Haiti: A Black Comedy- Parttwo. By Jon Bradshaw 
EVEN 
THE RATS HAVE 
GONE 
Papa and Mama Doc . 
Duvalier s message to the Ton Ton Macoute 
“Remember one thing always. You 
are black, you are ugly, 
you smell But you have the power. The only 
place I carry white flesh 
is under my feet” 
T he Avenue Roosevelt swings out 
along the harbour through 
Carrefour and falls away to¬ 
ward Jacmel, Cotes de Fer and the 
southern hinterland. In Carrefour, a 
once sumptuous suburb of Port-au- 
Prince, there are little gardens of 
curved palms and the houses are strung 
with coloured lights. Carrefour is 
moribund and very still - the sudden 
sound of a drum, the bark of a dog, 
perhaps. Nothing more. At night, the 
red and blue and yellow lights throw 
eerie illuminations through the trees. 
Walking past the deserted hotels, set 
back like tombs in the shadows, one is 
drawn to the low-lit houses as to a 
fun-fair or an all-night patisserie. 
The houses are ramshackle con¬ 
structions of wood and corrugated tin. 
Inside, a collection of tables and chairs, 
a makeshift bar, an old jukebox, where, 
for a few gourdes, scratched songs of 
the Fifties are available. The wooden 
walls are bare — the odd calendar and 
Coca-Cola sign. As in most public 
places, there are many Haitian flags 
displayed, a picture of Papa Doc in the 
centre. It is best, for reasons of security, 
to display them prominently. In the 
main room, the girls sit around in 
shabby shifts and gowns - chatter 
sharply among themselves, fix their 
hair, or when a man comes in, shimmy 
toward the door with sour smiles of 
approbation. 
Our table is set beneath the room’s 
sole window; it affords the best view 
of the room and, through the window, 
of the porch beyond. My companion, 
formerly a soldier, had offered to bring 
me here. The Ton Ton Macoute use it 
as a rendezvous, a place of relaxation; 
it is a chance to observe them at close 
range. 
The old soldier is an enormous man 
from Saltrou in the south. About 16 
stone, he has white fuzzy hair and huge 
black jowls, hanging like sporrans at 
either side of his wrinkled face. Born 
in the time of President Sam, he fought 
with Magloire and had fallen out with 
Duvalier. He discreetly retired to 
Saltrou, where he does a little farm¬ 
ing. In the early mornings, while 
working his rocky plot of land, he often 
dreams of emigrating to Canada or the 
United States. He imagines a modest 
wooden farm of wheat or yams or corn, 
a stream perhaps, a rough stone house— 
in some such place as Minnesota; he 
likes the sound of Minnesota. The re¬ 
gime, however, has long refused to 
grant the old man an exit visa. Even if 
it did, the price of a visa is well beyond 
his reach. Confined to his island and 
growing old, he seems still equable. 
“Haitians don’t need a visa; Haiti 
needs a visa,’’ he observes. 
“Why is everyone against us?” I 
remember the Director of Tourism had 
complained. “Is it because we are a 
Negro country with a Negro dictator? 
Millions of tourists go to Spain and 
Portugal and Yugoslavia and they 
have dictators. But, they’re white. Do 
tourists hate black dictators? Is that 
why they’re against us?” There was no 
acceptable answer. 
The jukebox never stops — the songs 
a generation old. Rosemary Clooney 
sings Come On To My House and two of 
the girls begin to hum the tune. Two 
men in sports shirts and dark glasses 
come in. One of them, down the length 
of his black left arm, bears tattoos of 
Duvalier, a woman and the Haitian 
flag. A pretty Negress approaches him; 
he waves her aside. He peers round the 
room. Recognising a young Creole 
girl, he smiles and takes her roughly 
by the arm. The girl peels a nectarine 
with her teeth. She spits on the floor 
and breaks arrogantly away. The man 
shouts; the girl walks casually behind 
the bar and busies herself with the 
bottles. The man glares and jerks 
round. Striding from the room, the 
heavy butt of a pistol is visible, pro¬ 
truding from his hip pocket. 
“You see? These things occur too 
often here,” the old soldier says, his 
voice implying he takes neither one 
side nor the other. “But, things have 
been relatively quiet of late. I thought 
the matter had ended.” The “matter” 
is the current racial dispute between 
black and brown. Although, a remnant 
of the Creole upper class remains in 
Haiti, the majority, who were not 
detained or put to death, went into 
exile. Those who elected to stay, or 
were not able to leave, earn fortunes 
from art, coffee and textiles. But, 
they are dissociated with politics 
and make only token gestures toward 
the government. The poorer Creoles, 
who cannot afford such disinterested 
largesse, have become convenient 
scapegoats, on which the regime- 
blames all its misfortunes. Oddly, a 
light skin still remains a badge of 
prestige in Port-au-Prince and many 
black bureaucrats have wives con¬ 
siderably lighter than themselves. 
“Lighter,” says the old soldier, 
“but not white. I, myself, have heard 
it said that the whites have no colour. 
They are the colour of ash all over. 
They have yellow teeth and a slit for 
a mouth.” He smiles. 
The bar woman brings more beer 
and a little food for the old soldier. 
The food is free; she demands of me 
the beer bill. She and the old soldier 
exchange warm smiles. Their under¬ 
standing is tacit and without shame. 
Until Duvalier, there had been little 
dissension between the colours. But, 
Papa Doc is black, an apostle of negro- 
philism. In the early days of his regime, 
transforming a black peasant rabble 
into the Ton Ton Macoutes, he told 
them*. “Remember one thing always. 
You are black, you are ugly, you smell. 
But you have the power.” In Haiti, 
black is more than a colour. It is an 
attitude, a point of view. “The only 
place I carry white is under my feet,” 
Duvalier has said. 
Duvalier is a frail, bespectacled man, 
somewhat paralytic from a stroke. 
He speaks in a halting voice and is said 
to lounge in his pyjamas for much of 
the day. Once, the old soldier tells me, 
while sitting behind his desk, Duvalier 
was overcome by a seizure and began 
to shake uncontrollably in his chair. A 
startled aide, wishing to render assist¬ 
ance, rushed quickly to his side. “Don t 
touch me, you fool,” Duvalier shouted. 
“Can’t you see I’m the Haitian flag - 
floating.” 
The bar woman smiles. There is 
another story, the old soldier says, and 
though it may not be true, hardly a 
peasant in the island does not know it 
in one of its versions. Papa Doc, he says, 
and four of his aides, convened to 
decide what he could do to make the 
people happy. The first aide suggested 
his President get into a plane, fly over 
Haiti, drop a $ 1,000 bill and make one 
Haitian happy. The second aide sug¬ 
gested he fly over Haiti, drop ten $100 
bills and make ten Haitians happy. 
The third suggested he drop a thousand 
$ 1 bills and make a thousand Haitians 
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