POLITICAL VOICES IN HAITI
Music set the tone for change
Instrumental in ousting Aristide, singer in a popular band now faces death threats for his work
BY MICHAEL DEIBERT SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
Newsday
July 18, 2004
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Theodore (Lolo) Beaubrun Jr., lead singer of Haiti's most popular musical group, says he's glad his work had a role in helping overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, even though fear of retribution has meant he has occasionally had to watch his back.
"Not just as a musician but as a human, there are certain things you can't accept in society," says Beaubrun, of Boukman Eksperyans, a group named for a slave who helped spark Haiti's uprising against the French 200 years ago.
Brushing his graying dreadlocks aside, he says Aristide's increasingly violent, corrupt rule was the reason he lent his songs and celebrity to the protests that swept Haiti in the months before the president fled in February. By that time, Aristide faced growing unrest and an armed rebel movement that had effectively cut the country in half.
A rallying cry
"It was time for a revolution; no one could play politics like that anymore," said Beaubrun, who formed Boukman in 1978 and helped popularize its "voodoo rock" style as a vehicle for social commentary in this impoverished nation of 8 million. The group continues a Haitian tradition of music as both political statement and rallying cry.
But the effort has its costs: Beaubrun has not slept at home since December, when he says neighbors warned him that his house was being staked out by Aristide loyalists on a mission to assassinate him. Since then he has divided his time between the homes of family and friends around the capital, and Haitian diaspora communities such as New York and Miami.
Instrumental in the founding of the "Non" artistic collective that protested what they characterized as Aristide's misrule, Beaubrun marched in rallies and performed at events whose size and energy would eventually help topple the regime.
After an attack by pro-government gangs that severely damamged the rector of Haiti's State University in December, Boukman played at a rally at the school along with such local bands as Sweet Micky and Jah Nesta. Students, who were in the vanguard of the protests of Aristide, were among the thousands in the enthusiastic crowd.
"It was a way to show that there are not only demonstrations on the streets, you can have cultural demonstrations. It was a really nice day; people were dancing," Beaubrun says.
Music as political commentary is nothing new in Haiti. In the struggle to oust the French in the late 18th century, bands of rebel slaves were fortified for battle by passionate voodoo drumming. During the 20-year U.S. occupation in the early 20th century, singers launched frequent musical broadsides at perceived abuses by the U.S. forces.
The oppressive dictatorship of François Duvalier forced politically aware music underground, but in the late 1970s it resurfaced under his slightly less severe son, Jean-Claude Duvalier. Singer Ti Manno's pointed but highly danceable tunes dominated the revival.
Under subsequent military regimes, bands like Boukman Eksperyans continued the tradition. The band's 1990 entry for Haiti's Carnival, "Ke m pa sote" ("My Heart Doesn't Leap"), obliquely targeted political malefactors and was considered pivotal in the struggle to oust Gen. Prosper Avril's dictatorship.
Genesis of oppression
In September 2002, following a summer of student protests against Aristide, a Boukman Eksperyans concert on a plaza within easy earshot of the National Palace was broken up by armed riot police who stormed the stage, saying the orders had come from "high up."
"This was one of Aristide's first real tries at dictatorship," Beaubrun said. "He sent his guys and everyone was frightened."
The band was playing "We Don't Want No War," interpreted as a critique of political violence under Aristide and containing the line "Mr. President, it's you I'm talking to."
"Man, after that, people who were inside [the National Palace] said that he was frightened, that he thought I was talking directly to him," Beaubrun said.
"The coalition against Aristide was remarkably broad-based," said Gage Averill, chairman of New York University's music department, "and this was reflected in the musical challenges that musicians posed to the government."
Music as political message
"In a country not yet fully literate, oral musical transmission carries information about political events and attitudes in ways that are particularly powerful," said Averill, author of "A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti." "And the power of music to move people, to encourage dancing and marching and an attitude of abandon, has helped to make of political protests something more emotionally compelling and moving."
Beaubrun says musicians have learned some vital lessons since Aristide's ouster, such as the need to be ever-vigilant in a shifting tide of political opportunism and potential violence.
"Music will always have a role to play for me," says Beaubrun, who remains wary of the future in a country where turmoil has never been too far away. "The situation doesn't mean that everything is all right just because we have a new government, because we can lose that thing that we've been fighting for. We've lost it before. We have to really change the country, completely, the state, the system. We have to disarm, and nobody can be above justice."
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Floods Kill Hundreds in Haiti, Dominican Republic
Floods Kill Hundreds in Haiti, Dominican Republic
(Listen to the original here)
All Things Considered, May 26, 2004 · Massive flooding takes hundreds of lives on Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Days of torrential rain have caused floods and mudslides in both countries, leaving more than 500 dead as rescue workers try to find victims and survivors. Hear NPR's Melissa Block and freelance reporter Michael Deibert.
(Listen to the original here)
All Things Considered, May 26, 2004 · Massive flooding takes hundreds of lives on Hispaniola, the island shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Days of torrential rain have caused floods and mudslides in both countries, leaving more than 500 dead as rescue workers try to find victims and survivors. Hear NPR's Melissa Block and freelance reporter Michael Deibert.
Post-Aristide Haiti Seeks Stability
Post-Aristide Haiti Seeks Stability
(Listen to the original here)
Morning Edition, April 22, 2004 · Haiti's interim government has been trying to create political and economic stability in the two months since Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide was driven into exile. Many areas have calmed down since the bloody rebellion, but problems remain. Hear NPR's Bob Edwards and Newsday reporter Michael Deibert
(Listen to the original here)
Morning Edition, April 22, 2004 · Haiti's interim government has been trying to create political and economic stability in the two months since Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide was driven into exile. Many areas have calmed down since the bloody rebellion, but problems remain. Hear NPR's Bob Edwards and Newsday reporter Michael Deibert
Aristide departs, Marines move in
Aristide departs, Marines move in
UN approves U.S. - led mission to restore peace as fragmented opposition groups in Haiti battle for political influence
BY TINA SUSMAN AND MICHAEL DEIBERT;
Tina Susman is a staff correspondent and Michael Deibert is a special correspondent.
Newsday
March 1, 2004
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - President Jean-Bertrand Aristide slipped into exile yesterday and left a capital in chaos. Shotgun-wielding loyalists overran the streets and fired at will, looters tore through businesses, and armed men claiming allegiance to a rebel army began marching through neighborhoods.
U.S. Marines took the lead in establishing a multinational force approved last night by the United Nations Security Council for a three-month mission to restore order. The first hundred of what were expected to be several hundred Marines left Camp Lejeune, N.C., yesterday evening and arrived in Port-au-Prince after dark, according to John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the UN.
Hours earlier, Aristide's constitutional successor, Supreme Court Justice Boniface Alexandre, was sworn into office and pleaded for calm. "We need all sons and daughters of the country to work for peace, justice and law," he read from a hand-written statement, a sign of the haste with which the transition was made.
Haiti's first democratically elected president, who in recent years had been accused of corruption, human rights abuses and ineptitude, apparently flew out of the capital undetected about 6:45 a.m. in a U.S.-provided jet after losing the support not only of many Haitians, but of his chief international backers. Once among Aristide's strongest supporters, both the United States and France, Haiti's former colonial ruler, praised his resignation and said it was the only way to halt the carnage.
"The government believes it is essential that Haiti have a hopeful future," President George W. Bush said at the White House as he announced the deployment of Marines, who join 50 sent here last week to protect the U.S. Embassy. France was also expected to contribute troops.
Rumors about the circumstances of Aristide's departure ran wild: that he was bundled onto the plane handcuffed because he refused to quit voluntarily; that Alexandre was roused from bed and informed he was president; that U.S. officials threatened to charge Aristide with drug-trafficking unless he resigned.
No matter what the true circumstances, once news of Aristide's departure spread at about 8 a.m., mania ensued. Some jails were emptied as police abandoned their posts, looters used machetes and sticks to break into shops, and black smoke from burning barricades and torched businesses billowed into the air downtown. Some revelers cheered Aristide's downfall with shouts of "Happy New Year!" Within hours, small groups of armed men claiming to be fighters of rebel leader Guy Philippe, whose insurrection began Feb. 5, appeared in Port-au-Prince.
"We are with Guy Philippe's team, and we are here...to make sure that everything can function normally," said Fautsin Radeux as he marched through the Petionville neighborhood clutching an Uzi submachine gun. Small groups of residents clapped.
More often, though, the scene was ugly as armed gangs known as chimeres, who claimed loyalty to Aristide, unleashed their anger on passersby. "They stopped us. I got out of the car and raised my hands and said I work for a hospital, and if you hurt me you will be hurting a lot of people," said a hospital director stopped at a roadblock.
The gang let him pass, then opened fire and shot out his tires, said the man, who declined to give his name.
Across from his hospital, a group discussed the day's events and warily eyed the few vehicles that passed. "I'm happy, because it's a government of terror that has left the country," said Carl-Henri Dorsainville.
