and
other spirits are quintessentially local spirits. These spirits are inherited
LQGLYLGXDOO\WKRXJKWKH\PD\UHÀHFWJHQHUDOL]HGDUFKHW\SHVZKLFKPD\
be recognizable throughout different regions of the country.”6
The question, then, becomes what happens when the lwa and their
adherents are relocated? Does this affect the nature of a spirit that is,
or was, local? Within the religious context of the urban lakou, the dead
are still central but given the transitory nature of life in the city, it is
66 Katherine Smith

KDUGO\¿WKRPHIRUWKHGHDG7KHVHUYLFHRIWKH lwa is more commonly

centered in an ounfò, and the dead are segregated from the lakou to the
necropolis. However, when the dead are concentrated in one locale, their
celebration changes from a private familial occasion to a public festival,
a sort of Carnival. The population explosion in Port-au-Prince has also
affected the magnitude of the holiday. Indeed, many of my friends and
informants witnessed the growth of Fet Gede in their lifetimes. Some
even claimed that it presently surpasses Easter in popularity and numbers
of participants.
The ounfò is a social network established in the city to serve the lwa,
and the cemetery is the place where the dead of the lakou are transposed.
The cemetery is therefore like a massive ounfò. The cemetery is also the
only religious site (including Catholicism and Protestantism) in the city
that draws all of its practitioners together in one place at one time, when
residents gather for Fet Gede on November 1st and 2nd. There are reposwa
(sacred repositories) for many different lwa throughout the cemetery. My
guide, a municipal employee, aptly observed that, “The whole cemetery
is one big ounfò´7KHUHLVDZDWHU¿OOHGWRPEIRU6LPELWKHVSLULWRI
fresh water. A handsome church-like tomb is dedicated to Danbala. There
is a recess behind a tomb for Ezili
Dantò and a tree for Ezili Mapyong.
A modest grave serves as a reposwa
for Gede Ti Pis Lakwa, said to be the
¿UVWFKLOGEXULHGLQWKHFHPHWHU\2Q
days for particular spirits, adherents
leave candles and offerings at their
reposwa. On the west side of the
Grand Rue, in the neighborhood of
Bwa Verna is the premier ritual focal
point of the cemetery, the cross for
the Bawon Samdi [Fig.3]. The whole
cemetery is a crossroads between
ZRUOGV±DOLPLQDOSODFHZKHUHHI¿-
cacy of the dead is especially strong
– but the Kwa Bawon is the zenith of
its potentiality. Vodouists believe that
the Bawon’s grave is the tomb of the
¿UVWPDQEXULHGLQWKHFHPHWHU\2Q )LJThe Kwa Bawon (Baron’s Cross), be-
OLHYHGWREHWKHWRPERI¿UVWPDQEXULHGLQWKH
this side of the cemetery too, Francois cemetery, is the ritual focal point for Fet Gede.
Duvalier was buried before his tomb November 2008. (Photograph by author)
DIALOGING WITH THE URBAN DEAD IN HAITI 67

was destroyed in the popular uprising that uprooted his son in 1986. The
remains of his tomb are in the area named after the suburb Petionville,
DQGGLUHFWO\EHKLQGLWLVWKHVKULQHIRU%DZRQ.ULPLQHO+HUHRQH¿QGV
WKHPRVWDQWLVRFLDOPDJLF±QDPHO\P\VWLFDOPXUGHUVDQGWUDI¿FNLQJLQ
zonbi. This kind of sorcery would have been familiar to Francois Duva-
lier, who many say appropriated the black garb and nasal accent of the
Bawon Samdi.

Malfektè of the Cemetery

Within the cemetery there is a network of malfektè (malefactors)
who work with djab and with mò (the dead) to do the kinds of spiritual
biddings an ougan or manbo would not do. As the artist and Vodouist
Louko described the difference to me, “A malfektè will work with the
ERQHV+H¶OOJUDWHWKHERQHVPL[WKHPZLWKSHUIXPHDQGVHWWKHPRQ¿UH
but an ougan (Vodou priest) won’t do that for you. There’s ougan, then
there’s malfektè. … The rites of the malfektè are sometimes attributed to
Vodou, but they’re not (the same). People mix things up.” The tasks of
the malfektè generally require the manipulation of the unnaturally de-
ceased, and include working with zonbi, or selling the souls of the dead
to labor on behalf of the living. Some malfektè may serve Ginen as well,
but an ougan or manbo (Vodou priestess) working within a temple would
never identify as a malfektè even if she or he openly served with both
hands. Nonetheless, one malfektè, Iphote, defended his practice saying,
“To be a malfektè is not a crime. We serve the spirits of the air and of
the earth.” I asked Iphote where his eritaj was and he stated that after a
ceremony using seven bits of earth collected from around his tomb, he
legitimately bought the land he worked on from the spirits of the earth;
“After God, and with the lwa, this is my land.” The tomb effectively
became his eritaj.
The malfektè earn their reputation because they excel at ekspedisyon,
or the sending of “vagabon dead” on mystical missions. Typically with an
ekspedisyon, the spirit of the dead will be sent to attach itself physically to
a person, and then slowly consume its victim’s life force. When this work
is commissioned, St. Expedit, who represents Bawon Lakwa, is invoked
through prayer and his image is inverted. The Bawon Samdi must be of-
fered a calabash of vegetables, and he must grant his permission to the
malfektè. However, the mystical work of the malfektè is not exclusively
OHIWKDQGHG,IRQHLVDIÀLFWHGE\VXFKVRUFHU\WKHQDmalfektè may offer
the best antidote. As the Creole proverb states, Fè koupe fè (“Iron cuts
LURQ´ZKLFKFDQPHDQ³PDJLF¿JKWVPDJLF´,QGHHGULGGLQJDSHUVRQ
68 Katherine Smith

of an ekspedisyon
requires beating the
dead at their own
game: the victim
must undergo an
elaborate ceremony
whereby she or he
ritually dies and is
prepared for burial.
In September
2009, I interviewed
a malfektè named
Antz. I met Antz
through a man
)LJThe malfektè Antz conducts mystical work from a tomb in the
Port-au-Prince cemetery. Here he poses in front of his altar with a
named Benjamin,
pipe for the spirit Gede. September 2009. (Photograph by author) who was a friend
of my research as-
sociate Georges Rene. Benjamin worked at the Palais Justice as a driver
and courier, but he could also often be found in the cemetery. He was a
powerful ougan in his own right, and had an astounding knowledge of the
cemetery. Benjamin introduced Georges and me to Antz, who conducted
his consultations from the inside of a small family tomb [Fig.4]. The tomb
was made of concrete and covered in modern, bright green tile. It was
raised on a solid concrete base, where the family’s dead are presumably
interred, atop which was built a small landing and an altar room. A man,
who I would learn
was Antz’s assis-
tant, was making
a veve, or ritual
cosmogram, on the
landing of the tomb
next to where he
had crossed a red
and a black scarf.
There was a rooster
tied to the adjacent
tomb. I learned this
man was called
Kriminel after the
Fig.5: Antz’s altar where he serves the spirits. September 2009.
spirit he serves. (Photograph by author)
DIALOGING WITH THE URBAN DEAD IN HAITI 69

