THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 16, 1994 TAG: 9410160078
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOHN KIFNER, THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide flew home Saturday to a Haiti brimming with joy, bringing a message of reconciliation after three harsh years of military rule.
Arriving at midday aboard a U.S. Air Force plane, Aristide boarded a helicopter to join an enormous crowd awaiting him downtown at the National Palace. As his helicopter took off, an ecstatic crowd at the airport turned and began running toward the palace some three miles away.
Standing on the palace steps behind bulletproof glass, Aristide threw a dove of peace into the air, drawing cheers from the huge crowd of supporters.
``Honor, respect,'' he said, smiling as he used the greeting that rural people give in Haiti's villages and mountains. ``Honor, respect.''
Then, he delivered the message that he would repeat over and over again in his speech Saturday, in French and in Creole: ``No to violence, no to vengeance, yes to reconciliation.''
The squalid shantytowns were festive Saturday, with crowds dancing and chanting under victory arches of palm leaves and branches. The rutted streets were swept clean, lined with freshly painted murals depicting U.S. soldiers, their tanks and helicopters and a smiling Aristide descending on a cloud.
The U.S. soldiers, part of a force of 20,000 that paved the way for the 41-year-old priest's return to office, surrounded the imposing white National Palace. If they were a comforting sign of security for the present, they were also a symbol of an uncertain future. It was only their massive presence that toppled the old order, Haitians note, and someday soon the troops will leave.
Aristide's return brings a formal end, at least for now, to the system that has existed here since the Duvalier family dictatorship took power in the 1950s. It is a system in which gunmen accountable to no law have held sway: the bogeymen of children's tales, the dreaded Tontons Macoute, and their descendants.
On Saturday, the crowds gathered in front of the palace sang the words of a church song, ``He's above, he's coming! He's above, he's coming!'' as they danced to marching bands and waved leafy tree branches, one of the symbols of Aristide's movement.
The words of the song refer to Jesus, but they have come to stand for the deposed president, and the possibility that someday he would fly back home from his exile in the United States. The song was forbidden after the coup, and Haitian soldiers beat people who they heard singing it.
By noon, the crowd numbered tens of thousands, stretching over all the streets and parks between the palace and the peeling white colonaded military headquarters where the Haitian army commander, Lt. Gen Raoul Cedras made a farewell speech Monday that was drowned out by earthy insults. Two days later, he departed for Panama.
Aristide arrived at the airport at 12:25 p.m., more than half an hour behind schedule, carried on a U.S. plane with Secretary of State Warren Christopher, members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and other dignitaries who overflowed into two more planes. After brief handshakes and waves, the major participants boarded 10 Blackhawk helicopters.
Cheering crowds raced along the airport fence following the course of Aristide's plane. As the helicopters lifted off, the crowd turned again and began running toward the National Palace.
There was a roar from the throng in the center of town, as the helicopters, their blades whipping the oleander trees on the palace grounds, settled to the grass, and Aristide, in a dark suit topped by a big red and blue, gold-fringed sash of office, stepped out of the third helicopter.
Red and blue balloons floated in the sky, a military band struggled through the national anthem, and two women in red and blue dresses serenaded the president with a Haitian folksong adopted for the occasion.
``Haiti, darling, there is no country as beautiful as you,'' they sang, using the traditional Creole words, and then, employing Aristide's nickname: ``Titid has come back, Haiti will be beautiful, the country will progress. . .
At last the president began speaking from behind the bulletproof shield. ``I greet you in a lavalas way,'' he said, using the Creole word for the flash floods that wash down the mountains, sweeping all before them. It is also the name of Aristide's movement.
Over and over, Aristide stressed the theme of reconciliation and urged calm. He seemed to be consciously setting a tone against acts of street vengeance against the gunmen who human rights organizations say have killed some 3,000 people and pillaged the countryside over the past three years.
``Never, never, never, never again will one more drop of blood flow,'' Aristide said. He drew a cheer of approval as he added: ``Let us live in peace. All the guns must be be silent.'' ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS COLOR PHOTOS
Thousands of joyous Haitians celebrate the return of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, right, after three years of military-imposed
exile.
KEYWORDS: HAITI by CNB