Criticism Banned : Haiti: Land of Poverty and Fear

There is no order to this ruined little Caribbean country, only endless indelible images from the haunting to the absurd.

In the city streets, blocks from the palace gates, children with orange hair and distended bellies rummage listlessly through trash heaps, slowly dying of starvation--as in Africa--from the protein deficiency kwashiorkor; they are so common throughout Haiti that doctors refer to them in shorthand as “the Kwash Kids.”

Next door to the huge, ornate national bank building, bustling with purpose and pin-striped suits, a naked man of perhaps 20--as oblivious to passers-by as they are to him--sits in the filth of an open, running sewer, vigorously soaping himself down, the foaming suds covering his body in a pale shade of gray.

People scramble to safety as an army truck, siren screaming, suddenly thunders down a busy street, its bed full of grim-faced young soldiers with M-1 rifles and Uzi submachine guns, going who knows where in such a hurry, so early in the day. A cab driver only shrugs and suggests that perhaps the ruler is about to leave the palace to spend a day at his beach house.

In the hotels, meantime, visitors to Haiti awaken to such government-approved TV fare as “The Flintstones,” “Tales From the Dark Side,” the Rev. Robert Schuller’s “Hour of Power” from the Crystal Cathedral, and a wide range of old Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne westerns. If you don’t like that, there is an all-day sports channel.

Swarming With Missionaries

At breakfast on a hotel terrace, three young German dentists, volunteers at a rural clinic, are earnestly absorbed in a discussion of the difficulties inherent in trying to teach flossing to people who subsist mainly on a diet of sugar cane and rice. They clearly see nothing preposterous in this mission.

At an adjacent table, an elderly Haitian waiter, with the weary courtesy of one who has been through this countless times before, reassures two beaming Baptist missionaries that, yes indeed, he “has been saved.”

Haiti today is literally swarming with such missionaries. Volunteers of all faiths and nationalities, they man hundreds of “feeding stations” throughout the country, physically sustaining thousands with the only meal they will get that day--invariably rice and beans--while, on the spiritual front, trying to drive that Satan, voodoo, from the Haitian soul.

For most Haitians, finding drinking water is another central daily preoccupation.

In rural areas, villagers often walk miles to the nearest tap, carrying the water home in jugs atop their heads. Sometimes they earn a few extra dollars posing for passing tourists who invariably find them picturesque, especially the children and women in their bright bandannas.

Urban slum dwellers enjoy no such minor windfalls, since there is nothing even remotely colorful in their life style, only the unrelieved misery of people living in some of the most densely populated, diseased pieces of real estate on Earth--sprawling shantytowns of cardboard and tin, clogged with the perpetual stench of garbage and open sewers baking in the tropical sun.

Here, there are an estimated four public drinking water faucets per 100,000 residents--those available for only a few hours on alternate, unscheduled days. So, never certain when there will be water, people stand in long, patient lines every day with their pitchers and buckets, and wait.

Toilets are communal, generally the nearest trash heap. The leading cause of death is malnutrition, followed closely by tuberculosis, diarrhea, hepatitis, typhoid fever, malaria and other preventable diseases.

Few Can Escape

An occasional few make a desperate attempt to escape to the United States in flimsy little boats, but, of course, for most there is no escape. They either drown or get sent back.

Such is life for the majority in this land of a few happy millionaires and 6 million of the poorest people on Earth, a place 600 miles from the Florida shores, where one family has ruled through fear and corruption for 28 years and it is strictly forbidden to criticize the ruler, Jean-Claude Duvalier, 33, who bears the mighty title president-for-life.

Here, nearly every measurable national statistic is dismal: illiteracy rate 80% (although the official language is French, an estimated 90% of the population speaks only Creole, there is no effective bilingual program in public schools and most children do not attend); life expectancy 54; infant mortality rate one in four; minimum legal daily wage, $3--which most people would be happy to get.

Unemployment is, by most estimates, well over 50%; average per capita income is less than $300, but, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the majority of Haitians actually live on less than $150 per year--the lowest living standard in this hemisphere, well below what the World Bank calls the “absolute poverty line” worldwide.

Haiti is also one of the most densely populated countries in the world (with a ratio of 651 people per square kilometer of arable land, versus 383 in India, 53 in the United States).

