TROUBLE IN HAITI

Though only three hours from Miami, I had entered an upside-down world where minority whites are suspect, and where consumerism gives way to hunger. I was here, as a Latin American scholar, to observe the insecurity of a people struggling to establish democracy after decades of dictatorship and repression. The eight-person Human Rights delegation to which I was attached, sponsored by the Mennonite and Brethren Churches, provided me opportunities that every student of the Third World longs for - intense, on-the-ground encounters with the world's poor as they struggle for change in the face of the possible political disintegration of their society.

Sometimes the encounters were unanticipated. Housed at a dorm for street children in the slums of Port-au-Prince, I slept on the roof to escape the oppressive summer heat. One night I awoke to find a thief hovering over me. He had scaled the walls and was apparently reaching for the money bag around my neck, when my opened eyes startled him into a hasty retreat. I drifted back to sleep until machine gun fire erupted in the distance a few hours later, followed soon after by the morning calls of strutting roosters nearby.

The desperation of my unexpected visitor was understandable. Over 95 per-cent of Haitians live in extreme poverty. Ten thousand "lucky ones" toil in U.S.-owned sweatshops, like those contracted by the Disney Corporation. In the land where Spaniards vanquished the Indians, women sew Pocahontas pajamas for American kids - and earn 7 cents for each pair (then sold for $11.97 at Wal-Mart). A visit to Cité Soleil was particularly revealing. Here, in squalor along the coast, one quarter of a million Haitians slowly starve in shanties. A modern hospital sits empty in the middle of the slum - closed by the U.S. Agency for International Development after ungrateful Haitians threw rocks at Tipper Gore's caravan in protest of the hospital's alleged connections to the "Macoute."

The "Macoute," of course, were the fearsome thugs of the hated Duvalier dictatorship (1957­1986), appropriately named after a bogeyman common to Haitian children's stories. Today they are being slowly displaced by the new, professional Haitian National Police [HNP], who patrol the streets of Cité Soleil with respect for the people. We chatted with HNP officers and their Canadian U.N. advisors, who are still leery of the old Macoute.

So, too, are the people. "They still have arms caches," one Haitian told me, "and they do not keep them for hunting lions. We are the lions!" Indeed, since their final ouster in 1994 with the return of Jean Bertrand Aristide, former Duvalierists have stockpiled an estimated 200,000 weapons. Even while we were in Port-au-Prince, they held a downtown rally where they threatened to destabilize the nascent democratic government. The U.N. has failed to disarm the Macoute, who heavily outgun the HNP.

The lines are drawn sharply in Haiti: former Macoute and Duvalier supporters, including the super-rich, long for a return to absolute power. The mass of poor, who voted the wildly popular Aristide into office in 1991, thirst for government accountability and change. A visitor can identify a Haitian's convictions in this highly politicized society by asking the critical question: "What do you think of Aristide?" "He's possessed by the devil," the famous Duvalier journalist and playboy Aubelin Jolicoeur (subject of Graham Greene's novel The Comedians) told me over a drink in the plush Grand Hotel Oloffson. Just blocks away, I visited the burned out shell of Aristide's church, where poor Christians still gather to pray. Here, in 1988, Macoutes hacked scores of worshippers to death with machetes while they attempted to kill Aristide. "We must follow Jesus and Titid," a widow whispered to me as she tugged at my sleeve, using the nickname that refers to the former priest's small physical frame.

Some Haitians want change, others fear it, and the United States stands ambivalently in the middle. When the Macoute overthrew Aristide in September 1991, they established a reign of terror. The mastermind behind a wave of death squads, Emmanuel "Toto" Constant, claims to have been a paid informant of the CIA. When the U.S. restored Father Aristide in 1994, Marines carted off documents that would have revealed Constant's operatives and supporters. The Clinton administration has yet to return the files, and while I was in Haiti it released Constant from a U.S. prison, refusing Haitian demands for his extradition.

In Port-au-Prince, stifling humidity aggravated the smells of ubiquitous dirt and exposed sewage. Not far from our living quarters, the mangled corpse of a thief lynched by a mob began to rot in the street. We held a series of meetings with Haitian representatives and U.S. Embassy officials. One of the most candid was with a dozen congressmen, who expressed grave concern over the failure of the U.N. to fulfill its mandate and disarm the Macoute. "We are headed towards a Barundi-type disaster," one warned us, referring to the genocide in central Africa. "Impunity for past abusers threatens our new democracy," another Haitian told me - a position I echoed when interviewed about Constant's release by the Associated Press and quoted about it on National Public Radio.

This fall at Wright State, students in my Authoritarianism and Repression class are examining the historical roots and dynamics of Haiti's political tensions. "Studying this stuff is scary, really scary," reflects one senior. The class is also scrutinizing the media coverage accorded Haitian affairs here in the United States. Haitians have attempted to cast off the legacies of one of the world's most brutal dictatorships over the past decade, but their efforts are incomplete. The transition to democracy is threatened by the violence of the Macoute. Still, the nation is a laboratory for those of us analyzing Latin America's struggle for political equality and social change.