Implacable Foes of Duvalier : Rumor or Not, Haitian Exiles in Miami Celebrate the News

MIAMI — It was the best news the Haitian exiles had ever heard, and when they were told it was all a mistake, that even the White House had got it wrong, they decided to believe it anyway.

“ Duvalier tombe! “ the crowd chanted in Creole. “Duvalier is down!”

On Friday morning, 500 people in the Miami neighborhood known as “Little Haiti” celebrated the reported overthrow of President-for-Life Jean-Claude Duvalier.

They danced around makeshift coffins. They writhed around an effigy of the president, stomping and cursing. They carried a headless statue at the end of a yellow pole.

And by midday they also waved an afternoon newspaper, the Miami News, whose front-page banner headline declared: “Duvalier has fled Haiti, White House reports.”

But it was all error, day-old rumors complicated by White House spokesman Larry Speakes, who incorrectly reported that the man known as Baby Doc had fallen.

Later accounts from Port-au-Prince said Duvalier was still in power and safe in the palace. By late afternoon, the update filtered into the crowd.

‘Heartbreaking Confusion’

A few glumly took note. “How could Speakes be so stupid?” asked Ringo Cayard, a young businessman. “This confusion is heartbreaking.”

Jacques Despinosse, a community leader, hid his face in his hands: “We have to stop the fiesta, if there is nothing to fiesta.”

But the rest of the crowd rejoiced into the evening, shrugging off any suggestion that Haiti might still be under the control of the family that has ruled it for the past 28 years.

“We are in touch with Haiti, and they definitely tell us that Duvalier is finished,” said Gesner Pierre-Louis, an announcer on a Creole radio station.

“The devil has packed his bags,” said Marie Raymond, 27. Then she sidled up beside a conga drum on NE 54th Street and clapped to the beat.

The crowd paraded back and forth from the Laundromat on one corner to the Mirror a Deux Faces Beauty Salon at the other.

The demonstrators wore headbands and sashes of red and blue, the Haitian colors before the Duvalier family took power. They thrust palm fronds into the air. They stepped to island music. They hugged.

Vows to Return

Many vowed to return to Haiti. “Then no one will ever tell me to go home again, because I will be home,” said a 20-year-old named Marcel.

“Next week, next month, I go, as soon as the airports there are open,” said Tony Guignard, 29, a day laborer.

An estimated 50,000 Haitian exiles live in south Florida, most of them in Miami and others in migrant camps west of here.

Immigration officials say a large share of this population--probably more than half--is here illegally. They buy phony identification papers, double-up in decrepit housing, meld into the community.

Many drifted to Florida beaches in rickety sailboats, and many were caught as they staggered ashore, sun-parched from the journey. For the most part, those who were apprehended have sought political asylum.

But the U.S. government has insisted that the exiles covet the American dollar more than they fear the hard-fisted Duvalier, that they are economic rather than political refugees and undeserving of asylum. It wants them sent back. Thousands of asylum proceedings have dragged on for years.