Samuel Pierre, though, said he expected only an increase in the turmoil that had left him unable to find work. "Aristide had been taking care of us....I'm just worried about how I'm going to eat."
Aristide, whose destination was not known, had insisted as late as Saturday that he would not resign, despite increased pressure and the encroaching rebel forces. Scores of people have died since the rebels took up arms, including several in the capital. A letter read by Prime Minister Yvon Neptune at a news conference announcing Aristide's departure said he decided to leave to "avert bloodshed."
"I know it is not what the vast majority of the people ... would have wished to happen," said Neptune, calling the resignation a "great sacrifice" that would let peace "truly blossom."
In Haiti's second-largest city, rebel-held Cap-Haitien, Philippe said his forces would stop fighting. "If we move in Port-au-Prince, it will be to impose security," he told CNN.
Political opposition leaders, meanwhile, who have always claimed to be independent of the armed opposition, gathered to plot strategy. One problem will be how to deal with the armed rebels should they demand roles in a new government. Some, like Louis-Jodel Chamblain, are linked to atrocities in the regimes that ruled Haiti before Aristide's 1990 election. Many are former members of the army, which Aristide disbanded in 1994, three years after a military coup drove him from power.
"These guys are basically military," said one opposition leader, Charles Baker, saying he doubted they would demand a governing role. However, Baker also admitted there was no plan for what to do with the armed resistance since Haiti lacked the money to re-form its army.
Politically, things were equally unclear. The constitution called for Alexandre to take over but said he must be approved by parliament. It was also unclear if Alexandre would serve the remainder of Aristide's term, which was to end in 2006, or if a transitional administration would take over. Whatever happens, "We have to have a government that belongs to the citizens of Haiti," said Baker, a member of the coalition of political groups making up the opposition.
It won't be the first try. The island nation, which became independent from France in 1804, has been ruled by military juntas and civilian dictatorships for most of its history. Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest, was expected to change that in 1990 when he ran for president in Haiti's first free elections. With backing from millions of poor Haitians inspired by his anti-government sermons, Aristide won the vote by a two-thirds majority. A few months later he was ousted and fled into exile, not returning until 1994 when President Bill Clinton flew him home under Marine guard.
After his return, opposition activists began accusing Aristide of having adopted the same dictatorial tendencies as his predecessors, culminating in election boycotts and a cutoff of most international aid following disputed elections in 2000. Human rights groups accused him of ordering killings of political opponents and of involvement in drug trafficking, charges that Aristide denied.
Despite those accusations, Aristide still had the support of many. "Aristide was voted into power. He was supposed to serve until 2006, and he should have had time," said Jean Thermogine, a barbershop owner. "We should have been able to organize a political solution."
In the United States, the Black Congressional Caucus also denounced the Bush administration's decision to press Aristide to resign. "We're just as much a part of this coup d'etat as the rebels, as the looters, or anyone else," said Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Harlem).
Tina Susman is a staff correspondent and Michael Deibert is a special correspondent. Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
UN approves U.S. - led mission to restore peace as fragmented opposition groups in Haiti battle for political influence
BY TINA SUSMAN AND MICHAEL DEIBERT;
Tina Susman is a staff correspondent and Michael Deibert is a special correspondent.
Newsday
March 1, 2004
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - President Jean-Bertrand Aristide slipped into exile yesterday and left a capital in chaos. Shotgun-wielding loyalists overran the streets and fired at will, looters tore through businesses, and armed men claiming allegiance to a rebel army began marching through neighborhoods.
U.S. Marines took the lead in establishing a multinational force approved last night by the United Nations Security Council for a three-month mission to restore order. The first hundred of what were expected to be several hundred Marines left Camp Lejeune, N.C., yesterday evening and arrived in Port-au-Prince after dark, according to John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the UN.
Hours earlier, Aristide's constitutional successor, Supreme Court Justice Boniface Alexandre, was sworn into office and pleaded for calm. "We need all sons and daughters of the country to work for peace, justice and law," he read from a hand-written statement, a sign of the haste with which the transition was made.
Haiti's first democratically elected president, who in recent years had been accused of corruption, human rights abuses and ineptitude, apparently flew out of the capital undetected about 6:45 a.m. in a U.S.-provided jet after losing the support not only of many Haitians, but of his chief international backers. Once among Aristide's strongest supporters, both the United States and France, Haiti's former colonial ruler, praised his resignation and said it was the only way to halt the carnage.
"The government believes it is essential that Haiti have a hopeful future," President George W. Bush said at the White House as he announced the deployment of Marines, who join 50 sent here last week to protect the U.S. Embassy. France was also expected to contribute troops.
Rumors about the circumstances of Aristide's departure ran wild: that he was bundled onto the plane handcuffed because he refused to quit voluntarily; that Alexandre was roused from bed and informed he was president; that U.S. officials threatened to charge Aristide with drug-trafficking unless he resigned.
No matter what the true circumstances, once news of Aristide's departure spread at about 8 a.m., mania ensued. Some jails were emptied as police abandoned their posts, looters used machetes and sticks to break into shops, and black smoke from burning barricades and torched businesses billowed into the air downtown. Some revelers cheered Aristide's downfall with shouts of "Happy New Year!" Within hours, small groups of armed men claiming to be fighters of rebel leader Guy Philippe, whose insurrection began Feb. 5, appeared in Port-au-Prince.
"We are with Guy Philippe's team, and we are here...to make sure that everything can function normally," said Fautsin Radeux as he marched through the Petionville neighborhood clutching an Uzi submachine gun. Small groups of residents clapped.
More often, though, the scene was ugly as armed gangs known as chimeres, who claimed loyalty to Aristide, unleashed their anger on passersby. "They stopped us. I got out of the car and raised my hands and said I work for a hospital, and if you hurt me you will be hurting a lot of people," said a hospital director stopped at a roadblock.
The gang let him pass, then opened fire and shot out his tires, said the man, who declined to give his name.
Across from his hospital, a group discussed the day's events and warily eyed the few vehicles that passed. "I'm happy, because it's a government of terror that has left the country," said Carl-Henri Dorsainville.
Samuel Pierre, though, said he expected only an increase in the turmoil that had left him unable to find work. "Aristide had been taking care of us....I'm just worried about how I'm going to eat."
Aristide, whose destination was not known, had insisted as late as Saturday that he would not resign, despite increased pressure and the encroaching rebel forces. Scores of people have died since the rebels took up arms, including several in the capital. A letter read by Prime Minister Yvon Neptune at a news conference announcing Aristide's departure said he decided to leave to "avert bloodshed."
"I know it is not what the vast majority of the people ... would have wished to happen," said Neptune, calling the resignation a "great sacrifice" that would let peace "truly blossom."
In Haiti's second-largest city, rebel-held Cap-Haitien, Philippe said his forces would stop fighting. "If we move in Port-au-Prince, it will be to impose security," he told CNN.
Political opposition leaders, meanwhile, who have always claimed to be independent of the armed opposition, gathered to plot strategy. One problem will be how to deal with the armed rebels should they demand roles in a new government. Some, like Louis-Jodel Chamblain, are linked to atrocities in the regimes that ruled Haiti before Aristide's 1990 election. Many are former members of the army, which Aristide disbanded in 1994, three years after a military coup drove him from power.
"These guys are basically military," said one opposition leader, Charles Baker, saying he doubted they would demand a governing role. However, Baker also admitted there was no plan for what to do with the armed resistance since Haiti lacked the money to re-form its army.
Politically, things were equally unclear. The constitution called for Alexandre to take over but said he must be approved by parliament. It was also unclear if Alexandre would serve the remainder of Aristide's term, which was to end in 2006, or if a transitional administration would take over. Whatever happens, "We have to have a government that belongs to the citizens of Haiti," said Baker, a member of the coalition of political groups making up the opposition.
It won't be the first try. The island nation, which became independent from France in 1804, has been ruled by military juntas and civilian dictatorships for most of its history. Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest, was expected to change that in 1990 when he ran for president in Haiti's first free elections. With backing from millions of poor Haitians inspired by his anti-government sermons, Aristide won the vote by a two-thirds majority. A few months later he was ousted and fled into exile, not returning until 1994 when President Bill Clinton flew him home under Marine guard.
After his return, opposition activists began accusing Aristide of having adopted the same dictatorial tendencies as his predecessors, culminating in election boycotts and a cutoff of most international aid following disputed elections in 2000. Human rights groups accused him of ordering killings of political opponents and of involvement in drug trafficking, charges that Aristide denied.
Despite those accusations, Aristide still had the support of many. "Aristide was voted into power. He was supposed to serve until 2006, and he should have had time," said Jean Thermogine, a barbershop owner. "We should have been able to organize a political solution."
In the United States, the Black Congressional Caucus also denounced the Bush administration's decision to press Aristide to resign. "We're just as much a part of this coup d'etat as the rebels, as the looters, or anyone else," said Rep. Charles Rangel (D-Harlem).
