Haiti des années 60-70-80: Le pays était-il mieux sous Papa et Baby Doc ?

March 23, 2008
Haiti’s Poverty Stirs Nostalgia for Old Ghosts


By MARC LACEY
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The imported granite was smashed. The giant cupola was toppled. The grave of François Duvalier, the longtime dictator, is a wreck, much like the country he left behind.

But Victor Planess, who works at the National Cemetery here, has a soft spot for Mr. Duvalier, the man known as Papa Doc. Standing graveside the other day, Mr. Planess reminisced about what he considered the good old days of Mr. Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude, who together ruled Haiti from 1957 to 1986.

“I’d rather have Papa Doc here than all those guys,” Mr. Planess said, gesturing toward the presidential palace down the street. “I would have had a better life if they were still around.”

Mr. Planess, 53, who complains that hunger has become so much a part of his life that his stomach does not even growl anymore, is not alone in his nostalgia for Haiti’s dictatorial past. Other Haitians speak longingly of the security that existed then as well as the lack of garbage in the streets, the lower food prices and the scholarships for overseas study.

Haiti may have made significant strides since President René Préval, elected in 2006, became the latest leader to pass through the revolving door of Haitian politics. But the changes he has pushed have been incremental, not fast enough for many down-and-out Haitians.

“It’s time to show people that democracy is not just about voting but changing their real lives,” said Prime Minister Jacques-Édouard Alexis, who survived a no-confidence vote in February pushed by critics of his handling of the economy.

Jean-Claude Duvalier, now in exile in France, sought recently to take advantage of the discontent by raising the possibility of a return to Haiti. In a radio address in September, he offered a tentative apology for his acts, saying, “If, during my presidential mandate, the government caused any physical, moral or economic wrongs to others, I solemnly take the historical responsibility.”

Mr. Duvalier’s remarks, in which he also asked for “forgiveness from the people,” together with the nostalgia one hears on the streets of Port-au-Prince, the capital, these days provoke fury among present-day leaders.

They say they cannot believe that Mr. Duvalier’s National Unity Party is attracting followers, and that a giant photograph of the elder Mr. Duvalier hangs from the party’s headquarters.

They wonder who is buying copies of a sympathetic new book about François Duvalier called “The Misunderstood” by Jean-Claude Duvalier’s former information minister, Rony Gilot.

Even François Duvalier’s grave has received some sprucing up, and the talk at the cemetery is that supporters plan to rebuild it to its former glory.

“It’s such an insult to the victims to praise the Duvaliers,” said Patrick Elie, whom Mr. Préval recently appointed to head a commission to look into whether the army disbanded under the former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide ought to be rebuilt. “There is nothing redeemable about them. We’re still paying for what they did to the country.”

Mr. Elie, who was a minister in Mr. Aristide’s government, calls the praise of the Duvaliers a “conspiracy of amnesia” that makes his blood boil.

“If you say François Duvalier was good, I feel like coming over and slamming my beer bottle in your face,” Mr. Elie said, sipping from a bottle of Prestige beer one recent evening. “There is a limit to tolerance. It becomes complicity with butchery. If you do that, I am going to go ballistic.”

Mr. Préval has acknowledged the Duvalier nostalgia and says he is working to counter it.

“People don’t know what the Duvalier regime truly represents,” Mr. Préval told The Miami Herald late last year. Acknowledging that there was peace back then, he added that Haitians born after Jean-Claude Duvalier fled in 1986 — who make up the bulk of the country’s population of 8.5 million — “don’t know the price of that peace.”

Mr. Préval has sought to recover some of the tens of millions of dollars that the younger Mr. Duvalier has stashed in foreign banks, funds the president says were looted from Haiti. Mr. Préval is also is pushing a plan to create a museum at the site of a former prison next to the palace, in which the Duvaliers’ henchmen tortured political prisoners. The site would be a reminder of that era’s horrors, he has said.

Haiti has a poor track record when it comes to preserving its past. A previous effort to restore another ignominious site, the Fort Dimanche prison, failed. The crumbling prison, where political executions once took place, is now home to squatters, some of whom get by selling patties made from dirt to quell hunger pangs.

