A coup mounted by these gentlefolk, with the
connivance, alas, of elements in the CIA, sent
President Aristide into exile.
The next brutal regime of colonels (soon to
nominate themselves as generals) sent crowds
of desperate souls into constructing junk sailboats—I
watched them on the beach at Petit-Goave. Refugees
alive and dead began to wash up on the shores
of Florida. Colonel-General Raoul Cedras, leader
of the coup, commented with a nice shrug that
Haiti is a place where life is worse than death.
He was not just a murderer and torturer; he
was also a philosopher who found peace in scuba-diving
off the shore of his waterfront estate.
In 1994, the Clinton Administration mounted
an intervention to bring back the legitimately
elected Aristide. CIA-sponsored disinformation
had attempted to sully his name by accusations
on the order of: "Aristide has definitely been
proven to be an alleged drug dealer," "an accused
child-molester, maybe," "a manic depressive,
preacher of murder," what'll you have? "Can't
really carry a tune."
Under President Clinton, even the CIA gagged
with this nonsense. Twenty thousand American
troops came for an armed visit, described by
Bob Shacocchis as "the immaculate invasion."
General Cedras departed to pursue his hobby
of scuba-diving in Panama, although Jimmy Carter
had invited him to teach Sunday school in Plains,
Georgia. A few years carrying the burdens of
state, such as maintaining landing strips for
cocaine traffickers on their way to Puerto Rico
and Florida, had left the philosopher-general
in no need of further employment.
I attended the triumphal Mass for President
Aristide's return at the Port-au-Prince cathedral,
and afterwards lay outside in the dirt behind
a stone wall, discussing politics with a Haitian
engineer, while a few diehard "attaché" hoods
fired into the crowd from their headquarters
in the Renaissance Bar. Although a fanatic non-smoker,
I accepted my new friend's offer of a cigarette
because we were colleagues, already sharing
so much. He gave me his business card while
the crowd leaving the cathedral waved rooster
banners, placards, effigies, the symbol adopted
by Aristide—some waved actual roosters—and also
knifed to death one of the Renaissance Bar thugs.
The roosters crowed on and on. So it was finally
morning in the first black nation to win its
freedom in modern times? Not quite.
