19584: radtimes: No celebration; this 'Little Haiti' uneasy (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

No celebration; this 'Little Haiti' uneasy

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/americas/8074995.htm

Mar. 01, 2004
BY JOE MOZINGO
jmozingo@herald.com

Among the tin-roofed shanties and cheap pensiones where Haitian migrants
scrape the bottom of an already sunken economy and try not to draw much
attention, the faces were stoic Sunday afternoon, the mood tentative.

Like every weekend here, they gathered on milk crates and plastic chairs in
little cliques -- women cooking corn and rice in scratched-up steel vats,
men talking low and drinking Presidentes.

There were no fireworks, no dancing in the streets.

WATCHING, WAITING

The people of this ''Little Haiti'' simply listened to news of Haitian
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's departure on the radio and kicked around
the question of whether life in their country might improve.

''I want a country that is better, whether it is with Aristide or with the
opposition,'' said Arturo l'Ndol, 53. ``I don't care. I just want it to be
better.''

L'Ndol still has relatives in Haiti, where violence still raged and the
future was ominously uncertain. He looked tired. He and his generation had
gone through so many fits and stops of brutality and repression over the
decades that it was hard to root for any one side. ''We are not for this or
against that,'' he said. ``We are just for the country.''

Down on the corner, in front of a shuttered storefront, a group of younger
men were happy that Aristide was gone. They originally supported him, they
said, but grew to despise him as a ''liar'' who ultimately plundered
foreign aid and did nothing to make the country better for regular people.

''France loaned all this money, and we never saw it,'' said Shiller
Estenor, 30. ``Now at least we can possibly move forward. This is a very
critical moment.''

Estenor said the United States and other countries need to intervene and
help build the physical and political infrastructure to bring Haiti out of
its downward spiral.

But there were some detractors within earshot of his positive comments. A
tiny, elderly man leaped out of his plastic seat and started thumping his
chest.

''Aristide was a good man,'' he said. Estenor jumped away giggling, and the
women peeling plantains around them laughed at the old guy's sudden streak
of truculence.

Estenor has been living in this neighborhood since he was 6, but still
wants to return to Haiti. ``It is not good to live as an immigrant, where
the culture is different, the government doesn't give us respect.''

WISH TO RETURN

Unlike Haitians in Miami, Haitians in the Dominican Republic have made
little progress in gaining a political or economic foothold.

Of a dozen Haitians interviewed for this story, all said emphatically that
they would return to Haiti if they could find a way to survive there.

''We need a professional leader,'' Lily Hanson, 48, who gets by on the odd
construction job and producing kitschy paintings for tourists. ``We just
need a good man, peaceful and democratic.''

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