THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 7, 1994 TAG: 9408070067
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY FRANCIE LATOUR, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 267 lines
Jean-Bertrand Aristide settles into the corner of a burgundy and cream-colored sofa. His small feet barely touch the ground. Hands folded, eyes unmoving, he quietly begins a parable.
The Haitian proverb goes like this: A pot cannot boil in just one spot. If it does, the warmth will not spread.
``Chodye-a pa kapab bouyi yon sel bo,'' Aristide says in his native Creole. ``That means I am the president of every single Haitian citizen, not just for those who have money and guns.''
It is not the diplomatic language expected of a deposed president negotiating his return to power. It is simpler, and harder to understand.
Aristide has been boiling quietly as he attempts to conduct an exiled Haitian government from a one-bedroom apartment in the capital's Chinatown section. He's 1,400 miles away from the majority that brought him to power in February 1991 and the military rulers who ousted him seven months later.
Since then, Aristide has become The Enigma.
Headlines have painted a portrait of an evasive man whose own indecision is partly to blame for a three-year stalemate between him and leaders of the illegal regime who control the country. That regime has refused to step down despite economic embargoes, an international flight ban and an agreement signed by both parties in July 1993 that promised Aristide's return to Haiti last October.
Charges of waffling by Aristide resurfaced as the United Nations passed a resolution last Sunday clearing the way for a U.S.-led invasion and peace-keeping operations in Haiti. Politicians and the media wanted to know: Does he or doesn't he support military intervention?
But underneath the apparent contradictions is a consistency Aristide says took root long ago, even before he came to the political scene at age 37. Now 41, Aristide says he was ``infected with the priestly virus'' as a 5-year-old, when he began studying under the Catholic order of Salesian Fathers.
``I must always have the Bible in one hand, and the Constitution in the other,'' he says, balancing two empty palms on either side of his thin frame. His foundations in liberation theology, he says, are what compel him to transform God's word into the blueprint for government policy. ``It is like a light, and the light clears the way to choose the principles of democracy.''
An interpretation of the Bible influenced by Marxism, liberation theology rejects the notion that the poor should wait for heaven to be delivered from their suffering on Earth.
The time for deliverance, Aristide says of Haiti's tyrannized majority, is now, not the hereafter.
For Aristide, memories of tyranny date back to his childhood in Port-Salut, the rural town where he was born in 1953. His family of land-owning peasants put him a slight notch above most farmers, who he says had nothing.
It did not insulate him or his older sister, Anne-Marie, from the sight of peasants arrested and beaten by military police, sometimes for stealing a potato or a banana.
``We cannot compare the U.S. Army to the Haitian one,'' Aristide says. ``When Americans hear the word `army,' they think of the officers who went into Miami to help after the hurricane. But in my country, the army is the hurricane.''
In the midst of repression under then-Haitian dictator Francois ``Papa Doc'' Duvalier, Aristide found hope for change. That hope was the Bible.
He read numerous translations of the Scriptures once he entered the Salesian Fathers Seminary in Cap-Haitien in 1966. But he could not find the Gospels' message of glory among the slums of Port-au-Prince. At that point, he says, he tied the notion of a loving God to the notion of democracy and justice.
He still recites the holy text from memory, by book, chapter and verse.
``The spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. . . . He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners . . . to release the oppressed.'' (Luke 4:18)
Soft-spoken, he weaves Hebrew, French and Creole together, correcting himself when he errs on a word or a phrase.
``Come, you who are blessed by my Father . . . For I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink.'' (Matthew 25:34-35)
In a country where prison is a common method of political control and hunger and thirst are still the norm, Aristide says those verses were like sticks of dynamite in his hand.
When he entered the priesthood in 1982, it was not to begin a life of isolated devotion. His interpretation of the Gospel set him on a collision course with religious and government authorities.
The first warnings came from the bishops who had trained him.
``Don't go driving 200 miles an hour when 50 is fast enough,'' one director once whispered in his ear.
In the six years that followed, he threw out that advice and began preaching militance in the pews of his parish at Saint-Jean Bosco and over the airwaves of Haitian radio. After ignoring demands from Salesian officials in Rome to leave Haiti in 1988, he was expelled from the order.