And, since the AIDS epidemic, tourism is down by 75%.

The Haitian elite, of course, never gets near this wretched mess.

According to various world lending agencies, an estimated 5% to 10% of the population controls anywhere from 50% to 85% of Haiti’s national wealth. About 250 to 500 families are thought to be multimillionaires.

These people, along with a small American colony, live in an enclave high above the squalor of the city, in the hillside suburb of Petionville, a place of boutiques, golf courses, luxury hotels, art galleries and lavish homes with swimming pools. Here, the water always flows. Residents build their own water tanks and buy as much water as they need from the government. The water commissioner is said to be one of the wealthiest men in Haiti.

The leader of this little kingdom remains equally insulated from the realities outside his door. Casually called “The White House” by government officials, the Haitian National Palace sits grandly in the center of the city, a gleaming white monument upon vast, manicured lawns, glaringly incongruous amid the sea of human wreckage surrounding it, with an anti-aircraft gun on the front lawn, radar dishes on the roof--and, of course, soldiers everywhere, most no more than sullen-faced, swaggering teen-agers.

Palace Vicinity Cleared

The main task of the palace guard, it appears, is to make sure that nobody walks or drives on the surrounding streets or even sits in one of the adjacent parks. But no Haitian ever strays into these forbidden zones--only an occasional tourist, who is promptly hissed away, usually with a menacing little flourish of a rifle butt.

Assisting the army in its work are the Tontons Macoutes, that special police unit originally created by Duvalier’s father, Francois (better known as Papa Doc), to exterminate his political enemies, real or imagined, during his bloody, black nationalist coup against the ruling mulatto elite in 1957.

Still legendary for the vicious enthusiasm with which they approached their task, the Macoutes (“bogeymen” in Creole) swarm through the cities and villages of Haiti today by untold thousands, manning the ever-present roadblocks, keeping vigil in even the smallest, dustiest rural towns. The largest contingent, naturally, is headquartered next door to the palace.

In a bid at image repair, however, Duvalier officially renamed the Tontons Macoutes the Volunteers for National Security (VSN) several years ago, and today the government routinely likens them to a domestic “peace corps,” albeit one with Uzis.

Still ‘Mad Dogs’

To the disgruntlement of many a Tonton, Duvalier has even stripped them of the bell-bottom trousers, spike-heeled boots and dark, wrap-around sunglasses they so favored under Papa Doc, requiring them instead to wear ordinary navy blue uniforms.

Few Haitians seem impressed.

“Mad dogs are mad dogs,” one prominent citizen said with a shrug. “The Macoutes may be on a leash now, but who knows when they will be set free?”

One of the first truths a visitor to Haiti learns is that most citizens, both the rich and the poor, live with the constant suspicion that they are being watched, followed, perhaps even overheard by the Macoutes.

Such is the fear that even in private, the most intelligent, prominent Haitians, most of them American-educated, practically demand guarantees of anonymity sworn in blood.

“Last time I talked to a reporter, I said some little thing that pissed Duvalier off--and he figured out who it was,” one of Haiti’s most prominent citizens said. “I got away with it then, because of who I am. But a second time, I might not be so lucky, and I don’t want to find myself living in Miami.”

“Don’t even write my initials down,” gasped another leading citizen, paling. “You don’t know these people; they’re probably following you everywhere you go, and they’re capable of going through your notebooks when you’re not in your room.”

Outright Terror Gone

Still, both rich and poor generally agree that while the police-state fear remains a part of daily life, the outright terror of Papa Doc’s day is certainly gone. Jean-Claude, nicknamed Baby Doc by his subjects, is universally regarded as a more mellow man--or, as one succinct Haitian said, “He’s not a killer at heart.”

Nowadays, political enemies are no longer murdered and thrown into the streets as object lessons, as reported in Papa Doc’s day. Most commonly, they are now only jailed or exiled. Just last summer, three Belgian priests, along with the director of a Catholic radio station, were exiled for calling a government referendum an undemocratic sham.

The government seems pleased with this modified climate. Last year, in another measure of progress, the state press proudly touted an open letter from Duvalier to the army, police and VSN, which decreed, in essential part:

“The police are strictly forbidden to physically torture or to perpetrate physical violence at the time of arrests, investigations, questioning and during detention.”