The small
chamber atop of the
tomb could accom-
modate two chairs,
face to face, with the
chairs’ occupants
touching knees.
On the wall hung
a rubber bust of a
grayed corpse – a
Halloween “zom-
bie” brought from
the U.S. [Fig.5,
Fig.6: Above Antz’s altar hangs a Halloween “zombie” to which Fig.6]. To this, Antz
he has added a pipe to represent Gede Avadra. September 2009. had added a pipe
(Photograph by author)
to represent Gede.
Graphite images covered the walls of this small cell like prison tattoos: a
FRI¿QDIDFHDUDWDFURVVDVQDNHDOOWRUHSUHVHQW$QW]¶VSHUVRQDOSDQRSO\
of spirits. A small ledge was built into the structure to serve as an altar.
There, Antz had assembled an array of plastic and glass bottles, including
DERWWOHRIUXPLQWKH¿JXUHRID³FDO\SVRGDQFHU´7KHUHZDVDQDHURVRO
spray can for love magic: two lovers embraced on the label under a ban-
ner that said legitimo. Other disparate tchotchkes of domestic and foreign
origins amalgamated into an exotic menagerie: a red plastic skull goblet,
femur bones crossed and tied, a plastic doll seated and bound to a chair,
DFOD\MDUWKDWVPROGHUHGZLWKORZÀDPHVWKDWEODFNHQHGWKHFRUQHUZDOO
of the altar, a white enameled bowl, small, smooth stones,7 candles, two
KXPDQVNXOOVDPRUWDUDQGSHVWOHDGULHGVWDU¿VKDQason (sacred rattle),
D-RVHSKLQH%DNHUOLNH¿JXULQHRIDVOHQGHUEODFNZRPDQZLWKKHUDUPV
akimbo, and lastly an upside down doll, likely posed to invert someone
else’s fate.87KLVDVVHPEODJHRI¿JXUHVDPRXQWWRDYHULWDEOH81RIWKH
unholy, the unwanted and the terminally other. From the magic supplies
sold at the Marché en Fer downtown, to the ubiquitous used goods piled
along the sidewalks, and the bones sold by the cemetery staff, Antz, as bri-
coleur, culled these objects lexically from the endless heaps of potentiality
that move through the markets of Port-au-Prince every day. Marshaled as
such, they lend visual credence to Antz’s own marginal status. This is a key
point to stress: ti malfektè like Antz ply their trade within an indigenous
semantics of “the strange.” These signs of otherness signal the willingness
of the malfektè to operate beyond the bounds of normative values.
70 Katherine Smith

+RZ$QW] JDLQHG DFFHVV WR KLV WRPEFXPRI¿FH LV DQ LPSRUWDQW

part of his spiritual biography. Antz had become an ougan when he was
reklame anba dlo, or reclaimed under the water. This is a means to the
priesthood that is often referred to as “natural,” because the lwa initiate
you themselves, effectively bypassing the ounfò and any debt owed to
the ougan or manbo. Antz was taken “under the water” for seven years
and 21 days.9 This period of seclusion is metaphorically a time apart from
HYHU\GD\OLIH³¶EHWZL[WDQGEHWZHHQ¶DOOWKHUHFRJQL]HG¿[HGSRLQWVLQ
VSDFHWLPHVWUXFWXUDOFODVVL¿FDWLRQ´10 This liminal time “under the water”
may take place during the course of a dream or a physical separation or
mental illness. While Antz was under the water, he came face to face
with his met tet (head lwa), though he keeps its name a secret. Addition-
ally, he serves four other primary lwa: Makaya,11 Lenglensou,12 Jeneral
Tonel Malè, and Gede Avadra, as well as a djab achte (bought djab)
named Djab Andey.
$QW]KDG¿UVWFRPHWRWKHFHPHWHU\LQDIWHUDSHULRGRIFULVLV
His wife had left him because their spirits were not compatible. She was
spiritually stronger, and her lwa did not like Antz. Consequently, her spirits
drove him mad in order to separate them. Antz wandered the streets for
a period, a stranger to family and friends, until an ougan brought him
to the cemetery for treatment. There in front of the church of Set Doulè
1RWUH'DPHGH6HSW'RXOHXU*HGH$YDGUDPRXQWHGKLPIRUWKH¿UVW
time and announced that this would be his home now. Antz was healed
and since that time he has earned a living doing mystical work in the
FHPHWHU\)RUKLV¿UVW\HDULQWKHFHPHWHU\KHSOLHGKLVWUDGHZLWKRXW
D¿[HGORFDWLRQRU³RQWKHVWUHHW´DVKHSXWLWHIIHFWLYHO\ZRUNLQJDV
a spiritual day laborer. This is a dangerous position for the malfektè, as
the competition and mystical warfare within the cemetery is intense.15
Then in front of the Kwa Bawon, and with the help of Gede Avadra, he
KHDOHGDQLQIDQWZKRZDVDIÀLFWHGE\Dloupgarou and was near death.
Many people witnessed this miracle, and when the chief of staff of the
cemetery heard about Antz’s abilities he personally awarded him the
use of a tomb. Antz has been in this tomb for two years, though his new
wife has urged him to leave the cemetery and establish his own, more
legitimate, temple as an ougan.
Antz’s explanation of his ascension within the cemetery power struc-
ture is plausible: infants and children are often treated at the Kwa Bawon.
However, later in our conversation, Antz himself offered an additional
explanation. He claimed to have “worked” for the president’s lover, and
the work was effective. To show her appreciation, she asked the chief
DIALOGING WITH THE URBAN DEAD IN HAITI 71

of the cemetery staff to promote Antz. This is also believable, as most

of the malfektè I met carried cards that said “Groupement de la Majorité
Presidentielle” for the President’s majority party Lespwa. However when
I began to note this on my pad of paper, Antz told me not to write it down.
My line of questioning about Antz’s political ties stopped there.
These stories offer contradictory accounts of how Antz arrived at his
place within the cemetery. However, I would hesitate to place more “truth
value” on one version than another. Rather, these accounts demonstrate
two extreme modes of working with the dead. His relationship with Gede
Avadra is manifest through his miraculous healing powers; his political
HI¿FDF\LVHYLGHQFHRIWKHVWUHQJWKRIKLVdjab achte (bought djab) who
is not part of his cadre of inherited spirits. These spirits represent the ex-
treme poles of the cool-hot spectrum of energy in Vodou, but ultimately,
they also tell the story of the city’s history.
During my initial interview with Antz, I met both his djab achte, Djab
Andey, and Gede Avadra. The interview began with general questions
about Antz’s life and spiritual practice. I was not interested in speaking
with his spirits at that time; my intent was only to survey the cemetery’s
network of malfektè. Spirits, however, have a way of disrupting plans and
upending the power dynamics of the standard ethnographic interview.
While Antz was speaking about his role in the cemetery, he was suddenly
“mounted,” or possessed, by Djab Andey. The onset of his possession
FDPH ZLWK D VXEWOH VKLIW LQ IDFLDO H[SUHVVLRQ QRWHG ¿UVW E\ *HRUJHV
7KHQ$QGH\DQQRXQFHGKLVSUHVHQFHZLWKJXVWRKLV¿QJHUVVSUHDGZLGH
like talons, he reached to shake my hands, one after another in the sym-
metrical manner that welcomes a spirit or spiritual leader. He thumped
his chest and thundered his name. With convulsive movements he stoked
WKHEXUQLQJFOD\SRWRQWKHDOWDUDQGWKHÀDPHVURVHZLWKWKHPRWLRQRI
his hand. He demanded blood, and Antz’s assistant asked me for 50 goud
to purchase Vino Tinto, a sweet Dominican red wine.
Possession works like the embodiment of a mask, revealing through
the exaggeration and distillation the pith of certain principles. All of Djab
Andey’s vaudevillian panache underscored the seriousness of his engage-
ment with Antz, and demonstrates for his audience “the consequences
of ignoring the obvious.”16 A djab is a spirit who, like the malfektè, does
work on contract rather than through familial obligation or reciprocity.
Their contracts generally stipulate the cost of a life, typically a fam-
ily member, or the other party. Some also claim that a contract may be
IXO¿OOHGZLWKWKHOLIHRIDKRPHOHVVFKLOG$djab achte turns blood into
money, lineage into lucre.
72 Katherine Smith

