Mayor Jean @-@ Yves Jason said that officials argued for hours about what to do with the volume of corpses . The government buried many in mass graves , some above @-@ ground tombs was forced open so bodies could be stacked inside , and others was burned . Mass graves was dug in a large field outside the settlement of Titanyen , north of the capital ; tens of thousands of bodies was reported as having been brought to the site by dump truck and buried in trenches dug by earth movers . Max Beauvoir , a Vodou priest , protested the lack of dignity in mass burials , stating , " ... it is not in our culture to bury people in such a fashion , it is desecration " .