Port-au-Prince - In Haiti, there are assassinations, and then there are voodoo-proof assassinations.
It isn't just about killing a political enemy. It's about how it's done as well, because the dead just may come back to life in a seance and point straight to the murderer. That's why, some claim, opposition leader Amiot Metayer was shot in each eye when he was killed late last year.
That, according to voodoo, ensures that the victim can't see, and thus can't tell who did the shooting. Metayer's brother, Buteur, claimed he found the way around it, accusing President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of being behind the plot. The murder was a pivotal turning point that caused the brooding unrest to escalate into the current armed uprising.
The Caribbean nation is now at the brink of civil war.
Voodoo is an integral part of Haiti's culture, and a vast majority of Haitians believe in or perform voodoo in one form or another. Most Haitians are also Catholic.
"Of course I do voodoo," said a 45-year-old unemployed man named Francia. "I take voodoo showers for good luck. You take the leaves of a tree and three perfumes, mix it," he continued, rambling off a concoction of ingredients.
Generally, voodoo is a far cry from the spells, chicken crows, dolls, needles and black magic often popularly portrayed. But few people are willing to discuss it.
Angry residents, part of a mob chanting pro-Aristide slogans in front of the presidential palace and vowing to bring death to the opposition and the rebels, suddenly hush when a reporter asks about voodoo. It's best to be left alone, they say.
Aristide, a former Catholic priest, has used voodoo to further surround himself with mystery. He has reportedly walked barefoot into a cathedral at midnight by himself, wearing a white robe, and emerged half an hour later. It's still talked about on the streets.
"They are not going to tell us the truth about that," said Joel, who would also only give his first name and asked to be interviewed away from the mob if he was going to talk about voodoo. "I don't know if Aristide is using voodoo."
Aristide supporters in the capital, some of them armed bandits wearing masks, have repeatedly said that they would kill anyone they think may be responsible for a possible ouster of the president, and they left their options open of how they would do that.
"If you want to kill someone with voodoo, it's easy. You go to voodoo house and priest teach you how to do. Just give some money," one believer said in broken English.
Aristide has hinted that he was meant to be in power, citing a list of numbers that add up to a voodoo justification that he serve the full five years of his term. The opposition has rejected an international peace plan mainly because it would have allowed the president to stay in office, and there appears to be little hope for a peaceful solution to the crisis unless Aristide resigns.
The rebels, who have taken over most of the northern part of the country and are believed to be marching toward the capital, have made no secret of their proclivity to voodoo. They have vowed to fight with weapons and "poud", the Creole word used to describe a legendary voodoo powder.
Some of the magic involves allegedly turning humans into zombies. Police dismantling street barricades in the north erected by the rebels are believed to have developed mysterious rashes, also blamed on a magic powder.
How much of this is true and how much is hearsay is impossible to tell. Africans developed voodoo when they were enslaved and put to work on plantations in Haiti. There is one god in voodoo, and three other important spiritual beings.
Under the French, Haitians were forbidden to perform voodoo, but the religion survived and voodoo priests today yield tremendous power in the country. Voodoo is also found in Brazil, Cuba and other Latin American countries.
But the religion is often misunderstood abroad and dismissed as a superstition, or as a means to inflict harm onto other people under the guise of a spiritual justification. Nevertheless, Haitians can still laugh about some of the mystery that surrounds voodoo.
Haitians are still talking about an incident in 1994, when United States forces arrived to restore Aristide after a coup.
A black chicken drew the attention of the American soldiers one night at a Port-au-Prince intersection, so the story goes. They couldn't tell what it was and thought it may have been a bomb.
They gathered around it, not sure what to do, and finally realised their mistake. But not before Haitians, listening into the troops discussing the black object, had tuned in to their conversation using the same radio frequency.
"The black chicken is a chicken after all," reports later said in a mocking tone, much to the amusement of Haitians. - Sapa-dpa