Antz’s djab is called andey, or “in mourning” because he wears all

black. His modus operandi is to slip into the cemetery dressed in black
hiding among the mourners of a funeral procession. The cemetery is a
spiritually dangerous place where mercenary spirits and forsaken dead,
like Andey, may try to attack the living, but funerals are an especially
dangerous time because grief may render mourners vulnerable. Andey
excels at enhancing people’s luck for the bòlèt (lottery), but he charges
exorbitant rates for this work. As he said, Fòk ou pèdi pou genyen (“you
have to lose to win”). His other specialty is sending ekspedisyon, and he
said he even kills the innocent. All of this Andey told us upon introduc-
tion, presumably to reiterate for us his power, danger, and strength. He
said plainly that he had problems with his “horse.” Andey felt Antz was
not holding up his end of their contract. He had already consumed one of
Antz’s children to exact revenge. According to their contract, Antz had
17 years to live before Andey ate him as well. In the mean time, Andey
was obligated to make Antz the richest and most powerful malfektè in
the cemetery.
Then, with some struggle, Antz’s other primary spirit, Gede Avadra,
pushed Andey away to speak to me. First he established his identity.
Avadra means worthless, or it means a vagabond, a good-for-nothing. His
full name was Gede Avadra Mowa, “Gede King of the Worthless.” His
strength is curing and protecting children, but he does not allow Antz to
accept money for these works. Before agreeing to conduct a treatment,
KHUHTXLUHV$QW]WROHDYHWKHUHODWLYHVHFXULW\RIKLV³RI¿FH´LQWKHFHP-
etery and sleep in the streets for three days. It is noteworthy that Antz,
in returning to the street is returning to the place he was before Avadra
recuperated him from madness. Antz must become a street child and
therefore suspend his position within the hierarchy of his family and the
cemetery in order to effect the most powerful healing.
Avadra claims to be the strongest Gede, though he is dirty and sleeps
in the streets. Avadra is a child, his mother is Gran Brijit and his father is
Legba. At the same time, Avadra said he has no family because he was
abandoned at the cemetery gates as an infant. For this reason, Avadra
comes before the gates and before Legba. Yet because he is Gede he
still also comes at the end of the regleman (liturgical order). As Avadra
phrased it, he is the alpha and the omega and therefore comes before
and after all the spirits. He does not need to be invited to a ceremony
because he is already there: his power is his omnipresence. In inverse
measure, he is taken for granted and disdained, like the rat which is his
symbol. His song succinctly states the sense of being both needed and
DIALOGING WITH THE URBAN DEAD IN HAITI 73

unappreciated: Avadra Gran Chemin, genyen yon tan ya bezwen mwen

(“Avadra of the Great Path, there will be a time they will need me.”).
Avadra sang this with a mournful tone typical of many Vodou songs
longing for lost parents.
The sense of being orphaned, or ignored, or generally unappreciated
by one’s family or community is a common theme throughout the vast
repertoire of songs for Rada spirits, and are reminiscent of songs and
hymns throughout the Afro-Atlantic.17 Often refrains emphasize the loss
of parents, such as: m pa gen manman, m pa gen papa (“I don’t have a
mother, I don’t have a father”), or m pral cheche parann mwen (“I’m going
to look for my parents”). In other instances, refrains, like Avadra’s song,
anticipate a future time when recognition and justice will be realized:
Bondye va gade yo (“God will see them”). These jeremiads of injustices,
especially the loss and fragmentation of family, resonate strongly with
the experience of slavery. One might wonder though what this means in
the context of temple life which is structured like a family. I would offer
that the plangency of these songs for the lwa Ginen act as moral foil to
the clientelism that is the dark side of such networks. The concomitant
invocation of being an orphan and of waiting for justice at the hands of
God or Ginen, stands in direct opposition to the rationale of the gwo neg,
or “big shot.”18 Gede Avadra, occupying the lowest possible position in
society, represents the sharpest possible contrast to the gwo neg.
Gede Avadra embodies the ubiquitous street children of Port-au-
Prince, who until recently, would seek refuge in the cemetery. It was
FRPPRQWR¿QGWKHPUHVWLQJWKHUHRUEHJJLQJDWWKHFHPHWHU\FURVVURDGV
especially on Gede’s days (Mondays and Fridays) when temples often
come to give charity. Many street children slept there as well because
the police and others who might harass them were frightened to enter the
cemetery at night. In 2009 when I met Antz, however, the cemetery staff
was under orders to keep street children and other vagrants out. This was
part of efforts to clean up the cemetery, which began roughly the same
time Antz acquired his tomb. Indeed, there was less rubbish, and fewer
open tombs visible along the main streets than in the previous decade of
disrepair. It was less clear though where the children were now spend-
ing their nights. One cemetery employee said the children had taken to
sleeping in Port Leogane, the nearby intersection where buses depart
for the south. In the previous two years (2007-2009) of relative stabil-
ity, I had noticed a decline in the presence, or at least visibility, of street
children. Most street children have families and the minor economic
growth experienced during this period of calm may have allowed some
74 Katherine Smith

of them to return home. But given the long history of violence against
street children at the hands of police, paramilitary groups and gangs, this
may be overly optimistic conjecture.19 Gede Avadra’s prominence in the
cemetery speaks to the absence of these children: his potency as a symbol
is a condition of their displacement.
Of course, existing outside the structure of family is rife with ambi-
JXLW\*HGHHPERGLHVWKLVDPELJXLW\DVWKH¿JXUHZKRLVV\PEROLFDOO\
central, yet represents the factions of society who are most marginalized.
In 1965, George Eaton Simpson wrote of a spirit named Sans Manman
(Motherless) whose sense of placelessness resonates with Gede Avadra:

Sans Manman
Wherever you shall go,
<RXVKDOO¿QGZDWHUWRGULQN
Yes, you have no mother,
Yes, you have no father,
But every place you shall go
<RXVKDOO¿QGZDWHUWRGULQN

