18651: Esser: Slum may be key to Haiti's fate (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Slum may be key to Haiti's fate
http://www.sun-sentinel.com

By Tim Collie
Staff Writer

February 15, 2004

CITE SOLEIL, Haiti -- The fate of this divided nation may hinge on a
slum built atop a landfill that is one of the most explosive social
tinderboxes in the Western Hemisphere.

Six square miles of narrow alleys, festering shantytowns and cramped
cinderblock hovels, Cite Soleil -- "Sun City" -- is the bedrock of
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's power in Haiti. Its vast labyrinth
of tiny streets and divided turf is a metaphor for Haiti's politics,
which are a maze of brutal street justice, dark plotting and daunting
conspiracy theories.

With some 200,000 residents, it is the largest of a string of slums
along Port-au-Prince's waterfront that collectively account for a
quarter of the capital city's population. Street gangs with names
like "The Last Occasion" hold sway over drug networks, protection
rackets and prostitution rings.

It is here that Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas Party recruits the young
toughs known as chimere, who thwarted a march by anti-Aristide
opposition parties last Thursday, and who again may be on the streets
for another anti-Aristide protest scheduled for today. Following a
long tradition in Haitian politics, these street soldiers menace and
intimidate opponents of whoever occupies the Presidential Palace.

Consequently, Cite Soleil is the seat of Aristide's power, with
supporters among the chimere and the many poor Haitians who struggle
to survive here.

But if that power -- built on political patronage, shared suffering
and cash -- wanes for Aristide, the whole country could slip into
chaos, say human rights activists, diplomats and even slum dwellers
here.

Cite Soleil could go the way of Gonaives, where the assassination of
a gang leader named Amiot Metayer in September set in motion an
anti-Aristide uprising two weeks ago that spread to 11 cities and
resulted in dozens of deaths. Disaffected anti-government partisans,
calling themselves the Gonaives Resistance Front, still control
Gonaives, Haiti's fourth largest city, which sits on a major road
linking the north and south.

In Boston, a rough Cite Soleil neighborhood at the center of
opposition protests in November, reporters touring the slum on Friday
were abruptly cut off by two SUVs filled with gun-toting street
soldiers. Their leader, Robinson Thomas, would speak only briefly to
a reporter because he said two of his top lieutenants had been killed
earlier in the week -- allegedly by Lavalas gangs.

"It's just not safe to talk right now, even on my own turf, because
you never know who is watching, when they might launch a hit," said
Thomas, 27, who is better known in Haiti by his street name Labanye
("The Banner.")

"Lavalas is losing control here, and they want to regain it by
killing me and other gang leaders," said Thomas. "If they kill me,
they'll have an uprising here, but I'll be dead, so that doesn't do
me any good."

Top leaders killed

During the last four months, some of the top leaders of Cite Soleil's
major gangs have been killed. Posters on many storefronts celebrate
Thomas's former boss, Rodson Lemaire, one of the top four or five
gang leaders in Cite Soleil. His body was found riddled with bullets
in late October after he broke ranks with Lavalas.

Last weekend, five people were killed who were reportedly aligning
themselves with the Group of 184, a coalition of business groups,
trade unions and student organizations that has called for Aristide's
resignation. The group contends Aristide should step down over
contested 2000 legislative elections that were swept by the Lavalas
Party. Aristide has refused, despite international criticism and
growing violence in Haiti among more radical opponents of his
government in many parts of Haiti.

"Cite Soleil was Aristide's fiefdom, but he's losing control," said
Pierre Esperance, head of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights,
one of the country's leading human rights groups. "What happened last
weekend was more score settling. Lavalas needs to keep control,
especially after what happened in Gonaives, so when there are signs
of disloyalty, or when people know too much or are no longer needed,
they are dealt with."

In November, Boston residents erected barricades and shouted "Down
with Aristide!" after the death of Lemaire, known as Colobri
("Hummingbird") . Posters along the storefronts here openly vow
retribution for his death against Fritz Joseph, Cite Soleil's mayor
and a staunch Lavalas partisan.

"Boston is ground zero right now because that's where Lavalas feels
most threatened," said Ernst Sentil, 29, who recently fled the
neighborhood under threats for his support of the Group of 184.
"People are being shot, their family members kidnapped.

