HAITI: THE REVOLUTION THAT WASN'T
Kurlansky, Mark
j t tv jr i The Revolution That Wasn't BY MARK KURLANSKY Back in February, people massing on the streets of Haiti were begging the army to stage a coup d'etat or waving American flags and calling...
...The disbanded Tonton Macoutes have been chased and hunted down by mobs, stoned, knifed, and beaten to death...
...Since February, it has become fashionable to say there were 300,000 of them, but there is no record...
...The former has been propping up the government with a $30 million emergency aid package on top of its regular $50 million gift...
...Father Hugo Triest, a Belgian priest deported in 1985 for his direction of a Catholic station, has returned to his post and offered this message to Haitians: "Let us use the little freedom we have to make a revolution, because there has not been a revolution so far...
...Asked why he allowed someone else to decide for him, he replied, "I cannot make a decision for myself because I don't know which Haitians are good for the country...
...His people were ecstatic...
...In August, U.S...
...We will blow your head off...
...Current estimates say only 20 per cent of the nation's six million islanders can read and write...
...This freedom to publish without brutal reprisals at first created a press that was highly critical of the government, demanding its resignation and accusing key figures of high crimes...
...The press, which had been tightly controlled, is now free...
...The same Leogane peasants drove me off a week later shouting, "Get out, communist...
...stamp of approval, but it has caused bitterness among many Haitians— those who work in the sugar mills and the sugar planters who depend on the mills, for example...
...The Ton-ton Macoute, Duvalier's private militia formerly thought to number about 10,000 to 12,000 troops, was disbanded...
...For the first time, he gave a timetable for democracy, a series of events leading to the installation of an elected president on February 7, 1988, which will be the second anniversary of Duvalier's departure...
...In a June 7 speech, General Namphy appealed for calm...
...For most Haitians, communism remains what the Duvaliers made it—a dirty word...
...Only 10 per cent of those eligible to vote turned out...
...The raids have since stopped, but Haitians have turned to a clearer target...
...Until June, there were continuous demonstrations, strikes by newly legalized labor unions, and violent attacks on people thought to have ties to Duvalier...
...The Haitians plan to try negotiating alone with the IMF in the near future...
...A few, mysteriously, walk about openly and untouched...
...The speech did have a calming effect, but Haitians are still nervous and distrustful...
...Flour mills and vegetable oil were two other monopolies now being shut down...
...Secretary of State George Shultz came to Port-au-Prince to congratulate the three-man dictatorship that rules Haiti on its progress toward democracy...
...We are going to have to teach them how to do it...
...T-shirts emblazoned with the words LIBERATED HAITI were everywhere, and people boasted about "The Revolution...
...I am hungry...
...PICTURES agency stories on foreign events and covering local news in an edgeless way reminiscent of the Duvalier years...
...The law also prohibits publication of anything that endangers "public order...
...But Delatour says most of the profits will have to go for paying bills...
...j t tv jr i The Revolution That Wasn't BY MARK KURLANSKY Back in February, people massing on the streets of Haiti were begging the army to stage a coup d'etat or waving American flags and calling for a U.S...
...I told an unemployed father of three in Port-au-Prince that the United States is giving Haiti $80 million in aid...
...The recently announced 1987 national budget is $258 million, less than the annual budget of a large American university...
...There were still billy clubs...
...they were volunteers and many were part-time...
...How many times can you listen to them tell you that the reason I'm taking the decision is to protect the U.S...
...After months of demonstrations demanding the removal of Duvalier supporters from the CNG, the original six-man junta was whittled down to three...
...The role of the United States in the pseudo-revolution remains a mystery...
...the Communist Party was legalized for the first time last spring...
...For the first time, there are firearms in the hands of ordinary people, the booty from sacking Tonton Macoute stations and homes...
...And instead of being reassured by such appearances, the public often accuses Namphy of running for president...
...The new economic program may have the U.S...
...It is a loaded question in a country like Haiti," says Delatour...
...was a capital crime to be a communist...
...Now the U.S...
...One hostile twenty-six-year-old villager in the remote northwest explained his accusation: "Even if you are not a communist, we are in need of help...
...Unexplained shootouts are frequent...
...A popular rumor has it that the Tonton Macoute is regrouping and active under the name SOS...
...The per-capita income is declining, from a level estimated by the World Bank in recent years as $300...
...aid programs have always aroused suspicion...
...The U.S...
...Both anticommunist and anti-American rhetoric are becoming more common in Haiti...
...The police left him there as a warning until well into the morning of the following day...
