Who Will Save Haiti Now?
CLEAVER, CAROLE
Who Will Save Haiti Now? The Immaculate Invasion By Bob Shacochis Viking. 404 pp. $27.95. Reviewed by Carole Cleaver Coauthor. "Spirits of the Night: The Vaudun Gods of Haiti" The title...
...Or was it the fault of Haitian culture itself, with its traditions of strong man rule and corruption...
...Then there was the tragic story of Captain Lawrence Rockwood, who entered the Haitian prison in Port-au-Prince against orders to see if human rights abuses were occurring...
...Blanc, come, follow me,' he said...
...When mistakes were made it was because the Americans were too nice...
...Was it the fault of the uneducated Haitian masses, who chose instead a naïve little priest who spoke their language...
...Several months later when I asked newly arrived U.S...
...Bon Soir, blanc...
...Having spent much of his time living in an Army barracks, Shacochis presents the viewpoint of typical American servicemen, who did not know why they had been sent to Haiti or what they were supposed to do there...
...The Haitians," Shacochis succinctly sums up, "had been given what they prayed for, what they paid for in blood— democracy—but the nation was a shambles, and what was there to hope for now...
...He would shepherd us through the hazardous channel...
...This, too, was Haiti, the Haiti of young Samaritans and unsolicited blessings...
...Dirty politics made it necessary...
...But Shacochis does capture the indomitable spirit of two young men who are hardly atypical...
...Was it the fault of the Haitian generals who stepped into the vacuum to maintain order but could not maintain the fragile economy in the wake of an international embargo...
...Lavalas had divided like an amoeba, each cell at the other's throat...
...Very soon he was back on top, wielding his old evil power...
...And who are the LZ...
...forces are the IPSF (Interim Police Security Force...
...Electricity and water were still a lottery you would never win...
...Bazin, an intelligent, able and honest man, skilled in administration and cognizant of the forces of the global economy, could have guided the Haitians out of the abyss of poverty...
...The President [René Préval] was a sullen drunk, and the ex-President [Aristide...
...The only confusion he creates stems from hispenchant for alphabet soup designations...
...The government had proved incapable of either reforming or privatizing its corrupt monopolies, foreign investors had stayed away, foreign aid was frozen in escrow...
...They will be remembered only for having tortured and killed thousands...
...Haiti had no jobs to give its sons and daughters...
...The Haitian warden, Captain Serge Justafor, stalled him and called the American Embassy to say that some lunatic soldier was at the jail, causing trouble...
...Convicted of conduct unbecoming an officer, disobeying a superior and endangering his own life as well as that of other Americans, he was dishonorably discharged...
...The book focuses more on American actions in Haiti than on the indigenous population...
...Three months later Representative Dan Burton (R-Ind...
...Hurricane Georges, which destroyed all the crops in the Artibonite Valley, where much of Haiti's food is grown, has caused hunger and homelessness...
...policy reached its peak when American-sponsored United Nations troops, seeking to landinPortau-Prince to pave the way for Anstide's return, were forced to turn back because of a demonstration by CIA-supported FRAPH thugs...
...United States troops encountered an environment rife with danger, blood and grime...
...Rockwood was apprehended by the Military Police, read a list of charges including insubordination, and sent back to the States for a court-martial...
...The bureaucracy was paralyzed with incompetence, elected officials were strangling in their own greed, and parliamentary elections had been dishonest...
...With so many good people and such good intentions on both sides, why have things there gone so wrong...
...Spirits of the Night: The Vaudun Gods of Haiti" The title of Bob Shacochis' new book is surely meant to be ironic...
...visiting the Haitian jail, found 500 emaciated prisoners standing in six inches of excrement, some with their feet rotting off...
...had become a husband and father, a family man who lived in a big house with a swimming pool, separated from the people by the high walls of silence...
...People were beginning to say, maybe the price of democracy was too high...
...Nevertheless, the author's ability to explain the complexities of Haitian life will acquaint readers with its joys, problems and foibles...
...The UN skeleton staff stationed in Haiti "to train the police" has been authorized to stay on for another year...
...the night's other travelers like herons in the shallows, pausing to mark our passage, their voices bodiless...
...Shacochis criticizes the Army brass for its treatment of the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti (FRAPH), too...
...The Army had been told to stay out of Haitian affairs, but Rock wood, a 36-year-old veteran, believed it his duty to make certain that people were not being ill-treated...
...involvement with FRAPH was ambiguous until its leader, Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, who was being held in an American prison, appeared on CBS' 60 Minutes...
...I never figured it out...
...Bon Nwel...
...Most handled their assignments with resilience and good judgment...
...Aristide, head of the Lavalas Party, was wellintentioned and potentially benevolent, but ill-equipped to run a government or deal with the intricacies of foreign diplomacy...
...Because of an ongoing conflict between Parliament and President Préval, the nation was without a functioning government for a year and a half and elections scheduled for last November were canceled...
...Today all over Haiti the poverty-stricken masses listen as radios emit this sad song: "The Americans are coming to save us,/The Americans are coming to save us,/The Americans have come and gone,/Who will save us now...
...A brutal Haitian "section chief" deprived of his arsenal, for instance, was allowed to keep one weapon because it was clear that without it mobs would tear him apart...
...The vision of another young Haitian who helps him ford a river is more fleeting: "A hand reached out to rest on my forearm...
...It seemed counterintuitive to understand that, against the odds, Haiti's children were well raised...
...The soldiers saved our lives blanc' When we were at last safely on the other side of the fractured river, the boy turned back the way he had come, to resume his homeless journey to the opposite shore...
...He made it clear that he had been an employee of the CIA, active in creating havoc to keep the exiled Aristide from re-entering the county...
...The absurdity of U.S...
...Bon chance, blanc...
...Merry Christmas...
...The paramilitary group was mistakenly considered "the democratic opposition"—a political party to be left alone and not disarmed...
...Every leader takes all the power and all the money that he can...
...roads remained impassable, and people were starving...
...Misery can't kill Haitians," Gary, the street boy, asserted, "but you have killed us with hope...
...The darkness had been given a face, and I looked into the white-toothed smile of ateenage boy...
...A suspected Marxist, he was always anathema to the Americans, and constant attempts at assassination made him, like President for Life François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, justifiably paranoid...
...The Haitian Armed Forces is the FADH...
...About Gary, the slum kid who became his translator and buddy, he writes: "I craved his easy companionship and abiding decency, the ever thoughtful insights he offered into race and revolution, his gentle humor and quick laugh and general unwillingness to despair even though, like most Haitians, he had nothing and no viable prospects for the future...
...and the aftermath has left Haiti messier than ever...
...Faced with snipers, gang warfare and voodoo curses, they would need the wisdom of Solomon to settle daily disputes ranging from political killings to domestic violence to the stealing of goats...
...Although not a shot was fired when American soldiers entered Haiti in 1994 to return exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power, the invasion was far from clean...
...These are the Haitians, the backbone of the country, that those of us who know and love the place have met again and again...
...Was it the fault of the Americans, who supported Marc Bazin, a World Bank official, for the presidency, but were unable to get him elected...
...When he refers to the upper class as the MREs (morally repugnant elites), he is really going too far...
...Trained to fight and kill, they were instead expected to be peacekeepers...
...The narcotraffickers were back in business, crime was ubiquitous, the elite families had hired private armies, and an epidemic of assassinations had been orchestrated by—depending on who was raking through the evidence—Aristide, the oligarchic families on the mountaintop, or the CIA...
...Ambassador William Swing about the conflict in policy, he merely stared at me and said nothing...
Vol. 82 • January 1999 • No. 1
