23425: Bick: Violence at Macaya (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Paul BICK <paulbick@msn.com>

Violence At Macaya: A Haitian Metaphor
Age-old structures and the collapse of a modern dream.

Paul B. Bick


On a recent visit to southern Haiti, I and two companions met with a group
of former affiliates and employees of Parc Macaya, the crown jewel of
Haiti’s fledgling national park system—the group was composed mostly of
former surveillants, guides and their families from the area around Formon,
in the Plenn Durand area, in the shadow of pic formon, the gateway to
Macaya.  All of these people had, some five months prior, been terrorized by
a group opposed to the Macaya Park project, allegedly headed by elements of
the Despagne family—a large and comparatively wealthy network of family and
associates who saw themselves as disenfranchised in one way or another by
the park project.

According to our informants, the terror campaign orchestrated by the
Despagnes was carried out by chimeres in the employ of a powerful local drug
trafficker accompanied by numerous members of the Despagne family itself.
Over the course of two long days in March, at least one man was killed,
several were beaten and injured, a woman was sexually assaulted, and two
people were taken hostage, and held for ransom.  In the end, at least 17
structures were burned and looted.  Scores of people lost their homes, their
personal property and their livelihoods, and the park lost its human
structure and its primary base of local support.

As these unfortunate events unfolded in the immediate wake Aristide’s
departure, the people of Formon, knew they could expect little help from
their government, but they have yet to exhaust all hope for eventual
justice. This report represents an effort to help these people bring their
stories to the light of day, and to look briefly at the current state of the
biosphere project in the aftermath of the violence.

Background.

The Macaya Biosphere Reserve, created by decree of the Duvallier government
in 1983, covers more than 12000  hectares in the remote Massif de la Hotte
region of southern Haiti  (see map). Parc Macaya, which comprises the core
of the reserve (approximately 5500 hectares), is the best known and most
important of Haiti’s three national parks.   As it contains most of the
country’s last stands of unbroken virgin forest—98.5% of Haiti’s original
forest has been cleared—it is also home to most of the endemic plant and
animal species still to be found in Haiti and indeed is likely home to most
of the endemics remaining on the entire island of Hispaniola. The
overwhelming importance of Macaya—both in terms of its place in the natural
heritage of Haiti and for its vast scientific value, is well documented and
cannot be overstated (see Woods and Ottenwalder 1992).

In spite of various ongoing local and international efforts at preservation
in the more than two decades, since the establishment of the park, the
forests of Macaya and the species they harbor continue to disappear at an
alarming rate (see Sergile and Woods, 2001 and Rimmer and Townsend, et al
2004)).  Ongoing and often dire economic hardship and the absence of
governmental oversight have long been considered primary obstacles to
conservation throughout Haiti, but perhaps even more significant, at least
with respect to Macaya, are longstanding local cultural factors—the
structures and relationships which have always defined and continue to
define the human presence in the region.

Although for much of its tenure, the park has been a “paper park,” more of
an idea for a park, than a park itself, a tentative structure, helped to its
feet by a number of national and international agencies, has been
steadily—if hesitantly—emerging for much of the past two decades.   The
withdrawal of ATPPF and USAID funding in early 1990s the wake of political
upheaval in Haiti surely dealt a blow to the Park, but the recent violence
in the Macaya area itself may have set the park back to square one.

The traditional ways in which the people of Macaya have interacted with each
other and have used and controlled the land and its resources for
generations, were dramatically affected by the establishment of the
biosphere reserve and the emergence of its support structure.  A precarious
balance of local power, its dynamics and hierarchal frameworks were
significantly disrupted by a new and emerging social order underlying the
biosphere project.  As part of this process, control over the land and its
resources was effectively redistributed—negotiated out of the hands of
traditional power centers—specifically, powerful, land controlling members
of the Despagne family—and put into the hands of newly appointed park
employees and associates—a local director, various managers, surveillants,
guide groups, and others affiliated with interested international agencies
and the Department of Natural Resources.

For example, the business of guiding expeditions into the park, a necessary
service for those wishing to reach the inner peaks, emerged as the most
potentially lucrative form of employment ever seen in the area.  Park
guides, we were told, were at one time, charging--and receiving—sums as high
as $100 US per day for their services, the equivalent of several months pay
for the average Formon resident. Guide servicing, then, and the potential
riches it promised, became extremely disruptive and unbalancing
socio-economic development, and served to destabilize an already tenuous
local power structure.  Rival groups, and guide associations formed to
compete, often violently, with the established structure, for control of the
lucrative and increasingly rare expeditionary business.   Eventually these
tensions would escalate to the point where expeditions would be accosted by
a second set of “guides” mid-trek and forced to double pay or turn back.

