Against All Odds

WHEN THEY SET OUT IN THEIR FRAIL BOATS, MOST know they will never reach the U.S. mainland. Yet Haiti's poor are so desperate to escape their country's turmoil that a record 10,514 have left the island so far in May, including 1,635 in one day alone last week. With the refugee camps at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba reportedly full and no plans for an expansion in the works, the Coast Guard began limiting its rescue efforts to refugees in "imminent danger" of sinking or starving during the 600-mile voyage through the northern Caribbean to Florida. Others were urged to return home but not stopped.

Although May's traditionally calm seas encouraged the renewed exodus, the real culprit is a pervasive sense of hopelessness on the island fostered by the ambivalent policies of Haiti's neighbors. Military leaders seized power last September from the popularly elected President, Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, but the Organization of American States decided only this month to tighten its embargo by barring ships from their ports that traded with Haiti. The U.S. supports the embargo and is pressuring the European Community to stop sending supplies, but the Pentagon has refused to strong-arm its onetime military allies into accepting an OAS-brokered peace plan.

Aristide, who is in the U.S. to win backing for his return, hopes to address the United Nations this week even as military leaders on the island are trying to push through a new government formula excluding him from power. At least four people died last week in Port-au-Prince during a one-day general strike supporting his return.