That morning I rushed to the cable office to beat the censors I knew would stop all outgoing dispatches, especially mine. I filed a take to the Associated Press and the New York Times on what appeared to be an unsuccessful attempt to kidnap the president’s two youngest children as they were entering morning classes at the Methodist school. As I ran back to my car soldiers were arriving by truck, and I watched as they were posted before the offices of RCA. I went back to reporting first hand the bloody mayhem, knowing I would find a way to get the story out somehow as I had done many times before.
Elderly Judge Benoît and his wife had just returned from Mass in the nearby Sacré Cœur church. Macoutes and a truckload of presidential guardsmen drew up before their house and opened withering fire at point-blank range. Those in the house died instantly. The house was set on fire. It became the pyre of the judge and his wife, a visitor and servant. Their son Lieutenant François Benoît’s eighteen-month-old son died in the fire or was, as some believe, taken away by an officer. For days the Benoît’s ashes were scattered by the wind throughout the neighbourhood.
The Palace believed the Judge’s son, Lieutenant Benoît, an army sharpshooter, was responsible for the attempt on Papa Doc’s children. (It was later proved to have been an act by Papa Doc’s former secret police chief Clément Barbot.) Benoît had been in political asylum in the Dominican Embassy. Soldiers violated the sovereignty of the Dominican chancellery in their search, and they were halted from entering the Dominican Ambassador’s residence and massacring those seeking asylum there only by President Juan Bosch warning that it would be an act of war. We could see the Dominican Republic from our house. Generalissimo Rafael Leonidas Trujillo’s 31-year iron-fisted rule had been ended by assassins’ bullets on 30 May 1961, and the long-time exiled writer Juan Bosch had become the Dominican Republic’s first freely elected president. But with only four months at the helm he found the military machine he had inherited from the dictatorship now slow to respond to orders. Directed by Bosch to move against Papa Doc, the Dominican military refused even to rattle their sabres. They complained that they were out of petrol — literally.
I witnessed two young friends taken away in the absence of their father. Scores of ex-army officers were seized. One, a former coastguard commander, was shot dead by a squad of Duvalierist women. Everyone and anyone was suspect, especially the military.
I arrived home late that day. Not wanting to be detained at a roadblock by berserk Macoutes, I was forced to use back roads and drive over fields and around a mountainside to our home in a hilly rural farming area of Frères outside Port-au-Prince.
It was a restless night. As the heat of the day dissipated there was no sleep, except for our baby. We knew that the terror from the Palace would not be easily sated. The bloodbath would continue. Duvalier was bound to win all his stand-offs, even with President Kennedy. He knew he could resist everything but a well-placed bullet, and he was well guarded. Two loaded silver-plated Magnum revolvers rested as paperweights on his desk, and he carried a light US Second World War carbine with him everywhere he went. A Thompson submachine-gun was propped in the corner of his bedroom toilet. Moreover, Papa Doc was a consummately cynical actor. He played many roles: the good man, bad man, evil genius and madman. He affected the Baron Samedi look, that of the Voodoo god who is guardian of the graveyard, dressed in black hat and coat. Only Baron Samedi’s traditional cigar and bottle were missing — Duvalier neither smoked nor drank. (He was a diabetic dependent on insulin, but when his blood sugar got too low he would eat or drink something sugary, such as a sweet, to avoid insulin shock.) Wrapped in a red-and-black dressing-gown, the colours of his Duvalierist flag, he would shuffle aimlessly around the Palace at night like a lougarou — werewolf.
At daybreak I expected the Macoutes to come at any moment. Papa Doc knew that I would try to get the story out somehow. He would want to stop me. I had been repeatedly warned about reporting stories that created adverse publicity for the Duvalier government. ‘After all you are a guest here,’ the foreign minister had recently warned me.
At 5.30 a.m. a carload of Macoutes arrived at my doorstep. My yard-boy held his machete threateningly and looked at me, but I signalled for him to put it down. I went peacefully.
I was finally deposited in La Grande Prison in the centre of the city. It was a rambling series of tin-roofed cells encircled by a high mortar wall built by the French colonizers in the eighteenth century, covering an entire block.