The promise of an eco-tourism windfall to the area, was a cornerstone to the
selling of the various park projects to local communities, and the people of
the Macaya region have, to a large extent, waited patiently—and largely in
vain—for this windfall to arrive.  Macaya seems in many ways well positioned
for such a windfall—it is remote, unspoiled, breathtakingly beautiful and
yet, quite close to the United States, but the larger Haitian paradox
applies here in force—money will not come unless money first comes.  The
park is in desperate need of infrastructure, management and security.  In
short, the park needs funding, and plenty of it.  And of course, there is
the ever present international perception of political chaos in Haiti,
crushing poverty, danger, and environmental disaster—all of  which hang
together like an iron curtain between the biosphere project and the
eco-tourism dollars that could save it.

Additionally, none of the new structures set up to run and monitor park
operations were provided with adequate on-site support, or even the most
rudimentary funding by the organizations which created them.  USAID, UF, the
Haitian Department of Natural Resources and other groups were materially
more or less absent from day to day operations at Macaya, from at least the
time of the U.S. embargo which followed the 1993 coup, through the tenure of
the Aristide government.  According to people we spoke to, park employees
were not paid during most of this time—for many, more than ten years—though
most stayed on the job, in part, out of an honest desire to see an important
project through, and in the hope that it would eventually provide a decent
livelihood.

By the time Aristide was removed from office, in February of 2004, tensions
simmering just beneath the surface, were ready to boil over.  With the fall
of the government, whatever slim vestiges of central authority or
accountability that may have served to hold things together in Macaya were
gone and the park structure was allowed to collapse into violent disarray.
In the resulting power vacuum, once powerful local interests bent on
re-establishing themselves and eager to get at the park’s resources, rushed
into the breech.

As of late August, 2004,  Macaya is truly a park in name only.  Many former
employees, the local bedrock of the community, have left the area, or remain
in hiding, and the region must still be considered unstable—even dangerous.
Kay Michel, the park headquarters office has been thoroughly looted and
stands in decay.  Furthermore, unmaintained trails have been substantially
reclaimed by jungle vegetation, and the trek from Durand to Pic Macaya is
said to now require 5-6 days of arduous travel through thick underbrush.
Most unfortunately, high gardening and timber cutting are, by all accounts,
continuing unabatedly within all areas of the biosphere including the
sensitive  core areas which comprise the park proper.

But the most serious development in the Macaya saga, the terror-based
violence of early March, has resulted in a deepening collapse of the social
structure upon which the park must rely if it is to succeed.


Events of March 8-9

At approximately 11 in the morning on March 8, 2004, a pick-up truck driven
by armed chimeres—enforcers identified by locals as being associated with
Caul Constant, a well known Aux Cayes drug trafficker—and carrying several
well known and widely recognized members of the Despagne family and their
associates (Norbert, Jean Fritz, Florence, Lenmi, Roland, Samson and
Madeline Despagne, and  Jano Renmi, Senek Renmi,) rolled slowly through the
busy market at Sou Bwa.   All at once, the vehicle stopped, and its
occupants began shouting and firing automatic weapons into the air.  The
market cleared immediately, with peasants and merchants scattering in all
directions in confusion and panic.  These were the opening shots in a
calculated terror move which would, within 48 hours, ultimately tear apart
the local community.

Having set the initial tone of terror, the gunmen sped on toward the
mountain village of Formon, set on dismantling, once and for all, the local
authority of Parc Macaya.  Almost immediately, the group came across 39
year-old Rendel Benjamin, a man known to work for and associate with local
park staff. Benjamin was at the time living in the home of Floriz Preservil,
whose husband Adrienne, worked as a surveillant (a kind of watchman)  for
the park.  Jean Fritz Despagne, an agronomist, an educated and well known
member of the community, identified Benjamin as a “friend of the park” to
the others and, without warning, or explanation he was shot dead, doused
with gasoline and burned where he lay in the road.

In addition to Jean Fritz, Medeline Despagne, a local nurse, school
administrator and one time employee of USAID, was, according to numerous
witnesses, seated up front, next to the driver, pointing out to the chimere
those she knew to be affiliated with the park.  Throughout the rest of that
day, and most of the next, the pick-up truck cruised back and forth through
the Formon, stopping occasionally to burn a specifically targeted home and
terrorize its occupants. Although many of the town’s residents had by now
fled to woods and ravines, quite a few remained behind, either because they
were too old and infirm to flee or because they saw themselves as neutral
and unlikely to be targeted.

