[THEME MUSIC]
[SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: The next day,
I go to visit Max Beauvoir, a
man considered the voice
of the vodou community.
During Wade Davis' stay in
Port-au-Prince, Beauvoir
served as his guide
and mentor.
But in the years since, he's
become the Supreme Chief of
Haitian vodou
MAX BEAUVOIR: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Hello.
MAX BEAUVOIR: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
How are you?
HAMILTON MORRIS: Hamilton.
Good.
How are you?
MAX BEAUVOIR: Very good.
Glad to see you.
Hello, please come on in.
HAMILTON MORRIS: Beauvoir
started
his career as a scientist.
MAX BEAUVOIR: Do not be
afraid of my dog.
HAMILTON MORRIS: Receiving a
degree in biochemistry from
the Sorbonne, and went on to
investigate the medicinal
plants of Haiti, patenting a
method to isolate cortisone
precursors from agave.
Though he once straddled the
material world of chemistry
and the metaphysics of vodou,
Beauvoir has abandoned his lab
in favor of the temple in his
own home, called Le Peristyle
de Mariani.
[DRUMMING]
MAX BEAUVOIR: The Westerner
is an arrogant person, by
definition.
And in his arrogance, he
believes he can put his hands
on whatever he wants and possess
whatever he wants,
including soul, including
people.
This is why he made slavery.
This is why he made
so many things.
Being a zombie is not something
physical that
happened to you.
It is something spiritual.
A zombie is somebody
who has misbehaved.
In fact, somebody that in any
other society they would call
a criminal.
Most likely, in other societies,
this person would
have been condemned to death.
Our society, like every society,
has decided that
certain crimes are
intolerable.
Vodou doesn't believe
in killing people.
So in fact, this is why even
that person considered a
criminal is not killed.
We move from him, or from
her, that desire of
committing bad deeds.
And this is what zombification
is all about.
HAMILTON MORRIS: Max Beauvoir's
explanation of
zombification is unlike any
other I've heard thus far.
What he describes sounds
strikingly similar to the use
of antipsychotic drugs
in Western medicine.
But unlike pharmaceutical
antipsychotics, the knowledge
of the poison used to perform
this sort of chemical lobotomy
is controlled by an ancient
secret society
known as the Bizango.
MAX BEAUVOIR: Bizango and also
Sanpwel maintain social
justice, maintain police and
order in our society.
HAMILTON MORRIS: So how would we
go about meeting people in
these societies?
If a foreigner wanted to go and
learn about it, how would
they do that?
MAX BEAUVOIR: I am the
head of the Bizangos.
HAMILTON MORRIS: Yes.
Beauvoir suggests I travel to
the mountains to find rural
members of the Bizango
society, who might be
intimately acquainted with
the secret powder.
WADE DAVIS: All the time that
I was working, both securing
the powders in various locations
and trying to
understand what the nature of
the zombie was, and so on and
so forth, I kept brushing up
against what I later came to
understand to be the secret
societies of Haiti, the
Bizango Champwell, and that
Narcisse had actually been
brought before a tribunal of
one of these societies and
condemned for any number
of transgressions.
And in the end, I became
initiated in these societies,
certainly, if not the only,
certainly one of the first
outsiders ever to
become initiated
in the Bizango Champwell.
HAMILTON MORRIS: Not long after
vodou was recognized by
whites, they began to
fear its power.
Slaves found practicing
vodou were
harshly punished or killed.
Some slaves escaped their
masters and formed colonies in
the mountains, where they could
practice their religious
beliefs and live freely.
They're known as the Maroons.
It was the Maroons who
organized the first
small-scale slave uprisings,
which culminated with the Bwa
Kayiman vodou ceremony, in which
all in attendance who
vowed to kill their white
masters were anointed with the
blood of a slaughtered pig.
This ceremony sparked the
beginning of the 1791 Haitian
revolution, led by Toussaint
Louverture, and established
Haiti as the first independent
black republic.
It was the Maroons who
later became the
Bizango secret societies.
To some, the Bizango are a sort
of benevolent spiritual
police force.
But to many Haitians, they are a
feared band of cannibalistic
criminals who feast on the
unsuspecting during midnight
expeditions.
It is here that we meet
Tomas, the bokor.
A bokor is the Haitian
equivalent of a sorcerer, or
which doctor, shaman, or
medicine man, a retailer of
potions, a plant doctor, a man
in direct contact with deep
metaphysical realms.
We enter the peristyle to find
it's meticulously painted with
hundreds of images of white
people being stabbed in the
neck by Satan, or being impaled
by Satan while their
blood is consumed by
tricephalous snakes.
There is also a Richard Avedon
poster of Nastassja Kinski.
On the ground are three large
piles of glistening rock salt
and an infant's coffin.
It is here that we meet Tomas.
Tomas is also the
mayor of Ennery.
Hello.
TOMAS: My name is Tomas.
HAMILTON MORRIS: I'm Hamilton.
TOMAS: [INAUDIBLE].
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
TOMAS: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
TOMAS: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
TOMAS: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
TOMAS: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
TOMAS: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: He says he won't
tell you that.
[SPEAKING CREOLE]
TOMAS: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: He said on Sunday he
will make that for you.
TOMAS: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
TOMAS: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
TOMAS: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: He said $7,777.
TOMAS: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: He said Americans doesn't
believe in Haitians.
[SPEAKING CREOLE]
TOMAS: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: He said he will
make it for you.
[SPEAKING CREOLE]
TOMAS: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: So he said you
have to give first.
TOMAS: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: So he said tomorrow night
at the cemetery, he will
make a zombie ceremony.
And you will see zombie
getting up.
HAMILTON MORRIS: Nice
to meet you.
Thank you.
TOMAS: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
OK.
HAMILTON MORRIS: The next
evening, we drive back into
the mountains to meet Mayor
Tomas at our designated
midnight rendezvous.
We enter the peristyle dedicated
to the malevolent
baron, and Alex walks in
backwards to reverse any
spells cast upon him by Tomas.
He tells me Tomas is
untrustworthy,
a man without morals.
TOMAS: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
TOMAS: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
TOMAS: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Tomas, now
incensed, pulls off his gold
embroidered dashiki and puts
on a baby blue gown with a
scoop neck and two-button
closure.
As the associates of Tomas
slowly gather around, Alex
begins to back away, telling me
that it's no longer safe.
And we must return to our
Mitsubishi Montero.
He then calls his friend to
arrange a meeting with a
different bokor, deep in the
rice fields of Artibonite.
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
She just told me that she talked
to the [INAUDIBLE], and
everything we need, they will
make it happen to us.
So let's wait and see what
happens tomorrow.
HAMILTON MORRIS: At night, I
experience a feverish dream of
Jean-Claude van Damme, replete
with hypnagogic
hallucinations.
He approaches me, knife in hand,
and whispers in my ear,
flicking my earlobe with his
tongue, urging me to remember
what Wade said about the
cultural matrix.