Tina Susman is a staff correspondent and Michael Deibert is a special correspondent. Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Mohammed's Religion Finds a Place in Haiti
Mohammed's Religion Finds a Place in Haiti
by Michael Deibert (Reuters, June 13, 2002)
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - Tucked away on a corner of the Haitian capital's dusty, congested Delmas Road, a modest white building bears a curious sign, painstakingly stenciled in green Western and Arabic script.
"Mosquee Al-Fatiha," it reads. "Communaute Musulmane d'Haiti."
An attendant splashing water on the ground greets a visitor who approaches the gate. "As-salaam aleikum (peace be upon you)," he says, breaking into a smile. "Welcome to the mosque."
Haiti, the Caribbean nation closely associated with the African-derived faith of voodoo, is home to a small but growing community of Muslims. Two Islamic centers in the capital of Port-au-Prince are among nearly a dozen around the country started by those who have converted to the faith.
Officials with the major Islamic groups estimate there are between 4,000 and 5,000 Muslims in Haiti, a nation of about 8 million people.
In the lanes of the historic Carrefour-Feuilles quarter, a neighborhood that snakes up the mountains surrounding Port-au-Prince, a plangent, timeless sound echoes.
Among the market women haggling over prices while portable radios blare popular Haitian "compas" music, the muezzin's call to prayer goes forth from a new Islamic masjeed, or prayer center.
"Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, La ilaha ila Allah," -- "God is greater, God is greater, there is no god but God."
Haiti is about 80 percent Catholic and 20 percent Protestant, according to State Department figures, while some 85 percent of its people regularly practice voodoo.
MUSLIMS NOTICEABLE IN CITIES
But followers of Islam have recently stepped into the public eye. Muslim men distinctive in their kufi headwear and finely groomed beards, and women in traditional scarves, are now seen on the streets of several cities.
Nawoon Marcellus, who comes from the northern city of San Raphael, recently became the first Muslim elected to the Chamber of Deputies, Haiti's lower house of parliament.
"I returned to Haiti in 1985 just to preach Islam," said Abdul Al-Ali, the Delmas mosque's white-bearded, commanding imam, or spiritual leader. "I converted while I was in Canada and we bought the space for the mosque in 1993."
"Haitians would like to have the truth and Islam will bring it to them. If we follow Allah, peace be upon him, I think things can change."
In impoverished Haiti, beset by a faltering economy, malnutrition, political violence and a two-year-old electoral dispute that has led to a freeze on $500 million of international aid, some converts find the attention Islam devotes to charity and social justice particularly appealing.
"If you see someone who is in need, the ones who need help, whether it's education, money or what have you, we Haitians as a whole tend to be very generous in helping with one another," said Racin Ganga, the imam of the Carrefour Feuilles center, who attended college and was introduced to Islam in New York.
"Those who don't have anything tend to help out. It is in some way inborn to us as Haitians, as well as Muslims, to help out. So that principle of responsibility, of helping those less fortunate, resonated very well."
Yacine Khelladi, an Algerian economist who has conducted an informal survey of the religion in Haiti, said in its idealized form, Islam could address many of Haiti's needs, including social justice, literacy and a sense of community.
"It even regulates business, land disputes, banking and other things -- all of which could be perceived as attractive in Haiti as an alternative model," Khelladi said.
REVISIONIST HISTORY
The study of Islam has also resulted in some provocative new theories about Haitian history, including a revisionist view of Boukman, a rebel slave who inspired other slaves to rise up against their colonial masters.
"Boukman was never a voodoo priest, like they say, he was a Muslim," said Samaki Foussoyni, a worshiper at the Delmas mosque.
"When they describe his name, Boukman, in English, as he was from Jamaica, they are really describing 'book man,' because of the book he was always reading, which the French here in Haiti always referred to as an "upside-down" book," Foussoyni said.
"They described it as such because it was the Koran, which you read left to right. When they say they had a voodoo ceremony at Bois Cayman, where Boukman lived, it was in fact 'Bwa Kay Imam,' or 'the woods of the house of the imam' in Creole."
Although the mosques are locally maintained and receive no assistance from Islamic charities abroad, the nascent faith got an international boost from the U.S.-led military force that entered Haiti in 1994 to restore exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.
"The Pakistani and Bangladeshi soldiers came to our mosque to pray and enjoy our faith and they encouraged us with this belief," Al-Ali said.
Conscious of their status as outsiders in overtly voodoo and Catholic Haiti, a nation that endured decades of dictatorship and brutal military repression, Muslims are quick to stress the peaceful nature of their faith and to distance themselves from the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
"Allah says that if a man kills another man it is as if he has killed all humanity," said Racin Ganga. "The people who did what they did in New York, they are not even human. Islamic people should use the weapon of their love, because violence, as we've seen here in Haiti, will not take us anywhere."
by Michael Deibert (Reuters, June 13, 2002)
(Read the original here)
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Reuters) - Tucked away on a corner of the Haitian capital's dusty, congested Delmas Road, a modest white building bears a curious sign, painstakingly stenciled in green Western and Arabic script.
"Mosquee Al-Fatiha," it reads. "Communaute Musulmane d'Haiti."
An attendant splashing water on the ground greets a visitor who approaches the gate. "As-salaam aleikum (peace be upon you)," he says, breaking into a smile. "Welcome to the mosque."
Haiti, the Caribbean nation closely associated with the African-derived faith of voodoo, is home to a small but growing community of Muslims. Two Islamic centers in the capital of Port-au-Prince are among nearly a dozen around the country started by those who have converted to the faith.
Officials with the major Islamic groups estimate there are between 4,000 and 5,000 Muslims in Haiti, a nation of about 8 million people.
In the lanes of the historic Carrefour-Feuilles quarter, a neighborhood that snakes up the mountains surrounding Port-au-Prince, a plangent, timeless sound echoes.
Among the market women haggling over prices while portable radios blare popular Haitian "compas" music, the muezzin's call to prayer goes forth from a new Islamic masjeed, or prayer center.
"Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, La ilaha ila Allah," -- "God is greater, God is greater, there is no god but God."
Haiti is about 80 percent Catholic and 20 percent Protestant, according to State Department figures, while some 85 percent of its people regularly practice voodoo.
MUSLIMS NOTICEABLE IN CITIES
But followers of Islam have recently stepped into the public eye. Muslim men distinctive in their kufi headwear and finely groomed beards, and women in traditional scarves, are now seen on the streets of several cities.
Nawoon Marcellus, who comes from the northern city of San Raphael, recently became the first Muslim elected to the Chamber of Deputies, Haiti's lower house of parliament.
"I returned to Haiti in 1985 just to preach Islam," said Abdul Al-Ali, the Delmas mosque's white-bearded, commanding imam, or spiritual leader. "I converted while I was in Canada and we bought the space for the mosque in 1993."
"Haitians would like to have the truth and Islam will bring it to them. If we follow Allah, peace be upon him, I think things can change."
In impoverished Haiti, beset by a faltering economy, malnutrition, political violence and a two-year-old electoral dispute that has led to a freeze on $500 million of international aid, some converts find the attention Islam devotes to charity and social justice particularly appealing.
"If you see someone who is in need, the ones who need help, whether it's education, money or what have you, we Haitians as a whole tend to be very generous in helping with one another," said Racin Ganga, the imam of the Carrefour Feuilles center, who attended college and was introduced to Islam in New York.
"Those who don't have anything tend to help out. It is in some way inborn to us as Haitians, as well as Muslims, to help out. So that principle of responsibility, of helping those less fortunate, resonated very well."
Yacine Khelladi, an Algerian economist who has conducted an informal survey of the religion in Haiti, said in its idealized form, Islam could address many of Haiti's needs, including social justice, literacy and a sense of community.
"It even regulates business, land disputes, banking and other things -- all of which could be perceived as attractive in Haiti as an alternative model," Khelladi said.
REVISIONIST HISTORY
The study of Islam has also resulted in some provocative new theories about Haitian history, including a revisionist view of Boukman, a rebel slave who inspired other slaves to rise up against their colonial masters.
"Boukman was never a voodoo priest, like they say, he was a Muslim," said Samaki Foussoyni, a worshiper at the Delmas mosque.
"When they describe his name, Boukman, in English, as he was from Jamaica, they are really describing 'book man,' because of the book he was always reading, which the French here in Haiti always referred to as an "upside-down" book," Foussoyni said.
"They described it as such because it was the Koran, which you read left to right. When they say they had a voodoo ceremony at Bois Cayman, where Boukman lived, it was in fact 'Bwa Kay Imam,' or 'the woods of the house of the imam' in Creole."
Although the mosques are locally maintained and receive no assistance from Islamic charities abroad, the nascent faith got an international boost from the U.S.-led military force that entered Haiti in 1994 to restore exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.
"The Pakistani and Bangladeshi soldiers came to our mosque to pray and enjoy our faith and they encouraged us with this belief," Al-Ali said.
