Vol. 61 No. 3 1994 - page 494

494
PARTISAN REVIEW
marshy waterfront - places with names like Cite Soleil, Cite Carton,
Brooklyn, and Boston. Peasants leave their failed land and nest there, in
keeping with the age-old theory that if you have absolutely nothing the
best way
to
survive is to be around other people who are surviving.
Tens of thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands, of people are
crowded into this stinking swamp of garbage and human waste.
It
has
become the late-night shooting range of the military regime and its
armed supporters. Every night, usually some time after midnight, gunshots
are heard in the capital, which is completely blacked out because of the
embargo on fuel. Just little pop-pop sounds in the blackness.
In
the
morning bodies can be found. Some have had their faces mutilated with
machetes for added effect. Usually a few people are standing around -
there are millions of Haitians with nothing to do with their lives - who
will explain that these were supporters of deposed President Jean–
Bertrand Aristide. They probably were. Most of the people in the slums
did support him, which is why he won a landslide victory in the 1990
election.
Some of the killing may just be random shooting - true terrorism. A
doctor at the grim H6pital General, where patients die for lack of
medicine, said that he was seeing a lot of wounds that looked like they
might have been caused by falling bullets that had been shot in the air.
In
Cite Solei! no shelter is solid enough to offer protection from a rain of
bullets. Not surprisingly, the slums are not looking as crowded as they
once were. People say that the city isn't safe at night and that anyone
with a rural relative would do well to leave town. The population of
Port-au-Prince may actually be declining at the moment.
The lack of hard information works much to the advantage of those
doing the killing. A few months ago a massacre in the northern city of
Gonalves was reported. The original story came from Haitian journalists
opposed to the military regime. The foreign press was escorted around
the neighborhood, Raboteau, but saw very little proof of a massacre. At
one point an old bone, bleached white, protruding from a hole in the
ground, was offered as evidence of the recent killings. An advisor to
Haitian military chief Raoul Cedras told me, "It never happened."
Although I find the story credible - since it is consistent with what the
terrorists have done elsewhere in Haiti - it is also possible that this al–
leged massacre never happened.
The difficulties in understanding Haitians are compounded by the
Creole language, a dialect of French fused with various other European
and African languages. Like other languages based on popular dialect -
Yiddish is an example - the grammar is stripped down and the nuances
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