Just prior to entering the town, the gunmen came across Estenio Bel Jean,
the recently deposed head of park guides association, as he was taking his
cow to water.  Before he knew what was happening, they beat him, handcuffed
him, threw him into the truck and proceeded on to Formon*.

The first house burned in Formon belonged to Jean Exesius, a father of five
and the local blacksmith.  Exesius is brother-in-law to Reynal Altay, the
park coordinator, whose house would be burned next.  Although he and his
family would escape with their lives, Exesius lost his home, his tools, his
means of earning a living and his place in the community.   As the only
blacksmith in town—the maker of tools and farm implements for everyone, the
loss of Exesius, who left town after the incident, to live with his mother,
and has not returned, is itself a form of terrorism—a small farming
community such as Formon can hardly survive without a cultural pillar as
vital as its blacksmith.

At the home of Park Coordinator Altay, the chimeres were more brutal.  They
shot his livestock, kicked in the door to his home, and finding his wife
there, beat and sexually assaulted her, before tying her up and throwing her
into the back of the pickup truck.  They would eventually, when their reign
of terror was finished, take Madam Altay along with Estenio Bel Jean, back
to Aux Cayes and demand ransom for their release.

Madame Altay and park coordinator Bel Jean were, in the meantime, brought
immediately back to the house of Norbert Despagne. There they were again
beaten and held until the following evening, when they were brought to Aux
Cayes and held in the home of Madeline Despagne until ransom could be agreed
upon and arranged.  The kidnappers initially demanded $3000 dollars each
from the families of Altay and Bel Jean, but settled on $1000 when it became
clear that the original sum was too much for the families to raise.  After
three days of captivity, the ransoms were paid and the two were released.

Though his children still live in the area, with their grandparents, Reynal
Altay and his wife are still in hiding.  They come into Formon,
occasionally, to work their gardens and to visit their children, but they
fear for their lives, and believe they can never return to stay. Estenio Bel
Jean has fled and has not returned.

Juil Raynord, a respected herbalist and park guide would be the next victim.
  When the truck arrived at his home, Raynord was tending his gardens in the
hills and had heard nothing of events in town.  His elderly mother and his
sister were at home and were beaten, but their lives were spared by the
gunmen, who ordered them to leave Formon and never return.  As they fled,
Juil’s sister pleaded with Madeline and the others to spare the priest’s
vestments and chalice, which were stored for safekeeping in the house.  They
struck her—demanded that she leave, and dousing everything, including the
vestments and chalice, with gasoline, torched the house.  Again, like the
burning of the blacksmith’s shop, this intentional desecration of religious
objects constitutes an act of terrorism suffered by the town generally, as
these items belong to the community as a whole and are intimately linked to
its history, its culture and its identity.

By late afternoon, the gunmen had arrived at the house of Floriz Preservil.
Her husband, Adrienne was a park surveillant and member of the guides
association.  Floriz held her two-year-old daughter in her arms as she
recounted for us, in measured tones, how she watched from a nearby ravine as
the gunmen fired their weapons in the air and as Jean Fritz Despagne took up
a large stone and used it to break in the door of her home.  The men
ransacked her house, removed a television, a solar panel and various
household items before, as with the previous houses, saturating everything
with gasoline from a can kept in the back of the truck and putting a match
to it.  Floriz could only watch, helplessly, from the ravine, as her life in
Formon went up in smoke.  She remained in hiding there, trying to keep her
children quiet until well after dark, when she was sure the men had left,
and then she sought shelter among her neighbors.

By the early evening, anyone affiliated with the park in any way had fled
into the hills. The chimere had arrived at their last house of the day, kay
Madame Botinne, the mother of Reynal Altay, at 7 in the evening. They had
come, ostensibly, to look for Reynal, but he was long out of town.  Madame
Botine had fled earlier in the day as well, and her house was vacant.  Just
before they put it to the torch, a neighbor appeared to plead with the men
to spare the house.  Botinne was old, the neighbor argued, she had only this
house, and she had nothing to do with the park.  The gunmen listened to the
neighbor’s case and then burnt his kitchen for having the impertinence to
interfere.  With the sun setting behind the hills to the west, kay Botinne
went up in flames, and as darkness fell, the truck sped away, and an anxious
quiet settled on the town.

