I Was Held Hostage In Haiti.
Dispatches from The Land That God Forgot.
In light of recent developments in Haiti, this article from my time in Port-au-Prince and north of the city might add some insight.
“If work were good for you, the rich would leave none of it for the poor.” Haitian proverb
Emerald Isle Resort, Haiti, 1987. The Tonton Macoutes arrived Monday in six military-issue jeeps, armed with semi-automatics. Nobody standing on the veranda referred to them as military police. Even the manager, a tall Arab named Mehsud, muttered “Macoutes” as if that explained the law (or Haitian perception of law) in one word.
Earlier that morning, the Haitian staff had sealed off the resort, effectively holding everyone hostage. They were demanding a salary increase, despite earning twice what a professor made in Port-au-Prince. Now the same staff were sitting under dusty palms, occasionally running out and taunting the Macoutes, then quickly disappearing behind the palms again.
Some of these guests had just woken up and didn’t realize we were being held hostage.
According to the guest manifest, over ten nationalities were represented at the resort, meaning all the embassies had been notified. Despite the arrival of diplomatic helicopters, the Macoutes seemed unfazed. They stared at the tourists gathered on the surrounding verandas. Some of these guests had just woken up and didn’t realize we were being held hostage.
“Gawd Almighty,” one heavyset Texan said. “Are we gettin’ breakfast or what?”
Looking at the Macoutes that day, they hardly seemed like the same death squads Papa Doc François Duvalier created back in 1959. By the eighties, they had become generic for anyone wearing a uniform and armed. The commander spoke quickly to Mehsud, then got back into one of the jeeps.
They left without incident, but one of the cooks told me later that anything could have happened. Two white priests were hacked to death at Cap-Haitien the previous month.
I found him later that night, sitting on one of the concrete balustrades near the dining area. He told me they hadn’t gotten more money, but he didn’t seem unhappy. I asked why they bothered in the first place.
“We felt lucky this morning,” he smiled.
Dictators, oligarchs, megalomaniacs and just plain idiots have dominated the Haitian governments with little oversight outside of weak international tribunals.
How people can feel lucky in Haiti is anybody’s guess. With thirty-two military coups in the last hundred years, it seems like a distorted pipe dream. Dictators, oligarchs, megalomaniacs, and just plain idiots have dominated the Haitian governments with little oversight outside of weak international tribunals.
The people have seen their treasuries ransacked, their protests quelled with machetes, and yet they remain hopeful. How that hope transforms itself is like a voodoo ceremony based solely on faith.
Traveling down to Port-a-Prince after our hostage-taking, I was introduced to the driver, a gray-haired man wearing a golf cap. I was told he had driven the Pope during his 1986 visit. In each town we passed, people waved in recognition. Supposedly, his presence guaranteed our safety — yet it’s a relatively loose term in Haiti.
Port-au-Prince is dangerous at the best of times. There are no stoplights and little in the way of police presence. The whole time I was in the capital, I never saw a uniform, despite people telling me Tonton Macoutes were everywhere.
It’s a crazy parable of island existence, the streets, the crowds, the tap-taps (Datsuns with caps) honking at the intersections. On this particular day, we were going to The Iron Market, an iron-girded building originally commissioned to be a train station in Cairo.
“That baby’s dead,” he told us.
A guide was meeting us named Pierre. We were told he would keep the crowd back, a job that proved impossible as we exited from the bus. One Haitian woman with a baby grabbed a man’s arm in our group, asking for money. He was clearly shaken when he pulled away.
“That baby’s dead,” he told us.
Pierre only shrugged. People do desperate things in Port-au-Prince.
As we moved inside the Iron Market, vendors, beggars, and artisans grabbed us from every direction. Pierre had to keep fighting them off.
“Don’t let them pull you,” he said. “Hit them back.”
It wouldn’t have made any difference.
Opportunities with tourists are few and far between. Your only hope is to keep moving. At the same time, I learned you don’t ignore Haitians. I made that mistake and got a gesture that still shocks me to this day. A man in Petion-Ville drew his finger across his throat as I passed.
That’s the strange dichotomy of thinking in Haiti. Some Haitians want tourists in their country, others don’t. There’s no particular logic or plan.
Many resorts stopped bringing tourists into town because the buses were pelted with rotten tomatoes. I asked Pierre which Haitians did that. He pointed to three Haitians standing with tattered gym bags over their shoulders, selling t-shirts.
“They throw tomatoes from the back of the crowd,” Pierre said. “Watch the people in front. If they’re smiling it means they don’t agree with the men.”
I asked what you do if they’re not smiling.
“Leave quickly,” he advised.
You don’t stay longer than necessary in Port-au-Prince, or mistake common courtesy for kindness. There’s a sense of begrudging acceptance everywhere, but deep down, it’s like the Haitians are still fighting for independence.