“To think that the children being raised today do not have the reference of what wrongs have been done in the past,” said Wilson Laleau, vice president for academic affairs at the University of Haiti. “It’s so frustrating. We don’t use history and memory to understand our present and build the future. We keep beginning again from scratch.”

Mr. Laleau, an economist, said the economic growth that Haiti experienced in recent years was not really growth at all but a burst to catch up to where the economy was decades ago. “The economy was not as weak back then,” he said of the Duvalier era.

The old days come up in Haiti’s debate about whether to recreate the army. Mr. Préval’s commission is leaning against a traditional army, but it is grappling with how to control the rise of drug trafficking and what sort of force is needed to monitor the border that Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic.

“I know that the higher level of insecurity has made people nostalgic for the strong hand,” said Mr. Elie, the commission’s leader. “They think the army is going to bring back what they call ‘the good old days.’ We don’t want people to fall for that nostalgic trap.”

Those old days, Mr. Elie said, were a time in which Haiti’s elite lived lives on the backs of the suffering masses. Creating a more equitable society, he said, is a long-term struggle that inevitably makes many uncomfortable.

“The idea of recreating that monster that was the army is preposterous and unacceptable,” he said. “One thing they did well was taking .50-caliber weapons and shooting into shanty towns. They are going to have to step over my dead body if that’s the kind of army they want.”

A United Nations peacekeeping force is now in charge of Haiti’s security. It has battled the gangs that used to control the slums in the capital and restored a semblance of normality in the poorest neighborhoods. The United Nations force, a mixture of soldiers and police officers, has also trained Haitian police officers, who are increasingly visible on the streets. The police force is being vetted to rid it of officers who are themselves criminals.

But the judicial system is a shambles, ill equipped to prosecute law breakers. Some gang leaders arrested last year have already been released and are stirring up trouble again.

Moreover, kidnapping has become a new money-making opportunity for Haiti’s poor, with no one — babies, old people, rich or poor — safe from being grabbed from the streets for ransom.

The situation in Haiti remains tenuous. “All of this remains very fragile,” said Hédi Annabi, a Tunisian who leads the peacekeeping force. “It’s not irreversible. If we were to leave or downsize now or in the immediate future, we would leave a vacuum, which would be filled by the bad guys.”

Mr. Duvalier is not the only former leader with dreams of a comeback. In a New Year’s message, Mr. Aristide, now in exile in South Africa, declared in Haitian Creole, “We are waiting to meet again, face to face on Haitian soil.” About a thousand of his supporters took to the streets last July to celebrate his birthday and call for his return from exile.

The political establishment in Haiti considers the likelihood that either Mr. Duvalier or Mr. Aristide will return to the presidential palace to be remote. But the two men have devoted followings and play the role of spoilers in the country’s volatile politics.

One of those who heard Mr. Duvalier’s radio address was Bobby Duval, who remembered shaking his head as he listened to the former dictator.

“I heard his apology, but it’s a little late for that,” said Mr. Duval, who served 17 months in jail in the mid-1970s, a result of one of Mr. Duvalier’s crackdowns on critics. “He destroyed this country. He left our psyche completely destroyed. Since 1986, we’ve been suffering the aftereffects of what happened back then.”

Mr. Duval said he would welcome Mr. Duvalier back, but only to experience what so many Haitians did during his rule.

“If he comes back, he ought to go to prison to reflect on what he did,” Mr. Duval said. “Anything else would be spitting on all those who died under him.”


New York Times

Kisa nou panse de atik sila. eske nou men tou genyen nostalgi.

Voici ce que je disais depuis longtemps au forum que plusieurs haitiens pensent que c'était mieux sous la dictature. Je les ai vus et entendus lors de mes voyages récents en Haïti. Je pense que le gouvernement a beaucoup à faire pour dissiper ce sentiment nostalgique des compatriotes haïtiens.

Le gouvernement a un devoir de mémoire.Il y avait aussi des Allemands qui étaient nostalgiques pour le gouvernement Nazi,après la deuxième guerre mondiale.
Ils oubliaient que le désastre qu'ils confrontaient était du au nazisme.

J'ai lu que moins de 10% de la population actuelle en haiti a plus de 60 ans.Cela veut dire que la grande majorité de la population n'a pas connu vraiment le cyclone duvalérien.
Nous haitiens ,nous oublions vraiment trop facilement comme l'avit dit ce journaliste du New York Daily News.