Conscious of their status as outsiders in overtly voodoo and Catholic Haiti, a nation that endured decades of dictatorship and brutal military repression, Muslims are quick to stress the peaceful nature of their faith and to distance themselves from the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
"Allah says that if a man kills another man it is as if he has killed all humanity," said Racin Ganga. "The people who did what they did in New York, they are not even human. Islamic people should use the weapon of their love, because violence, as we've seen here in Haiti, will not take us anywhere."
Aristide's Tinderbox
Aristide's Tinderbox
Haitian Militants Losing Faith in President’s Promise of Reform
by Michael Deibert
August 28 - September 3, 2002
The Village Voice
(Read the original here)
Pierre Fabienne cradles his baby in his arms as his girlfriend, a shy-eyed beauty, stands in the doorway of their home on a noisy lane in Port-au-Prince's impoverished Cite Soleil quarter. Fabienne, a gang leader and supporter of embattled Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was instrumental in organizing a cease-fire among most of the district's warring factions last February. He hasn't gotten much in return for his efforts at diplomacy.
"I've sat with Aristide many times and I still have nothing," says Fabienne (not his real name).
"I still have the same room that I pay $300 for six months"—about U.S. $50—"no TV, no nothing, and Aristide knows that I'm a militant for change. He knows I fight for him. When he has something in Port-au-Prince, he calls us. When he wants people to go to his rally in Leogane, he calls us. When he's afraid of a coup d'état, he calls us. He wants us to stay in Cite Soleil, so no one hears about Cite Soleil, so he can call on us whenever he needs us to do something."
In Haiti's ramshackle and decaying capital of 2 million, where exuberantly colored tap-tap buses speed through congested streets blaring sinuous compas music and dark, mysterious mountains rise out of the bay, Cite Soleil's 200,000 residents have long formed the backbone of support for Aristide. Just north of Fort Dimanche—a former prison and torture center favored by former dictators Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier now turned into a squatter camp—and pinioned away from the rest of the city by dusty, potholed Route Nationale 1, Cite Soleil is a place where political activism and a criminal element born of desperate poverty exist side by side.
The tension between the two worlds exploded last month when Amiot Metayer, a political militant and gang leader, was freed by machine-gun-wielding members of his "Cannibal Army," who attacked the Gonaives jail he was being held in with a bulldozer. Metayer had been arrested on suspicion of ordering buildings torched during an outbreak of violence with a rival gang leader. Upon his release, he denounced Aristide, vowing to "fight to the death" any attempt to put him back in prison.
Once, people like Metayer and Fabienne celebrated Aristide. After his first election in 1990, it was the people of the slums who danced in the streets, carrying Aristide's picture and rejoicing at the ouster of the military dictatorship. When Aristide was himself ousted in a bloody coup d'état the next year, the residents of Cite Soleil fought for his return. They endured the nighttime terror of raids by the FRAPH (Front Révolutionnaire Pour l'Avancement et le Progrès d'Haiti) death squads, and often turned up tortured on narrow muddy lanes for uttering the deposed president's name.
Today, however, it is these same militants, claiming they feel forgotten and betrayed, who have begun to call for Aristide's removal, and for the dismissal of both his ruling Lavalas Family political party and Haiti's roundly loathed political opposition, the Convergence Democratique coalition. They argue it's the only way to restore the hope of a just nation that people in the district had fought for for so long. This is no polite debate.
In May, three local activists were shot dead by police, who later claimed to have been attacked by gangs. Local residents, for their part, charged the activists were shot while arriving at an arranged meeting with police. The killings triggered two days of shooting between police and gangs, leaving a pervasive suspicion among locals that, having outlived their usefulness, the militants have become targets.
When asked about the situation at a recent press conference, Aristide replied: "The people of Cite Soleil are the sons and daughters of the country. Their rights are violated when they cannot eat; their rights are violated when they cannot go to school. We must work with all sectors, the opposition and the elite, to improve their lives. We are committed to working with them and we will not rest until we do that."
"We have to protect the rights of every citizen," Aristide added, "but we must also protect those who are visiting Haiti and who live in Haiti."
In Cite Soleil, people are preparing to protect themselves. "I don't think that this government will change, and I don't think that the opposition will change, either," says Dessalines Jacques, a muscular man who takes his name from Haiti's greatest hero, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, creator of the national flag and victor over the colonizing French. This Dessalines, clad in a blue tank top, has just finished inspecting bags of weapons—9mms, shotguns, and M-1s—that Cite Soleil has held in its grasp to ensure it will never again be defenseless.
He says the people need a rache manyok, a peasant expression that literally means to "pull up your manioc"—a root vegetable—but is used by militants to mean getting rid of something tainted or corrupt. "We could form a new political movement, but we cannot do it on our own," he says. "We need all of Haiti's nine departments, plus the Tenth Department"—the name Aristide gave to the estimated 1 million Haitians living abroad—"because we are the children of the Tenth Department. And they know that their children are suffering here."
However shakily, Aristide remains in control; he was re-elected in November 2000 with little opposition. That would have come from the Convergence Démocratique coalition, a motley group of social democrats and ex-authoritarian functionaries with scant public support and pronounced distaste for the Haitian masses. But Convergence members contended the parliamentary elections held earlier were tabulated to favor Aristide's Lavalas party, so they sat out the presidential round.
The Organization of American States has been attempting to broker a deal ever since. Following a mysterious attack on the National Palace by nearly two dozen gunmen last December 17, thousands of armed Aristide partisans, including the youth of Cite Soleil, took to the streets, burning down headquarters and private homes affiliated with the Convergence and, in their words, "defending our palace and defending our president."
Accusations of electoral rigging from Convergence have led to the suspension of $500 million of desperately needed international aid. The group is further demanding that the government not only pay reparations but also disarm militant government supporters. In the meantime, capital residents witness daily scenes of armed convoys of Lavalas officials—who have been continually embroiled in scandal—speeding by in bulletproof SUVs as street children wash their faces in puddles of rainwater.
Some in the slums say they're not ready to abandon faith in their president's promise of reform. "We cannot forget what Aristide has been for us, and we will always be on his side when we see things being done," says Wily Sauvenur, a studious, bearded young man. Sauvenur (not his real name) is carrying a manila envelope containing the freshly printed stationery of a new political movement, the Organizasyon Revolisyone Chalo Jaklen, named after a murdered pro-democracy activist and founded the day militants stormed the National Palace. "But we will not support this or any government when we see nothing being done, and right now we see him sitting with the gwo manje—"high-living political types"—and living like them. Now is not like the days of the coup d'état. We're armed and we're very determined to change this country and they know that, and they will have to deal with us."
Haiti's poor have always had to fight. "In 1991, when the military made Aristide go and began killing our families, we were 10, 12—we were small kids," says Labanier, another self-described political activist. "We are not militants out of the blue. Our fathers and mothers were already militants, against Duvalier, against the military, because it was always bad here and people here always cling onto the dream that things can change."
The chimere, as the largely male and jobless contingent of Haitian society is often called, have been used as a political tool in Haiti for many years. Government and opposition leaders alike draw on the clannish—but not necessarily criminal—gang culture powered by the very real threats young men face in the slums.
"My mother died in '91 when FRAPH came and killed her in Cite Soleil, then they kidnapped my father in 1994 and killed him, too," says Pierre Fabienne, who rallied government partisans on the streets after being contacted by Haitian National Police forces in the early morning hours of December 17. "One day I think the people will stand up to defend their rights. If they keep doing this, if Aristide kills me, if he kills Labanier, all the gangs will come out and he will lose his power. We'll have a rache manyok again."
In the surreal landscape that can be Haiti today—pro-bin Laden graffiti scrawled on crumbling walls, former comedians rallying pro-government partisans with apocalyptic anti-foreign rhetoric—the situation of the militants of Cite Soleil and other neighborhoods is perhaps the clearest sign of just how grave things can become. "One day, man, I'd like to be able to give up this politics," says Fabienne, looking down the hill at the shacks and the naked, laughing children. "If not, I'll die and I couldn't do anything for myself."
Fabienne remembers the days of the U.S. invasion that returned Aristide to power. Ten years old then, he became something of a mascot to the visiting American soldiers and the journalists who accompanied them. He shined the boots of General Henry Shelton, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, "so they looked like mirrors," he says, and one American photographer even bought him some basic photo equipment, which he wore strung around his neck with obvious pride.
"I've done too much work for politics," Fabienne says, though he refuses to give up hope that Haiti can change. "Now, too many people hate me, and they hate what I say. But it's for this I try to help my little son, so we can arrive at a new place."
Haitian Militants Losing Faith in President’s Promise of Reform
by Michael Deibert
August 28 - September 3, 2002
The Village Voice
(Read the original here)
Pierre Fabienne cradles his baby in his arms as his girlfriend, a shy-eyed beauty, stands in the doorway of their home on a noisy lane in Port-au-Prince's impoverished Cite Soleil quarter. Fabienne, a gang leader and supporter of embattled Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was instrumental in organizing a cease-fire among most of the district's warring factions last February. He hasn't gotten much in return for his efforts at diplomacy.