I was stripped naked and placed in a cell. Every second became an hour. I knew what had happened at some of the houses of those arrested. Many times the Macoutes go back to pillage the house and ‘disappear’ the family. I was terrified for my family and powerless to help them.
When the sun went down and the roof cooled, the night sounds became weird, frightening omens. Occasionally there was a gunshot. Scared voices of sentries called out, trailing across the prison yard, reassuring each other at their posts along the wall. At one point I dozed, but a burst of gunfire awakened me, followed by the angry curses of an officer and mutterings from his men.
My thoughts were with my wife and little son, vulnerable to the roving bands of Macoutes. But I had some hope. My wife was from a family of fighters. General Laurent Bazalais — the mulatto Chief of Staff of liberator Jean-Jacques Dessalines’ army and among the signatories of the 1804 act of independence that created the Haitian state — was one of her forebears. Our peasant neighbours were all friends and hated the Macoutes. My Catholic God remained a stranger; the Voodoo lwa (spirits of mystery) were more approachable.
Suddenly it was quiet — for Haiti, unearthly quiet. I strained to listen, but I heard nothing. There were no voices. From what I could tell, the prison, at least the section in which I was incarcerated, was empty. What had become of all those arrested on the street the day before? Could they all have been sent to Fort Dimanche? When a soldier brought me a plate of beans and rice the next day I asked to go to the latrine, hoping to make some human contact that could inform me as to what was going on. But instead they rolled the latrine into my cell: a 55-gallon oil drum cut in half, filled with lime and black with flies feasting on the stinking faeces.
I found a rusted Gillette razor blade resting on the crossbar of the cell. I could see it had been used to carve people’s names on the walls, which were caked thick with lime from years of whitewashing. Everyone wanted to leave a trace of their existence behind. I tried to catalogue mentally all the prisoners’ names etched in the wall and their dates of imprisonment, but I was too anxious to retain them. Then I decided to add my name and the date.
On the afternoon of the second day a soldier brought my clothes and told me to dress. He came back and escorted me to the prison’s administration office. Captain Pierre Thomas was waiting. He was in charge of the Interior Department’s Immigration Enforcement Section. We were old friends.
Several soldiers watched as Thomas sorted through my papers and pocketed my $17 in Haitian gourdes.
‘You’re leaving,’ Thomas said.
‘Where to?’ I said. I had hardly any voice. My throat was dry, and I realized I had not had anything to drink in forty-eight hours.
‘You are being expelled,’ he replied.
‘What about my family? I am not leaving without them.’
Thomas looked at me. His eyes were tired. I could see he was exhausted, but his eyes seemed to offer some trust.
For the benefit of our audience, some of whom would report back to the Palace, Thomas said with finality, ‘They have no problem, but you do. This is the only plane. There will be no other plane for you. Let’s go.’
‘But I have no passport.’
‘You do.’
I trusted Thomas. He was not one of them. Clearly there was a sense of urgency in his words about my leaving that made me realize I would not be of any use to my family dead. Refusing might endanger them even more. If I did get on a plane and reach the outside world, I could bring pressure on Papa Doc to al
low them to leave.
Getting to the airport was another traumatic experience. A macabre out-of-season Mardi Gras band danced drunkenly in the street, blocking our way. My guard had fallen asleep in the back seat of the little car, and the muzzle of his Thompson submachine-gun had fallen against my side. I noted he still had it cocked. All I could think of was that this was Russian roulette on a grand scale. Any good bump — and there were no shortages of ruts and potholes in the streets of Bel Air — could produce a burst of machine-gun fire into my heart. I studied the dangers of awakening him, or Thomas, who was driving, having a collision, or of the soldier being startled by a bad dream. It was the last time I saw Thomas. In 1968 he was executed by Duvalier along with eighteen fellow officers.