Torture Stories Remain

But stories of torture and missing persons still abound.

Last summer a 77-year-old Catholic priest, critical of the government, was beaten to death--either by burglars or by the secret police, depending on whom you believe.

And, although the regime publicly insists that there are no political prisoners remaining in Haiti’s jails, one top-level government official--displaying a cynical candor that, as it turns out, permeates the upper echelons of Haiti’s ruling elite--bluntly admitted in private that he had authorized the release of two just that day.

(Amnesty International and the Catholic Church put the number of missing at anywhere from 7 to 23; the U.S. Embassy says it could be anywhere from none to 10 or 11.)

Either way, the conflicting realities of Haiti today are vividly reflected in scenes from Gonaive, a parched, listless little coastal town two hours from the capital, where food riots broke out last year, apparently sparked by corruption in the distribution of food at CARE warehouses. Whether police shot one, three or 10 remains in dispute.

Chased Through Cafe

In any case, the town remained quiet for many months. One afternoon only a few weeks ago, a particularly memorable demonstration of government tolerance occurred inside a small, empty cafe, where five members of the owner’s family were throwing themselves enthusiastically into the preparation of three sandwiches. (The occasional tourist who passes through Haiti these days is lavishly pampered.)

Suddenly, the front door burst open and a youth of around 18 ran inside, a soldier with an M-1 in hot pursuit. Crashing across the room, the boy flung himself out the back door and raced down a dusty village street. The soldier, hot and furious, stared after him, then, in disgust, turned around and returned the way he came.

“That’s progress under Jean-Claude,” a Haitian bystander observed wryly. “At least the kid had the nerve to run. Under Papa Doc, he would’ve been shot in the back.”

But, on Nov. 28, it was back to business as usual in Gonaive. Four demonstrators were shot to death by Duvalier’s militia, and several others wounded, when a large crowd protesting poverty and unemployment refused to disperse. The government called them “professional agitators . . . subversives.” Angry locals said they were only hungry Haitians.

Periodically, over the years, small bands of Haitian exiles have plotted invasions--only to be arrested before they left the United States or smashed the minute they landed on Haitian shores. Two years ago, four people were killed when a makeshift bomb exploded in a car parked a few blocks from the palace. But, otherwise, apart from the sporadic unrest in Gonaive, even minor acts of rebellion have been almost unheard of in Haiti ever since the Duvaliers took power.

On the surface at least, the overwhelming majority of Haitians appear to be among the most patient, obedient, passive people on Earth--perhaps because so many still recall the June night 28 years ago when Papa Doc, backed by the army, ended the 19-day rule of a president who was immensely popular among the urban poor.

From midnight until dawn, it is said, the steady sounds of machine gun fire and screams echoed up the hillsides as soldiers and police marched through one of the city’s largest slums, reportedly shooting everyone in sight. The death toll, officially ignored, was said to number in the thousands.

In any case, the slums have been silent ever since.

Accept Their Lot

Most Haitians seem to consider it their lot to beg for food and water, lose their teeth by age 25 and die young of treatable disease. Whether they are sitting in a thatch hut in some dusty village or in the midst of the city’s slums, they display neither self-pity nor resentment toward the wealthy few in their midst.

Crime, even petty theft, is almost non-existent in Haiti. No hidden anger is even expressed in graffiti, and the opportunity to at least deface a Duvalier is everywhere. Literally thousands of pictures of Baby Doc, Papa Doc and both their wives are plastered all over Haiti--on billboards, on walls of buildings, in offices and churches, even on hundreds of gauzy little pennants fluttering from overhead electrical wires. But not a single one is marred.

Instead, the poor buy cheap state lottery tickets when they have a few extra pennies, they frequent the pawnshops that are on every other corner, sometimes they buy a $3 gallon of rum--though there is almost no alcoholism problem in Haiti either. Cigarettes are commonly sold not by the pack but one at a time, five cents each. Haitians, even the soldiers, are constantly bumming cigarettes from tourists.

Haitians seldom seem to show irritability, even toward each other.

