Haiti Slides Down, Never Finding Bottom

A person never arrives in Haiti too late for the action. Last month, Haiti provided a new mix of chaos and misery, as if Baron Samedi, the god of the cemetery, is once again presiding over the rituals of public life.

I returned, as I do yearly, in time for a general strike (not observed), which is the usual prelude to a new general strike, which will also be ignored. Victory has been declared on all sides. It led to the usual “consultations by the national leaders” (lamentations, mutual abuse and vows of eternal vigilance), but there is a genuine puzzle of an issue here. The Parliament, unable to live up to the conditions for foreign aid, unable to agree on a prime minister, therefore unable to govern, was dismissed by President Rene Preval, who is considered to be either the handmaiden of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the once and future president, or a traitor to him. Preval argues that the legislators’ terms have expired. (They have.) They argue that no new Parliament has been elected. (None has.) Therefore Preval rules by decree.

But Preval otherwise decrees nothing much and has no funds anyway to implement anything that might occur to him to decree. The promised foreign aid money is held up partly by the lack of anybody to do anything with it. Haiti slides down, never finding the bottom. It now appears that since the people can’t elect appropriate leaders, the inappropriate leaders want to elect a new people.

Those out of office include Manno Charlemagne, the Bob Dylan of Haiti, who once functioned as the mayor of Port-au-Prince. A few years ago I used to breakfast with him on the terrace of the Hotel Oloffson before he went off to his mayoral labors, retainers holding an umbrella over his head, the limousine waiting. In the evening he climbed out of his City Hall duds and into a dashiki to sing of love, justice and the mango smells of a great island nation on Saturday night, in the bar of the hotel, but eventually he was asked to depart the Oloffson, due to mounting bills.

Preval, when awake, governs by alternating silence and public pronouncements, untainted by charisma. This year only the RaRa and Carnival musicians sing and dance, as always, under a popular mandate.

Haitian politicians, Aristide most brilliantly, invoke the idea of democracy with passionate conviction. Each one sees himself as the only hope for democracy, yet each becomes a dictator. During the current state of anarcho-populism, the messiah, Aristide, waits in Tabarre, his gated mansion, for his nearly inevitable new term in 2001. Revising the words of Louis XIV, who said, “Apres moi, le deluge,” the formerly humble priest seems to have said, “After me, me.”

I asked an associate of Aristide why he didn’t lead the country to the revised control of corrupt state-owned enterprises that he promised and that was the condition for a massive aid package. “Politics,” he said. In fuller explanation, he included an urbane shrug and an ironic smile; we both understand about the promises politicians make.

The newspaper Le Matin headlines an editorial, “Haiti Prefers Dignified Solitude to Filthy Compromise.” It observes about the U.S. ambassador: “His Stalinist mustache and haggard eyes make us suspect he will pull certain ears and upset certain people.” (Timothy Carney is an alert, affable, experienced career diplomat.) In another article, Le Matin sums up the present situation: “Constitutional order has been transformed into constitutional disorder.”

These words do nothing about the falling water table, the failed schools, the epidemic of street crime, the hunger, the unemployment. Nor do Organization of American States observers or study missions do much more than issue reports. In “Le Nouvelliste,” Aubelin Jolicoeur describes the arrival at an exhibition of Chinese prints of the then-ambassador from Taiwan: “A superb Buick of golden color, its headlights sparkling on the sidewalk, set the tone for a gala occasion.” Auby, the inspiration to Graham Greene for his novel, “The Comedians,” would like to recapture the belle epoque of Port-au-Prince during his glory days as “Mister Haiti.” Still natty with his repertory of white suits, silk scarves and canes, Mister Haiti is reduced to brooding in a dreary room in a desolate hotel.

During my yearly visits, I catch up on the gossip: Mohammed Fayed, near father-in-law of Princess Diana, made his first fortune collecting port taxes for “Papa Doc” Duvalier. Mother Teresa, settling in to help children dying of AIDS, turned off the hot water in her hospice because most Haitians had to do without. Jean-Claude Duvalier, “Baby Doc,” whom I called Furniture-Face, is now unable to pay his bills at his chalet in southern France. When his wife left him, she carried off most of his worldly goods. Some say he seeks work as a gardener. Recently he indicated that he was ready to return to Haiti if the people want him, but we can safely assume that he will never again be “president for life,” not in his lifetime.

Then there is Andre Pierre, the voodoo priest I first visited in 1963, when people were starving in Croix des Missions. So as not to insult his honor by merely giving him money, I offered to buy a painting he had begun. When I came back a week later to pick it up, people were eating. He is now a world famous artist, still a voodoo priest--his day job--86 years old and an energetic joker. Amid the straw, dirt, clippings, metal bits in the sanctum sanctorum of his hounfor, his temple, he hospitably includes Hindu imagery, Christian imagery, voodoo imagery. I asked why a menorah, and he grinned. “Pour les juifs,” he said. He still lives between mud-and-straw walls, but his compound was filled with women and children, many of them his, who pass the time cheerfully under shade trees and amid bowers of flowers.

He pointed to the portrait on a Haitian monetary note and said, “Lucifer,” and then pointed to the number of gourdes it was worth and said, “Encore Lucifer”--money is the work of the devil--so I asked him the price of a new painting. He squealed with pleasure: “$15,000!”

Well, Lucifer is one of the gods, too. We shared swigs from a bottle of Rhum Barbancourt, careful first to spill a few drops on the ground as an offering to the lwa. Some things are eternal, although the photo of Damballah, the great snake god on his altar in 1963, seems to have disappeared. It was a photo clipped from a Life magazine with Harold Stassen on the cover. Erzulie, the goddess of love, is represented no longer by a photo of Shirley Temple.

Even in Haiti, change is possible. But you have to look hard to find improvement.