30027: Ferdinand (reply) Martissant (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

> From Anna Ferdinand

It was 1995 when I first went to Haiti.  I was visiting the National Office
on Migration (ONM) one day and met up with a group of young men from Grand
Ravine who had gone into exile to the DR during the coup for their support
of Aristide.  Upon their return, with the restoration of Aristide, they
approached every government office they could think of in an attempt to
bring development to their area now that democracy had returned.  I began
teaching English at a school at their request.  After class often I would
join them in their rehearsals for a folklore troupe and a theater group.
They also brought me on several occasions to Grand Ravine, introducing me to
people who had been in Guantanamo, telling me about their hopes for a school
in Grand Ravine, and a project that would stop the erosion of the road that
crossed the deepening ravine. They were bringing up the issues that faced
the new democracy; the need for schools, infrastructure, reforestation and
the need to promote a beautiful culture in a country filled with artists.
It was a time when there was hope that these things could now be achieved,
that if you could stumble upon the right government channel, these things
just might happen.



 By the year 2000, when political crisis had been well established and the
May 21 elections took place, one of the group from Grand Ravine, Luckner
Monprevil, was elected as second in a cartel of three Port-au-Prince mayors
under Family Lavalas. The artists who had been members of the theater group
were now his security corps, toting large guns.  At the inauguration, City
Hall was overrun with Lavalas supporters and the scene was chaotic.  I came
upon the law student turned adjoint mayor to congratulate him.   He was
surrounded by his well armed friends, cowering in a room in the back.  It
was a mad scene outside, and the reality of power in that situation was
overwhelming him in the moment.  Unfortunately he came into a questionable
situation and political chaos and mismanagement brought his cartel down.  I
don't think he did much of anything while in power and by the end was
criticized for driving a Mercedes to work.    By 2003 the groups were well
armed, and all innocence seemed to have been lost. True power to develop
from the mayor's office had come and gone. Power had corrupted, with
positions for the old gang in parliament and presence in the National
palace. Only the dance teacher had turned away in disgust.   When Fefe Bien
Aime, a Grand Ravine resident who had been appointed as cemetery director (a
gun battle in the cemetery took place under his direction), was killed, the
Lavalas group, entrenched in the new system of Popular Organizations, turned
against Aristide.  Bien Aime was last seen in the hands of the police.
Later his car was found dumped and he was dead.   But after a couple of
months of calling Aba Aristide, they were again pro and the new leader was
seen in the palace; political mutations in an atmosphere devoid of positive
development in any sense.  Just as the Raboteau folks came in and left the
Lavalas fold, so did the group in Grand Ravine.  Idealism, ideas of justice
and development were long gone, lost to gang war.



The discussion of what gang was in charge of what crimes occupies the
discussion on this list, fights between the authors of articles in a war of
words, is equally unconstructive.  It's easy to try and paint a picture of
black and white, right and wrong, but Haiti is far beyond that.  Deibert has
done a commendable job, with heavy duty investigative journalism over the
years, of opening the eyes to the fact that no one side has the monopoly on
what is good and right.



The United States government bought their own form of political gangsters to
carry out their war out in what they consider a slum.  Aristide played the
same game on his lower wrung of power.  There was a hope that he would step
out of the game, to hold up a mirror in the face of what the most powerful
do to the least powerful.  Instead he became their mirror image.  The
consequence has been that not only did Martissant residents initial activism
result in little, but the whole country has blown up in everyone's faces.
The gang wars, the election wars, the constant parade of wars just hit on
the sand like endless waves, lapping up on the real land, with real people
living real lives where nothing ever changes because people never change.