They believe in old deities and spirits; some bring luck, some, like the devious mambo, take it away.
Many Haitians have maintained a strong adherence to voodoo. They believe in old deities and spirits; some bring luck, and some, like the devious mambo, take it away.
I remember a French travel writer, René, joining us in Petion-Ville one night. They’d been down in Port-au-Prince all day, and his photographer was in no condition to eat now. She’d been threatened twice by Haitians for taking pictures. In one instance, her camera was grabbed out of her hands.
They’d planned on visiting The Citadel, but now they were packing to go home. “They don’t want us here, mon ami,” he said to me. He claimed he’d been in and out of Haiti over the years, writing about the people who used to come here: the gays, the Italian Mafia, all of them wanting to turn Port-au-Prince into their own pre-Castro Havana.
On an average income of two dollars a day, it’s a wonder Haitians can survive at all.
Now Haiti seemed like a dejected soul, decrepit, over-populated, surviving in the midst of political turmoil, hurricanes and earthquakes. On an average income of two dollars a day, it’s a wonder Haitians can survive at all. Yet, René pointed out one of the more bizarre ironies in Haiti. The previous day, he found a Mercedes dealership in the downtown core.
There are still more hand carts than cars, some drawn by people, others by mules. The smoke in the air isn’t exhaust so much as cooking fires. Charcoal is still the major source of fuel. It makes the city feel like a flashback in time, something René considered quaint on his first visits.
“It is what drew me here,” he told me. But quaintness and charm only masked the true Haiti, a wasted dream torn out of the peoples’ hands.
“The Duvaliers were the worst,” he said. He blamed them for the state of the country, the economy, and even the treatment he and his photographer received earlier that day.
When Baby Doc Duvalier left the country in 1986, the clash of good and evil began all over again. The Tonton Macoutes wanted another dictator, the people wanted a slightly built priest named Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Hundreds were hacked to death, many close to the steps of the Iron Market near where the polling stations were located.
On election day, as the people went to vote, the Macoutes arrived, cutting their way through the crowds with machetes. Hundreds were hacked to death, many close to the steps of the Iron Market near where the polling stations were located.
“The Macoutes are always involved,” I remembered the cook at the resort saying. “You don’t talk to them. You cross the street.”
The following night, traveling down to Port-au-Prince, I witnessed my first voodoo ritual. Along the road, we saw little glowing lights which turned out to be candles stuck on overturned Styrofoam cups.
We never saw the worshippers up close. As our car approached, they fled, going off down little side streets or across abandoned lots. Our driver explained that this is the way of the Haitian people. Everyone runs when they think the Macoutes or chimera are coming.
He was turning a corner when we were suddenly flooded with lights. Up ahead of us was the Mercedes dealership, a glass and steel building with a freshly paved parking lot. I remembered René’s comment about who buys Mercedes in Haiti. “The people make nothing,” he said. “Eighty percent live below the poverty line. They are not lucky. These people have no luck.”
“The Citadel is here,” he said. “One of the greatest structures in the world, and it earns next to nothing.”
We were looking at a map that night, René running his finger up the coast to Cap-Haitien and then to Milot. “The Citadel is here,” he said. “One of the greatest structures in the world, and it earns next to nothing.”
Haitians don’t promote the Citadel. It has a history many people would rather forget. Freed slaves built it, but it came at a terrible cost. The years that followed would be years of tyranny and madness under Christophe, the only monarch of the Kingdom of Haiti. The Citadel was abandoned, left to the weather, the cannons lying in the ocean below the ramparts.
It’s a strange commentary on life in Haiti. The Haitians have been taken from the earth, but in the process, they’ve robbed themselves of their future. Today less than twenty percent of the land is considerable arable, yet timber is still listed as an export.
When the hurricanes came in 2008, nearly ninety-eight percent of the forests were gone thanks to deforestation. There was nothing holding back the flood waters. Seventy percent of Haiti’s crops were destroyed and millions of people were left starving.
Only one third of the aid promised after the last hurricane has arrived.
A West Indian writer once wrote, “Haiti is a country so different from what the heart arranged.” The international community continues to act sympathetic, but countries like the United States tend to taper off imports when Haiti doesn’t do their bidding. Only one-third of the aid promised after the last hurricane has arrived.
During the cholera crisis, nobody was surprised when forty voodoo priests were hung for not preventing it. Your word is your bond in this country, and you risk life and limb if you don’t deliver on promises. It’s a never-ending divine comedy, a script leading to more corruption, more blood in the streets, and more Haitian people going hungry.
“This is a country with no hope,” René said to me the night before he left the resort. We were watching the moon rise over the Bay of Gonaives. He was telling me a story about the day Baby Doc and his wife fled the country, and how squatters broke into their house afterwards. The air conditioning was still going. The squatters had to move back outside to get warm.
“That is Haiti,” he said. “There is no luck. Not even for squatters.”