"What keeps Lavalas support up right now is money and guns,
especially guns," Sentil said. "They supply the weapons, and turn a
blind eye on whatever the criminal actors are involved in. But they
don't have the support of the average people there. They are just
living in fear, without schools, food or health care. Their lives
have not changed under Aristide."

Lemaire vs. Lavalas

What turned Lemaire against Lavalas isn't clear. It may have been
money, or simply a perceived lack of respect from Aristide. In July,
he led an attack against members of the Group of 184 who were
attempting to hold a rally for their "New Social Contract," a
political platform for the reform of Haitian society. But after about
30 Group of 184 members and several reporters were injured in a
rock-throwing melee, some gang members publicly condemned Lavalas.
One, named Johnny Occillius, gave an interview on local radio saying
he and others were paid $12,500 by Lavalas to disrupt the rally. He
then fled to the United States.

But members of the chimere who broke up Thursday's demonstrations
scoff at such talk. Though witnesses said they saw chimere taking
money from a car during Thursday's failed demonstrations, they denied
receiving pay from Lavalas. They are the outraged poor people, they
say, who voted for a popular president in a legitimate election in
2000. Now Haiti's wealthiest residents, who are leading the calls for
Aristide to resign, are once again trying to usurp the role of the
poor masses, they say.

"We want a president to stay in office, a president who works for us,
the poor people in the streets, not these rich Arabs," said Evans
Vital, 34, a chimere captain, referring to Andy Apaid, the third
generation Haitian of Lebanese ancestry who leads the Group of 184.

Added 24-year-old Etienne Guiny, another chimere member: "Who is
going to feed the street woman who has to pay 110 Haitian dollars
(about $12) for a small bag of rice? Do you think Andy Apaid, or
these 184 people are going to do that? These people are going to Cite
Soleil and trying to find people to overthrow our president. We are
not going to let that happen. Look at what happened in Gonaives."

Speculating on Lavalas

But Thomas said that the Fanmi Lavalas might be fracturing, splitting
into camps whose political leaders run different gangs in Cite
Soleil. The men that killed his two lieutenants are commissaires
(commissars), he said, who were dispatched by Lavalas to kill him.

"I think what is going on is that the patrons are changing as
different people fall out with Aristide in the (Haiti's Presidential)
palace," said Thomas, who grew up in Cite Soleil. "My patrons were
dumped by Aristide, so they had to clean house. That meant coming
after [Lemaire] -- man, I grew up with this guy, really loved him --
and now coming after me."

Thomas recalled how excited his family was at Aristide's first
election in 1990. People loved the street priest, he said, and
believed he would change their fortunes.

"I remember telling my mother that Aristide was going to be
president--I must have been 11-- and it was so exciting," he said in
an interview Saturday. "But nothing has changed. The conditions in
this place are horrible, just horrible for people, and he's done
nothing about them.

"How it works is that they pay us to maintain control here--I've been
given $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 to do some bad things. Things I
cannot talk about now because I'm not safe out of this country yet,"
Thomas said. "But I have to tell you I regret it now, because it
didn't really help anybody here."I really think that Aristide should
go, or at least give the social contract a chance," he said,
referring to the Group of 184's improvement plan. "People are at
least curious to see what it says, if the people like Apaid really
mean it. But they cannot find out more about it, because it's just
dangerous to talk that stuff in Cite Soleil now."

What makes the situation so frightening to many observers in Haiti is
that, unlike previous eras in the country's history, there is no
strong government police or military authority to hold back the
well-armed chimere gangs. The army was disbanded after a U.S.-led
invasion that reinstalled Aristide to power in 1994, and the
5,000-man police force has been weakened by corruption, political
favoritism and poor training.

Attempting to retake Gonaives back last weekend from the gangs, the
national police were easily repulsed.

"That's what makes this a fairly unique moment. Before there was
always a central military authority, for good or for ill, that kept
order and chaos to a minimum," said Robert Fatton, a Haiti-born
scholar of the country at the University of Virginia. "Now I don't
know what you've got. If the police force falls apart, and Aristide
loses control of Cite Soleil, then the whole place could easily erupt
into chaos."

Tim Collie can be reached at tcollie@sun-sentinel.com or at 954-356-4573

Copyright © 2004, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

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