But by then, Aristide says, expulsion from the church could not take back the knowledge he had shared with his followers there. A lavalas, literally a flood or an avalanche, was in motion, spilling outside the church walls and onto the political landscape. Military attempts to assassinate the priest at his pulpit in 1987 and 1988 only fed the movement.
``The consciousness of the people was so high, it was irreversible,'' he says. ``It was like a machine, a historical machine with no brake, no reverse pedal.''
In 1990, even Aristide couldn't reverse it.
Once the idea of the priest as president took hold - on the radio, in churches and on the street - he says he felt compelled to accept it. He announced his candidacy on the last possible day - Oct. 18, 1990.
``It is the same with Mass,'' he says, leaning back in his seat. ``You offer yourself to the people, you give your body and your blood. If there is no risk, there is no sacrifice.''
A 68 percent majority vote against 10 other candidates carried him from the sacristy to the presidential seat.
With that mandate, he says, he began to turn the tide of corruption and violence that has plagued the country since its independence from French rule in 1804. He began by negotiating more than $500 million in loans and grants from the World Bank and other international donors. Then, with the help of the United States, came a crackdown on drug-trafficking that had become a billion dollar industry for the island nation.
``For the first time,'' Aristide says, ``people knew the meaning of security, they saw that justice was coming.''
For others, the promise of justice inspired fear, not safety.
In Aristide's sermons of class uprooting, many of the country's elite heard the death knell for their lifestyles, and even their lives. While human rights groups applauded Aristide's commitment to freedom, they say that record was tainted by as many as two dozen incidents of ``necklacing'' - lacing a victim's body with a gasoline-soaked tire and setting it on fire.
``No, no, there was no case of necklacing,'' the president counters. ``Haitians are a nonviolent people. It has always been a small group of people using the gun.''
At the hands of that group, Aristide met the same fate of 24 Haitian presidents before him: He was stripped of his powers in a military coup d'etat. His administration had ruled for seven months.
Those who still oppose him in Haiti warn that a return for Aristide will only bring turmoil, not peace. To this, Aristide responds in the same soft-spoken rhymes.
``When they say reconciliation,'' he says, ``they mean impunity. When we say reconciliation, we mean justice. Vengeance is not justice, but neither is impunity.''
In other words, political opponents need not fear for their lives?
``If you are a thief,'' he answers, ``you can't impede theft; if you are violent, you can't stop violence.''
Down the hall from Aristide are two other apartments which serve as a reception area and offices for the president's staff.
The cool, off-white walls, smooth surfaces and beige carpeting in this cluster of offices all are spotless; it is more like walking into a hospital than a functioning government.
Splashes of orange or blue from a few Haitian paintings and the occasional houseplant are the only relief from the sterile atmosphere.
Inside the offices, the muffled hum of an air conditioner accompanies the silence at the desks where his aides perpetually try to resuscitate an exiled presidency.
``It can get very heated,'' one of Aristide's aides assures. ``It depends on the day, on the situation.''
No matter what the situation is, Aristide rarely goes out to meet it. He is a prisoner in his own office.
U.S. Secret Service agents from a nearby apartment pop their heads into the hallway at the slightest commotion.
Aristide doesn't remember when he last left the building, and he won't talk about the details of his protection. But he will say this: ``If your pen ran out of ink right now, I wouldn't be able to run down and get you another one.''
Instead, Aristide ushers in a constant loop of Cabinet members, diplomats and television news crews. Dressed in a gray pin-striped suit with a crimson-and-gray paisley tie around a starched collar, Aristide's small body is all angles; nothing like it appears in the flowing, white robes he has moved in most of his life.
Three couches in Aristide's apartment form a horseshoe around an elegant oval table, where he offers coffee. The few decorations come in threes: three Haitian flags on the dining table across the way, three miniature roosters hanging on the walls or decorating desks.
``It's the crow of the rooster, that wakes up the people and announces democracy,'' he says.
Sprinkled between the official visits are anonymous Haitians who come just to see their president, as early as 8 a.m. and as late as 9 p.m. In the remaining hours, he prepares more documents for the various Haitian embassies, reads and plays guitar. And he prays.
The beginning and ending of his days are marked by a shower, not by sunsets. ``More often than not I wake up over there,'' he says, motioning with his head to the desk in the next room. At most, he sleeps four or five hours a night.