Selon les dernieres statistiques, plus de la moitie de la population aurait moins de 21 ans. Et a peine 5 % aurait 65 ans et plus.

http://www.ihsi.ht/rgph_resultat_ensemble_population.htm

Donc, plus de la moitie du pays n'a fait qu'entendre parler des Duvalier.

Pale de sa w konnen non tonnè.

Rodlam Sans Malice a écrit:Pale de sa w konnen non tonnè.

San Malis,

Wi se ,pou ti mesye sa yo pale de sa yo konnen.Pou yo oze konpare koripsyon rejim apre 7 fevriye yo ak sa anvan dat sa a.
Lè m ap di sa a se tout rejim apre 7 Fevriye yo ,menm rejim Latòti an ke mwen konsidere kòm yon rejim chat mimi myaw.
Sou Divalye yo pa t gen kontwòl,okenn kontwòl sou kès Leta a.Mesye yo te konsidere kès lan kòm pwopriete prive.
Se pa t menm kès Leta sèlman ,si w te gen yon bagay mesye yo te renmen,yo pran l kareman.
Mwen sonje nan Petyonvil ,te gen yon chèf makout yo te rele PAUL VERICAIN,misye t al touye yon nonm li te di se kamoken ,epi misye t ap sikile nan la ri Petyonvil avec machin nèg la ,pa gen moun ki te ka mande misye kont e tout moun konnen kote machin lan sòti.

Marc ak Colo ,se noumenm ki vle konpare Divalye yo ak lòt rejim,pa gen konparezon non!

Non Colo,

Contrairement à vous,je ne marchande pas en rumeurs.J'avais connu la victime et aussi Paul Véricain qui était le maire de longue date de Pétionville.Ce n'était pas des rumeurs.
Véricain était un ami de mon père avant l'avénement de Duvalier et il avait pris ses distances avec lui après l'avènement de Duvalier au pouvoir.
Il ny avait pas plus d'anti duvalièriste plus que mon père.

Marc ak Colo ,se noumenm ki vle konpare Divalye yo ak lòt rejim,pa gen konparezon non!

Ami Joel

Je ne fais que rapporter des faits , des opinions de nombreux haitiens que j'ai rencontrés lors de mes voyages en Haiti. Je vous dis sincèrement que plusieurs haitiens pensent que c'était mieux avant. Ce ne sont pas mes opinions mais les leurs. Je n'ai pas assez vécu en Haiti pour me faire une idée des régimes mais je peux vous dire que si l'actuel gouvernement ne fait rien pour dissiper ces sentiments nostalgiques des haitiens que j'ai recontrés, Duvalier a de fortes chances de participer dans une élection et je vous assure qu'il fera des gains importants.

Pourquoi n'aviez-vous pas aussi mentionné le nom du beau frere du President de la republique qu'on avait arrète a Puerto Rico.pourquoi n'aviez-vous pas mentionné le nom de l'ex ministre des affaires etrangères qui fut ecroué au penitencier national?

Savez-vous quand a commence le traffic des stupefiants en haiti.N'aviez-vou pa lu sur ce forum le recit du debut de ce commence ?Savez-vous ou etaient acheminées les recettes de la Regie du Tabac et des allumettes chaque matin?Vous devez vous renseigner aupres de ceux qui travaillaient a la Banque de la Republique d'Haiti dans les années 60;ils vous apprendront des mefaits qui vous surprendront.

Vous dites:"les regimes post Duvalier."Pouvez-vous comparer le premier mandat de Preval a celui des Duvalier?

Se pa menm penpenp lan.Si yon moun di sa ou gen movèz fwa.
Colo,
Sou gouvènman Divalye yo,ti echanj ou wè n ap fè sou sit sa a ,t ap enposib.
Nou pa ta menm oze menm.Se pa vi non nou sèlman nou t ap mete an danje ,se vi tout fanmi nou ,tout ras nou.b
Konpare Divalye yo ak lòt rejim ki vin apre l yo;se konpare Stalin ak lòt rejim ki vin apre l yo,se konpare Hitler ak lòt yo,se konpare Idi Amin,Bokassa,Somoza elatriye ak lòt yo.
Mesye gen yon ti respè pou dizèn de milye victim rejim lan ,se te yon tan ke pòsonn pa t a labri non,menm patizan rejim lan pafwa.
Mwen dakò ak Revelatyon sou pwen sa a.Sou Divalye yo,mo koripsyon an pa t ekziste ,se te yon bagay nòmal,se te jan peyi an t ap dirije e si yon moun ta menmm oze di rejim lan koronpi,w ap disparèt ak tout fanmi w.