...I have a big problem for my family," says Andre Kajused, a sixty-one-year-old planter with eighteen children...
...People of property are increasingly heard to say, "At least the Tonton Macoute maintained order...
...For the average Haitian, the knowledge that he can stand on a street corner and not worry that five armed men will beat him senseless on the spot or drag him away is a welcome change...
...There is no unemployment compensation in Haiti, so the concept of unemployment is meaningless because they have to do something to survive...
...What a lot of people will not be doing to survive any more is working for protected state monopolies...
...I suffer...
...The military, in turn, formed a provisional government called the National Governing Council (CNG) that has come to be dominated by two men engaged in a tense power struggle: Lieutenant General Henri Namphy, chief of staff under Duvalier, and Colonel Williams Re-gala, a much-hated officer who was close to the former president...
...Of late, however, Haitian radios and newspapers have become oddly bland, giving a great deal of time and space to newsMark Kurlansky, a free-lance journalist based in Miami Beach, has been covering Haiti regularly for the past year...
...he said...
...the government, in turn, recognizes only those with certain academic credentials which few Haitians possess...
...The new government began with only $150,000 left in the Central Bank, according to Finance Minister Leslie Delatour, and has been unable to build up that balance...
...its price in Haiti is five times that of the world market...
...They carry petitions for everything from money to feed their families to a project for planting mango trees throughout the capital...
...They will teach them how to do a better job of beating my head," was the typical response of a Port-au-Prince youth...
...The economy is in chaos, and the government has no figures on unemployment, inflation, or gross national product...
...In any event, the lack of organization would have destroyed the election's credibility regardless of the turnout...
...The bananas are the child's first exclusive private property...
...Attacks against foreigners are more and more common, and several have died in mysterious circumstances—including Paul Alexander, an American consultant to the U.S...
...I don't know how many so far I've filled out," Dessalins said...
...Government with its aid package reaps little good will in this environment...
...The warehouses were sacked, and there were so many attacks on food-relief trucks that by May there was talk of suspending the program...
...Everyone seeks government assistance but, given the size of the budget, little can be accomplished...
...invasion...
...They danced in the streets for hours...
...Sugar was one such monopoly...
...Their homes have been sacked and stripped of everything usable, including the electrical wiring...
...The grain was processed in state-owned mills and the flour sold for high prices...
...Although most Haitians have nothing, the idea of property is sacred...
...Fear of crime is growing rampantly, though there is no way to measure whether crime is actually increasing...
...PHOTOGRAPHS BY MAGGIE STEBER/J.B...
...The first step toward democracy, the October 19 election of an assembly to write a constitution, was not encouraging...
...You are not helping me...
...Under the Duvaliers, it...
...The government, after years of doing nothing, is besieged with demands, not only through official channels but also from people who line up every day at the Ministry of Finance, a building they would not have dared to approach a year ago...
...Delatour went there recently to explain his program but was driven off by a hostile crowd...
...sugar industry and that I work for the CIA...
...Jean Dessalins, who was working for local candidate Pierre Joseph Zephiren, I asked him how many he had passed out...
...People are going to have to vote to be a democracy," says Father Frantz Gran-dois, who heads the program...
...It's not that this is being done with joy," says Delatour...
...The United States Embassy has recommended $6 million in military aid but says no arms are involved—"mainly trucks and boots," says embassy spokesman Jeffrey Lite...
...Given the lack of communist activity in the country, it is a bit mysterious that foreigners are continually accused of being communists...
...They do not collectivize their work, even tending separate seedlings when working in a tree nursery and drying their small quantities of coffee beans in separate little areas...
...Kajused lives in the southern town of Leogane...
...Namphy also promised that he would not be a candidate...
...The head voting official at one polling place told me he decided whether to let people vote according to whether they looked Haitian: "You can just tell...
...Duvalier left behind a recorded message saying, "I have decided to pass the destiny of the nation into the hands of the military...
...Then, on February 7, President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier fled the island on a plane provided by the United States...
...Keys to ballot boxes were kept on hand by poll officials, and a decision to have write-in ballots in a nation where 80 per cent of the people are illiterate left endless opportunities for fraud...
...The state is opening the markets to foreign competition...
...wonders the minister...
...Under the old regime, the United States sent millions of dollars' worth of wheat...
...They thought they overthrew their dictator but find themselves still hungry and ruled by a military junta...
...is sending wheat again, for the same purpose...
...I don't see it...