I climbed aboard the Delta afternoon flight to Santo Domingo with four cents in my pocket, wearing a sports shirt and a pair of linen trousers, the back pocket of which had been ripped off by the butt of a Macoute’s rifle. Except for a US Marine officer I was the sole passenger on the plane. At dusk, the ‘Clipper’ climbed out over the Cul de Sac plain and headed east across the lakes towards the Dominican Republic. There was no relief in my last look at the majestic Massif de la Selle mountain, only sadness for the country, its people and my friends — and fear for my wife and child. My beloved newspaper, the Haiti Sun, and printing plant were gone for ever. Of one thing I was certain: I was leaving Haiti only physically. The country had become ingrained in my soul. My wife, with the assistance of Time’s Editor-in-Chief Henry Luce, the British Foreign Office and the New Zealand Prime Minister, but mainly by dint of her own courage, followed me into exile with our infant son three weeks later.
Papa Doc had won this battle. It had been impossible to send out reports on the bloody violence I had witnessed. In exile I could not write a first-person account of that bloody day for fear Papa Doc would retaliate against my family and friends. I had to keep silent. No first-hand account of that day was published.
4 | A RIVER OF BLOOD
We came upon the border but had to settle for looking at Haiti from the Dominican side. For the most part, the roughly 195-mile border that separate the two countries was a desolate and ill-defined line. There was no border fence. No single highway ran its length; only a series of feeder roads or narrow paths linked the few towns that populated both countries. Rivers served as the demarcation line in the valleys. In the mountainous sections the border could be delineated by the fact that the Haitian side had been eroded by tree-cutting for charcoal to the point where the land was virtually bald, while the Dominican side was still green with trees and vegetation. The border had an aura of evil, the uneasy feeling of a place not to wander about. The demarcation line, such as it was, had been soaked in the blood of ancient enemies.
The natives of Hispaniola, as Christopher Columbus baptized the island in December 1492 on his first voyage of discovery, suffered dearly under Spanish rule. In 1650 French settlers took over the western third of the island; it became known as La Partie Française until officially named Saint-Domingue with the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697. The Spanish side first introduced African slaves to the island in the early sixteenth century to toil in their gold mines after the Indian population had literally been worked to death. Much later, as the French settlers evolved into traders, Saint-Domingue became an important market for the thriving commerce in African slaves.
Following thirteen years of warfare, in 1804 an ex-slave, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, led his armies to victory against the French and declared the new nation of ex-slaves Haiti (the Indian word for ‘mountainous lands’). The black Caribbean nation entered a hostile white world. It was the second free country in the hemisphere after the United States. Fearful of foreign invasions, the victorious Haitian leaders led their armies across the border in conquest to occupy much of the Spanish part of Hispaniola. In 1821, seventeen years after independence, Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer occupied the entire island, and the eastern two-thirds became known as ‘Spanish Haiti’. The border disappeared for twenty-three years until 27 February 1844, after Boyer was overthrown and, taking advantage of the political chaos in Port-au-Prince, a group of Dominican patriots led by Juan Pablo Duarte seized Santo Domingo and brought about the capitulation of its Haitian garrison. The Dominican Republic came into existence, and the border reappeared.
We reflected sombrely on the fact that no strip of land in the Caribbean had seen so much killing. Graham displayed a keen interest in the border history and lore. The Haitianization of the border area dated as far back as the early 1930s. Haitian currency and the Creole language dominated the region. Dominicans were fearful of crossing the border because they believed that powerful old Papa Legba, the Voodoo deity and interlocutor between man and his gods, guarded the roads leading into Haiti. They associated the Haitians with black magic. Yet Haitians crossed over into the Dominican side, looking for work in the sugar-cane fields and as market traders and to flee political oppression. The Dominicans feared a ‘black tide’ was engulfing their country.
We arrived in Monte Cristi on the north coast. From there we headed west to the frontier at Dajabón, but before entering the town we branched off again, heading north towards the coast to inspect an area where exiled Haitian General Leon Cantave’s ragtag army had been trained. Cows grazed peacefully in the pastures. We passed saco mangles, men who made a living collecting the bark of the mangrove tree which was used for dyeing animal skins. At Pepillo Salcedo a smart-looking Dominican navy corvette was berthed at the Granada Banana company dock. A small empty Haitian military post was within shouting distance on the other side of the river mouth.
I parked the Beetle on the side of the road, and we walked through the wild vegetation in the Punta Presidente bird sanctuary. As we struggled through the undergrowth on the bank of the river we startled a flock of flamingos that rose and flew like a pink cloud. Then we heard an engine start, and two men in a motorboat ploughed off into the open sea, the throttle wide open.