The song implies that the spirit Sans Manman is an orphan who is
blessed and revered. In sharp contrast, forty years later, the same phrase
³VDQVPDQPDQ´UHIHUVWRWKHDJHQWVRIXQRI¿FLDOVWDWHYLROHQFHWKHPHQ
with guns and machetes who carry out organized “mob violence,” because
only people detached from the moral accountability of a family structure
FRXOGFRPPLWVXFKFULPHV,QDJURXSRIH[VROGLHUVFDOOLQJWKHP-
selves Lame San Manman (“Army of the Motherless”) was instrumental
LQRXVWLQJ3UHVLGHQW-HDQ%HUWUDQG$ULVWLGHDQGLQÀLFWLQJDWURFLWLHVRQ
neighborhoods where his support was strongest.
Such men are sometimes derided as ratpakaka, or “rat for shit,”
DQRQRPDWRSRHLDWKDWGHVFULEHVWKHVRXQGRIWKHLUJXQ¿UH:KLOH,FDQ
think of no example in Haitian culture where rats are lauded, it is said
that one who knows something well “knows it like a rat.” Transformed
LQWRDV\PERODVWKHWRWHPRI$YDGUDKRZHYHUWKHUDWWUDQVFHQGV¿OWK
and familiarity. And at Fet Gede the young men vagabon are essential
to “heating things up,” to creating an energetic atmosphere to celebrate
and sustain the spirit. At the same time, street children and other itiner-
ant people are fed by groups of Vodouists, and it is understood that by
feeding them, Gede eats.
Both of Antz’s spirits are similarly un-rooted: Avadra is homeless and
Andey slips from the street into the cemetery to consume the bereft. One
DIALOGING WITH THE URBAN DEAD IN HAITI 75

is dangerous because he operates outside structure, the other is morally

superior for the same reason. During my interview with Antz and his two
spirits, I asked Gede Avadra about the fate of his “horse.” He said that
while Antz had been born with strong mystical powers, he had chosen to
SXUFKDVH'MDE$QGH\WRPDNH¿QDQFLDOJDLQV$YDGUDNQHZWKDW$QGH\
had eaten Antz’s child, and would eventually eat him as well, but it was
written in the contract and he could therefore offer no protection. Antz had
effectively sold his soul. Through the intertwining spirit biographies of
Antz, Djab Andey, and Gede Avadra, a powerful dialectic emerges: Djab
Andey kills, works for money, has been bought, slips into the cemetery
from the street through funeral processions, eats children, and will even-
tually eat Antz. Gede Avadra, on the other hand, heals, will not work for
money, chose Antz, lives on the street, heals children, and tries to protect
his “horse.” In addition to personifying the ambiguities of rootlessness,
the striking contrast between these death spirits can be understood as two
complimentary means of spiritual praxis in Haitian Vodou.

The Hot and the Cold, the Left and the Right
So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you
out of my mouth. – 5HYHODWLRQV

The contrast between Andey and Avadra – between a fast-working

but amoral agent and a morally superior but benign spirit – is an extreme
manifestation of a broader Afro-Atlantic dialectic that may be roughly
glossed as right and left, or cool and hot, modalities of spiritual power.
,Q$IUR%UD]LOLDQUHOLJLRQVIRUH[DPSOHWKHEDVHUEXWPRUHHI¿FDFLRXV
Makumba functions as a semantic and moral foil for the cool and regal
Candomblé. Similarly, in Afro-Cuban religions, Regla de Ocha is widely
perceived to be the more respectable, more pure, than its brute cousin
Regla de Palo. In Brazil and Cuba, these spiritual paths are understood
as separate, sometimes complimentary, religions, though there is a clear
social hierarchy that posits Palo and Umbanda as morally, and even
racially, inferior.20 However, what these “hot” practices are denied in
legitimacy and prestige, they are granted in potency and expeditiousness:
“But, if ocha marginalizes palo within a moral topography derived from
its own idealized projections of human-divine sociality, it also prioritizes
palo on a temporal axis.”21
Practitioners of Afro-Atlantic religions, and other spiritual work,
index these rites according to West and Central African-derived
ethnonyms. Religions and rites – such as Palo (Cuba), Macumba and
76 Katherine Smith

Umbanda (Brazil), and Kongo and Petwo (Haiti) – that deal in the
realm of the “hot” or the “left,” are generally attributed to Central
African origins. The dead are a prominent concern in these rites, as
they are in Kongo cosmology of Central Africa.22 As Stephan Palmié
(2002) has described their workings with the dead, “The realm of the
dead is literally a wilderness, a kind of primeval preserve into which
people venture to domesticate or colonize” (195). To “domesticate or
colonize” aptly describes the aggressive, or proactive, character of hot
rites that seek overtly to exert human agency on supernatural powers.
Because this exertion of will is often turned towards personal rather
than collective gain, these rites tend to be associated with magic, or
sorcery. This partially accounts for their denigration in the eyes of many
adherents of cooler rites. Afro-Atlantic religions that deal in the cool,
right-handed energies – such as Candomblé and Vodu (Brazil), Regla de
Ocha (Cuba), Xango (Trinidad) and Rada Vodou (Haiti) – are generally
believed to have derived from West African ethnic groups, especially
the Yoruba of Nigeria or the Fon of Bénin.
7KHVH HWKQRQ\PLF PRLHWLHV DUH UHÀHFWHG LQ WKH UDQJH RI KXPDQ
divine practices centered in the Port-au-Prince cemetery as well. Antz’s
UHODWLRQVKLS WR$QGH\ DQG$YDGUD SHUVRQL¿HV WKH GLYLGH EHWZHHQ WKH
left and the right, the hot and the cool. Andey, for example, works with
bones, which is common in Palo, as well as Kongo religious practice.
$UWKLVWRULDQ5REHUW)DUULV7KRPSVRQGHVFULEHVVXFKREMHFWVDV
“spirit embodying” because their “vital spark or soul” comes from “an
ancestor come back from the dead to serve the owner of the charm,
or a victim of witchcraft, captured in the charm by its owner and
forced to do his bidding for the good of the community (if the owner
LV JHQHURXV DQG UHVSRQVLEOH RU IRU VHO¿VK HQGV LI KH LV QRW´ 
.RQJRLQÀXHQFHVDUHDOVRIRXQGLQWKHELQGLQJRIWKHGROOZKRVKDUHV
the formal and mystical properties of an nkisi or a prenda, which contain
VSLULWHPERG\LQJVXEVWDQFHV&RQYHUVHO\$YDGUDSHUVRQL¿HVWKHHWKRV
of Ginen, or Guinea, the mythical origin for all cool and benevolent
Vodou spirits. Like the orisha, Avadra is inherited and works out of
familial obligation rather than through contract or coercion.
Within Vodou, the spirit nasyon (nations) Rada and Petwo
exemplify the cool-hot paradigm, though they are by no means the only
manifestations of it (a point which existing literature on Vodou has too
RIWHQRYHUVLPSOL¿HG3HWZRDQG5DGDDUHWHUPVXVHGWRGHVFULEHWZR
prominent nasyon in the West and South of Haiti, but they are not used
throughout the country. There are myriad other nasyon in Vodou known
DIALOGING WITH THE URBAN DEAD IN HAITI 77

by African ethnonyms that are also indexed as hot (Kongo, Makaya, and
others) or cool (Ginen, Nago, and others). Then there are djab who, like
$QGH\GRQRWKDYHDQ\IRUPDODI¿OLDWLRQZLWKDnasyon, but operate as
independent agents. However because they are the predominant valiances
of hot and cool spirits in Port-au-Prince, for the sake of simplicity, I will
refer primarily to Petwo and Rada hereafter.
Petwo gleans its imagery from the most brutal recesses of the Creole
imaginary. Yet the historical memory of slavery – as manifest in Petwo
rites, ritual trappings and magic – does not so much haunt the popular
imagination as structure an understanding of the world that allows the
practitioner or bòkò (sorcerer) to act on, or assume control of, the present.
Taussig’s now apothegmatic assertion that “history is sorcery” certainly
describes Petwo’s modus operandi. Petwo deities are served with the
cracking of whips, shrieking of whistles and charges of gunpowder.
Their rhythms are sharp and staccato, and they dance with convulsive
movements when they take possession of a body. The earliest description
of Petwo, found in an oft-cited passage by Moreau de Saint-Méry (1797),
corroborates the violent and revolutionary energy of Petwo:

