A View of Haiti

The leading whore house in Portau-Prince is the Flamingo, where the girls are black, but the guests are white and American.

You enter the dark, friendly reception, choose a girl, and take her outside to drink and dance in the warm Haitian night air. Time passes, the rum flows, voodoo drums throb in the distance. Then two men from Westport, Conn., come outside. They flaunt their bellies in gaudy Hawaiian shirts and walk heavily, because they are already drunk. Each sits down with his whore.

One of the men belches, and then laughs. The hot sweat trembles on his face. He closes his eyes as the whore lays soft kisses on his neck and strokes his hair.

In a way, the scene was an apt symbol of Haiti and the Americans who go there in pursuit of the crystal-white, palm-fringed beaches, sparkling blue water, and hot Caribbean sun. Tourists marvel at the dramatic color of the Haitian landscape, its coconut, papaya, and mango trees, its high jagged mountains, and its sharp cliffs and quiet coves. They drink Haitian rum, watch the colorful folklore shows, and swing at night to the fast rhythms of the Haitian music. And most take a curious look at the native culture and its black primitivism.

Beneath these trappings of beauty and romance the life force of Haiti lies untouched. The people are desperately poor, they are uneducated, and they live in the small huts and villages of the countryside--where the only signs of modernization are telephone wires strung along the rutted and tortuous roads. Most peasants work small plots of land for their food, live in thatched huts or rusted tin shacks, and try to raise pigs or chickens for trade in the city marketplaces.

Much of the land is mountainous and semi-arid. There was a drought in the north last fall, and there will be a famine this spring. CARE is presently mobilizing to send emergency health teams with food supplies to the area, but several thousand people will probably die of starvation.

Education is sporadic and backward. At the most five to ten per cent of the people are literate. One teacher was proud of her class of 40 students because after a year of lessons each had learned to write his name.

The cities, particularly Port-au-Prince with its 250,000 inhabitants, are the most sordid parts of Haiti. In the sprawling market places, you have to breathe through your mouth to avoid the smell and clench your teeth so the flies can't get in. Beggars are everywhere and swarm around you. Children follow you holding out their hands for money. A cripple throws himself in your path, clinging shakily to his crutch, and without saying a word expresses the horror of human degradation.

Women sit by great kettles of food, or display brightly-colored cloths, or guard piles of oranges, bananas, and mangoes. Throngs of people crowd the markets and mill in the little shops where shoes, mahogany products, straw hats, sisal baskets, and old French grammar books are sold. There is movement and excitement in the streets--but the energy has no focus, it leads nowhere.

The harsh reality of this market place economy is stagnation. There are no signs of progress, and most American officials see little hope of it. American corporations have invested $55 million dollars in Haiti, but their effect on the economy has been negligible. Only a flour mill, which imports its wheat from the States, sells in the Haitian markets. The other products--coffee, bauxite, and sugar--are all for export.

Moreover, American businesses are currently in the process of disinvesting in Haiti, either by selling their land or by refusing to cover depreciation costs. Whatever part the U.S. might have played in aiding Haiti with job-training, education, and industrial development seems to have been squandered.

One need not ponder the imponderables to discover what lies behind Haiti's stunning poverty, its stagnation, and the withdrawal of American money. The answer is easy: Dr. Francois Duvalier, self-declared president of Haiti for life, the notorious "Papa Doc."

At one time a country doctor, Duvalier came to power in 1957, emerging as president after months of political upheaval, rioting, executions, and military rule. He modeled his regime after that of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and enforced it with his secret police, the famed Tonton Macoute.

It is to the credit, however small, of the U.S. government that it finally terminated its aid to Duvalier. Friction developed during the dictator's early years when members of the American AID mission--which between 1945 and 1963 poured $105 million into Haiti--often woke to find that their Haitian workers had taken the American trucks to drive to Portau-Prince for one of Papa Doc's military parades.

Events reached a climax in 1963, when Dulavier ordered the American military mission, a single company of Marines who were training the army in police work, out of the country for "interference" in Haitian politics. A force of Haitian exiles, supported and armed by the new president of the Dominican Republic, Juan Bosch, stood poised on the border. Invasion forces were thought to be arming in Cuba, and a story circulated that Duvalier had reservations on a plane to Paris and was ready to flee the country.

