Haiti We Could Turn Our Back

But four months later, the coup still stands. The military gang that took power on Sept. 29 remains in control; the sanctions have only hurt the Haitian poor, made life more difficult for the tiny middle class and enriched the even tinier oligarchy, with which the military runs the country like a plantation. And this month President Bush unilaterally eased the embargo. In effect, he all but threw up his hands. Haiti’s provisional government has defiantly promoted the general whose removal is Aristide’s main condition for a negotiated settlement. Meanwhile, America’s forced repatriation of Haitian refugees has left Bush open to charges of racism and turned the Haitian masses against him. To them, it looks as though a two-bit army has stared down the world’s greatest military power.

Bush can afford a policy failure in Haiti. It has little strategic significance and no powerful U.S. constituency. And Aristide is a problematic ally. He foolishly tried to take on the army, the oligarchy and the church all at once. His rhetoric at times even condoned violence. Just after the coup, Bush received Aristide in the Oval Office, but relations have since deteriorated. Last week Aristide accused Bush of abandoning the fight. Some policymakers now say that the United States should never have signed off on the OAS’s insistence on restoring Aristide. Talk of military intervention has turned to speculation about walking away altogether. Says one diplomat: “We could turn our back on Haiti and let it fall into the abyss.”

By electing Aristide, a priest who promised a fair division of the country’s wealth, many Haitians hoped they could put an end to decades of rule by brutal and corrupt leaders. And as far as they were concerned, the United States shared responsibility for that legacy. It invaded Haiti in 1915 and stayed until 1934. It created the country’s thuggish joint military and police force. For years it supported the notorious Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier because he espoused anti-communism. Today, almost any Cuban who can reach Miami is granted political asylum. Yet Washington went to court to win a ruling classifying thousands of Haitians as economic, not political, refugees. Now the U.S. Coast Guard is sending back most of the Haitians who have fled to America since Aristide’s ouster.

Haiti’s oligarchs, who cheered the coup against the populist Aristide, feel vindicated. Bush’s tepid support for Aristide has convinced them that America, Haiti’s main trading partner, ultimately is on their side. During a beach party he hosted last week, an heir to one of Haiti’s top families observed: “We know the golden rule: whoever has the gold rules.” Whatever Haiti’s political future, the wealthy seem sure that it won’t include the wholesale empowerment Aristide promised his constituency. They also maintain that economic growth under a strong-arm government is better for the masses than redistribution of a shrinking pie. “We’re doing it backwards,” said the host. “Jobs, taxes, this is the beginning of democracy. One election doesn’t make democracy.”

But the Haitian rich pay few taxes, even though they rake in the lion’s share of the nation’s wealth (box). One reason they hated Aristide was that he forced them to pay up-and raised government spending in one of the stingiest countries of the world. Until 1986, some superrich businessmen enjoyed monopolies granted by Duvalier and his son, “Baby Doc.” Those are gone, but the fortunes they created remain. The Brandts, the Mews, the Nadals, the Vorbes, the Madsens, the Behrmanns-Haiti’s great families, almost all light-skinned mulattoes, live in luxury on the mountains overlooking Port-au-Prince’s wretched slums. So do those who have made fortunes in smuggling.

Some members of the elite acknowledge that they have done nothing to improve conditions for the 90 percent of the population that is unschooled and barely fed. But others talk about the country’s conditions with a kind of willful disbelief. “I ask myself, how much poverty is there, really, in the country?” said a dentist lolling poolside at the Petionville Club. “You see a beggar and you might think he was poor, but he is taking the money he gets and practicing usury.” Comments about police repression show similar callousness. One man compared the smell left after soldiers break up a demonstration to the aroma “after your wife sprays Flit in a room.” Over shrimp brochette, another defends the coup, in spite of its violence. “Look, how are you going to do this?” he asks. “The people who did this meant business, man. It was ideological-like Pinochet-the free market versus whatever you want to call it.”

The U.S. response to the inequities in Haiti has been to try to create a middle class, the classic engine of economic and political progress. Much of that hope hinged on the “assembly sector,” U.S.-financed factories that employed 40,000 workers. In its original form, the U.S. embargo blocked Haiti from exporting these products; strategists thought the new industrial class would line up against the coup. The assembly sector’s leaders did call for the negotiated return of Aristide but never went further. Meanwhile, nearly 30,000 workers have been laid off. “The [bosses] disappointed us, didn’t they,” says one State Department official. Baker said easing the embargo may now save those jobs, but others are doubtful, citing political instability and deteriorating infrastructure.

Some industrialists may simply have been too scared to fight the coup. Last month police broke in on Rene Theodore, the Communist candidate for prime minister who is supported by the United States and the OAS, as he was meeting with other politicians; they killed his bodyguard with a shot to the head. Last week one U.S. and one British reporter went to the countryside to investigate reports of atrocities and were arrested. A local sheriff threatened to kill them, telling a colleague: “They know I burned the village; they know I killed people.” A member of Parliament said he was stopped on the street and fired upon by men in civilian clothes; Theodore said his house was fired at. In winning its legal fight to repatriate the Haitian boat people, Washington argued, in effect, that Haitians may live in fear, but that doesn’t entitle them to asylum. That may be so. But it remains to be seen how forgiving the military leaders will be of Haitians who supported Aristide and then fled when he was toppled. And while they wait to find out, many Haitians can only feel disappointed about a U.S. government that hailed democracy while it worked but seemed helpless to do anything when it came undone.

Photos: A yawning chasm between haves and have-nots: A would-be refugee is shipped back to her home, a child forages in a garbage dump, a bourgeois family leaves church in Petionville (BILL GENTILE FOR NEWSWEEK)

Three fourths of Haitians are below the poverty line established by the World Bank.

One percent of Haitians earn 44 percent of the nation’s income–but few of the rich pay any taxes.

Fewer than half of all working-age Haitians are fully employed.

One third of all children die before the age of 5; life expectancy hovers around 50 years.

Subject Terms: UNITED States – Foreign relations – Haiti