Since the coup
MacDonald, Bruce & Hogan, John P.
THE MAGIC TOUCH In the wake of his candid announcement that he had contracted the HIV virus, Earvin "Magic" Johnson has been called a hero and inspiration by many, a hedonist by some, and a...
...They have also lost touch with the masses...
...Romelus has spoken over Radio Henriquillo...
...In the era of AIDS, there is nothing abstract about sexual morality...
...America did not invent promiscuity, but we have brought a characteristic entrepreneurial zeal to its promotion...
...Prosper] Avril, 59 under [Ertha] Pascal Trouillot, and 24 under Aristide...
...The OAS meeting in Cartegena, Colombia, on November 23 between Aristide and leaders of the Haitian Senate and Chamber of Deputies ended in a stalemate...
...They judge this a "significant improvement" in human rights...
...His athletic accomplishments, with all the attendant wealth, celebrity, and social prominence, made him seem larger than life...
...In a way that most Americans, more critical and cynical about their own politicians, may find hard to credit, the priest-president embodies whatever hopes the poor retain for some redress of the economic and political injustices that mark that sad land...
...But it is hard to suppress the suspicion that a little more guilt might prove surprisingly effective in the fight against sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS...
...But station personnel in the Dominican Republic have been harassed and the Macoutes-Duvalierist forces in Haiti have set up an interceptor station--Radio Petjonville--to block the signal...
...Following his doctors' suggestions, Johnson has retired from basketball...
...Haiti's poor have always suffered...
...Meanwhile, the army remains entrenched in Haiti, hundreds of students languish in prison, and the death toll can safely be put at 1,300...
...Is the carnival to continue, only with more foolproof accouterments...
...Still others retort that any discussion of sexual morality is just an excuse for venting prejudice, ignorance, or prudery...
...During the latter half of the eighties, its radio station, Radio S oleil, was the voice of the voiceless...
...The church has not been completely co-opted, however...
...On his return to Haiti after a visit to the United Nations, Aristide had given a speech that was a bitter attack on Haiti's elite...
...Local cooperative organizations, peasant organizations, and base Christian communities have been the target of military attacks...
...Johnson plans to use his fame to help fight AIDS, to educate the public about the deadly disease, and to preach the necessity of what he calls "safe sex...
...First, the military made the coup appear an uprising of enlisted men...
...During the recent visit of an OAS delegation, the bishops refused to meet the OAS at the same time as members of the Haitian Conference of Religious and the base Christian communities...
...Although he did not use the term "Pbre Lebrun," his remarks were rightly interpreted as a call for popular justice...
...The Washington Office on Haiti has summarized data published by the National Coalition for Haitian Refugees: "On a monthly basis, total violations averaged 73 under [Gen...
...It begs credibility to hear the claims of Haiti's wealthy few that the poor will suffer...
...It's a matter of numbers...
...On the night of October 18, the army responded to his criticism the only way it knows how: The radio station in Bishop Romelus's own diocese was destroyed...
...Johnson has been perhaps the most dominant basketball player of his time--he led the Los Angeles Lakers to five NBA championships--and certainly one of the most congenial spirits ever to have played the game...
...By exploiting his battles with the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, they quickly made Aristide's human rights record the pivotal question...
...But there is something disorienting about keeping our gaze fixed upon a man in the throes of an almost unimaginable agony--it is still not known whether he has passed the virus on to his new bride and unborn child, or how many women he might have infected...
...710: Commonweal...
...I would rather have a short misery than a long one...
...He says he contracted the fatal virus as a result of years of promiscuous behavior...
...Indeed, Johnson is championed as the "mainstream" heterosexual figure who will remove the stigma attached to AIDS because of its current association with homosexuality and drug use...
...The OAS proposal to name an interim prime minister, restore Aristide to the presidency, and form a new government agreeable to the legislature was rejected by the lawmakers, apparently out of fear of the military...
...For the present, only a complete and enforced economic blockade seems to hold any hope for the restoration of Aristide and democracy...
...and the poor, who supported Father Aristide--with 70 percent of their vote--last December in Haiti's freest election, wait for his return...
...Others have questioned Johnson's smiling endorsement of "safe sex...
...the military remains in power...
...Sex often seems the only "real" thing in a world suffused with material distractions and meaningless entertainments but starved for human connection...
...He refuses to speak on Radio Soleil...
...General Raoul Cedras and Major Joseph Michel Francois, the coup leaders, supported by Port-an-Prince's elite, have mounted a public relations battle to counter the claims of Haiti's first popularly elected president...
...The bishops who oversee Radio Soleil have looked into the eye of evil and blinked...
...There is Radio Henriquillo, a kind of "Radio Free Haiti," located in the neighboring Dominican Republic...
...With all the bravado he displayed on the basketball court, Johnson has become evangelical about condoms...
...One church voice has not been stifled, that of Bishop Willy Romelus of Jeremie...
...This tactic had some early success with incomplete and inaccurate accounts in both the New York Times 6 December 1991:709 and the Washington Post, and it succeeded in putting some distance between Washington and the Aristide government...