"I've sat with Aristide many times and I still have nothing," says Fabienne (not his real name).
"I still have the same room that I pay $300 for six months"—about U.S. $50—"no TV, no nothing, and Aristide knows that I'm a militant for change. He knows I fight for him. When he has something in Port-au-Prince, he calls us. When he wants people to go to his rally in Leogane, he calls us. When he's afraid of a coup d'état, he calls us. He wants us to stay in Cite Soleil, so no one hears about Cite Soleil, so he can call on us whenever he needs us to do something."
In Haiti's ramshackle and decaying capital of 2 million, where exuberantly colored tap-tap buses speed through congested streets blaring sinuous compas music and dark, mysterious mountains rise out of the bay, Cite Soleil's 200,000 residents have long formed the backbone of support for Aristide. Just north of Fort Dimanche—a former prison and torture center favored by former dictators Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier now turned into a squatter camp—and pinioned away from the rest of the city by dusty, potholed Route Nationale 1, Cite Soleil is a place where political activism and a criminal element born of desperate poverty exist side by side.
The tension between the two worlds exploded last month when Amiot Metayer, a political militant and gang leader, was freed by machine-gun-wielding members of his "Cannibal Army," who attacked the Gonaives jail he was being held in with a bulldozer. Metayer had been arrested on suspicion of ordering buildings torched during an outbreak of violence with a rival gang leader. Upon his release, he denounced Aristide, vowing to "fight to the death" any attempt to put him back in prison.
Once, people like Metayer and Fabienne celebrated Aristide. After his first election in 1990, it was the people of the slums who danced in the streets, carrying Aristide's picture and rejoicing at the ouster of the military dictatorship. When Aristide was himself ousted in a bloody coup d'état the next year, the residents of Cite Soleil fought for his return. They endured the nighttime terror of raids by the FRAPH (Front Révolutionnaire Pour l'Avancement et le Progrès d'Haiti) death squads, and often turned up tortured on narrow muddy lanes for uttering the deposed president's name.
Today, however, it is these same militants, claiming they feel forgotten and betrayed, who have begun to call for Aristide's removal, and for the dismissal of both his ruling Lavalas Family political party and Haiti's roundly loathed political opposition, the Convergence Democratique coalition. They argue it's the only way to restore the hope of a just nation that people in the district had fought for for so long. This is no polite debate.
In May, three local activists were shot dead by police, who later claimed to have been attacked by gangs. Local residents, for their part, charged the activists were shot while arriving at an arranged meeting with police. The killings triggered two days of shooting between police and gangs, leaving a pervasive suspicion among locals that, having outlived their usefulness, the militants have become targets.
When asked about the situation at a recent press conference, Aristide replied: "The people of Cite Soleil are the sons and daughters of the country. Their rights are violated when they cannot eat; their rights are violated when they cannot go to school. We must work with all sectors, the opposition and the elite, to improve their lives. We are committed to working with them and we will not rest until we do that."
"We have to protect the rights of every citizen," Aristide added, "but we must also protect those who are visiting Haiti and who live in Haiti."
In Cite Soleil, people are preparing to protect themselves. "I don't think that this government will change, and I don't think that the opposition will change, either," says Dessalines Jacques, a muscular man who takes his name from Haiti's greatest hero, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, creator of the national flag and victor over the colonizing French. This Dessalines, clad in a blue tank top, has just finished inspecting bags of weapons—9mms, shotguns, and M-1s—that Cite Soleil has held in its grasp to ensure it will never again be defenseless.
He says the people need a rache manyok, a peasant expression that literally means to "pull up your manioc"—a root vegetable—but is used by militants to mean getting rid of something tainted or corrupt. "We could form a new political movement, but we cannot do it on our own," he says. "We need all of Haiti's nine departments, plus the Tenth Department"—the name Aristide gave to the estimated 1 million Haitians living abroad—"because we are the children of the Tenth Department. And they know that their children are suffering here."
However shakily, Aristide remains in control; he was re-elected in November 2000 with little opposition. That would have come from the Convergence Démocratique coalition, a motley group of social democrats and ex-authoritarian functionaries with scant public support and pronounced distaste for the Haitian masses. But Convergence members contended the parliamentary elections held earlier were tabulated to favor Aristide's Lavalas party, so they sat out the presidential round.
The Organization of American States has been attempting to broker a deal ever since. Following a mysterious attack on the National Palace by nearly two dozen gunmen last December 17, thousands of armed Aristide partisans, including the youth of Cite Soleil, took to the streets, burning down headquarters and private homes affiliated with the Convergence and, in their words, "defending our palace and defending our president."
Accusations of electoral rigging from Convergence have led to the suspension of $500 million of desperately needed international aid. The group is further demanding that the government not only pay reparations but also disarm militant government supporters. In the meantime, capital residents witness daily scenes of armed convoys of Lavalas officials—who have been continually embroiled in scandal—speeding by in bulletproof SUVs as street children wash their faces in puddles of rainwater.
Some in the slums say they're not ready to abandon faith in their president's promise of reform. "We cannot forget what Aristide has been for us, and we will always be on his side when we see things being done," says Wily Sauvenur, a studious, bearded young man. Sauvenur (not his real name) is carrying a manila envelope containing the freshly printed stationery of a new political movement, the Organizasyon Revolisyone Chalo Jaklen, named after a murdered pro-democracy activist and founded the day militants stormed the National Palace. "But we will not support this or any government when we see nothing being done, and right now we see him sitting with the gwo manje—"high-living political types"—and living like them. Now is not like the days of the coup d'état. We're armed and we're very determined to change this country and they know that, and they will have to deal with us."
Haiti's poor have always had to fight. "In 1991, when the military made Aristide go and began killing our families, we were 10, 12—we were small kids," says Labanier, another self-described political activist. "We are not militants out of the blue. Our fathers and mothers were already militants, against Duvalier, against the military, because it was always bad here and people here always cling onto the dream that things can change."
The chimere, as the largely male and jobless contingent of Haitian society is often called, have been used as a political tool in Haiti for many years. Government and opposition leaders alike draw on the clannish—but not necessarily criminal—gang culture powered by the very real threats young men face in the slums.
"My mother died in '91 when FRAPH came and killed her in Cite Soleil, then they kidnapped my father in 1994 and killed him, too," says Pierre Fabienne, who rallied government partisans on the streets after being contacted by Haitian National Police forces in the early morning hours of December 17. "One day I think the people will stand up to defend their rights. If they keep doing this, if Aristide kills me, if he kills Labanier, all the gangs will come out and he will lose his power. We'll have a rache manyok again."
In the surreal landscape that can be Haiti today—pro-bin Laden graffiti scrawled on crumbling walls, former comedians rallying pro-government partisans with apocalyptic anti-foreign rhetoric—the situation of the militants of Cite Soleil and other neighborhoods is perhaps the clearest sign of just how grave things can become. "One day, man, I'd like to be able to give up this politics," says Fabienne, looking down the hill at the shacks and the naked, laughing children. "If not, I'll die and I couldn't do anything for myself."
Fabienne remembers the days of the U.S. invasion that returned Aristide to power. Ten years old then, he became something of a mascot to the visiting American soldiers and the journalists who accompanied them. He shined the boots of General Henry Shelton, commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, "so they looked like mirrors," he says, and one American photographer even bought him some basic photo equipment, which he wore strung around his neck with obvious pride.
"I've done too much work for politics," Fabienne says, though he refuses to give up hope that Haiti can change. "Now, too many people hate me, and they hate what I say. But it's for this I try to help my little son, so we can arrive at a new place."
Haiti's battered faith
Haiti's battered faith
Impoverished, terrorized, their elections corrupted, the country's people still believe in their hero, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
-
By Michael Deibert
Salon.com
(Read the original here)
June 27, 2000 Haiti, a country I love and where I lived for months in 1997, seems once again to be drifting, inexorably, toward its own terrible, particular marriage of anarchy and dictatorship. In the run-up to the parliamentary elections that were held May 21 (where former president Jean Bertrand-Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party won 16 of 19 Senate seats outright), the country witnessed a spate of political violence on a level not seen since the dark days of Raul
Cedras' military junta of the early 1990s.
In the space of six months, Jean Dominique, the country's most respected journalist, was gunned down outside his radio station, an opposition campaign director was macheted to death inside his home and the campaign offices of opposition party Espace de Concertation were burned to the ground by a mob chanting pro-Lavalas slogans and calling for the death of Espace's leader, former mayor of Port-au-Prince Evans Paul. Recently, the president of Haiti's electoral council fled to the United States, fearing for his life after he refused to sign off on the election results.
