Haiti A Rumbling in the Belly of the Beast

By Amy Wilentz/Port-au-Prince

No one stays out late anymore. By 10:30 p.m., even on Fridays, the streets of Port-au-Prince are empty. That is when the shooting begins. In the fancy neighborhoods on the hill and in the slums down by the water, armed men, often in uniform, sometimes in civilian clothes, break into houses, beat the residents, ransack the premises. They steal whatever suits them. No one really knows who they are, what they are looking for. But almost every morning, someone finds a fresh body lying on the street, a bullet through the head. The violence is making everyone wary of men in olive green.

When Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier fled Haiti early last year, jubilant crowds danced in the streets and chants of "Liberty!" filled the air. Duvalier's departure ended 28 years of totalitarian rule and brought hope to Haitians that the military, which helped bring down the dictator, would cooperate in rebuilding their impoverished country. Today, however, despair and confusion once again grip Haiti. The three-man provisional government headed by Lieut. General Henri Namphy is worse than ineffectual; the elections scheduled for next month threaten to turn into a sham; and the forces of order, as in Duvalier's days, continue to terrorize the people.

In his 1966 novel The Comedians, Graham Greene described a similar time in Haiti: "No one dared move on the roads at night; it was the hour when only the zombies worked, or else the Tonton Macoutes." That infamous paramilitary force of Dr. Francois (Papa Doc") Duvalier and his son Baby Doc was disbanded by decree after Jean-Claude fell from power last year, but in spite of repeated promises, it was never disarmed. The provisional government has prosecuted only a few of the most notorious thugs. "It isn't easy to get rid of something as basic as the Macoutes," says Aubelin Jolicoeur, a Haitian journalist and former gossip columnist. The recent rampages have a signature style that has led many Haitians to suspect that elements of the Macoutes are involved: the late-night assaults, the beatings of entire families, the arbitrariness, the brutality.

But then, there are the olive-green uniforms, a disturbing sign of army complicity in the murderous attacks. The rule of law is nonexistent. In August, Louis Eugene Athis, one of seven major presidential candidates, was killed along with two campaign workers by a machete-wielding crowd in a small town south of the capital. In the northwest at least 200 peasants from a land- reform collective were massacred in July by vigilantes believed to be in league with a few large landholders in the area.

With the countryside in a state of undeclared civil war, an umbrella opposition coalition called the Group of 57 organized numerous national strikes and demonstrations. The aim of the protests, they said, was to dislodge or reform a government that has repeatedly violated Haiti's new constitution. At the height of the protests this summer, the day was rare when the ramshackle boulevards of Port-au-Prince were not blocked by barriers of flaming tires. Each day, as the sun slipped in the sky and the air grew cooler, bands of boys played soccer around the debris. By evening, the thick black smoke enveloped the city. The sunsets were brown.

The summer's violence has continued into the fall. The army recently occupied Raboteau, a large shantytown in the city of Gonaives. They arrested, detained and beat several people and terrorized Raboteau residents. Recently, Haitians in the countryside, fed up with army abuses and the lack of protection, have begun to retaliate. In Tabar, a small village just outside Port-au-Prince, a group of townspeople captured ten men who had repeatedly robbed and attacked the locals. In the ensuing melee, three of those captured were killed. Last Sunday several men burst into the living quarters of a Dutch priest who had recently said a funeral Mass for a Tabar boy killed by the army. The robbers stole $3,000 from the church near Port-au-Prince and shot the priest twice. He survived.

One of several progressive clergymen who joined this summer's attack on the government is the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, 34, an energetic priest with a solid constituency among the hundreds of thousands of discarded people who live in the slums of Port-au-Prince. He is known as the priest of the poor, and visitors walking through the hallways of the church compound where he works are likely to stumble over abandoned children who use the place as a sort of unofficial clubhouse, sleeping and playing ferocious games of cards and marbles.

Among Haiti's tight-knit ruling class, Aristide and his clerical colleagues are hated. But the people from the shantytowns, especially Haiti's eternally jobless young men, believe in him. "He's the messiah," says one youth, lounging in La Saline, the slum behind Aristide's church. During his sermons in the summer, the priest rarely failed to attack the regime and the U.S. government that supports it.

