Buried Alive: Did a Haitian Voodoo Priestess try to create a zombie in Los Algodones?

On Tuesday, April 13, 2010 a group of Haitians exhumed the body of Yeliná Chelí from the Los Algodones cemetary. Yeliná Chelí was a 35 year old Haitian woman who, according to family and friends, was killed and buried three days earlier after bewitching, white powder was blown in her face by a supposed Haitian voodoo witch who was pursuing Yeliná's husband. The police arrested Yeliná Chelí's parents, Bolo Chelí and Anyeliná Pie, along with the other Haitian villagers responsible for digging up her cadaver, requesting that the remains be turned over to them for further study. Her family exhumed her body because they believed that she had been given zombie powder and was still alive underground. When they dug her up, the coffin of  Yeliná Chelí was lined with sweat. Is it possible that Yeliná Chelí was buried alive?

Yeliná Chelí was a resident of Villa Esperanza, a section of the Hatian batay Los Algodones, which falls under the municipality of Montellano.  It has been an area of severe socioeconomic depression for many years. I remember visiting it when I was a teenager and helping out with various distribution projects. My favorite was called a milk ministry; we gathered all the children from the village into the church where we'd exchange songs and hand out cookies, glasses of milk, hard-boiled eggs and sometimes toys. In recent years, missionary Elio Madonia, through The Samaritan Foundation, has worked with teams to improve conditions in the area, establishing Villa Esperanza, but conditions are still far from ideal since viable work for Haitians is simply not available in the Dominican Republic. In a place where people struggle to meet their most basic needs and the very real racial tension between Haitian immigrants and Dominicans is high, talk of voodoo witch craft is taken very seriously and has intense sociocultural ramifications. 


There was an intimidate backlash against Haitians in the form of comments left on online news articles about the exhumation and blogs. One reader of Almomento.net, going by the username "de la rosa", wrote:


"What else can they give us, these sons of the god Damballa... they adore African gods... continuing as slaves like before... while they continue in this way, they won't have progress and they will continue being the most neglected people in the world... this teaches THE HAITIAN WOMAN SOLAIN PIE who went to San Cristobal in a two million peso Yipeta with body guards... she's making herself "white" she mine as well comb the hair on her head of rock... THEY DENY THEMSELVES... they don't know who they are... Haiti is an abortion of American imperialists... the difficult thing is that this curse has fallen on THE SACRED DOMINICAN NATION... The time has come, dominicans, to defend your country...!"


To which "History Man" responded, "Amen". [Click HERE for full article with comments]

The title of a blog written for deDominicanos.com says it all: "Haitianos traen ignorancia y miseria a Dominicana [Haitians bring ignorance and misery to Dominicans]" The author insists that education is the only way forward since uneducated Dominicans are being swayed by voodoo and occult beliefs too. [Click HERE for full blog entry with photo of zombie powder ritual and video of the exhumation] 


So lets get back to the good stuff. You said something about bewitching white powder and zombification, right? What's that all about?

Apparently, zombies were traditionally created by powerful voodoo priests (or priestesses) to be used as a workforce. Priests would blow a white powder on victims who would then "die" and were buried. The priest would later dig up the body and "bring it back to life" but continue giving it doses of other drugs to keep the person in a zombie state to be used as a perfect slave laborer. The classic tale of a modern-day zombie is that of Clairvis Narcisse, who was pronounced dead in 1962 by staff at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Deschapelles, Haiti and was buried but was found very much alive 18 years later and returned to his village.

Cool! How can I make one?


According to Wade Davis, an anthropologist and author of several books on the topic of Haitian voodoo, the main active ingredient in zombie powder is tetrodotoxin, the deadly neurotoxin found in Puffer fish. There are a bunch of other things in there as well, but the other three ingredients almost always found are Bufo marinus (marine toad), Osteopilus dominicensis (Hyla tree frog), and human remains. Lovely. Let's get mixing! Hang on, not so fast. Davis also concludes that cultural factors play a significant part in the creation of zombies, so you can't just blow some powder on someone and expect it to make a zombie if the person doesn't believe in the process himself. Too bad. My dishes need a zombie to wash them. [For more information read Wade Davis' books. I'm currently reading The Serpent and the Rainbow and finding it super interesting. Or just watch the movie.]


So do Dominicans practice voodoo too?


Voodoo is a syncretic religion that has for centuries adapted to fit into other religious systems, most obviously Catholic, and it is widely considered a strictly Haitian belief system in the Dominican Republic. However, according to an article on dr1, since voodoo is something still feared by the majority of Dominicans as a result of the teachings of the church and the belief that it's a Haitian thing, many Dominicans do actually practice it but call it "21 Divisiones". Apparently it is so culturally significant that some Catholic Dominicans have alters to Belié Belcán, a loa in Dominican voodoo. So voodoo is operating behind 21 Divisiones, which is then hiding behind Catholicism. Talk about religious layering!


What about Yeliná Chelí? What exactly happened to her and how do Haitians feel about the incident? 


Her body is currently at the Institute of Forensic Sciences in Santiago awaiting autopsy to determine cause of death. Since this is the Dominican Republic, don't hold your breath until they have the results. We're closer to having our own pet zombies like in the movie Fido than accurate results. Incidentally, Fido is an excellent zombie movie, as is Zombieland.


The real tragedy is the aforementioned backlash on the part of some Dominicans who already distrust Haitians and feel they are anything from dirty to cannibalistic and the sentiment of hopelessness felt by many Haitians that incidents like this one only worsen. Just two days ago Kreyol speakers of a mission group staying at Crossroads were saddened after their conversation with village youth at Villa Ascension who expressed shame about being Haitian because of incidents like this one. 


While I don't agree with the sentiment of the author of the deDominicanos blog I mentioned earlier, I do agree that education is the key to a better future for the Dominican Republic. Dominicans need to promote not only the education of Dominicans, but also that of Haitians and include lessons in Haitian and Dominican history and cross-cultural understanding. Only then will both cultures begin to be able to interact in a peaceful manner.

 The voodoo temple in Caribaio, near Villa Ascension.