Fights Often Bloody

(When they do, however, it can be gruesome, usually involving women fighting over a man. “It’s horrible, they deliberately try to mutilate the other woman, they bite off an eyelid, or a lip--something that no cosmetic surgeon could begin to repair,” Dr. Steve Winter, a temporary volunteer from Yale-New Haven Hospial, working at a country hospital, said with a shudder.)

As in most poor societies, most Haitians seem to take comfort in their religion. And, despite the zealous efforts of missionaries, voodoo remains the most widespread religion in Haiti today. (As the common local joke goes: Haiti is 70% Catholic, 30% Protestant, and 100% voodoo.)

Some say that Papa Doc himself was a believer. Certainly, being an astute politician, he courted the village witch doctors assiduously, even inviting them to the palace, it is said, for regular consultations. Likewise, Jean-Claude, a Catholic, has never so much as frowned at voodoo rituals, despite the fact that educated Haitians consider them primitive, revolting and embarrassing.

And, no doubt about it, voodoo ceremonies, whether packaged for tourists or real, have their hair-raising moments. Among other things, voodoo calls for sacrifices to the gods, generally live chickens, goats and cows. When the proper ceremonial frenzy is reached, somebody bites the head off the flapping chicken and drinks its blood. According to a local guide, a true believer himself, “They also bite the throat of the goats; but with the cows they use knifes, because the cow, he fights back.” (In fact, dogs seem to be about the only animals in Haiti with any personal security. Haitians eat cats.)

Reminders of Beauty

There are, of course, occasional reminders that, for all its misery, Haiti can also be a place of both beauty and pleasure, even for the poor.

Beauty, in fact, can often be found in the heart of the worst slums, in a brilliantly colored canvas, often reflecting whimsy and joy, tacked to some shanty wall, or on city street corners, in the displays of gleaming mahogany and stone sculpture, the work of struggling young artists, most so desperate nowadays that they practically give their works away to the few tourists.

It is a lingering enigma of Haiti that, despite its squalor--or perhaps because of it--Haitian artists, painters in particular, have long been world-famous, unmatched by any other Caribbean country in both their numbers and dazzling creativity.

And, for an earthy reminder that Haiti, for all its poverty, remains a land of pleasure, only consider that, by the best estimates, 26,000 prostitutes from the Dominican Republic stay busy in this country, because, as one of them put it, “Haitian men are more interested in sex than Dominicans.”

A Flirting Divorcee

Or, drop by a luxurious Petionville hotel, the owner’s silver Rolls-Royce parked in front. In the bar, a beautiful blond divorcee, 40, a Chicago travel agent, was flirting brazenly with a 23-year-old Haitian waiter, her intentions perfectly clear.

The AIDS scare be damned, she vacations here every year and was cheerfully direct in explaining why:

“Sex. Haitians are the sexiest, most romantic men I’ve ever seen. They’re the greatest therapy on Earth. I leave here feeling like a queen.” She prefers the younger ones and isn’t picky--taxi drivers, idle street boys, now this blushing young waiter.

All of it might have been a world removed from the steaming, teeming city streets below, where the nuns at Mother Teresa’s Home of the Dying provide the most lasting image of all: Bearing stretchers, they make their rounds through the narrow alleyways of the slums, peering into each dim hovel, searching out those too weakened by hunger and disease to find their way to the mission alone.

Only Sickest Taken

Having only so many beds, so much food, they make their selections carefully, taking only the worst, leaving the others behind until another time.

“This one, he has TB, he will die soon, maybe tomorrow,” said Sister Alba, a sturdy, round-faced young nun from Calcutta, bending over, peering closely at a man of perhaps 20 who had crawled nearly to the mission gate, then collapsed in the dust. He was carried inside for a clean bed, a bath, and a few final hours, or perhaps days, of warm food and human concern.

Passing by a small storage room, its door slightly ajar, Sister Alba closed it quickly in a thoughtful attempt to spare her visitor a glimpse of the corpses lying within. There were three that day.

At times, Haiti seems like a nation cursed, beset by an unholy list of problems that only get worse.

The single most pressing national problem facing Haiti today is salvaging the devastated countryside. A mountainous little country about the size of Maryland, bordering the Dominican Republic on the western end of the island of Hispaniola, Haiti is devoid of natural resources and has traditionally depended on agriculture to support at least 75% of the population.

