In Berre an old lady has died and a funeral party has been announced which will last all night.
With songs, the young people try to cheer up her son,
who sits at a small table looking at photos of his dead mother.
The whole village attends the party.
It is a social duty to attend the dead from the moment that death occurs.
At the back of the house, the women make coffee
so that the people can make it through the night and the party may be successful.
They have a totally different view of death from the Christians.
The cycle is renewed and death is the end of the journey through life.
Now, the soul of the deceased will walk towards the past to meet up with his ancestors.
The next day, the people attend the burial dressed up in their finest clothes.
Scenes of grief continue.
It is necessary to shout a lot so that the dead person knows that he is dead.
The soul does not leave the body immediately, instead it remains at his side,
and it is necessary to convince it to go off with the GHEDE,
otherwise, it could disturb the living.
In some places, they turn the coffin over many times,
so that the dead person gets lost and cannot find his way home.
In the centre of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, we find the Presidential Palace,
where the bloody dictators, François Duvalier
Papa Doc and his son Baby Doc lived.
Opposite the front of the palace is the statue of the slave,
Toussaint Louverture, who led the fight against the French.
On the other side, the figure of a slave, ringing a lambi,
symbol of the fall of colonial power and the fight against the oppression of slavery.
Haiti is the gallery of art Naif.
The church of the Trinity is the first that opened its doors to this type of art work.
The art of a people who feel the need to express themselves by painting in this way.
Haiti is the country of colour.
The people paint their houses, their streets
and their collectively-owned cars, the famous TAP-TAPs.
The Haitian people have suffered countless attacks and their freedom has been repressed on many occasions.
Perhaps the most tragic example, because it was so recent,
was that carried out by the DUVALIER dictators and their reigns of terror sustained
by witchcraft and black magic.
They were surrounded by their troops, the TOM-TOM MACOUTES,
most of whom were BOKO, wizards that work on the dark side of voodoo:
the "DÉ MÉ", which means "with both hands".
This practice is the opposite of GUINÉ, in which the HOUNGAN only uses his right hand.
The Catholic Church does not like to coexist with voodoo,
while the voodooists, on the contrary, have no trouble coexisting with the Church.
On one side of the Cathedral,
people can be found praying and asking for help
before a figure of Christ that occupies an important place in their beliefs.
Rituals are celebrated daily in the cemeteries of Port-au-Prince.
The dead must be well attended to, otherwise they will bother you instead of helping you.
We attend a mass with Filo Pascal that is being held for a dead relative before Baron Sammedi.
He is offered food and rum, which at the end will be shared out among the poor people
who come to the cemeteries because of this.
A year and a day after the death, the family members must release the soul of the deceased,
which has been living up until now in the water.
They must carry out a very expensive ceremony in which an ox is sacrificed.
If they delay it for a long time, the deceased may rise up against them.
In the traditional voodoo law, the maximum penalty is zombification and not death.
The HOUNGANS that have passed sentence, will appoint an executioner
who will blow the zombie powder in such a way that the criminal will inhale it without realising.
Shortly afterwards, he will die, without anyone knowing why
and he will be buried.
Some time later he will be exhumed, an antidote will be applied
and they will steal his soul.
He will obey the HOUNGANS and will work for the rest of his life for them.
In fact, they reduce him to a cataleptic state produced by Tetrodotoxin,
the main ingredient of the zombie powder.
His brain does not receive a sufficient supply of blood,
which combined with the shock of being buried alive,
causes irreversible damage to his mental faculties.
But those who work the "DÉ MÉ" may also use these sinister techniques for revenge.
For this reason, there are some people who poison their dead before burying them,
because they could have been victims of a Boko and be turned into zombies.
The most important secret societies were born a long time ago
and were the real spiritual support for the uprising of the slaves.
Their ceremonies, like this one of bossu
are more violent because they call upon the lua petro originally from Haiti.
The voodooists inhale some powder made up by the HOUNGANS which stimulate the senses
and keep them awake all night long.
From this moment on the atmosphere gets hotter and hotter until a climax
is reached where almost everyone suffers severe trances.
the lua petro have arrived.