24308: Driver: (comment) Aubelin Jolicoeur

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

>From tfd3@columbia.edu

So Jolicoeur is dead.  I guess most of us have memories
of him.

My wife and I made our first visit to Haiti as tourists in
January, 1980.  We went straight from the airport to the
Olofson, and within an hour or two we had met Jolicoeur.
Or rather, he met us, for he had an eye for newcomers
(which we were) and good looking women (which my
wife was and is), so he introduced himself.  We were
very interested in learning about Haitian culture.  Upon
hearing this, he took us to a small "New Year
ceremony", vaguely Vodouiste, that very night in a
private home in Petionville.  We had to be grateful to
him, although we had already decided he was not a man
to be trusted.

I have a friend, a journalist, who has lived and worked in
Haiti for decades.  For a time she accepted Jolicoeur's
invitation to live at his house.  She had an assistant from
Cite Soleil who used to help her with setting up
interviews, etc.  One day Jolicoeur returned home to find
this fellow sitting with my friend on the veranda of the
house.  Jolicoeur ordered him to get out.  When my
friend defended her right to visit with her guest,
Jolicoeur drew himself up as far as his small height
allowed, and said emphatically and indignantly in
English:  "If he can come here, who I am?"

Jolicoeur is gone, but the attitude underlying that class-
ridden question is tearing Haiti apart today.  The love of
money, and the heavy hand of the U.S., don't help.

Tom Driver