...The initial and strong reaction of the United States, the Caribbean nations, and the Organization of American States (OAS) included a condemnation of the coup, a demand for Aristide's reinstatement, and when that failed, an economic embargo of the island nation...
...Given the importance of radio in this largely illiterate nation, the failure of Radio Soleil to defend the poor and the democratic possibilities offered by Aristide is appalling...
...Allegations of human rights abuses under the Aristide government have been given wide circulation in the U.S...
...Walker Percy thought the American preoccupation with anonymous sex symptomatic of our modem loneliness and despair, our estrangement from ordinary human allegiances...
...I want Pe Titid [P~re Aristide] back no matter what it takes...
...REPORT ON HAITI SINCE THE COUP THE CHURCH'S SIGNAL FADES ore than two months after the military coup of September 29-30, the prognosis for Haiti is dismal...
...Aristide defended his human rights record on the op-ed page of the New York Times (October 27): "Reports that our government incited people to violence or revenge have no basis in reality...
...Aristide supporters--usually city slum dwellers or rural peasants--have been rounded up, and increasingly so have priests and sisters involved in community organizing...
...In stinging Creole, he denounced the coup and called for the return of Aristide and democracy...
...Yet the Washington Post (October 31), reported at face value the warning of the Haitian Chamber of Commerce and Industry that "the sanctions would provoke a 'socio-economic catastrophe' and that it would be the international community's fault...
...His condition will remind us that we need a franker and less judgmental attitude about sex...
...Against the counsel of his closest advisors, he threatened his opponents with this particularly gruesome form of street justice from the masses if his election was not respected...
...Not one political assassination occurred during our administration...
...President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's president, remains in exile...
...No boat filled with frightened political refugees fled Haiti for U.S...
...A number of sisters have been harassed and threatened by soldiers and police...
...Yes, it will be a good thing if Johnson's tragedy brings a greater awareness of AIDS and more direct government involvement...
...But it can also be a tool of self-respect and personal accountability...
...Have we not been reminded that, unlike the emptiness of promiscuity and celebrity, the prospect of death confronts us, not with anything larger than life, but with life itself...
...Amy Wilentz in In the Parish of the Poor (Orbis), summed up this relationship: "It is sometimes difficult to know which comes first, the people, or Aristide...
...To question our obsession with sex, and especially with celebrity sex, is not to condemn Johnson, or any other AIDS victim...
...One slum dweller told a friend that he would rather a "ti miskre" than a "grand miskre...
...By now it is clear that in this struggle, the Haitian Catholic church is no longer the cultural-political force it was during the downfall of Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986...
...The problem is that I can't pinpoint the time, the place, or the woman," he says...
...Then their civilian allies promoted the claim that the middle class was fed up with Aristide...
...Abstinence, they assert, is the morally correct and medically reliable answer...
...Should we not lower our eyes in the presence of such human frailty and pain...
...Beyond the undeniable pathos of seeing a young man grapple with mortality well before his time, there has been something hyperbolic about the media and public reaction to Johnson's tragic fate...
...shores...
...I did my best to accommodate as many women as I could--most of them through unprotected sex," Johnson said in describing his sex life...
...Now it has fallen into offering apologies for the coup while refusing to allow Aristide supporters a turn at the microphone...
...Bruce MacDonald, a Washington-based freelance writer, has also written extensively on Haiti...
...THE MAGIC TOUCH In the wake of his candid announcement that he had contracted the HIV virus, Earvin "Magic" Johnson has been called a hero and inspiration by many, a hedonist by some, and a tragic figure by nearly all...
...There are good indications that a sizable portion of Aristide voters are willing to suffer through the embargo in order to bring him back...
...But it may take more than words and an economic embargo to quell this outbreak of lawlessness on the part of a corrupt military used to the easy profits of the drug trade...
...JOHN E HOGAN & BRUCE MacDONALD John P. Hogan, who was director of Catholic Relief Services in Haiti from 1987 to 1989, has written frequently on Haiti for Commonweal...
...Most people involved in the battle against AIDS have welcomed Johnson's advocacy and praised his honesty...
...Notwithstanding the determination of Haiti's people to stand against the coup makers, the way out will not be easy...
...The two live in political symbiosis...
...True, guilt sometimes consists of an ugly psychological coercion...
...Father Eddy Julien, priest-director of Caritas in the Diocese of Jeremie, was arrested...
...AIDS is not a punishment for sexual incontinence, but neither is the HIV vires a source of moral wisdom...
...The context for that speech, however, must be kept in mind: Aristide was told at the airport by his ministers of a possible assassination attempt awaiting him on the trip to the National Palace...
...His six-foot nineinch frame didn't hurt, nor did his generosity and personal warmth...
...It is beaming information into Haiti, and Aristide often speaks over its air waves...
...He escaped the wouldbe assassins that night, only to be caught up in the coup a few days later...
...Not one political prisoner was jailed...
...press, supported in part by his threat to use "Pbre Lebrun" (the practice of hanging a gasoline-drenched tire around someone's neck and torching it) on his opponents...
...How that will now change is hard to gauge...
...Since the coup, the abuses and death toll have steadily risen...
...The station has also opposed the OAS embargo...
Vol. 118 • December 1991 • No. 21
