An excerpt:
He probably shouldn't worry: since "Best Nightmare on Earth: A Life in Haiti" was completed, yet another president has entered the palace, this time by means of a real election. Jean-Bertrand Aristide is a fascinating and extraordinary young priest, a populist and proponent of liberation theology who, whatever his failings, commands undeniable support, at least among the desperately poor people who still account for 9 Haitians in 10. He has accomplished no revolution. Haitians still starve, children with the swollen bellies and the pale orange hair of severe malnutrition still beg on the streets; but at least one can now venture out at night without fear of assault or arrest. And the annual Mardi Gras Mr. Gold so prizes has recovered its joy. No one who knows Haiti would deny that things might well get worse before they get better; but until they do, that this President even reached the palace must be taken as a slender sign of hope. Looking on the Haiti of today, one is tempted to remind Mr. Gold of his own words, describing the darkest days of Papa Doc: "Haiti's jokes, songs and stories, paintings, and laughter could not be extinguished, I believed; they were also a part of my metabolism, and for them to disappear would amount, for me, to a kind of suicide. I had fallen asleep too often to the steadiness of drums resounding over the hills. I loved Haiti as one could also love a woman -- despite the pains she inflicted. That's the truth. I have no excuses." He need have none now; even the American graybeard, had he been present to watch the unlikely young priest stepping through the palace's white portico , would have had no trouble seeing his Haiti. If nothing else, this improbable country still fits the description first supplied by Mr. Gold's oldest Haitian friend, the tall imperious black man in the white linen suit who first greeted the young traveler on the Panama Lines vessel : he called it "the land of unlimited impossibility." |
