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#837: From this morning's post!




From: Carolle Charles <Carolle_Charles@baruch.cuny.edu>
>By Serge Kovaleski
>Washington Post Foreign Service
>Monday, November 1, 1999; Page A21 
>
>PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- "Aba Bob ("Down With Bob") read the spray-painted 
>words on a downtown building, a reference to Robert Manual, who resigned 
>recently as Haiti's secretary of state for public security after months of 
>political pressure. 
>
>But in a kind of graffiti tit-for-tat, across the street on Rue Pavee, "Vive 
>Bob" ("Long Live Bob") was emblazoned on a Port-au-Prince storefront amid a 
>haphazard patchwork of unrelated political slogans.
>
>Throughout this decrepit capital, political graffiti are everywhere, 
>transforming Port-au-Prince into a virtual Creole billboard of social 
>expression on issues ranging from today's leaders to the Haitian police to 
>the United States and the legacy of Haiti's past dictators.
>
>Schools, churches and cemeteries have been heavily daubed, and the back of 
>the Legislative Palace is caked with swatches of political protest and 
>advocacy. One can even find short political essays scribbled in chalk on 
>building walls. 
>
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>      
> The graffiti, which are abundant as well in other cities, towns and hamlets 
>across Haiti, are mostly the work of political organizations and parties
that 
>use the streets to disseminate their views in an impoverished nation where 
>most of the 7.5 million people do not have television sets, radios or 
>telephones. Street scrawlings also have become a form of political 
>campaigning, as many candidates have emblaz
>
>