In 1768, a Negro of Petit-Goave, of Spaniard origin,

abused the credulity of the Negroes through superstitious
practices and gave them the idea of a dance, similar to
the Vaudoux dance, but more hectic in its movements.
To produce a stronger effect, the Negroes added well
crushed gunpowder to the rum which they drank while
dancing. Sometimes this dance, called Danse á Don Pèdre,
LQÀLFWHGIDWDOFDVXDOWLHVRQ1HJURHVDQGVRPHWLPHVWKH
YHU\VSHFWDWRUVHOHFWUL¿HGE\WKHFRQYXOVLYHPRYHPHQWV
shared the rapture of the dancers, and drove them on,
with their chanting and hurrying rhythm to a crisis
which, to a certain extent, they shared. The Don Pedro
was forbidden under threat of direst penalty – sometimes
without avail. (60)

As the passage suggests, the violence of Petwo is wild, uncontained

and contagious, potentially even revolutionary. The purpose of the lwa
of Petwo is restitution, not reconciliation, for “theirs is the iconography
of slavery.”
Another lens through which to view the difference between Rada
and Petwo is the difference between family and foreigner. The slavery
LPDJHV DQG VODYHOLNH VSLULWV LQ 3HWZR PXVW ¿UVW EH XQGHUVWRRG DV D
78 Katherine Smith

manifestation of exogamous power. Petwo spirits always work under

contract, unlike Rada spirits who work under the auspices of familial
obligation. This makes sense of the apparent contradiction that Petwo is
both slave and slaver; the larger referent is that of outsider. Hence when
Petwo spirits arrive at a ceremony they eat with knives and forks rather
than with a spoon or kiyè GinenWKH¿QJHUVRIWKHULJKWKDQGDVIDPLOLDO
spirits would. Artist and Vodou priest Pierrot Barra explains that Bawon
Kriminel (a Petwo lwa) is a force of justice, “If a person is taken to meet
the Bawon, he is turned into a pig. The fork and spoon are used to eat
the meat.”25
The idea of Petwo-as-outsider recalls a larger Afro-Atlantic pattern
whereby new paradigms of authority are established with exogamous
power. Anthropologist Luc de Heusch wrote the best account of the
establishment of the royal charter of the Kongo kingdom by an outsider
in The Drunken King, or The Origins of the State (1982). In Haiti,
Bwa Kayman, the ceremony popularly believed to have launched the
Revolution, was a Petwo ceremony led by an ougan named Boukman,
who likely came from Jamaica.26 Likewise, Djab Andey disclosed an
important secret,27 that Gran Bwa, chief spirit of the Petwo nasyon, was
actually the Tree of Knowledge from Genesis.28 Gran Bwa, he said,
was actually the parent of Adam and Eve. Andey’s gnostic reading of
Genesis places the exogamous power of Petwo at the very cosmogonic
moment, at the instant when human life was painfully differentiated
from the garden and spirit-matter/human-animal order was established.
Andey established Petwo as the ultimate cosmogonic other.
A similar pattern of establishing order from an exogamous source
of power occurs in the world of the dead. The shrine for Bawon Samdi
LVDOZD\VVDLGWREHWKHWRPERIWKH¿UVWPDQEXULHGZLWKLQDFHPHWHU\
In rural Haiti this would make it more likely for the Bawon to be a
family member, that his name would be remembered. However, in Port-
au-Prince, the cemetery was established as a massive burial ground
with an epidemic of yellow fever that struck British troops during the
revolution.29,WLVOLNHO\WKHQWKDWLIWKHUHLVD³¿UVWPDQ´EXULHGXQGHU
the tomb of Bawon, then he is foreign.
Yet Rada presents its own version of the beginning of things.
5DGDLGHQWL¿HVLWVRULJLQVDVGinen, or Guinea, which is understood by
Vodouists to be the place of both historical and mythical origins. Ginen
is the Old World, a place remembered as before slavery. Slavery, in a
sense, becomes the Fall, the loss of purity and the moment when the
order of the present world was established. When Vodouists invoke that
DIALOGING WITH THE URBAN DEAD IN HAITI 79

time, they are also identifying a way of being in the world that is inosan
(“innocent”), as the voice of so many Rada songs proclaim. Elizabeth
McAlister (2002) succinctly describes the moral economy of Ginen:

Perhaps a more salient division in Afro-Haitian

religion than “African” versus “Creole” or even “cool”
Rada versus “hot” Petwo is a moral distinction that
Vodouists make themselves between “Ginen” and
“magic.” “L’Afrik Ginen” (literally, Guinea Africa) is
the originary Africa across the waters, from whence the
slaves were taken and to which the Vodouist will return
after death. Ginen is a mythical place, but it is also an
ethos. Someone who is “Ginen” follows family ways,
is morally upright, and does not meddle in a neighbor’s
affairs. To work in the Ginen tradition is to work “with
the right hand” and to accept the will of God and the
spirits. (87)

In contrast to the volition that characterize relations with Petwo

spirits, when one follows the path of Ginen, one is absolved of freewill
and, concomitantly, absolved of sin.
Narratives of Bwa Kayman emphasize aggression and victory,
but others relate that the violence promised deliverance back to Ginen.
3HUKDSVLWLVSRVVLEOHWRJOHDQVRPHLQVLJKWIURPRQHRIWKHJDGÀLHVRI
the Revolution, French traveler Decourtilz:

(T)he Congo and other Guineans were so

superstitiously affected by the utterances of Dessaline
that they even let him persuade them that to die in battle,
at the hands of the French, was nothing but a blessing
since it meant they were immediately conveyed to
Guinea where, once again, they saw Papa Toussaint who
was waiting for them to complete the army with which
he proposed to reconquer Saint-Domingue. This absurd
system worked so well, said the informant, everyone
goes into the attack with supernatural dash, singing the
traditional songs of Guinea as though already possessed
by hope of seeing old friends once more.