The next morning, March 9, just after sunrise, the chimeres were back, their
pickup rolling  calmly up the road, looking like a work crew with a job to
finish. The Despagnes were all present, directing the action just as they
had the day before. Their first stop was the home of Joseph Presevil, a park
surveillant.  He had been in hiding since the previous day, but his wife and
children were at home.  Joseph knew the men would come looking for him, but
he believed his family would be safe.  Methodically, however, the chimeres
began drenching everything in the house with gasoline while Madame Joseph
and the children tried to save what they could from the flames.  Neighbors
came to help them, but the gunmen beat them back and announced that anyone
who would give this woman and her children shelter, would have his house
burned, so Preservil’s family spent the night hiding in a ravine and fled
the next morning to a neighboring town.

And from there, the gunmen spent the day burning, looting and terrorizing
much as they had done the previous day.  The homes of Estenio Bel Jean, his
brother Selitreux, and Alviys Floridor would also be burned that day in
addition to several others.  By sundown, 17 structures had been burned,
including several outbuildings and kitchens, numerous people had been
injured in beatings, or had bones broken by rifle-butts. Several children
were burned by falling debris. Crops, tools, livestock and seed were
routinely destroyed as opportunity presented itself.  The truck was full of
stolen household items. When the gunmen became hungry, Madeline stole a goat
for them to eat, the nearest she could find along the road, oblivious to the
objections of its owner.


Aftermath

Three weeks later, around the first of April, many of those family members
who fled the terror began to return. News of the events had spread far and
wide in southern Haiti and the perpetrators were beginning to fear the
possibility of reprisal. According to Makens Despagne (although a member of
the Despagne family, Makens supports the park and has disassociated himself
from the family), Norbert Despagne, in an effort to head off such an attack
and to deflect suspicion from himself, damaged and partially burned one of
his own houses.  Although the house was vacant at the time and the damage
was minimal, Norbert portrayed the incident as an unjustified reprisal and
positioned himself as another innocent victim of widespread unrest.

Shortly thereafter, Norbert, accompanied by his brothers Samson and Rolan,
went to Aux Cayes and appeared on a radio program to publicly refute the
spreading rumors of their family’s involvement. The Despagne family had
nothing to do with the arsons, they claimed.  They had been victimized
themselves.  The brothers placed the responsibility generically, on the
“people of Formond,”  who, they claim, burned the houses en masse, in
response to a general widespread disapproval of the park.  Former
surveillants then burned Norbert's house, they explained, because he is a
“man of the people.”

Enraged by the confusing publicity the Despagne brothers had generated
around the event, Makens traveled to Aux Cayes himself and appeared on the
same radio program a week later to dispute Norbert’s claims and to link Caul
Constant, a well-known local drug trafficker, to the murder and arsons. He
alleged that the vehicle and the weapons used belonged to him and that
several chimeres involved in the burnings were in his employ. Constant and
his people, Makens contended, were working as ‘muscle’ for the Despagnes,
who resented the authority of the park and wished to use the land as their
family had for generations. The competing public claims and the link to
Constant fueled much discussion in Aux Cayes, and Makens was eventually
forced into hiding by repeated death threats.

Throughout the spring and early summer, no amount of petitioning in Aux
Cayes would bring justice, or even an attempt at justice to the people of
Formon, both as a consequence of widespread government paralysis in the wake
of Aristide’s departure, and due to general fear that the real power brokers
involved, such as Constant, would have their revenge on anyone who made
trouble for them.  By mid summer,  Altay, Bel Jean and the rest of the
former park staff—as well as Makens Despagne -  were still in hiding.  Their
occasional forays back to Formon would invariably result, sooner or later,
in late-night drive-bys with automatic weapons firing into the air—an old,
yet effective macoute trick designed to terrorize enemies.  The ability of
the former park staff to support themselves and their families, while in
hiding, has been severely undermined, and attempts to rebuild their lives in
Formon have met with little success.

On July first, Adrienne Preservil and Reynal Altay came out of hiding and
traveled to Aux Cayes to attend the funeral of Adrienne’s mother-in-law.
Both were immediately arrested, at the behest of Constant, on the trumped-up
charge of burning Norbert Despagne’s house. They remained in jail for
several days but were eventually released and disappeared once again into
hiding.

In mid July, Michel Bel Jean, the son of Selitreux, after extensive and
tireless petitioning in Port Au Prince, managed to bring the case to
interested parties in the Department of Natural Resources. On July 22, a
lawyer from the Ministry of the Environment, accompanied by an armed squad
of uniformed police, arrested Senek and Jano Renme, as well as Lenmi
Despagne.  Having nothing to initially build a case on but the often
conflicting testimony of eyewitnesses for the more serious crimes, the
police jailed the three men on charges of Marijuana possession and
cultivation.  And although an “official investigation,” into the murder and
arsons of March 8th and 9th was apparently launched, nothing has as yet come
of it.  Shortly after his arrest, Senek, “bought his way out of jail,”
according to our informants, and although Jano and Lenmi Despagne remain
behind bars in Aux Cayes as of this writing, they are not expected to remain
there long.