Heading down Route Nationale 1 on an August night in a dark and slashing rain, Aristide and three other priests, all of whom have spoken out against military abuses, were stopped first at an army checkpoint and then at an improvised roadblock less than 300 feet down the road. There, a gang of about 40, armed with rocks, sticks, machetes and guns, began stoning the car. Two of & the priests hid Aristide on the floor. Soldiers only a short distance away ignored the assault.

Meanwhile, in another car in the priests' convoy, a young religious student was mistaken for Aristide, badly beaten and saved from execution only when the gang's leader approached, took the boy's face in his hand and then pushed him away. "That's not Aristide," he told his men. "Aristide doesn't have a beard." The priests escaped when their driver spotted a small opening in the barricade and plowed through it into the night.

During those summer months of terror and insecurity, the presidential candidates did not campaign in the countryside. At the offices of Marc Bazin, a leading candidate who was fired in 1982 after four months as Jean-Claude Duvalier's Finance Minister, nervous guards still frisk visitors. Louis Dejoie, whose father opposed Francois Duvalier in the 1957 election that brought the dictator to power, keeps a pistol on his desk. When Dejoie is told that a U.S. embassy official has suggested army escorts, he laughs: "Could we trust them?"

The strikes and demonstrations have ended, but doubts persist about whether the government is committed to meaningful elections. Aside from the candidates and the U.S. embassy, few expect Haiti's new electoral council to be able to set up a free and fair vote by Nov. 29, the date scheduled for the presidential ballot. "The government certainly would prefer not to have elections," says Emmanuel Ambroise, a member of the council.

Ambroise, whose brother and pregnant sister-in-law were tortured to death at Francois Duvalier's orders in 1965, believes that the council will nonetheless be able to run a respectable contest. "We are going to have this election right in the belly of the beast," he says. Many Haitians, however, feel that Ambroise's optimism is misguided, and some have suggested boycotting the elections. To prevent that, several popular coalitions recommended a reform of the provisional regime, including the possible resignation of General Williams Regala, the least popular member of the three-man government.

Back in the late afternoon heat of the La Saline slum, the election provokes yawns or hoots of derision from the same people who came out in March to vote overwhelmingly for the new constitution. "This government isn't interested in real elections," says Frederick, who will not give his last name because he fears reprisals. "They want their own man in power, so that they can stay there," he gestures toward the hill where the wealthy live amid satellite dishes and swimming pools, "and we can stay here." He sweeps his hand across the tableau that poverty has painted: alleys filled with refuse, a dwarf and a blind man begging together and a troupe of half-naked children who parade by, playing their own brand of music on a series of improbable homemade instruments. Aristide's constituents.

Like others, the priest is not particularly hopeful about the election's outcome. The call for a substantial change in the provisional government has been stilled in the face of continuing U.S. support for the regime. Today, Aristide is advocating instead a "historic national unity" across class lines "to prevent Duvalierists and the Tonton Macoutes from taking power."

Those class lines, however, are not so easy to cross. Pacot, a run-down but still chic neighborhood, is three miles and another world away from La Saline's slums. In a corner here and there, the brittle, corrupt surface of Papa Doc's Haiti still glitters. Guard dogs run along the tops of security walls, and chauffeured Mercedes Benz slip in and out of driveways leading to Gothic gingerbread houses.

Aubelin Jolicoeur lives here in a stucco house that looks out over a garden. As the sun sets behind his terrace, the bougainvillea, like a tropical cliche, begins to cast its mysterious evening shadows. "The government absolutely believes in elections," says Jolicoeur, whom Greene immortalized in The Comedians in the character of the vicious -- but charming -- Petit Pierre. He sips at his champagne. "Why, Bill called me in just this morning," he says, referring to General Regala. "All he could talk about was elections, elections, elections. For three hours. He asked me to begin a series of profiles of the candidates. Of course, I'm only too happy to oblige. You see, he really wants democracy in our dear Haiti."

Jolicoeur plays with his flamboyant ascot and pours another glass of champagne. "Bill is a good friend, a dear friend," he says, looking up, smiling. "Would you like to meet him? I can arrange it." In a few hours, the shooting will start again.