Where the Bodies Go

In Haiti, parents sometimes threaten their misbehaved children with abandonment in Titanyen. A place where the dead outnumber the living, Titanyen is a settlement on the outskirts of Port-Au-Prince sandwiched between the mountains and the ocean. Past dictators and presidents including the Duvaliers and Aristide used Titanyen as a dumping ground to disappear the bodies of political dissidents. While those buried Titanyen used to be victims of political violence, today they are victims of economic violence, be it poor construction on unstable hillsides or lack of access to clean water and medical services. Thousands of victims of the January 12th, 2010 earthquake were buried here in mass graves and every day, cholera victims are dumped unceremoniously at the same sites.