CRISIS IN THE CARIBBEAN : Wealthy Haitians See Chance for Profit in U.S. Occupation : Trade: Rising number traveling to Dominican Republic on way to American shopping sprees.

When the border crossing out of isolated, sanctions-bound Haiti opened to Richard Elie this weekend for the first time in months, the well-off Haitian American decided to go shopping.

Big time.

His list included dozens of high-priced items--from spare parts to high-tech goods--that have been banned from Haiti during its three years under economic sanctions. And the shopping trip that would begin at the international airport in the Dominican Republic, just a few hours beyond this remote border town, ultimately will take him through New York, Miami and other cities that became his second homes during his 20 years in the United States, Elie said.

“I’ll be back in 20 days,” he said, referring to the day after deposed Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide is due back from exile with thousands of U.S. troops as his bodyguards. “And I’ll make some profit.”

Never mind that Elie dislikes Aristide. Never mind that he distrusts the Americans now occupying his homeland.

At the moment, what matters most is profit--a lot of profit, it would seem, judging by the dozens of Haitians with ties to the United States who have been streaming out of the country bound for similar shopping sprees since the U.S. military landed here a week ago.

But as they crossed from the squalid immigration post on the frontier of impoverished Haiti into the relative modernity of the Dominican Republic, Elie and other Haitians with the means to do so took note of one of the stark, enduring symbols of their nation’s isolation and its ingenuity.

Across a narrow neck of the lake that straddles the Haitian-Dominican border here, a small armada of ancient rowboats shuttled gasoline from one side to the other--continuing to break the international embargo with plastic jugs, fueling a black market that has helped enrich the tiny Haitian upper class.

And Elie was evidence that, under a U.S. occupation intended to help Haiti’s poor, the rich are likely to grow even richer.

Indeed, the scene at the rugged Haitian border town of Malpasse, which means “the bad passage,” was rife with other bitter ironies, contradictions and ill omens of an American military intervention with an increasingly vague mission.

Few personified them as clearly as Elie, a jet mechanic for American Airlines who left the United States for a job in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, shortly before the United Nations tightened the embargo and shut down the airport.

Elie, who acknowledged that his comparative wealth will probably mushroom, stressed that the expected lifting of the embargo after Aristide returns is the only benefit he sees in the U.S. intervention.

“I love them,” Elie, 35, said of the Haitian military rulers the U.S. government is forcing from power. “Look, I was getting ready to fight against the Americans. If the Americans invaded Haiti, and our (military-installed) president asked us to, I would go out and kill Americans.

“I lived 20 years in America. But I was born in Haiti. I will remain Haitian. And I think the U.S. government is all screwed up here. What are they doing here? Restoring democracy? Where? There’s never been democracy in Haiti, from the first president until now.”

Elie had equally firm opinions of the man the Clinton Administration has vowed to restore to power, a Roman Catholic priest and champion of the Haitian poor who was overthrown by the ruling military junta three years ago, just seven months after becoming president after a free election.

“Aristide is not a democrat,” Elie said as he waited at the border post while a rickety rowboat brought a tankful of gasoline for his motorcycle. “He’s never even been for the United States. You should hear his speeches from before (his ouster in the 1991 coup). I’m a much better friend of the United States than he is.”

But like most of Haiti’s rich minority, Elie conceded that Aristide is enormously popular among the country’s poor majority.

“If you talk to the masses of people right now, they still love Aristide, and they love the Americans for now,” he said. “They have the right to believe in that. They’ve been stepped on hard for three years by the military. But they shouldn’t take revenge. And that’s our biggest fear right now.

“Justice is not judgment, and judgment is what I fear the people have in mind. I’m afraid Aristide is coming back for the judgment day, and that, my friend, is how civil wars begin.”

And yet Elie and several other businessmen interviewed at the Haitian border checkpoint agreed that their fears of future vengeance are offset by their forays for profit.

“Look, I don’t care if I make money off the American intervention,” Elie said. “I don’t see hypocrisy in that. If the American presence brings us good money, fine. We can use the money to kick the Americans out later. This massive force, this massive domination--I feel totally dominated now. Sooner or later, I believe the people are going to revolt against it with a fire of rage.”

Saturday night’s killing of 10 Haitians by U.S. Marines responding to shooting in the northern city of Cap Haitien was just the sort of fuel Elie said will feed that fire.

As he spoke, though, Elie was surrounded by symbols of the enduring Haitian military repression, corruption and, in his words, “the ways everybody is filling their pocket at the last minute.”

Haitian entry visas, free until very recently, were going for $55, much of it destined for the pockets of the Haitian officers who still control the border crossings. Without entry authorization forms from the military government, others have paid as much as $1,500 to the border guards to look the other way as they crossed.

Some officers appeared above the corruption, although resigned to an imminent civilian future. One Haitian sergeant insisted on doing everything by the book, carefully recording the passport numbers of everyone entering and leaving Haiti. He did his work slowly but without charge.

He has long since grown accustomed to the contradictions, he said. During his decade in the Haitian army, he said, he was trained in U.S. military camps, perhaps by some of the same American officers now occupying his country.

“This is all just politics,” he said. “I don’t care much for politics. Today I’m a soldier. Tomorrow, who knows? Maybe I’ll be free. Maybe I’ll be poor. Maybe I won’t be here at all.”

Fastened to the wall of the immigration bunker nearby was an appropriate epitaph.

The marble dedication stone was dated March, 1977. It acknowledged Philippe Biamby--one of the three leaders the Americans are forcing from power--as minister of defense and interior. Above his name, though, were only the faintest traces of the man who had dedicated the building as “president of the republic.”

Bashed out with chisels was the name Jean-Claude Duvalier, forced into exile in France in 1986.

Richard Elie laughed when he saw the dedication stone.

“Sure, Biamby’s name is still there,” he said. “He’s still in power today. But they’ll just chisel him out too in a few weeks when he’s gone. That’s just the way it’s done down here.”