Fearing the worst and genuinely disgusted with Duvalier, the U.S. withdrew its AID mission in August. Washington maintains a small embassy staff in Port-au-Prince and terms its relations with Duvalier "cool but correct."

Since 1963 Papa Doc has tightened his hold on the country, most recently in a purge of 19 army officers last summer. Although the political situation in Haiti is inherently unstable, much of the violence has subsided--some of it, of course, remains.

Posters of Duvalier are everywhere, and a heavy guard of soldiers with rifles and bayonets patrols the entrances to his palace. Small police units stop traffic on the country roads at intervals of 20 miles and ask for identification. "What do they want?" you ask your driver. "It's an inspection," he says, and will say nothing more.

Stories of executions by the Tonton Macoute are common. Recently, after a Haitian citizen had been murdered in broad daylight, a judge ruled that he had died a natural death. As one of the characters in Graham Greene's novel The Comedians remarks, "Violent deaths are natural deaths in Haiti."

The Tonton Macoute themselves are veiled in mystery. They do not wear uniforms, but move among the people--who don't talk about politics, because anyone could be an informer. One university student admitted that his father was in jail:

"How long has he been there?"

"Five years."

"Have you seen him?"

"No."

"Where is he?"

"I don't know."

"What was he arrested for?"

"I don't know."

'Are there many like him?"

"Yes, many."

What is more disconcerting than Duvalier's fascism is his complete disregard for his country's poverty. One Washington official said, "We asked Duvalier what programs he was developing, and with a smile he replied, 'What programs would you like?' He has no programs.

"The government's revenue from taxes is about $13 million. A breakdown of the budget would probably show 80 per cent going into salaries, and 20 per cent going to the foreign bank accounts of high Haitian officials. Duvalier did not invent the system, but he has perfected it."

The concept of government service does not exist in Haiti, nor has it ever been a part of Haitian history. Since the early 19th century--when Henri Christophe, the country's first black ruler, drove 20,000 slaves to their deaths in the construction of his massive fortress, the Citadel, high in the mountains over Cap Haitien--the government has existed for its own benefit. It simply does not do things for the people. It does not build highways or schools or hospitals; it does not try to improve agricultural methods or encourage industry; it does not give care to the young or the aged. Projects undertaken with AID money lie abandoned.

Of the 2000 students who graduate each year from the university in Port-au-Prince, 1000 go into law; for law is the road to politics, and politics is the source of wealth.

From this tradition of government, in which the only policies are survival and enrichment, a society of two world has emerged. One is the small and largely self-contained world of Duvalier--Papa Doc has not been outside of Port-au-Prince since 1963 and rarely appears in public--and his government. It is the world of upper classes and the few members of the intellectual and commercial elite who have not fled the country, the world of Graham Greene and his comedians. But the vast majority of the Haitian people live in the other world, the world of the countryside, whose relations with the central government are rare.

There are those who would say the life of a Haitian peasant in the countryside has little value, that a life of poverty is cheap, that the natives put on a colorful show in the nightclub, but that with no shoes and no automobiles they cannot grasp the touchstones of happiness.

It is surprising, and confusing, to many Americans that despite their poverty, backwardness, and illiteracy, and despite, political terrorism, repression, and censorship, the life of the Haitian peasantry has a richness and a joy of its own.

Small individual land holdings are the way of life in the countryside and give the people something tangible, no matter how impoverished, that they can call their own. Property, the home, and the family become a basis for life.

Passion and primitivism are also part of the Haitian people's strength. In a Haitian church on Sunday morning, they make no pretense of wealth or sophistication. They don't suffer mal du siecle, they aren't neurotic, introspective, or brooding. They come to church to share the little they have.

The minister is not facile with words and has no finely embroidered altarcloth; but he speaks with passion, and speaks in a language the people understand. The Haitians have found something--perhaps an acceptance of each other--which must be cherished and defended. They seem very close to Christianity.

The same kind of joy and spontaneity springs from the market places, despite the squalor, the smell, and the flies. On market day, the people rise before dawn to assemble their wares and carry them, in great bundles on their heads, to the villages. The market place becomes a meeting place where people find their friends, catch up on the news, and exchange their goods. They will bargain furiously over prices, not so much out of bitterness as with an exuberant sense of play.