But now, the urban slums swell daily with rural refugees, peasants whose small plots of land have become so parched and bleached through decades of erosion that they are virtually useless. On land where mango and banana trees once stood, now only cactus grows. Clogged by decades of crumbling earth, creeks and streams have gone dry, water everywhere is now in short supply.

In a cruel twist of fate, the ruination of Haiti’s agricultural lands was originally caused by the poverty of the peasants themselves. In their search for shelter and charcoal, they cut down their own trees, year after year, ignorant of the destruction to come.

Swine Population Lost

Small farmers were delivered yet another devastating blow two years ago during a swine fever epidemic. Every pig in Haiti--400,000 of them--had to be destroyed. Then, this year, the country’s mango crop, a chief export item along with coffee, was banned from U.S. markets in a new controversy over pesticides.

And now, because Haiti was originally tagged as a source of AIDS--medical authorities have since absolved it of the stigma--tourism is down to a trickle; small hotels are closing, cab drivers, waiters, young artists and countless other segments of the population are now poorer than ever before.

That Haiti should have come to this is tragically ironic in a couple of ways:

First, although it now competes with places such as Bangladesh on world poverty charts, Haiti was once the richest colony in all the Caribbean, called “The Pearl of the Antilles” by its colonial masters. (Discovered by Columbus in 1492, it was ruled by Spain for two centuries, then ceded to the French in 1697.)

And, second, although it is now in the grip of one of the world’s most firmly entrenched dictatorships, Haiti was born through a brave rebellion of slaves, dedicated to the notion that all men should be free and equal.

First Black Republic

As an astonished world looked on, men and women who had been brought in chains from Africa to work the vast, lush plantation lands of French aristocrats rose up and, against all odds, drove the mighty forces of Napoleon Bonaparte into the sea. And, in 1804, Haiti proudly proclaimed itself the world’s first independent black republic.

And the country has grown steadily poorer ever since.

The country’s new rulers divided the big plantations into small parcels and distributed them to the people. But, for several decades after independence, Haiti was literally isolated from the rest of the world, partly through its own paranoia that the French would return, partly because the Western powers refused to recognize its existence. (The French were not appeased until 1825, when Haiti finally promised to pay around $150 million in reparations, and the United States did not establish ties until 1862).

And so, without either trading partners or foreign aid, in the hands of illiterate and unworldly slaves, the unsteady country was a political war zone from the outset. No democratic tradition ever took hold, no ruler ever lasted long.

Force and upheaval have always been a part of the Haitian tradition--as is the tendency of rulers to name themselves to positions for life. In all, Haiti has had nine emperors, governors and presidents-for-life.

African Tradition

“Hell, it’s the African tribal tradition you see here,” remarked an educated Haitian, both seriously and sarcastically. “They should’ve just settled on calling every leader since independence chief-for-life, and left it at that.”

(Ninety-five percent of Haiti’s population today is of black African descent, the rest mulatto.)

In 1915, fearing that the German Kaiser might try to gain a Caribbean foothold in the unstable nation, the U.S. Marines invaded Haiti, and didn’t leave for 20 years. Meantime, the mulatto elite gradually gained control of most economic and political power.

Through it all, of course, the Haitian masses mostly just looked on, growing poorer and more neglected and more fearful with each passing decade, every new ruler.

Duvalier Rose to Power

All paving the way for the ascendancy of the one-time country doctor, Francois Duvalier, who took power in 1957, a chaotic, violent year of racial upheaval in which six different regimes rose and fell and Haiti verged on civil war.

Duvalier’s takeover was legitimized in a ritual election, many mulattoes fled the country, and blacks took permanent control of the government, creating the Haiti of today, which officially lionizes Papa Doc as its “liberator.”

His grave, high on the government’s list of approved tourist sights, is in the local cemetery, guarded by two soldiers and an eternal flame, but otherwise as modest as all the rest.

And the taxi driver, specially licensed by the government to chauffeur tourists, was well rehearsed in what to say: “As you can see, the Father wanted to be buried with the poor people. He was a great man, what he did for us was something very good. . . . He helped blacks from oppression, he made black people free. . . . People say he killed people, but,” he finished with a shrug, “you have to throw away the skin of the eggs.”

It’s a common Haitian expression, whatever it means.