Tankou San Malis te di l,mesye pale sa nou konnen

Mwen pa nan voye roch poum konble lan mè.mwen pa ka pretann konvenk francois duvalier ke li se te youn tyran.Bye.

Men repons yon Ayisyen Brooklyn voye bay neg ki ekri atik saa.
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Mr Lacey:

I know that it is your assigned task to write almost daily articles about Haiti, but please, the next time you want to talk about Haitians' feelings about the Duvalier regime, go talk to the millions of brains Haiti has formed and whose talents are successfully servicing more than 100 countries around the world instead of Haiti.

All this because of Duvalier's extreme megalomania and greed supported by US governments of the same hue. Go talk to those who organized against the dictatorship and narrowly escaped Fort Dimanche, Ti Tanyen or rotting in the trunk of a car.

Mr. Planess was a young child when Duvalier was at his highest terroristic fervor so mostly oblivious of the reality around him. If he was eating, the world was okay.

Some young Germans felt exactly the same while Hitler was cremating blacks, jews and gypsies in Germany and the country was very clean and orderly too!


Jocelyn Gay
__________________

Brooklyn, N.Y. 11210 (718)________

Yon moun te mèt di sa l vle, Ayiti pandan e apre 1986 lan pa konparab menm, menm lè ke mwen pat vrèman viv li, men temwanyaj yo la.

Wiiii ! ... koripsyon ak represyon politik te fè raj, men omwen nivo te vi Ayisyen an jeneral pat nan eta sa a, yon moun ki te genyen yon ti djòb te ka bay fanmi l yon ti plat manje pa jou, se nou ki te premye genyen televisyon pa kab nan zòn nan, teleco ki te pi modèn nan zòn, menm "fire hydrant" ke nou te genyen...

Mwen konnen ke se pa sa yo ki esansyèl nan lavi yon pèp. Men, sa yo se siy ke te genyen yon peyi anba kouch pwoblèm ki te genyen.

Menm apre 1994, peyi a te rekiperab, se domaj ke politisyen rabi te kite vanjans, foli pouvwa, ak lanmou dola vèt pran devan yo.

Le pays était-il mieux sous Papa et Baby Doc ?

Pou mwen reponn kesyon sa a dirèk, fòk mwen di ke : wi ! ...peyi a te pi bon.

Youn moun ka konprannn sa wap defann lan.Si w tap byen mennen ak fanmi w se normal pou ap defann lendefandab e nou menm ki te blije pati kite peyi ya paske nou pat ka viv ak fanmi nou, ki tap gade zanmi nou ki ap mouri ;kite nan prison ap manje popatat ak men yo plen kakak nan Fort Dimanch eske ou vle nou di ke peyi ya te pi bon tou.Eske ou pran an konsideratyon konbyen moun peyi ya vinn genyen koulyè ya konparativman a epok ke wap pale kote anyen pat regle ki fè jodya youn paket peyisan blije rantre nan bidonvill site katon, site soley ,site de dye.Si o lye gouvenman Duvalier yo tap vann peyisan ayisyen ak dominiken pou yo al fè esklavaj an dominikanio yo te fè refom agrè pou envesti nan lagrikilti jodya ayisyen pa tap manje biswit labou.

Si a la fen rey Jean Claude Duvalier te genyen mwens ke 6 milyon ayisyen kote peyi ya te genyen ankò moyen pou pwodwi manje ;jodya nou genyen preske 9 milyon epi deforestatyon fè peyi ya pa ka pwodwi anyen ankò ou pa ka konprann poukisa sitiyatyon an vinn pi mal.ou byen ou bloke servo w poul pa ka rezonne paske wap defann posityon ke w te genyen sou rey Duvalier yo.