THE STUGGLE FOR A DEMOCRATIC HAITI
By Mark D. Danner; Mark D. Danner is an editor of this magazine.
Published: June 21, 1987
THREE HOURS OUT OF NEW York, I start awake to find myself floating over a grotesque landscape - the sickly, reddish-brown hills of Haiti, wave upon wave of blood-dark corrugations, thickly marbled with white sand. Haitian peasants have long since uprooted the once-dense covering of trees and underbrush, selling the wood for charcoal and leaving bare white canyons through which, month after month, year after year, the rainwater flows, carrying tons of precious topsoil to the bottom of the Caribbean.
While in the cities of ''Haiti liberee'' a new political universe suffers a painful and confusing birth, the land, farmed to exhaustion, eroding, continues its slow and spectacular death. During the last three decades - while the nation was ruled first by Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier and then his son, Jean-Claude - the land began to disgorge its dependents, sending them streaming to the slums of the cities.
Faced with the trickling away of Haiti, the 35 emperors, kings, ''presidents-for-life,'' and dictators of every stripe who have ruled the land have preferred to think of other things. One committed suicide; one was executed; two were assassinated; seven died in office, and 18 were violently overthrown.
The most recent was Jean-Claude Duvalier, who, in the early hours of Feb. 7, 1986, with his elegant mulatto wife, Michele, boarded a United States Air Force jet and fled to the south of France. There he rejoined an expatriated fortune estimated at $400 million to $600 million -equivalent to about twice Haiti's annual budget -and left behind the poorest country in the hemisphere and one of the poorest on earth. In 1985, 90 percent of Haitians subsisted on less than $185, while the wealthiest .5 percent received almost half the national income of about $2 billion a year.
In Haiti today, the world's first independent black nation is enduring another of the periods of disorder, guarded optimism and sporadic violence that so often in its history has bridged the fall of one ruler and the rise of the next. Expatriate Haitians in Miami and New York celebrated the anniversary of Duvalier's fall with parties and parades, but in the capital city of Port-au-Prince - where I was spending the latest of three visits to post-Duvalier Haiti - the day was greeted with a deathly silence broken only by the sirens of armored vehicles patrolling deserted streets.
The head of the interim Government, Gen. Henri Namphy, who had served as Duvalier's army chief of staff, warned last June that the country was on the ''brink of anarchy,'' then promised Haitians ''a fair, good and firm transition to democracy.'' Local elections are promised for next month and presidential elections in November. Scores of Haitians have been noisily campaigning for the chair Jean-Claude hastily vacated.
On every corner, Haitians selling mangoes or cassettes will tell you in disgust that the candidates think only of what they can steal, just like Jean-Claude; that the very idea of elections is a grim joke in Haiti - a country in which a vote can be bought for a swig of rum; so-called political parties flourish for a season before fading away with the candidate's name, and the notion of politics as a means to further the public good is utterly unknown.
Partly as a result of this pervasive discontent, the ''official'' process has acquired a shadow, a shifting, amorphous and divided opposition. The backbone of this ''democratic sector'' is the Catholic Church, itself divided, which rallied the people during the six months of social upheaval leading to Duvalier's flight. Hundreds of popular organizations, claiming to give voice to workers, peasants, neighborhood leaders and others, form what Leslie Manigat, a prominent presidential candidate, calls the ''counterpower in the streets.'' That counterpower surfaced dramatically in March, when Haitians overwhelmingly approved a new Constitution that strips the Government of its power to administer the elections, creating an independent commission for the purpose; and that forbids ''ex-Duvalierists,'' from running for public office.
Everywhere in Haiti, one hears talk of ''development,'' and vague warnings of Communism finding a breeding ground in misery. Today, no guerrilla groups are concealed in the Haitian mountains, and in 10 years Duvalier's overthrow - and the consequent political reshuffling, now in progress - may be seen as the beginning of real improvement in the lives of the people. Or it may be recalled as a sign that the country was marching inexorably toward a long season of bloodletting, what one Haitian journalist described as the ''Salvadorization'' of Haiti: the familiar cycle of violent rebellion, brutal repression and prolonged guerrilla war.
It is common wisdom that avoiding such a future will depend on ''building democracy'' and ameliorating Haiti's poverty, causes for which the United States will donate more than $100 million this year, most of it through the United States Agency for International Development. But the weight of American influence is not without its own risks; it provokes a deep strain of Haitian nationalism, and thereby aids precisely those forces the United States, and its allies among the Haitian elite, most fear.