On
Thursday Haiti, the dark island,
will have celebrated 200 years
of independence
By
Jonathan
Power
January 2, 2004
LONDON - Graham Greene's great novel "the
Comedians", set in the Haiti of the dictatorship of Papa
Doc, gives some support to the artist's pious hope that
"a writer is not so powerless as he usually feels and a
pen, as well as a silver bullet, can draw blood." How
else to explain how this half of a quite small Caribbean
island gets more press than it deserves?
It is, indeed, in part the legacy of Graham Greene
who, as I am too, was often drawn to the island because
of its idiosyncratic but rich culture and, not least, its
lurid shades of darkness and light that permeate the
political spectrum. Greene, whilst capturing the ugliness
and horror of the Tonton Macoutes, also draws a careful
portrait of the civilized and caring Dr Magiot.
However, the outside world's fascination with the forces
of darkness represented in most European and Asian
cultures by men with black skins means that the first
image is more remembered than the second.
It is also in part because, like Central America,
Haiti is in America's back yard and when the politics of
this impoverished "wrinkled wasteland" go wrong the
people might take to their boats, their rafts and their
planks of wood and make for Florida.
So on Thursday, to mark the 200th anniversary of the
slave revolt that ended French dominion over the island,
reporters descended on Port au Prince, which despite its
coups, riots, uprisings, assassinations and a farrago of
tyrants, continues to totter along with the same
whirlwind of activity on every sidewalk- vendors,
carpenters, ironsmiths- a cacophony of bursting noise
amid the conflicting smells of clean-burning charcoal and
dank open sewers. Women, with an African swing, walk the
streets, portering great basins on their heads, stuffed
with contraband merchandise. Scribes sit under shade
trees poised with their ancient clackety typewriters to
await their illiterate customers. Children pour out of
the school gates in their French-sailor uniforms and make
for the homes of the rich in the cool hills above.
Wagons, homemade buses, stuffed with passengers, painted
like fancy wrapping paper each with its own message,
"Dieu est Bon and "L'Armee Celeste", tout for trade.
Haiti, we regular visitors have found, seems to resist
change. It remains the poorest country in the Western
hemisphere. Its forests are laid bare, its soil depleted,
its water table ever lower. After the 14 years of
Francois Duvalier (Papa Doc) and the 15 years of his son,
Jean-Claude (Baby Doc), leaders came and went and did so
with astonishing frequency until in 1991 came the victory
in a rare election of the "hollowed-cheeked, goggle-eyed,
wide-mouthed" revolutionary, ex priest Jean-Bertrand
Aristide. Since then, apart from interruption by a
military coup and a short term of office by an ally,
Aristide has remained the politician on top.
Aristide, who, whilst a priest, had nearly sacrificed
his life a number of times as a non-violent warrior
against oppression, seemed to promise much when he won
the presidency after an amazing show of electoral
strength by the poor and downtrodden. Tragically for
Haiti, as with all his predecessors, power has turned to
dust in his hands. He has achieved little and in a
desperate effort to maintain his political power he too
has his bands of armed thugs and too readily indulges in
corruption and electoral shenanigans.
The United States has intervened twice. The first was
in 1915 and the second in 1994. The circumstances- and
the outcomes- were amazingly similar. In 1915 there had
been continuous rebellion and six presidents in four
years. The last one had been captured by a street mob,
hacked to death and his parts distributed around town.
The American record of occupation was decidedly mixed. It
provoked resentment by reintroducing the French system of
forced labor. At the same time there were roads,
hospitals and the first automatic phone system in Latin
America. It wasn't enough. It took 18 years for the
Americans to conclude they were on a voyage to
nowhere.
Eighty years later the U.S. repeated the experience
after an invasion eased yet another military man from
power and the then deposed Aristide was reinstated. Yet
America has effectively given up the ghost again,
defeated by the corruption, the ever present violence and
the often bizarre, always self-interested, maneuverings
of the political class. It also left behind a bad taste-
the revelation that anti-democracy thugs had been at
times during the early 1990s on the CIA payroll, contrary
to White House policy.
Haiti- dangerous yesterday, dangerous today- thanks to
Graham Greene will always hold the world's attention. But
whether it will ever advance out of its penury, poverty
and sadistic violence seems impossible to foresee. Two
hundred years on, darkness appears to have won over
light.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2004 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
Water on Stone - The Story of Amnesty
International"
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