BY ERNIE MAILHOT
Below are some of the observations of a team of Militant reporters who visited Haiti at the end of May. Correspondents Ernie Mailhot, Jean-Luc Duval, and Simone Berg attended the congress of the National Popular Assembly, an organization opposed to the U.S. occupation of Haiti, and the International Conference Against the IMF and Neo- Liberalism, held at the Ecole Normale Superieure campus in Port-au-Prince.
BY ERNIE MAILHOT AND JEAN-LUC DUVAL
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Among the many passengers and workers at the airport here were various police and security people. Most of these are the same police that functioned under the military regime that carried out a 1991 coup against Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the current Haitian president reinstalled after the September 1994 U.S. invasion. Two had hats and T-shirts designating them as part of the transitional police force.
The most imposing and authoritative of the security cops was wearing a blue beret identifying him as part of the United Nations forces. His camouflage pants were stuffed inside his shined, laced up combat boots. His camouflage shirt had a tag over the pocket saying, "U.S. Army" and on his arm was a U.S. flag patch.
As we drove into Cite Soleil we saw what seemed like an endless line of women carrying large containers of water on their heads. They were going and coming from the single source for running water in this part of Cite Soleil.
An extremely poor and rundown section of Port-au-Prince, Cite Soleil has a population of 180,000. Long known for its opposition to the military and support for Aristide, the residents suffered many attacks during the three years the military coup leaders were in power.
At one point during the coup years the military drove people out of their homes and burned down a whole section of Cite Soleil. "All criminals to justice" was a slogan we saw on one of the walls in the area where the homes had been burned. Several short streets have been paved in this area where the government is planning to rebuild homes.
On one of the main streets in Cite Soleil eight women and a man were sweeping the street. They explained that they had gotten their jobs since the Aristide government had returned.
They receive 240 gourdes every two weeks - a little more than $15. Six of the eight women have children and for some this is the only income in the family.
Also in Cite Soleil we visited L'ecole La Sainte Famille, an elementary school with seven teachers and three small rooms where 80 students attend classes each day.
Many schools in Haiti function on two shifts. Some students attend class in the morning and others in the afternoon because of the lack of facilities, materials, and teachers. La Sainte Famille has only one shift a day due to lack of money. It is private, as are most school in Haiti. The teachers told us that they function on donations.
Next to the Domaine Ideal Hotel, a former tourist resort where the National Popular Assembly congress was held, is the Dispensaire Barque de Pierre, a medical clinic set up two years ago by Richard Arsenault from Quebec, Canada.
The clinic handles basic medical needs and has a small pharmacy. A couple of weeks ago it added education in hygiene to its work when Jerome Latreille, a student volunteer also from Quebec, joined the small staff of three Canadians and several Haitians who work there. In two years the clinic has served 38,000 patients.
The clinic administrator, Arsenault, was forced to flee the infirmary for a time during the military regime of Raoul Cedras because it became known that he had helped victims of the military both by giving them medical care and a place to hide.
Some of the students from the Ecole Normal Superieure who were at the anti-IMF conference invited us to their school to set up a Pathfinder literature display the next day. After the overthrow of Jean Claude Duvalier in 1986, the students took over the building. Since then it has been a stronghold in the struggle for university autonomy and recently it was the site of several meetings in support of the national teacher's strike. We set up the Pathfinder literature table for two hours. Books by Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Malcolm X, Thomas Sankara, and others went briskly.
Quite a few people asked about the new pamphlet on the table about the case of framed-up trade unionist and political activist Mark Curtis. Some had read about the case a few years ago in the newspaper Haiti Progrés and were shocked to hear that Curtis was still in jail. The students were impressed that Curtis writes a regular column for the Militant.