A Reluctant Warrior : The Nightmare That Is Haiti: Gunshots in the Quiet of Night

The eve of change, whether by invasion, coup d’etat or election, is the most dangerous time in Haiti, and the quiet night, from dusk to dawn, is the scariest. That is when all ears strain for the sound of faint gunshots, knowing the hunt is on. Almost 80 years after the first U.S. invasion of Haiti, I am lying awake thinking this in the middle of the night. I am not with my friends, family or colleagues in Haiti because I have taken a public position against the regime and been warned to stay away. But my heart, my eyes and ears are with them and I feel that familiar tightening of emotions--fear, anticipation, dread, conflict and hope--that characterize life and political struggle in Haiti.

I want to know where my friend Evans Paul, the pro-democratic mayor of Port-au-Prince, is tonight. Which safe house he will seek refuge in, whether they will find him. Evans is among the most visible figures of Haiti’s popular resistance to dictatorship, a resistance largely ignored by the Western media. More than 500 Haitians have been killed these past three years, but 300,000 have survived and are in hiding--like Paul. If the generals fall, those in hiding will be ready to help Jean-Bertrand Aristide rebuild Haiti, and that is why they must die now, before the Americans arrive to protect them. That is the word on the street. For a second, my heart pounds wildly, and I am terrified and I am running, because the bullets are aimed at me.

Who is being arrested tonight? Who is keeping watch for the U.S. planes from an open square of concrete inside one of Haiti’s prisons? That is where prisoners sleep, without bedding, with gutters for toilets. The prisons are said to be packed, though no human-rights organization has gotten inside to document who has been detained, beaten or tortured, which, if any, bodies have been dumped.

It is only recently that President Bill Clinton acknowledged that torture had become routine in Haiti. It is always in moments like this, when power is shifting and revenge is in the air, that massacres occur, often in rural prisons, out of sight of the television cameras.

I wonder if my friend Christophe is awake; whether he caught any of the Aristide leaflets dropped over the capital last week. At 37, Christophe has worked his entire adult life as a servant. He writes poorly in French, cannot read Creole and has little chance of a better job. Until recently, he and his wife shared a narrow cot with their 7-year-old son; now they have a baby girl. I wonder where she is sleeping. Christophe says the last three years have been hell--he has no other word for it. Two centuries after Haiti’s independence, he feels like a slave. Aristide is not God to him, but a courageous man, a man of faith who has not abandoned his brothers.

Haiti is a small country, and politics have always become personal too quickly. Many families are divided by politics; mine is no different. I wonder what my cousins and their friends, part of Haiti’s ruling elite, are feeling. Many have taken refuge in their second homes in Miami, glued to CNN. Those remaining debate their options: Whether to head for the Dominican border or go up to their summer cottages above Port-au-Prince, with a safe and spectacular view of the action to come.

I know some are mentally replaying the tumultuous events of 1915, when, days before the U.S. Marines landed, the head of Haitian President Villebrun Guillaume Sam was paraded on a stick. Many of the elite consider themselves apolitical, victims of a political nightmare, vulnerable to being attacked for being wealthy, for being light-skinned. Now, with an invasion, they worry about being mistaken for Americans and getting shot by newly armed, rum-drunk Haitian recruits.

It is all part of the elite’s enduring nightmare, the one where Aristide is cast as a monster looking the other way as vengeful masses attack the houses and property of the rich and civil war breaks out. To protect them from this nightmare, their embattled childhood friend, Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras stood up to Clinton and became a hero. Yet, his army is seen as corrupt, drug trafficking and crime have flourished and, with the embargo, the country is sinking. All this has left the elite feeling frightened and righteous. They, too, have become prey to extrajudicial violence, to bribes and threats.

The attitude of the elite toward a U.S. invasion is equally conflicted. Many have U.S. passports, bank accounts and property. They educate their children here, pay taxes and feel as much a part of American culture as they do Haitian. Though they vehemently oppose an effort to restore Aristide, they nostalgically recall the U.S. occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 as a golden period of prosperity and order--for those with money.

What about Aristide, a man I knew before he was president, when he was an orphanage director with children perpetually clinging to him? He is the cat with nine lives who has used up a few, having survived several assassination attempts. He rarely sleeps well, and right now, amid everything else, he is mourning the assassination of his mentor and close friend, Father Jean-Marie Vincent.

I worry these may be the last weeks of Aristide, a man who has changed the face of Haitian history. There is no doubt in my mind that his enemies will try to kill him if he returns. Nor do I doubt that he is intent on returning. Whatever his private fears, he acts like a man with a sense of destiny, someone for whom others have died--loved ones like Vincent--taking the blows and bullets meant for him.

It is hard for me to imagine him back in power in a demilitarized Haiti, protected by an international peacekeeping force that will cede power to a retrained civil police force. It seems only yesterday that Cedras and the army betrayed Aristide in the coup d’etat . And that the Clinton Administration, while giving Aristide sanctuary, let CIA officials attack his character and motives, minimized the achievements of his government, then downplayed the scope of human-rights abuses in Haiti--allowing the bravest and brightest democrats to be killed or chased out to sea. It is only one of a thousand ironies that the State Department last week finally acknowledged that human-rights abuses today are comparable to those of the notorious Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier regime, then used this fact as ballast for an invasion.

U.S. foreign policy toward Haiti continues to be an offshoot of our domestic concern about immigration and Clinton’s need to appease Florida lawmakers. His turnabout on Aristide reflects less his concern about human rights or democracy, than his belated assessment that the only way to keep refugees away from Miami is to stop the murders in Haiti. I can understand why Aristide might have trouble embracing an invasion, never mind trusting Clinton.

The sun is almost up now, and somewhere across the river, another political exile, Alerte Balance, has found a haven. Like Aristide, she has become a symbol of survival for Haitians, especially women, whose role in this struggle is overlooked.

Balance was cast in the international spotlight recently, after Haitian secret police hacked off her arms with a machete and left her for dead at the killing fields of Titanyen, outside Port-au-Prince. She is alive to recount the horror and, in another cruel irony, she has become empowered in her new role as a spokeswoman for Haitian democracy. But I imagine there are moments when her brain cannot accept her loss of limb--common among amputees--and she may suffer from phantom pains for decades.

Her life and condition may be an apt metaphor for the reality facing Haiti and all Haitians today. No miracle--no Aristide, no Clinton, no invasion--can give back what has been lost. But there is still hope for recovery, and a need for assistance. Healing will take place amid fresh memories of loss and lingering pain.