Despite evidence that Dessaline may have actually forbid Vodou

80 Katherine Smith

services, he remains solidly linked in the popular imagination to Vodou,

DQG PRUH VSHFL¿FDOO\ WR 2JRX >2JXQ@ ZKR LV SDUW RI WKH 5DGD ULWHV
And it is still believed that those who die a just or natural death return to
Ginen. In this instance, Ginen describes both the mystical place where
the dead return to across or beneath the water, but also the ethos behind
the service of those ancestors.
Recent scholarship, however, has called into question the historical
nature of ties between West and Central Africa and diasporic cultures.
Too often the formal aspects of Afro-Atlantic religions, as well as the
aesthetic trappings and nomenclature elude scrutiny simply because they
“appear” African or conform to an idea of what Africa should look like.
Work in anthropology and history has, for example, demonstrated the
role of key individuals in inventing or transmitting “tradition” well after
contact and into the mid-twentieth century. These individual artists,
charismatic leaders, intellectuals, priests/priestesses, and businessmen
were often the go-betweens who had the ears of anthropologists and
HWKQRJUDSKHUV)XUWKHUWKHUHGXFWLRQRI$IULFDQLQÀXHQFHVLQWKH1HZ
World to a putative Yoruba-Kongo dyad denies the geographic distance
between and historical complexity of the diverse ethnic groups forced
across the Atlantic. Stephan Palmié (2002) calls this compression of
African cultural geography the “theme-park approach” (159). However,
to query the relationship between Africa and the New World is not to
deny there is a connection, rather it is to suggest that the dialectical
historical reality is far more complex, and therefore more interesting,
than facile ethnic derivations would suggest.
Anthropologist Karen Richman argues for a distinction between the
hot and the cool that is linked to Creole, rather than African origins, in
Haitian Vodou. Richman makes a convincing connection between the
amoral power of pwen, which are fast working and effective works of
magic, and the cooler and revered, but comparatively impotent rites of
Ginen (Guinea), and the relationship between proletariat and peasantry.
7KURXJK PXOWLVLWHG ¿HOGZRUN LQ D UXUDO FRPPXQLW\ LQ /HRJDQH DQG
a migrant farming camp in south Florida, Richman argues that, “The
dialectic of Guinea and Magic is a peasantry’s representation – and
critique – of the encompassment of their moral economy by a system of
capitalist production and their incorporation as producers of migrants
for export.” For the peasants of Leogane, the moral authority of
Ginen allows them to disavow their own economic disenfranchisement.
+RZHYHU E\ WUDFLQJ WKH WUDQVQDWLRQDO ÀRZ RI UHPLWWDQFHV VRXWKZDUG
and the exchange of pointed ritual songs recorded on cassette tapes,
DIALOGING WITH THE URBAN DEAD IN HAITI 81

she argues that the denigrated pwen/magic are the economic engine that
allow Ginen to maintain the appearance of purity.
Richman, however, considers primarily white spirits of Ginen.
For example, when she describes the semantics of feeding the lwa, she
states that Ginen eat unsubstantial “snacks” foreign to the quotidian life
of the peasantry. In essence, she posits Ginen as the aristocracy of the
pantheon. But Gede, as well as a host of “non-white” Ginen spirits, does
not factor into this equation. Neither does the conspicuous consumption
that characterizes many pwen (approximate to Petwo) ceremonies,
ZKHUH WKH VDFUL¿FHG PHDW LV RIWHQ EXUQHG UDWKHU WKDQ HDWHQ 2QH
ZRQGHUVKRZWKHVHIDFWRUV¿JXUHLQWRWKHSHDVDQWU\¶VPRUDOHFRQRP\
and if they would apply more generally to an urban religious praxis.
Richman accomplishes important work in historicizing the relationship
between social change and transformations in religious life, however,
the multivalent distinctions between Ginen and pwen are perhaps more
elusive still.

Rada and Petwo Baselines

We have reviewed a number of lenses through which scholars have
interpreted hot and cool modalities of spiritual power in Afro-Atlantic
UHOLJLRQVDQGLWVHHPVLQFUHDVLQJO\GLI¿FXOWWRDVVHUWZLWKDQ\KLVWRULFDO
accuracy the ways in which these religions can be assessed as simply
“African.” The Rada spirits are familial, except Avadra who is an orphan,
and except the cadre of white spirits who may be inherited, but are treated
as aristocracy. Petwo spirits are engaged through contract, except when
a spirit elects to stay with a family and become an inherited djab. As one
typical example, a bòkò in Jacmel had a powerful djab achte who had
been bought by his grandfather. When the djab¶VFRQWUDFWZDV¿QLVKHG
he elected to stay and had been sustained by the family through three
generations. Another ougan owned a djab which he claimed to have
created. When I asked how it was possible to create a djab, he said, “My
djab is like my child, and the same way you can make a child, and it
can grow up and become more powerful than you, a djab can also grow
in force.” The fact that so many who serve the lwa elect to establish
familial relations with djab achte and Petwo spirits demonstrates that
the status of outsider or foreigner can be mutable.
In their espoused moral stances, the distinction between Rada and
Petwo becomes more clear. However, in quotidian life Rada spirits can
be capricious and jealous. Georges René described his relationship with
one spirit, Freda, saying, “You have to be careful with these blan spirits.
82 Katherine Smith

They’re more dangerous (than Petwo) because they will kill you with a
smile.” And Stephan Palmié has questioned the ideological motivations
behind the denigration of Cuban Regla de Palo, “representations of
cultural difference tend to function as the most insidious devices for
GHPDUFDWLQJ WKH ERXQGDULHV RI LQWHUQDOO\ SDFL¿HG VRFLDO VSDFHV ±
SDUWLFXODUO\VLQFHWKHLUPHDQLQJFDQEHDQGDWWLPHVDUHFRQÀDWHGZLWK
notions of origin and descent” (197) So what might we deduce as a
Creole “baseline” – to borrow Herskovits’s term – for differentiating
between Rada and Petwo?
Insight can be gained from Palmié’s analysis of hot and cool palo and
ocha: “The contrast between palo and ocha, then, is not just the result of
the accidental conjunction of two African traditions under the conditions
of Cuban slavery. Irrespective of its history … this contrast enables
what we many call a form of indigenous Afro-Cuban historiography
and social analysis that stands on its own, a language of practice we
might say in the case of palo, that makes use of recensions of a past of
slavery but resolutely speaks to the present” (191). The dialectics of
hot and cool are indigenous (his emphasis) to Cuba because they were
formed through trans-Atlantic trade rather than cultural processes that
are, or were, a priori African. The semantic ordering of Palo and Ocha
therefore reveals less about African antecedents, and offers instead a
historiography that models and mirrors the present through a particular
imagining of the past.
If the collective imagining of the dead by the living is a
historiographic endeavor, then how does Petwo speak “resolutely to the
present”? I offer that Petwo and Rada diverge most markedly in how the
SRVWPRUWHPOLYHVRIWKHGHDGDUHLPDJLQHG6SHFL¿FDOO\DVD³ODQJXDJH
of practice” the natural and unnatural dead are deployed by the living
towards different ends and by different means.
Rada is primarily concerned with those who die naturally. These
are the ancestors of Ginen who are suspended in the water, “betwixt
and buoyant,” for a year and a day before being reklame anba dlo
(reclaimed from the water). Gede is the universalized ancestor, and as
such some Vodouists consider him to be Rada, others posit a separate
nasyon of Gede, but everyone I asked said he is Ginen, or cool. Hence,
when Gede arrives at a ceremony, after being under the ground, he must
be “heated up” with hot peppers. Gede and the ancestors are feted in
the cemetery on November 1st and 2nd, when the city’s residents gather
to collectively celebrate the dead. Families come to clean their tombs
and offer libations of coffee and kleren (white rum). Groups of ounsi
DIALOGING WITH THE URBAN DEAD IN HAITI 83