...Minister of Justice Francois Lator-tue, ignoring the right-wing anticommunist nature of the fallen regime, told a Sunday church gathering that "Duvalier had a communist mentality...
...When he drove his BMW to the airport and left for good, he got his wish...
...In August, Secretary Shultz was greeted with the slogan Food Not Arms...
...But party leader Rene Theodore will not leave Port-au-Prince...
...The three things Haitians wanted most still elude them: to oust all cronies of the deposed dictator from the government, to establish democracy, and to improve the economy...
...A decree issued last summer requires journalists to register with the government...
...Most of those who remain are either in hiding in the mountains or living quietly in their homes, protected by sympathetic neighbors...
...And Gonaives magistrate—or mayor—Richard Jean-Noel was perplexed by questions...
...But we simply can't afford this...
...But along the way, human-rights activist Gerard Gourgue, the only credible anti-Duvalierist in the CNG, also resigned...
...Reports of burglaries, sometimes by groups in military uniforms, abound...
...Agency for International Development, who was shot to death in his home in June...
...Economic collapse accounts for much of the tension...
...There is going to be some adjustment and suffering...
...The Catholic Church has raised $26 million for a five-year program to teach three million Haitians to read...
...Really...
...And Regala, the army colonel who is accused of numerous acts of brutality during the Duvalier years, remains in power...
...Warehouses for U.S.-sponsored food relief were one of the first targets in the February uprising...
...So was Prosper Avril, another hated man...
...And the Administration has asked Congress for $109 million in aid for 1987, which would more than double the amount in two years...
...I don't care if you are not a communist...
...U.S...
...We want to be run by the Americans," was the sentiment of a nineteen-year-old demonstrator on a street in Saint-Marc on February 2. "If they were here, there would not be misery, there would not be billy clubs, and we could find jobs," he told me...
...But there were no development projects funded by the Haitian government...
...When I asked Ges-ner Antoine, a sixty-year-old snack vendor in the town of Gonaives, how he had voted, he explained, "While I was standing there this man with a ballot filled out told me to come here [the polling place] and dump it in...
...This is the economic model for Haiti of both the Reagan Administration and the International Monetary Fund...
...But there are about 10,000 blank ballots floating around town...
...They lived by extortion and terror, beating, jailing, torturing, and killing at will...
...But they certainly outnumbered the 8,000 in the regular army, and they were armed...
...Namphy and his ministers try to keep the peace with regular public appearances in the streets, the churches, and provincial towns...
...Anumber of improvements in everyday life are evident...
...Their huge profits were deposited in the private bank accounts of members of the Duvalier family and their friends...
...The extent of unemployment can only be guessed at, but it could be more than half of the potential work force...
...My survey of numerous towns on election day revealed many other illiterate Haitians who had simply been handed filled-out ballots...
...The army took over, and there was still misery...
...The government was to sell the wheat and use the proceeds to finance development projects...
...Workers are given the option of taking over the state-owned plants as cooperatives but are warned that the competition will make survival difficult...
...But $258 million will neither pay the bills nor finance new programs...
...By early September, the government was $70 million in arrears on its immediate bills...
...Alix Cineas, a former public-works minister closely associated with Duvalier corruption and one of the most disliked public figures, was removed...
...Three thousand demonstrators-some of whom may have been waving American flags only six months before-gathered to jeer at Shultz...
...Direct involvement in establishing the pro-Duvalier military government that replaced the dictator is officially denied, but it is clear that Washington was then and is now more than a neutral bystander...
...The Haitian people really don't know what to do...
...Delatour is eliminating those jobs, saying they drove up prices by cutting out foreign competition...
...The label has stuck, but it was not a revolution, and Haiti is not yet liberated...
...A teen-ager, allegedly caught in the act of burglary, was shot dead by the police on the night of August 11 and laid out on display on a sidewalk along a main street in Port-au-Prince with his iron jimmy bar in his hand...
...There was no voter registration so there was no list of eligible voters...
...They often get an icy reception, even a hostile one...
...The elections were widely resented because of a government decision to appoint twenty out of the sixty-one delegates directly, and they were deliberately boycotted by many, simply ignored by others...
...When seven people in the town of L'Estere told me they had gotten their ballots from St...
...It's only an election for a constitution," he said...
...There is always tension in Haiti...
...And there were fewer jobs than before, as political instability drove off the last of the tourists and some of the manufacturing...
...When a child is born in a southern village, the umbilical cord is buried and a banana tree planted on the spot...
...Duvalier used to claim that all he really wanted was to make his people happy...
Vol. 50 • December 1986 • No. 12
