21391: (Chamberlain) Reviving tourism in Jacmel (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

(LATimes, 18 April 04)

Reviving tourism in Haiti

Seaside resort strives to counter country's image

By Carol J. Williams



JACMEL, Haiti -- The quaint, two-story villas with filigreed verandas may
need a lick of paint, and the relentless din of motorbikes and dump trucks
along the main thoroughfare is hardly conducive to a laid-back Caribbean
vacation.

But otherwise, this seaside resort known for cheerful handcrafts and spring
festivals testifies to the potential that Haiti has seldom lived up to. An
oasis of calm with a vibrant, can-do spirit, Jacmel is a glaring exception
to the national legacy of opportunity lost to outbreaks of violence.

United in a drive to market their town of 30,000 as Haiti's cultural
capital and premier tourist destination, Jacmel's residents managed to head
off most of the looting and vandalism that ravaged large parts of the
country in recent months as a rebellion drove President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide into exile.

Jacmel's business leaders kept the people focused on the common good with
radio broadcasts urging tolerance and respect for their neighbors' property
and political positions.

''Only the police station was ransacked, and people even brought back some
of what they took from there after appeals went out on the radio," said
Marie Giselaine Michel, director of the Aid to Artisans project, which
promotes local crafts.

The newly constituted Group for Reflection and Political Observation has
enlisted youths to paint over pro-Aristide graffiti and spruce up the
central streets in anticipation of tourism.

Although Jacmel's main streets have potholes and its sidewalks are obstacle
courses of broken concrete, they are largely free of the debris found in
many parts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, a two-hour drive to the
northeast.

With more than 300 deaths since the rebels rose up against Aristide on Feb.
5, the only foreign visitors to Haiti these days are US, French, Canadian,
and Chilean peacekeepers and a small contingent of relief workers.

''Right now we can't talk about tourism. First we have to focus on the
country's image," said Danielle St. Lot, whose duties as interim minister
for commerce and industry include tourism. She figures it will take at
least a year for the scenes of machete-wielding looters and gunmen to fade
from the memories of potential visitors.

Jacmel's boosters are more optimistic. ''Many countries have had violent
events, but with time people forget," said Michaelle Craan, an artist
employed by the local chamber of commerce.

The resort area's civic leaders are working on development plans that tune
out the troubled country beyond the town limits. By building a charter
airfield and expanding the marina, they would spare visitors the squalor of
Port-au-Prince, whose La Saline and Carrefour slums flank the only road
leading to Jacmel from the capital's international airport.

Such improvements, they hope, will bring prosperity anew to Jacmel, which
had a late 19th-century heyday as a bustling coffee port and was the first
Haitian town to have telephones and electricity. Jacmel's lush tropical
foliage, year-round sunshine, and proximity to other vital stops on the
West Indies trade route enticed French merchants to move their homes piece
by piece across the ocean on the ships that returned with Haiti's bounty of
coffee, bananas, spices, and essential oils that Paris needed for its
perfume industry.

In more recent decades, Jacmel attracted more than 100,000 visitors some
years to its Carnival and May Day festivities.

But with tourism now evaporated, local artisans survive on sales to foreign
vendors and Web-based catalog companies, said Thomas Oriental, a local
designer.

They also build displays for Broadway shows, backdrops for the San Diego
Zoo, and a Haitian exhibit that will open in June at the Smithsonian
Institution, added Michel, of the Artisans project.

Many in Jacmel attribute the town's stability amid the recent unrest to the
cultural establishment that holds sway in the community, where more than 10
percent of the population is employed in crafts. Jacmel also enjoys a
tranquil religious environment in which adherents of the Catholicism
brought by French colonialists, African voodoo, and the Bahai faith
instilled by missionaries share a common social vision.

During the height of the political chaos in early March, Monsignor Guire
Poulard urged Jacmel residents to keep in mind that looting and pillaging
harms Haiti's people, not its politicians.

Having survived the strife, Jacmel is focused on its ambitious comeback.
Not only do local boosters expect to see visitors flock back for Carnival
and May Day, but they also have been negotiating with a major Miami-based
cruise ship company.