‘They are up to no good. I bet they’re Cuban gusanos,’ Graham said, using Castro’s word, worms, for Cuban exiles.
We got back in the Beetle and headed south to Dajabón. The old customs gate looked more like the entrance to a fort than the entrance to the Dominican border town on the banks of the Rio Dajabón, more commonly known as the Massacre River. The river originally got its nickname in the seventeenth century when Spanish troops ambushed buccaneers on the river bank while they were hunting cattle on Spanish territory. The Spanish slaughtered the men.
The water under the Dajabón bridge was green and sluggish. Dominican soldiers were amused by our visit and our interest in the border. They allowed us to proceed to the middle of the bridge, but one of the solders warned me. ‘ Con cuidado. Carefully,’ he said, as I stepped over the yellow line in the middle of the bridge to take a picture of Graham taking a picture of the Haitian side of the river.
The soldier set his rifle down and pointed to the Haitian side. ‘Alli estàn los Haitianos. The Haitians are there.’ He nodded meaningfully at the foliage that cloaked the river bank. It all looked pristine and deserted. Graham focused his little Minox camera and snapped the view of Haiti. It was the only time during all the years I knew him that his camera worked on the first try.
Graham had a mischievous look in his eye, as if he wanted to provoke the Haitian soldiers into showing themselves or perhaps even shooting at us. The Dominican guards were cautious. ‘Haitian soldiers and Macoutes have you in their gunsights,’ one of the Dominican soldier warned. ‘They are watching your every move.’ As if to show proof of what he meant, he pointed to the pockmarks left by bullets that had struck the Dominican customs house when Haitian troops had opened fire with a .50-calibre machine-gun on General Leon Cantave’s retreating army of Haitian exile recruits and cane-cutters. It had been a real war scene along this section of the Massacre River in September 1963. Cantave’s forces fled in total disorder, throwing away their weapons in terror, after trying unsuccessfully to capture the
army barracks in the border town of Ouanaminthe, which could not be seen from the bridge. Since that incident the border had been closed. There was no traffic or contact between the border guards on each side of the river.
Graham was fascinated by one story that had emerged after the battle for Ouanaminthe. One of Cantave’s toughest fighters, Captain Blucher Philogenes, was killed in the encounter. According to a radio message intercepted by the Dominicans, Duvalier had ordered that Philogenes’s head be flown back to Port-au- Prince in a pail of ice. The story of the special plane dispatched by the Palace to fetch the head soon spread on both sides of the border.
‘What did Papa Doc want with the head?’ Graham asked.
Bajeux and I offered answers, but who knew really knew the mind of a butcher? I assumed he wanted to savour contemplating it, but Bajeux suggested he needed to verify that the officer was dead before paying a bounty to a member of his garrison who claimed to have killed him. There was also the possibility of a simple scare tactic, suggesting an act of black magic, which Graham believed to be the best possible answer. ‘Shakespeare,’ he said. ‘Hamlet talking to Yorick’s skull.’
Despite its bucolic atmosphere, Dajabón was far from silent. Dominican meringues blared full-blast from radios in shops and homes along its dusty streets and from a scratchy loudspeaker system attached to the roof of a neighbouring bar.
We sat in the shade in one of the colmados. We had to raise our voices to be heard above the music. Graham brought up the so-called ‘Parsley Massacre’ of October 1937 when the Dominican military had macheted and bludgeoned Haitians to death by the thousands, many on the banks of this river (and it is popularly believed that this is the origin of the name Massacre River). Only when the soldiers’ arms grew tired were they permitted to use their old Krag rifles and shoot those trying to escape across the river. Black corpses choked the water and along the ravines, according to survivors I interviewed for a feature on the massacre. El Jefe’s men conducted a literacy pronunciation quiz, and failure to win the quiz was instant death. ‘Say perejil (‘parsley’),’ every black person was asked, and if that person did not pass the test with the correct pronunciation, perehil, they were dead. Some twenty thousand Haitians were slaughtered throughout the Dominican Republic on dictator Trujillo’s orders.
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