Conclusion—A Conversation With Madeline Despagne.

With the appearance of governmental authority and armed police in Formon—if
only briefly—and with Jano Remni and Lenmi Despagne remaining for the moment
behind bars, tensions have eased some small measure on the Plenn Durand.
Those in hiding have begun to increase the length of their stays in Formon,
and terror squads have not returned of late.

While in Aux Cayes, after our stay in the mountains, we made a decision to
contact Madeline Despagne.  We had been told she kept a house in town (it
was there, after all, she was alleged to have held Madame Altay and  Estenio
Bel Jean until their ransoms were paid.) and we found her sister’s telephone
number in the directory.  After a number of unsuccessful attempts, we did
reach Madeline, to give her an opportunity to address the accusations
leveled against her.  What she had to say was interesting, and worth
repeating here.

At first, Madeline neither denied nor admitted to involvement in the crimes.
Her tone was dismissive and matter-of-fact.  She said, “It is a normal thing
when a government falls for those who were victims to seek revenge.”  The
responsibility, she felt, rested squarely on those who suffered the
consequences.  It is they, she claimed, who are dangerous and they brought
their fate upon themselves as a result of their own actions.  “You are very
brave,” she told us, “those chime lavalas could have killed you…they are
without faith or law.”  We asked her about the killing of Rendel Benjamin,
on the road from Sou Bwa and she dismissed it with a shrug, as if it were an
unimportant detail.  “He was nobody,” she said, “no one even knows who his
parents are.”

As it became clear that we knew something of the specifics of what had
occurred in Formon, and we began to present her details of her alleged
involvement, Madeline became more defensive.  She claimed to have had no
involvement in anything that happened there, and suggested that she was
being framed for her political leanings.

Madeline insisted that Dalbert Claude**, the director of the park, was
ultimately to blame for everything. He had, she claimed, “enriched himself”
by embezzling “a million dollars” in project funds and sowing discord among
the guides to cover his crimes. He was among the agents from justice and
environment who came to Formon to “unjustly” arrest and imprison her
brothers for marijuana possession.  Over the years, she informed us, her
family has been repeatedly targeted for abuse, for one reason only: because
they are Duvalierists.  Caul Constant carried out the crimes in Formon as an
act of revenge for a previous attack on his store in Aux Cayes, she
suggested, and the so called, kidnappings were simply Caul’s attempt to
protect his retreat from the dangerous situation he had created in Formon.
(**Repeated efforts to reach Mr Claude, both by phone, email and in person
at his office in Port Au Prince have thus far not been successful.)

The community of Formon, the human foundation of  Macaya, will eventually be
rebuilt. Foreign aid and research money will sooner or later make its way
back to area. The project is too important and has too many supporters to
disappear altogether.  But as one witness to the crimes in Formon suggested
to us, the community infrastructure must come before the park infrastructure
if the park is to have any chance of success.   Like most of rural Haiti,
Durand is in dire need of basic government services.  At present there are
no fundamental social structures in place to implement the rule of law and
settle disputes.  Most importantly, the area needs a full time local police
force—one not created simply to do the bidding of area drug lords or
powerful land holding families.

In the mean time, Madeline Despagne brusquely asserted to us that when aid
finally returns to Formon, she would be the one to decide who gets it and
how much they get. “If there is any aid to be given, I’ll decide who
deserves it.”    The ousted surveillants, guides and other former park
employees, would “never be allowed to return,” she said.  “Only if Aristide
returns would they be allowed to come back.”

Such aid is likely to be a long time coming.  For now however, and for the
foreseeable future, wealthy families control the land, practice “deux
moities”  sharecropping on sensitive slopes, and restoration projects
continue to fall into decay.  Alley cropping terraces collapse and are not
rebuilt.  The cutting of sensitive timber, and slash and burn agriculture
continue unabated, both within the park and in its sensitive buffer area.

The park and its surrounding human community cannot exist independently of
one another. Evolving relationships within and among local families, between
residents and governmental bodies, and among various Haitian groups and the
international scientific community, dramatically impact the emerging
character of Macaya and may ultimately determine whether or not the project
succeeds.  In this way, the drama in Formon clearly mirrors the wider crisis
throughout Haiti.  Old patterns will continue to re-emerge and repeat
themselves as long as fundamental social structures are missing from the
equation.