Papa Doc and Les Tonton Macoute
The Comedians by Graham GreeneThis 1966 novel deals with the macabre and grotesque era of "Papa Doc" Duvalier (1957-1986) that would carry on like a vicious hereditary disease under his son "Baby Doc" who now lives a life of comfort in exile in France. It's dictatorship as a theatre of the absurd, of pockets of arbitrary and savage violence erupting at will across the populace. As his author's introduction notes:
Poor Haiti itself and the character of Doctor Duvalier's rule are not invented, the latter not even blackened for dramatic effect. The Tonton Macoute are full of men more evil than Concasseur; the interrupted funeral is drawn from fact; many a Joseph limps the streets of Port-au-Prince after his spell of torture, and though I have never met the young Philopot, I have met guerillas as courageous and as ill-trained in that former lunatic asylum near Santo Domingo. Only in Santo Domingo have things changed since I began this book - for the worse.
Featuring an expatriate hotelier Brown, whose jaded, seen-it-all sensibility can't prevent him from getting embroiled in a doomed . This is not one of Greene's entertainments and how could it be? The subject matter of Haiti defies even tragicomedy. Incidentally for a very knowing look at Graham Greene see the following review: Sinner Take All - Graham Greene.
I haven't read much of the more modern fiction on Haiti. I have Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory lying around somewhere, its Oprah's Book Club label insistently staring at me. I suppose I should really read more than the first 5 pages but it looks like one of those difficult reads. Maybe later.
For now though, the eight families (light skinned) who own almost all of Haiti are happy to continue living in their paradise, shopping in the best department stores in Miami and Paris. Hell I met a number of their offspring at Harvard, bright, cultured and highly récherché in their intellectual outlook - much resented by some of the more common Haitian stock, I might add. I wonder about that resentment though: no one ever willingly gives up privilege. For the rest of the country I suppose it's mostly your garden variety third-world drudgery: a wellspring of ecological hell, cocktails of charcoal, asbestos and cheap chinese plastic imports, albeit washed down sprinklings of CNN, the BBC, the latest Hollywood bootleg dvds, brazillian football and global hip-hop and reggae.
If Jean-Bertrand Aristide, eventually aided by a reluctant Clinton, brought a promise of change and restoration to Haiti in the 1990s, the result a decade later is clearly disappointing if not disastrous as he too is now in ignimonious exile and Haiti is in the news again as a poor desperado. His journey from priest to president to exile (twice) and the historical parallels are begging for a couple of novels or at least a movie.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Damn, Koranteng, there's a lot going on here - the writing is excellent and the information fascinating. The realtionship between environmental degradation and political decline/collapse makes an awful lot of sense.
I also agree that our media tends toward solipsism, though not more than most and certainly less than some.
I fear "we" (the West) sees parts of the world as beyond hope, as sinkholes beyond redemption - it is perhaps related to a "help those who can help themselves" mentality.
Thanks!
2 - Mac Diva
There are two solutions to Haiti's debacle. The first is immigration. That is what really frightens Americans, Koranteng. Though the country has absorbed millions of immigrants from Europe, an increasing number of Americans want to end immigration now that the color of most immigrants skin is darker than olive. The second solution is, of course, for France to pay Haitians the millions in reparations it owes them. That is what really frightens the French. I wish I could say I believe either solution will occur in my life time, but I don't.