Members of various opposition groups were jailed in advance of last week's announcement of the electoral results. The Lavalas government has given explanations for these "detainments" ranging from the accusation that those arrested were accumulating firearms in preparation for a strike against the government, to saying that the detained were being threatened and that they were taken into protective custody for their own good as a "preventative measure." Meanwhile, the disputed count has Lavalas taking 16 of the 17 available Senate seats and likely to control both houses of Parliament.
While a second round of voting has been indefinitely postponed, the elections so far have been marred by allegations of fraud. The opposition has declared the results invalid, vowing to sit out the runoff elections. People murmur that the Organization of American States (OAS) electoral monitors are trying to shove a sham election down the country's throat just so all the international types can go home feeling that their money was well spent on "democratic" development programs, since some form of democracy was restored in 1994. Although the OAS recently released a statement calling the methodology of the vote tally "incorrect," there are many who think that it is too little, too late.
This situation is all the more troubling because Fanmi Lavalas ("lavalas" means "the flood" in Creole) is a political party whose dominant figure, Jean Bertrand-Aristide, has been the country's most outspoken, fearless champion of democratic rights. He fought for those rights during days when championing such a cause meant death.
Aristide is the preeminent political figure in the country. It was Aristide who spoke out against the Tonton Macoutes and human rights abuses of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier's regimes. Aristide, who continued the democratic struggle under the military regimes of Henri Namphy and Prosper Avril, men who found it politically expedient to massacre voters in 1987 on Ruelle Vaillant at Port-au-Prince, and then again in 1988 at the Cathedral St. Jean-Bosco while Aristide, then a practicing Catholic priest, was celebrating Mass.
It was Aristide and Lavalas, also, who were chased out of the country by a military coup in 1991 (after Aristide had become Haiti's first democratically elected president) and then returned to power by the U.S. Marines in 1994. Barred from serving consecutive terms as president, Aristide reluctantly handed over power to his protege, Rene Preval, and is said to be waiting until he can again run for (and almost certainly win) the presidency of Haiti in 2001.
Haitians, meanwhile, are left wondering whether they will have a heroic, visionary Nelson Mandela or an authoritarian, scapegoating Robert Mugabe (two other third-world leaders who came to power on a tide of popular movements) on their hands come that time.
Sadly, as I found out, the hard facts of Haiti don't make it easy to stay a hero for long.
"These are difficult times in Haiti," said Mirlande Manigat, an unsuccessful candidate for the Senate. Manigat is a member of the Assembly of Progressive National Democrats (RDNP), and a constitutional law professor at the University of Quisqueya in the capital. "The many political parties in Haiti reflect the polarization of Haitian society, and one party wins over 90 percent of the vote? Impossible."
A pleasant, highly educated woman, Manigat is the wife of onetime Haitian president Leslie Manigat. Her husband (whom Haitians had never really warmed to and whose election many regarded as fraudulent itself) was booted out of the post in 1988 in the chaos of post-Duvalier Haiti by Gen. Henri Namphy, a vicious dictator now alleged to be slowly and quietly drinking himself to death in exile in the Dominican Republic.
"My political party doesn't believe in violence or dictatorial force, so we now have no recourse ... We are heading for a gloomy time in Haiti." She looked down at her desk, and then wistfully out the window of her university office. "I didn't expect this for my country, now."
The climate of violence affects everyone here. A shellshocked Reuters correspondent, just arrived from the States, appeared at the house I was staying at in Port-au-Prince to inform us that his car had been detained as a group of young men ran past, smashing bottles and carrying tires under their arms. Word on the street had it that they were angry because Lavalas still hadn't paid them for their "work" during the elections. Zenglendos (armed thugs) stuck a gun in my friend's sister's face as she sat stuck in traffic on a downtown street. Finding notebooks that indicated she was a student, they threw them back at her through the car window as they drove away on their motorcycles.
As a friend of mine, a wealthy progressive mulatto, said, "The security situation here is not good." The fact that the streets of a city of 2 million people are empty at 8 p.m. is testimony enough to that.
I got a taste of how unstable that situation was firsthand when a group of friends and I ventured out one night to a hotel in the affluent suburb of Petionville. We went to see a concert by Sweet Micky, the legendary "president" of compas, Haiti's singularly slinky and sensual popular music. Micky is an unrepentant supporter of the 1991 coup against Aristide, and is as famous for his scabrous double-entendres as for his anti-Lavalas politics. His sweaty, exhilarating shows are known to attract a raucous crowd of ex-secret police, soldiers and gang members.
Sure enough, once we arrived among the massive, dressed-to-kill crowd, the audience scattered over the demurely arranged deck chairs and around a pair of illuminated pools -- not once but three times -- as groups of men drew their guns on one another, spitting invective and threatening violence. After one particularly nasty stampede, where I badly twisted my ankle knocking over a table to get away from any potentially flying bullets, a teenage Haitian boy got up with his girlfriend from their own pile of scattered chairs, looked at me and said simply, "Blan," the Creole world for foreigner. He was doubled over with laughter.
But in the face of such terror, kindness persists. A musician insisted that I partake of his young daughter's first Communion cake. An evangelist minister drove me the whole, hot, long, dusty way from Aristide's foundation at Tabarre to drop me off in downtown Port-au-Prince and then refused to take any payment for his services. A Haitian English teacher in a frayed suit who had lived near my own home in Brooklyn for 14 years began a conversation with me, unsolicited, just to hear what New York was like these days. As we walked down the street, he asked me with a sad shake of his head to tell people "what they [Lavalas] did to these elections."
Cleansing rain showers began in a flash on an afternoon of brilliant sunshine, the city never darkening a bit. These people's kindnesses and the stunning beauty of this place are what make the story of what is happening in Haiti something you must know.
"I came down here in 1985 to research voodoo rhythms," says Richard Morse, a surpassingly tall New York transplant, as he takes a drag off an early morning cigarette. We're in the lobby of the hotel he runs, a space where his group, Ram, also plays regular weekly gigs. The hotel itself is one of the outstanding examples of gingerbread architecture in Port-au-Prince.
"I took over the hotel in 1987, formed a band in 1990 and stopped counting governments in 1996." He remembers a time in the early 1990s when coups and counter-coups gave the country three governments in 12 hours. Morse, a Haitian-American educated at Princeton, is not hopeful about the current state of affairs in his adopted country. He says the lines between the old military regimes and Lavalas are getting fuzzier.
"They're trying to set up a system where there's no opposition, and they're willing to try any methods necessary to attain that," he says. He disagrees with the Organization of American States' qualified approval of the election results. "The OAS is saying, 'There were some discrepancies, but everything's OK.' Well everything's not OK. They're killing people. They're killing people and people are going into hiding."
Lavalas essentially terrorized the opposition into hiding until two weeks before the elections, Morse believes. Then, with a statement from Aristide calling for peaceful elections, the violence miraculously ceased and the opposition was told to field their candidates in what was to be a competitive election.
Morse thinks that the OAS is trying to pretend an election is valid despite obvious fraud and unfair voting practices, as they are currently accused of doing in Peru. Critics say the OAS is lowering the bar for what is acceptable in democratic elections under the philosophy that some movement forward (i.e., the holding of elections at all) is better than no movement forward.
Reiterating Manigat's sentiment, Morse stated flatly: "The precedent has been set that if you want to be involved in politics in this country, you've got to get your guns together ... Nothing's changed, the teams have changed but not the modus operandi."
Before we switched to music and New York, he punctuated our political conversation simply. "You can get killed here for saying the shit I just said."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Yvon Neptune and I sat around a table inside the house where he keeps his offices in downtown Port-au-Prince. An intense man with his beard and hair going gray around the edges, Neptune is the spokesman for Fanmi Lavalas who recently defeated Manigat to become a senator in the Haitian parliament.
The room was cool and quiet, away from the noise of the street. Cabinets were arranged around the room, lined with books in several languages. A bird chattered away from somewhere in the garden out back.
"The Haitian people are pleased" with the results of the election, he said. "The majority of the voters are pleased, because the elections have been an opportunity for them to state their position on the situation in Haiti."
Over the course of an hour, Neptune spoke of the policy of agrarian reform begun under President Aristide and continued under Preval, and also about encouraging the private sector, local and foreign, to invest in Haiti. He alluded to the pending approval of agreements with the IMF and World Bank by the new parliament, and of the necessity of modernizing the administrative infrastructure of Haiti.
Asked about Lavalas' commitment to democracy, and about the violence preceding the election, Neptune commented that "we continually stated our position on violence in Haiti: denouncing the violence, condemning the violence. We encourage everybody, everybody," he continued, "not to let themselves be intimidated and to come out and vote. And that's exactly what they did."
When questioned about the attacks on the opposition headquarters, specifically the arson of Espace de Concertation's offices, Neptune shifted blame back to that party's leaders, and their supporters, whom he characterized as party "cronies."
"It is difficult to accept the value of the opposition, the weight of that opposition, because it is practically nonexistent except for a few politicians who would use the airwaves to make accusations," he said. "They often commit violent act [sic] or delegate people to commit violent acts and they go as far as posturing as Fanmi Lavalas partisans. It is very easy for them to do that."