A voodoo ceremony--most Haitians are Catholic, but voodoo practice is widespread--shows another form of the people's life-affirmation. The sacrifice of animals and the drinking of hot blood are brutal aspects of voodoo, but in essence the ceremony is a celebration. The villages gather together around the pounding voodoo drums, and the dancing and singing are frenzied.

Two men perform a fire dance, and the mesmerism is like that of a bull-fight. The drums and the singing grow quiet as the two men, both stripped to the waist, both black as the night, dance with torches in each hand. They pass the torches over their bodies and let the flames lick their faces. They walk on hot coals and seem to wash their bodies in the fire--which does not burn because the voodoo god protects his dancers.

Suddenly the spirit of an evil god possesses a young girl, who falls violently to the ground and rolls, screaming, onto the fire. The two dancers rush forward, pull her back from the flames, and hold her until the voodoo priest can drive out the spirit.

The voodoo may be lunacy, the religion may be primitive, and the market place unsanitary. But one can not help wondering if the Haitian people aren't able to relate to each other in a way that most Americans have forgotten.

It is easy for an American to be-little the way of life of the Haitian peasantry, to despair the poverty, and to dismiss the country as a fascist dictatorship. But most Haitians would dismiss the American dream with equal ease and with possibly more justification. For what, after all, is progress, when Americans flounder in their affluence and persist in the path of war, racism, and riot?

That the Haitian peasants can be proud of their life comes as a first surprise to an American. A second surprise is that they are loyal to Papa Doc.

Their loyalty, of course, has a basis in fear, the political fear of the vicious Tonton Macoute and the mystic fear that Duvalier's own voodoo practice has generated. He takes the name "Baron Samedi"--one of the manifestations of the voodoo deity--and in 1963, when he popularized the story that he had engineered Kennedy's assassination through voodoo, many Haitians believed him.

But the Haitian loyalty to Duvalier goes beyond fear. Papa Doc has been in power for ten and a half years, which is a major accomplishment in a land with a history of political upheaval and violence. That Duvalier does nothing for them troubles the people, but they have no tradition of democracy or people-oriented government, and by the standards of the past, Papa Doc is an honorable man. He has survived, he has brought a semblance of stability to the country, and in the minds of the people he has identified himself with Haiti by declaring himself with Haiti by declaring himself president for life. As they owe their lives to the republic, they feel they owe their loyalty to its president.

If there is to be progress in Haiti, it will have to come through private initiative; for the Haitian government has no interest in change, and Washington, although genuinely eager to help, has been unable to deal with the methods of development.

There is considerable missionary enthusiasm in the country. A Baptist mission settled in the hills above Port-au-Prince 20 years ago, and the Episcopal church now counts more than 30,000 Haitians among its members. In terms of education, health practices and agricultural skill, the missionary work is valuable. But missionaries have an ugly fondness for concentrating more on converting the people than on helping them. With what joy, they say, are the natives discovering that Baptism is right and voodoo is wrong, that the great god Yahweh does, in fact, exist!

The most impressive work now being done in Haiti is at the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in the mountains near Les Chapelles. The hospital was founded 11 years ago and continues to run largely on the money and personal commitment of Dr. and Mrs. Sydney Mellon, of the famous Mellon family.

The hospital has 90 beds, which are always full, and a talented staff of doctors and nurses, many of whom spend voluntary terms of six months or a year at the hospital. More important, however, is the hospital's efforts in community development. A serious program in health education and veterinary care is slowly bringing the people to the ways of change. Teams work in the fields with the Haitian peasants, teaching them irrigation, soil improvement and croprotation techniques. A school has been started for the children of the community, and construction at the hospital has given the people job opportunities and taught them building and carpentry skills.

Approaching Les Chapelles, one sees the difference immediately. The fields are greener, and there are men working them, which in Hiati is rare. The huts look sturdier, and the pigs and horses are healthier. These are tangible signs of progress that even Duvalier, a doctor himself, can understand and respect.

The hospital is a monument to what man can do, but it stands alone, dwarfed by the stunning poverty of the land, the fascism of Papa Doc, and the terrorism of the Tonton Macoute--more sobering monuments to what man actually does.Stories of executions by the TONTON MACOUTE are common. Recently, after a Haitian citizen had been murdered on broad daylight, a judge ruled that he had died a natural death.