(initiates) come to distribute food, and beggars and children come to

receive their gifts and offer blessings in return. Gede mounts individuals
as well as small marauding bands of vagabon who may pound on tombs
and yell obscenities at the dead. In 2007, one such group of young men
GUHVVHGLQGUDJIHOODWHGERQHVDQGGDQFHGÀDPER\DQWO\DVWKHFURZGV
cheered “Gede Masisi!” (Gay Gede!). Groups of ban a pye (street
bands) parade down the main route and circle the Kwa Bawon to heat up
the ambiance. Hundreds come to the cemetery to pray for deliverance
from poverty and sickness at the church, Kwa Bawon or Tomb of the
Universals. Showmen, charlatans and prophets come to give oracles,
divinations, and administer healing medicine. For Vodouists, there is
no contradiction to have within the same space of the cemetery both
betiz (obscene humor) and healing. The transgressive behavior and
humor associated with Gede ritually heats up the cool dead and renders
transformation possible. Hence, for Gede, transgression and healing
always work in tandem.
By contrast, the Bawon Samdi is the head of the Gede family, yet
he is considered to be ritually hot. When he possesses a body, he does
not act like a vagabond, he does not engage in betiz, and he seldom
arrives en masse like the Gede. When a person dies, it is Bawon who
judges whether or not the death was natural. The Bawon may be called
upon to verify suspicions about death by sorcery, a point alluded to in
the following song:

Bawon o, Bawon o
I’m going to the cemetery,
I’m going to the cemetery
I’m going to ask the Bawon how many there were sent by God.

The song has another message as well. The Bawon decides which
dead may or may not be used for magic. As part of the Petwo nasyon of
spirits, Bawon commands the labor of the unnaturally dead.
The category unnatural dead includes those who died suddenly be-
cause of accidents or political violence or sorcery. The ougan and artist
Silva Joseph considered those who die of starvation as unnatural dead.
While weak, they are potential menaces to the living because they are
hungry and need to be fed, however, they are also vulnerable to being
manipulated by bòkò and malfektè. The unnatural dead remain suspended
on earth until the hour of their natural expiration arrives. Some believe that
WKLV¿QDOKRXULVSUHGHWHUPLQHGE\*RGIRUHDFKLQGLYLGXDOZKLOHRWKHUV
84 Katherine Smith

EHOLHYHWKDWDOOKXPDQVVKDUH-XGJPHQW'D\DVD¿QDOKRXU:KLFKHYHU
the case, until the soul reaches the moment of natural expiration, their
soul may be used for “work.” In the case of Antz’s Djab Andey, we see
that the spirit operates in the realm of unnatural death. Andey feeds on
the bereft, and enriches Antz at the cost of his and his children’s lives.
Ultimately, Antz will become an “unnatural dead” as well, when his life
ends early as a result of his contract. In a sense, the workings of unnatural
dead become a para-kinship system that perpetuates itself. One sells one’s
own life, but in doing so becomes vulnerable to the fate of the zonbi or
indentured dead.
The relationship between Petwo and the unnatural dead also helps
H[SODLQWKHWHPSRUDOLPPHGLDF\RUWKHVSHHGRILWVHI¿FDF\7KHmò of
Petwo are more immanent than the lwa of Ginen, they are not separated
by waters, only by the limitations of vision. Louko, an artist and Vodouist,
said, “When you go into the cemetery, there is a whole world of things
at work – there are cars and markets, everything – but you don’t have
the konesans (gnosis) to see them. The cemetery functions the same as
WKHUHVWRIWKHZRUOG<RXFDQ¿QGDOOWKHVDPHWKLQJVWKHUH«EXWWKH
invisible world isn’t for everyone, just for those who are ‘engaged,’ those
who have a djab, or those who have disappeared.” The dead who are
used with the cemetery reside in a world that mirrors the same hierar-
FKLHVDQGVRFLDOSURFHVVHVWKDWGH¿QHWKHVRFLDOOLIHRIWKHOLYLQJ$QW]¶V
work in amidst the dead may be ruthless and it may be cruel, but it is not
random. Likewise, the highly socialized terrain of the cemetery may be
overpopulated with the restless, vulnerable and hungry dead, but to the
ritually adept, they are as much a source of power and livelihood as a
threat. For the landless residents who have appropriated the land of the
cemetery and the mausoleums of the bourgeois, the world of the dead
offers resources unavailable in the city at large. Indeed, dealings with the
GHDGKDYHHDUQHG$QW]DQRI¿FHLQDJRRGQHLJKERUKRRGRSSRUWXQLWLHV
that would elude him in the world of the living.

Conclusion
So how do we situate Antz and his spirit menage a trois in the city,
and in the larger Afro-Atlantic world? To describe their position in the
cemetery is to describe, in a way, the state of Vodouists’ lives in the city as
they tenuously negotiate the dialectics of possession and dispossession.
Antz harkens from the dispossessed majority of Port-au-Prince, in spite
of the small piece of cemetery earth his spirits helped him repossess. Yet
the dead he works with are largely from the “slum neighborhoods” of
DIALOGING WITH THE URBAN DEAD IN HAITI 85

the cemetery. On a very concrete level, Antz is working with bones that
come from the Tomb of the Universals. These are the remains of those
ZKR DUH GRXEO\ GLVSRVVHVVHG ¿UVW IURP WKHLU eritaj and then second
from their tombs in the cemetery. Through Andey, Antz uses those
doubly displaced dead for work like ekspedisyon. Andey, who feeds
on the bereft, and willingly acts as a sort of invisible hit man, extracts
the surplus value of the labor of the displaced. Like a factory owner
from Petionville who exploits the labor of the landless and dispossessed
from Site Soley, Djab Andey is a predatory capitalist extraordinaire.
Gede Avadra, by contrast, is the voice of the dispossessed, who is
GRXEO\GLVSODFHG¿UVWIURPeritaj and then from his home in the city.
He represents the lowest stratum of global capitalism, a destitute street
child in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. He is clearly
the moral foil to Andey’s rampant consumption of life. Antz’s power
is the ability to harness the symbolic logic of the city’s labor and class
relations through a kind of embodied mimesis.
Antz’s biography and career trajectory runs the gamut between
these extremes. He was literally dispossessed during the period when
he lost his mind and wandered the streets. It was Gede Avadra who re-
possessed him in the cemetery, setting his head straight again. When
he came to work in the cemetery, he worked “on the street,” as he said,
essentially a spiritual day laborer. Now he is no longer dispossessed,
KHLVVHWWOHGLQDSODFHLQDQRI¿FHLQDERXUJHRLVQHLJKERUKRRG%RWK
spirits, apparently, helped him claim that place. What if we take these
spirits as a whole, as two sides of the same coin, as necessary inversions
of each other? It is the case with both spirits that dispossession is the
condition of their existence. As these spirits pass through Antz’s body
like channels changed on a television set, it is not entirely clear who
possesses whom. Gede Avadra took Antz. Antz chose to buy Andey, who
will ultimately consume him. All of this must be seen in the context of the
rapid and unplanned urbanization that has resulted from the ecological
death of national production. At the end of all other resources, malfektè
like Antz have come to depend on the country’s last renewable resource,
the dead.
What does this ultimately tell us about the quotidian life of the dead
in Port-au-Prince today? There is no tidy answer to relay, but the last time
I saw Antz he was possessed by Djab Andey and he was helping a woman
who was asking to make her child’s father impotent until he paid her
child support. The quotidian world of the dead is not society writ large,
as Durkheim might have it, because it is the realm of magic, which is
86 Katherine Smith