The fire, he implied, was probably set by Espace themselves. "That particular organization failed to pay the rent on that building for almost five years."
Again and again, talking to people of various backgrounds and political stripes, I heard of how Aristide's party has been acting recently in ways that are reminiscent of dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. It's hard for many Haitans to forget that Papa Doc came to power on a wave of noirisme, resentment of the elite light-skinned minority. And recently Lavalas members on state-run TV labeled mulattos of any ideological orientation as the "racist bourgeoisie" for the crime of criticizing Fanmi Lavalas (and by extension Aristide).
Dany Toussaint, a close confidant of Aristide and a newly elected senator, dismissively referred to several prominent mulattos including journalist Jean Dominique as "ti wouj" (the little red ones). Dominique had been an advisor to Preval. But he was murdered shortly after Toussaint's comment. That fact, and Dominique's intimations about Toussaint's alleged involvement in drug trafficking, shifted suspicion for the journalist's killing onto Lavalas.
And yet.
One goes downtown in Port-au-Prince to the slums of Bel Air, near the Palais Nacional, the crowded, congested streets of Avenue Jean-Jacques Dessalines, or the dusty, chaotic suburb of Delmas (favored base for the zenglendos) where, as one friend told me, "everyone gets robbed." You go to these neighborhoods and you are struck by the absolute belief that exists there that "Titid" (as Aristide is affectionately known) is the only man capable of solving Haiti's multitude of problems, the only man who has ever stood up for the poor, the only one who ever gave a damn.
The desperate, begging street boys on the Champs Mars dress in rags and sleep on the ground. I talked to young men who have moved from the countryside to the Cite Soleil and La Saline slums who have never found a job and probably never will. Old women sell fritays and fried bananas under the withering noonday sun. "N'ap toujou renme w Titid" (We will always love you Aristide) is scrawled on crumbling walls.
Some words come to mind that Aristide spoke, just days before the coup of 1991 forced him out of office and Cedras and company began an orgy of bloodletting unrivaled even in Papa Doc's time. Aristide, his back to the wall, had been informed of rumors that a plot was about to topple him and perhaps kill him, and that lists of his supporters who were also to be killed were being drawn up. This was the famous "Pere Lebraun" speech, which many in the media never tire of referring to as the moment when Aristide began calling for the "necklacing" of the opposition:
Again, under the flag of pride, under this flag of dignity, under this flag of solidarity, hand in hand, one encouraging the other, [...] each one will pick up the message of respect that I share with you, this message of justice that I share with you, so that the word ceases to be the word and becomes action. [...] it's you who will find what you deserve, according to what the Mother Law of the country declares.
One alone, we are weak, Together we are strong. Together, together.
Together we are the flood (crowd: Frenzy!)
Do you feel proud? (crowd: Yeah!)
Do you feel proud? (crowd: Yeah!)
So true, that there is power in numbers. Whether or not Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Fanmi Lavalas are committed to using their popularity -- and, more important, Aristide's sacred relationship with many in the country -- to push forward a program of real democratic change remains to be seen, but the signs are not encouraging.
If they fail, or succumb to the temptations for a naked power grab that have too long plagued Haiti's rulers, their betrayal of the Haitian people will be doubly bitter, coming as it does on the backs of all who followed Aristide's clarion call for democracy to their graves: the voters at Ruelle Vaillant, the martyrs of St. Jean Bosco and the thousands who died under the junta of 1991-94.
As always in Haiti, only time (and not words) will bear out their true intentions. But they're walking on a razor's edge.
"With a strong government and parliament, and a strong political program," Neptune said to me toward the end of our interview, "we'll spend less time bickering over power, so the majority who represent the people will have enough time to concentrate on their jobs. I think that's what needs to happen. And it is about to happen."
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About the writer
Michael Deibert is a writer living in New York City. He recently completed his first novel.
Impoverished, terrorized, their elections corrupted, the country's people still believe in their hero, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
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By Michael Deibert
Salon.com
(Read the original here)
June 27, 2000 Haiti, a country I love and where I lived for months in 1997, seems once again to be drifting, inexorably, toward its own terrible, particular marriage of anarchy and dictatorship. In the run-up to the parliamentary elections that were held May 21 (where former president Jean Bertrand-Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party won 16 of 19 Senate seats outright), the country witnessed a spate of political violence on a level not seen since the dark days of Raul
Cedras' military junta of the early 1990s.
In the space of six months, Jean Dominique, the country's most respected journalist, was gunned down outside his radio station, an opposition campaign director was macheted to death inside his home and the campaign offices of opposition party Espace de Concertation were burned to the ground by a mob chanting pro-Lavalas slogans and calling for the death of Espace's leader, former mayor of Port-au-Prince Evans Paul. Recently, the president of Haiti's electoral council fled to the United States, fearing for his life after he refused to sign off on the election results.
Members of various opposition groups were jailed in advance of last week's announcement of the electoral results. The Lavalas government has given explanations for these "detainments" ranging from the accusation that those arrested were accumulating firearms in preparation for a strike against the government, to saying that the detained were being threatened and that they were taken into protective custody for their own good as a "preventative measure." Meanwhile, the disputed count has Lavalas taking 16 of the 17 available Senate seats and likely to control both houses of Parliament.
While a second round of voting has been indefinitely postponed, the elections so far have been marred by allegations of fraud. The opposition has declared the results invalid, vowing to sit out the runoff elections. People murmur that the Organization of American States (OAS) electoral monitors are trying to shove a sham election down the country's throat just so all the international types can go home feeling that their money was well spent on "democratic" development programs, since some form of democracy was restored in 1994. Although the OAS recently released a statement calling the methodology of the vote tally "incorrect," there are many who think that it is too little, too late.
This situation is all the more troubling because Fanmi Lavalas ("lavalas" means "the flood" in Creole) is a political party whose dominant figure, Jean Bertrand-Aristide, has been the country's most outspoken, fearless champion of democratic rights. He fought for those rights during days when championing such a cause meant death.
Aristide is the preeminent political figure in the country. It was Aristide who spoke out against the Tonton Macoutes and human rights abuses of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier's regimes. Aristide, who continued the democratic struggle under the military regimes of Henri Namphy and Prosper Avril, men who found it politically expedient to massacre voters in 1987 on Ruelle Vaillant at Port-au-Prince, and then again in 1988 at the Cathedral St. Jean-Bosco while Aristide, then a practicing Catholic priest, was celebrating Mass.
It was Aristide and Lavalas, also, who were chased out of the country by a military coup in 1991 (after Aristide had become Haiti's first democratically elected president) and then returned to power by the U.S. Marines in 1994. Barred from serving consecutive terms as president, Aristide reluctantly handed over power to his protege, Rene Preval, and is said to be waiting until he can again run for (and almost certainly win) the presidency of Haiti in 2001.
Haitians, meanwhile, are left wondering whether they will have a heroic, visionary Nelson Mandela or an authoritarian, scapegoating Robert Mugabe (two other third-world leaders who came to power on a tide of popular movements) on their hands come that time.
Sadly, as I found out, the hard facts of Haiti don't make it easy to stay a hero for long.
"These are difficult times in Haiti," said Mirlande Manigat, an unsuccessful candidate for the Senate. Manigat is a member of the Assembly of Progressive National Democrats (RDNP), and a constitutional law professor at the University of Quisqueya in the capital. "The many political parties in Haiti reflect the polarization of Haitian society, and one party wins over 90 percent of the vote? Impossible."
A pleasant, highly educated woman, Manigat is the wife of onetime Haitian president Leslie Manigat. Her husband (whom Haitians had never really warmed to and whose election many regarded as fraudulent itself) was booted out of the post in 1988 in the chaos of post-Duvalier Haiti by Gen. Henri Namphy, a vicious dictator now alleged to be slowly and quietly drinking himself to death in exile in the Dominican Republic.
"My political party doesn't believe in violence or dictatorial force, so we now have no recourse ... We are heading for a gloomy time in Haiti." She looked down at her desk, and then wistfully out the window of her university office. "I didn't expect this for my country, now."
The climate of violence affects everyone here. A shellshocked Reuters correspondent, just arrived from the States, appeared at the house I was staying at in Port-au-Prince to inform us that his car had been detained as a group of young men ran past, smashing bottles and carrying tires under their arms. Word on the street had it that they were angry because Lavalas still hadn't paid them for their "work" during the elections. Zenglendos (armed thugs) stuck a gun in my friend's sister's face as she sat stuck in traffic on a downtown street. Finding notebooks that indicated she was a student, they threw them back at her through the car window as they drove away on their motorcycles.
As a friend of mine, a wealthy progressive mulatto, said, "The security situation here is not good." The fact that the streets of a city of 2 million people are empty at 8 p.m. is testimony enough to that.