He didn't get that much the week before the U.N. resolution allowing an invasion of Haiti.
When asked how his Tuesday began, he hesitates, then laughs. ``Well, that depends on what time I say it started, since it didn't really end.''
For the past 10 minutes, he has been trying to explain another proverb, but the phone interrupts. The first time, it's an old friend celebrating her birthday in Haiti. Though he dreamed about throwing a party for her the night before, Aristide says he must be content to sing her a birthday wish over the phone. He laughs more than he talks.
The second time, it's William Gray, Clinton's recently named special adviser on Haiti. Aristide listens for the first five minutes, while flashing CNN images remind him that another day is breaking in Haiti: more boats setting sail, more trails of dried blood leading to limp bodies. Phone calls and faxes to and from Haiti throughout the day and night fill him in on the specifics.
Each time the military squeezes the vise of repression just a little tighter around the country, Aristide says, the trickle of cassette tapes he receives from those who can't read or write increases to a steady flow.
While he has looked to South Africa and Israel for inspiration, he maintains that the only solution is a uniquely Haitian one.
``We need to compare, yes,'' Aristide says, ``but Haiti is not Israel, and it is not Palestine. There, it was two people at war. But in Haiti, no one is at war. What we have is a massacre. You can't ask the victims of massacre to shake hands with the perpetrators.''
As for South Africa, he says, the model of Nelson Mandela's coalition government is useless until the privileged classes can understand the concept of one man, one vote.
After 34 months of exile, Aristide still believes they will. But a unique solution would seem to apply an internal one, not an answer imposed by foreign invasion and indefinite peace-keeping efforts.
Throughout the charges of waffling, Aristide says he has made clear why he cannot support a U.S.-led invasion of Haiti. The Haitian constitution prohibits a president from calling for foreign military intervention in his own country.
``We must be careful not to divide people who want my return over this issue,'' he says. Whenever he sees two Haitians arguing over the question of invasion, Aristide says, he begs them to instead put their heads together for the good of the nation.
``The fact remains, I signed an agreement,'' Aristide says of the Governor's Island accords, in which military ruler Lt. Gen. Raoul Cedras agreed to step down but required Aristide to work with others in the Cedras government. Cedras' corps of military officers still controls the country today.
Pressure from U.S. officials to sign the accord brought the tension between the titles of priest and president to a head, testing the limits of Aristide's sermons against the hard realities of politics.
``I spent hours and hours not signing that agreement,'' he says, his voice straining for the first time during the interview. ``But that hesitation was a signal to the Haitian people. They realized there was something wrong with cohabitation with a dictator, and I was trying to tell them I understood that also.''
The assassination of his minister of Justice in Haiti was Aristide's proof of the accord's failure. ``Now the international community has to put its foot down to make the accords become a reality.''
As the experience of exile forces him to learn the new language of compromise necessary for his return, Aristide promises he will not make the same mistakes. He has openly charged the Clinton administration with racism and hypocrisy.
After haggling with William Gray on the phone, he makes more calls to his Cabinet about the wording of the U.N. resolution, hoping to steer negotiations rather than defend himself against more accusations.
But in the end, he returns to the same simple platform, a political goal born in a biblical lesson. ``We want to move from misery to poverty with dignity.'' He says his faith that government and ethics can meet remains unbroken.
To those who have followed Aristide from the beginning, the elected president they see now is as much a mystery as the theologian is to U.S. negotiators.
``When people ask me who this man is, I tell them I don't know President Jean-Bertrand Aristide,'' says Dominique Verella, who helped Aristide found the anti-poverty organization Lafanmi Selavi. ``But I do know Titid very well,'' she says, calling him by the familiar nickname among early followers.
Even Aristide acknowledges the inevitable clash that occurs when priest meets politician.
``Sometimes,'' he says, putting his hand to his mouth, ``I have to remind myself that I'm the president who is talking.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
BILL TIERNAN/Staff
Jean-Bertrand Aristide was deposed in a 1991 military coup. Efforts
to restore him to power so far have failed.
Photo
BILL TIERNAN/Staff
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti's president-in-exile, conducts his
effort to return to power inside a cluster of offices in Washington.
He rarely leaves his office.
KEYWORDS: INTERVIEW PROFILE BIOGRAPHY HAITI by CNB