ultimately something more practical and more mundane. For the displaced
and dispossessed, the dead are a means to an end: a resource for justice,
healing, luck, and money where there are few other opportunities.
0RUHWKDQ¿IW\\HDUVDJR0D\D'HUHQGHVFULEHGWKHIXQGDPHQWDO
cosmology of Vodou as the meeting of the quick and the dead at a
mirrored threshold. This paper has demonstrated one glimpse of what
WKDWWURXEOHGUHÀHFWLRQPLJKWORRNOLNHLQFRQWHPSRUDU\3RUWDX3ULQFH
The question becomes all the more poignant after January 2010. I still do
not know the fate of Antz, but I understand most of the tombs in the Port-
au-Prince cemetery remained intact after the devastating earthquake. If
KHZDVLQKLVRI¿FHWKHQKHSUREDEO\VXUYLYHGDQGLWZRXOGQRWEHWKH
¿UVWWLPHKLVOLIHZDVVDYHGE\WKHFHPHWHU\
It cannot yet be said whether the victims of the catastrophe are
considered natural or unnatural dead – that is whether Vodouists will
consider their deaths premature or planned – and it should not assume
there is or will be a consensus. Yet nothing is ever meaningless or
accidental. Already different interest groups are using the dead towards
their own ends. Evangelicals are calling the earthquake divine retribution,
a preview of the end times. Conversely, prominent Vodouists like Max
Beauvoir are claiming that the spirit world is out of balance. Beauvoir
memorialized the dead in the international and local press at sites where
the bodies were dumped. One might wonder though if parties interested
in establishing Vodou as an orthodox, hierarchical and homogenized
national religion – which is, in a way, a kind of death – might also take
advantage of such a circumstance.
Popular rumors have posited that the earthquake is either retribution
for the moral corruption of the Haitian government, or a result of the
U.S. covertly testing nuclear bombs somewhere in the vicinity. Perhaps
these rumors come closest to conveying the experiential truth of life in
Port-au-Prince before, and after, the earthquake. As Luise White argues,
rumors offer “a way to see the world the way the storytellers did, as a
world of vulnerability and unreasonable relationships.” The earthquake
hit hardest in a region already overpopulated with the displaced and
dispossessed. There are no glib predictions to conclude with here, but in
Vodou, death is always and inexorably linked with life and rebirth. Death
is never singular in its meaning or practical application to the present,
and likely the regeneration of Port-au-Prince will be no less complex.
DIALOGING WITH THE URBAN DEAD IN HAITI 87

NOTES
1
0D\D'HUHQ
2
Georges Corvington (2007).

Skulls represent Gede, but they may also be used for magic, to infuse an object
or person with some of the residual spiritual matter of the deceased. For more on the
Atis Rezistans art collective and their use of bones in the plastic arts, see Katherine M.
Smith (forthcoming 2011).

Ministère de l’Economie et des Finance, Institut Haïtien de Statistique et
d’Informatique, http://www.ihsi.ht/rgph_resultat_ ensemble_migration.htm. Another
study conducted by Sabine Manigat (1997) found similar results on a smaller scale:
two-thirds of the population of the neighborhood Morne-a-Tuf were born in the prov-
inces.
5
6PXFNHU
6
IbidS
7
These stones are likely zemi, or “thunderstones” that are believed to come from
the indigenous Arawak people. They are commonly found on Vodou altars where they
may be kept in oil, water, or regularly offered kleren (white rum).
8
Vodou dolls, or poupe, are common in magic, especially when it concerns love.
7KH\DUHXVHGDVPHVVHQJHUVZKRDUHHVSHFLDOO\HI¿FDFLRXVDWFRPPXQLFDWLQJZLWK
the dead. Contrary to the Hollywood invention of “voodoo dolls,” poupe are not used
with needles.
9
The narratives of how one comes to be “reklame anba dlo” often involve a major
life crisis being solved through initiation, and commonly the time spent “under the
water” is a factor of seven or three. See also Alfred Métraux (1972: 92).
10
Victor Turner (1967).
11
Makaya is a rite that is hot, and overlaps with Petwo and Bizango. It is associated
with Gran Bwa, and more generally with the curative power of leaves.
12
Lenglensou is a hot, volatile spirit who eats glass and is associated with thun-
der.

Bwawon Tonè (Félix Boisrond-Tonnerre) was Dessaline’s secretary, who is
credited with saying “To write (this acct), we need a white man’s skin for parchment,
his skull for an inkwell, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for a pen.” See Patrick Bel-
OHJDUGH6PLWK

Compare to Legba Avadra who is, “spoken of as a vagabond who continually
ZDQGHUVWKHSULQFLSOHKLJKZD\V´6HH0HOYLOOH-+HUVNRYLWV
15
By comparison, see Brown’s description of mystical warfare between paleros:
Jose M., interview, Union City, New Jersey, 17 December 1987. Cited in David H.
%URZQ
16
Gerard Aching (2002: 8).
17
See Samuel A. Floyd Jr.’s (1997: 216-220) discussion of the black spiritual “Some-
times I feel like a motherless child,” for comparison.
18
See also Karen Barber (1981).
19
For more on state and civilian violence against street children in Port-au-Prince,
see J. Christopher Kovats-Bernat (2006).
20
For more on race and Regla de Palo, see Stephan Palmié (2002: 196-200).
21
IbidS
88 Katherine Smith

22
For more on the dead in Kongo cosmology, see Wyatt McGaffey (2000); and
5REHUW)DUULV7KRPSVRQ

0LFKDHO7DXVVLJ

Brown (1991: 101).
25
Pierrot Barra quoted in Donald Cosentino (1998: 28).
26
7KRPDV22WW/DXUHQW'XERLV+LVWRULDQ-RKQ7KRUQWRQ
makes the point that while Boukman may have come from Jamaica, he capitalized on
WKH.RQJRSROLWLFDOLGHQWL¿FDWLRQVRIWKHVODYHLQVXUUHFWLRQLVWVLQWKHQRUWK7KLVVWDQGV
to reason, as the majority of African-born slaves in the region were from Central Africa.
-RKQ.7KRUQWRQ
27
6HFUHWVLQ9RGRXFDQDFWDVSRZHULPEXHGJLIWVWRFRQQHFWRUUH¿JXUHVRPHRQH
within a social network, along with all the obligations and status that entails. Thus,
VHFUHWVDUHQRWQHFHVVDULO\PHDQWWREHNHSWFRQ¿GHQWLDO$QGH\DFNQRZOHGJHGWKDW
the secret he gave me would help my research and I consequently was, and still am,
indebted to him.
28
Most often Gran Bwa [Gran Bois] is represented as a tree with a face, which is
sometimes stylized as a long straight trunk and a triangular head. I have also seen Gran
Bwa represented in red with horns, resembling a Christian devil, though the lwa is
generally only used for benevolent purposes. He is however thoroughly Petwo insofar
as he embodies the “bush.” Gran Bwa represents the leaves that heal, the leaves that
are brought in from the forest to energize a temple during its annual servis kay, when
adherents and community members are bathed with the leaves. Gran Bwa, like Gede,
is known to boast about his “wood,” slang for erection, which only reiterates his status
as being beyond social stricture and structure.
29
Corvington (2007).

0('HFRXUWLO]TXRWHGLQ0pWUDX[

/RUDQG0DWRU\

Karen E. Richman (2005).

Luise White (2000: 5).

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