I got a taste of how unstable that situation was firsthand when a group of friends and I ventured out one night to a hotel in the affluent suburb of Petionville. We went to see a concert by Sweet Micky, the legendary "president" of compas, Haiti's singularly slinky and sensual popular music. Micky is an unrepentant supporter of the 1991 coup against Aristide, and is as famous for his scabrous double-entendres as for his anti-Lavalas politics. His sweaty, exhilarating shows are known to attract a raucous crowd of ex-secret police, soldiers and gang members.
Sure enough, once we arrived among the massive, dressed-to-kill crowd, the audience scattered over the demurely arranged deck chairs and around a pair of illuminated pools -- not once but three times -- as groups of men drew their guns on one another, spitting invective and threatening violence. After one particularly nasty stampede, where I badly twisted my ankle knocking over a table to get away from any potentially flying bullets, a teenage Haitian boy got up with his girlfriend from their own pile of scattered chairs, looked at me and said simply, "Blan," the Creole world for foreigner. He was doubled over with laughter.
But in the face of such terror, kindness persists. A musician insisted that I partake of his young daughter's first Communion cake. An evangelist minister drove me the whole, hot, long, dusty way from Aristide's foundation at Tabarre to drop me off in downtown Port-au-Prince and then refused to take any payment for his services. A Haitian English teacher in a frayed suit who had lived near my own home in Brooklyn for 14 years began a conversation with me, unsolicited, just to hear what New York was like these days. As we walked down the street, he asked me with a sad shake of his head to tell people "what they [Lavalas] did to these elections."
Cleansing rain showers began in a flash on an afternoon of brilliant sunshine, the city never darkening a bit. These people's kindnesses and the stunning beauty of this place are what make the story of what is happening in Haiti something you must know.
"I came down here in 1985 to research voodoo rhythms," says Richard Morse, a surpassingly tall New York transplant, as he takes a drag off an early morning cigarette. We're in the lobby of the hotel he runs, a space where his group, Ram, also plays regular weekly gigs. The hotel itself is one of the outstanding examples of gingerbread architecture in Port-au-Prince.
"I took over the hotel in 1987, formed a band in 1990 and stopped counting governments in 1996." He remembers a time in the early 1990s when coups and counter-coups gave the country three governments in 12 hours. Morse, a Haitian-American educated at Princeton, is not hopeful about the current state of affairs in his adopted country. He says the lines between the old military regimes and Lavalas are getting fuzzier.
"They're trying to set up a system where there's no opposition, and they're willing to try any methods necessary to attain that," he says. He disagrees with the Organization of American States' qualified approval of the election results. "The OAS is saying, 'There were some discrepancies, but everything's OK.' Well everything's not OK. They're killing people. They're killing people and people are going into hiding."
Lavalas essentially terrorized the opposition into hiding until two weeks before the elections, Morse believes. Then, with a statement from Aristide calling for peaceful elections, the violence miraculously ceased and the opposition was told to field their candidates in what was to be a competitive election.
Morse thinks that the OAS is trying to pretend an election is valid despite obvious fraud and unfair voting practices, as they are currently accused of doing in Peru. Critics say the OAS is lowering the bar for what is acceptable in democratic elections under the philosophy that some movement forward (i.e., the holding of elections at all) is better than no movement forward.
Reiterating Manigat's sentiment, Morse stated flatly: "The precedent has been set that if you want to be involved in politics in this country, you've got to get your guns together ... Nothing's changed, the teams have changed but not the modus operandi."
Before we switched to music and New York, he punctuated our political conversation simply. "You can get killed here for saying the shit I just said."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Yvon Neptune and I sat around a table inside the house where he keeps his offices in downtown Port-au-Prince. An intense man with his beard and hair going gray around the edges, Neptune is the spokesman for Fanmi Lavalas who recently defeated Manigat to become a senator in the Haitian parliament.
The room was cool and quiet, away from the noise of the street. Cabinets were arranged around the room, lined with books in several languages. A bird chattered away from somewhere in the garden out back.
"The Haitian people are pleased" with the results of the election, he said. "The majority of the voters are pleased, because the elections have been an opportunity for them to state their position on the situation in Haiti."
Over the course of an hour, Neptune spoke of the policy of agrarian reform begun under President Aristide and continued under Preval, and also about encouraging the private sector, local and foreign, to invest in Haiti. He alluded to the pending approval of agreements with the IMF and World Bank by the new parliament, and of the necessity of modernizing the administrative infrastructure of Haiti.
Asked about Lavalas' commitment to democracy, and about the violence preceding the election, Neptune commented that "we continually stated our position on violence in Haiti: denouncing the violence, condemning the violence. We encourage everybody, everybody," he continued, "not to let themselves be intimidated and to come out and vote. And that's exactly what they did."
When questioned about the attacks on the opposition headquarters, specifically the arson of Espace de Concertation's offices, Neptune shifted blame back to that party's leaders, and their supporters, whom he characterized as party "cronies."
"It is difficult to accept the value of the opposition, the weight of that opposition, because it is practically nonexistent except for a few politicians who would use the airwaves to make accusations," he said. "They often commit violent act [sic] or delegate people to commit violent acts and they go as far as posturing as Fanmi Lavalas partisans. It is very easy for them to do that."
The fire, he implied, was probably set by Espace themselves. "That particular organization failed to pay the rent on that building for almost five years."
Again and again, talking to people of various backgrounds and political stripes, I heard of how Aristide's party has been acting recently in ways that are reminiscent of dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. It's hard for many Haitans to forget that Papa Doc came to power on a wave of noirisme, resentment of the elite light-skinned minority. And recently Lavalas members on state-run TV labeled mulattos of any ideological orientation as the "racist bourgeoisie" for the crime of criticizing Fanmi Lavalas (and by extension Aristide).
Dany Toussaint, a close confidant of Aristide and a newly elected senator, dismissively referred to several prominent mulattos including journalist Jean Dominique as "ti wouj" (the little red ones). Dominique had been an advisor to Preval. But he was murdered shortly after Toussaint's comment. That fact, and Dominique's intimations about Toussaint's alleged involvement in drug trafficking, shifted suspicion for the journalist's killing onto Lavalas.
And yet.
One goes downtown in Port-au-Prince to the slums of Bel Air, near the Palais Nacional, the crowded, congested streets of Avenue Jean-Jacques Dessalines, or the dusty, chaotic suburb of Delmas (favored base for the zenglendos) where, as one friend told me, "everyone gets robbed." You go to these neighborhoods and you are struck by the absolute belief that exists there that "Titid" (as Aristide is affectionately known) is the only man capable of solving Haiti's multitude of problems, the only man who has ever stood up for the poor, the only one who ever gave a damn.
The desperate, begging street boys on the Champs Mars dress in rags and sleep on the ground. I talked to young men who have moved from the countryside to the Cite Soleil and La Saline slums who have never found a job and probably never will. Old women sell fritays and fried bananas under the withering noonday sun. "N'ap toujou renme w Titid" (We will always love you Aristide) is scrawled on crumbling walls.
Some words come to mind that Aristide spoke, just days before the coup of 1991 forced him out of office and Cedras and company began an orgy of bloodletting unrivaled even in Papa Doc's time. Aristide, his back to the wall, had been informed of rumors that a plot was about to topple him and perhaps kill him, and that lists of his supporters who were also to be killed were being drawn up. This was the famous "Pere Lebraun" speech, which many in the media never tire of referring to as the moment when Aristide began calling for the "necklacing" of the opposition:
Again, under the flag of pride, under this flag of dignity, under this flag of solidarity, hand in hand, one encouraging the other, [...] each one will pick up the message of respect that I share with you, this message of justice that I share with you, so that the word ceases to be the word and becomes action. [...] it's you who will find what you deserve, according to what the Mother Law of the country declares.
One alone, we are weak, Together we are strong. Together, together.
Together we are the flood (crowd: Frenzy!)
Do you feel proud? (crowd: Yeah!)
Do you feel proud? (crowd: Yeah!)
So true, that there is power in numbers. Whether or not Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Fanmi Lavalas are committed to using their popularity -- and, more important, Aristide's sacred relationship with many in the country -- to push forward a program of real democratic change remains to be seen, but the signs are not encouraging.
If they fail, or succumb to the temptations for a naked power grab that have too long plagued Haiti's rulers, their betrayal of the Haitian people will be doubly bitter, coming as it does on the backs of all who followed Aristide's clarion call for democracy to their graves: the voters at Ruelle Vaillant, the martyrs of St. Jean Bosco and the thousands who died under the junta of 1991-94.
As always in Haiti, only time (and not words) will bear out their true intentions. But they're walking on a razor's edge.
"With a strong government and parliament, and a strong political program," Neptune said to me toward the end of our interview, "we'll spend less time bickering over power, so the majority who represent the people will have enough time to concentrate on their jobs. I think that's what needs to happen. And it is about to happen."
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Michael Deibert is a writer living in New York City. He recently completed his first novel.
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