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The Struggle in Haiti:
An Eyewitness Account

Fr. Gerry Creedon recounts his February 2004 trip to Haiti.

Despite the political tensions, I was able to visit Cavaillon in southwest Haiti on February 5-10, 2004, without difficulty. With a parish team from St. Charles in Arlington, I reviewed great progress in our sister parishes of Cavaillon and Gros Marin. With assistance from St. Anthony's Church, St. Charles has helped our sister parishes build a secondary school and two elementary schools. Over two hundred of our families sponsor a child's education, as well as a nutrition program.

Our team visited a mill and bakery. I was very proud of the fact that we were able to assist them in getting their mill back in operation since my father was a miller back in County Cork, Ireland, and I knew how central a mill can be to a rural community. The women who came with their grain and then went to the bakery to make buns evidenced pride in their ability to support families.

We witnessed the dedication of a chapelle at Flamand that we had also helped.

Many new projects were needed, especially in the field of communications.

The liturgies touched us. Faith sustains people in their communities, and is tangible in their full-throated singing and graceful dances.

The impending violent insurgency was becoming evident during our visit. The police and paramilitary dispersed a protest at the local police station, with gunshots filling the air at regular intervals.

The road back to Port au Prince was blockaded the night before we left and again two days later. Mercifully we were able to pass freely. Another church group we met at the Capital were not so lucky. They passed close to Gonaives and witnessed people being butchered to death by opposition forces, led by an escaped prisoner who had been involved in a massacre in an earlier coup. A police count of about 4,000 for a population of 8 million is inadequate to provide protection to the people or to government buildings.

I listened carefully to both sides of a widening political divide attempting to make sense of the conflict.

Opposition to Aristide
On one side, support for Aristide is slipping for a variety of alleged reasons: the economy is not improving, some of the roads are worse than before, some of his Lavallas supporters have resorted to violence, the elections were questionable. In addition more cultural reasons were offered: he had left the priesthood, he had married a white American, he had assumed a rich life-style. On an intellectual level, some faulted his theology of liberation for further alienating economic classes. Devotees of globalization accused him of not following through on the privatization of the economy.

Support for Aristide
On the other side, others vigorously asserted that despite his few resources, he had built more schools in 4 years than had been built in 100 years, devoting 10% of the budget to education. He had plans in place for community health services.

With regard to elections, the impugned senators had stepped down. He had repeatedly called for new elections, which the opposition refused. He had offered many opportunities for opposing parties to solve problems through negotiation and dialogue without response.

He had suffered an embargo on the $400 million available from international institutions for health, water, roads and other needed projects, because of US State Department objections.

There were numerous reports that the opposition was receiving financial and moral support from influential US interests opposed to Aristide. The posture of the current US administration, despite the Secretary of State's recent declaration, seemed ambivalent at best.

While the US press was quick to report excesses by Lavallas, it seemed to turn a blind eye to some of the assassinations that occurred at the hands of the opposition.

The Haiti Bishops have put their support behind a CARICOM (Caribbean Nations) initiative for a negotiated solution.

I hope the invasion of Fraph paramilitary and ex army exiles in the Dominican Republic does not make a diplomatic solution untenable.

In this time of crisis it is not enough to develop refugee sites in Guantanamo. US support for a fledgling democracy, that has been shaky at best, needs to be strengthened. It is strange that a country that is promoting democracy in the Middle East has been inconsistent in its attitude to one of our nearest and poorest neighbors.

  or  2004 Homilies