Pilgrimage to Haiti: Especially painful for persons of color

by Tom Honoré

Honoré and his wife Jan visited Haiti for the first time in mid-January. As a person of color on the CTA board and anti-Racism Team, he shared his reflections with CTA News.

Traveling to Haiti for the first time as part of a human rights delegation led by Bishop Tom Gumbleton, Johanna Berrigan and Bill Quigley, among others, required me to confront as never before my present bourgeois existence against the backdrop of the horrible conditions of poverty and suffering in Haiti. Most of us would simply rather not think about Haiti, let alone go there and have to see all those black faces and hands challenging us to respond to them as neighbor. This is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Life expectancy in the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean is 71. It is 52 years in Haiti. But statistics will not tell the story. One must go there.

Our delegation arrived in Port-au-Prince January 16. Outside the airport were endless rows of young Haitian men desperately looking for work as porters or simply begging for handouts. The new environment got to us immediately. I have traveled and lived in many places, but I never felt this kind of distress before…not in Skid Row L.A., not in the inner city ghettos of Chicago and New York, not in my childhood all-black neighborhood in Baton Rouge. Haiti gave entirely new feelings of danger and imminent threat.

We were in Haiti to help secure the release of Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste from prison. He is a friend of Jean Bertrand Aristide, the twice-elected President of Haiti who was forced out each time by a coup d’état back by the U.S. Jean-Juste was locked up by the same thugs who ousted Aristide.

The U.S. has never supported a strong and independent voice in Haiti. That little country was born when slaves rose up to throw off their yokes, expel the French, and declare themselves a new nation in 1804. Though fresh from its own successful revolution against the British, the U.S. did not befriend Haiti. The slave-owning politicians in this country would never recognize black ex-slaves as sovereign statesmen and equals. U.S. double dealing and lack of support for the first elected President of Haiti, Aristide, follows a 200-year pattern of undercutting any chance for Haiti to succeed. Our troops occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. Then the U.S. put in place tyrants like Papa Doc Duvalier and his murderous son Baby Doc. More recently, the U.S. sought to discredit Aristide in every way possible, reneging on promised loans, imposing an embargo on Haiti’s trade, and arming U.S. surrogates to remove him. Our government could not let a little black man condemn U.S. foreign policy in the Americas. In his place the U.S. installed an expatriate from Miami who was friendly to U.S. intentions.

We met with the U.S. Consulate, the the Papal Nuncio. We held a large press conference. We had many meetings with local leaders.

At times I was overcome with sadness, seeing so many people moving about with vacuous expressions of quiet resignation and desperation. It reminded me of the American Apartheid of my youth in the South. I was not prepared to see that kind of racism again. Outside negative forces were again at work to keep the Haitian people in misery. In my opinion, most African Americans would find it harder than whites to see up close what is happening in Haiti.

I know that I am bound to love by action the poor and powerless black folk of Haiti. I must also learn to love those who sit in comfort with very little apparent desire to help the people — like the Archbishop of Port-au-Prince who refused Tom Gumbleton’s plea to have Jean-Juste’s priestly faculties restored, claiming that Fr. Gerry had disobeyed his command to cease being so “political.”

Tom Gumbleton, Jan and I traveled to the residence of the Papal Nuncio — the highest ranking diplomat in Haiti. He could rally other diplomats to the cause of Fr. Gerry’s freedom. His home is a large palace overlooking the city, with high walls and gendarmes carrying shotguns. Inside are some 50 acres of manicured lawns and flowers. The temptation is large to look down on this man. But am I any better?

In the end, it was the example of the young human rights workers in Haiti who have shown me a much better way to live and to forgive and to hope. In spite of all of the present sufferings and the obstacles to justice, they continue to work and pray and hope without ceasing.

My most transformative time was the hour some of us spent visiting Gerry Jean-Juste in prison. With smiles and peace glowing on his face and in spite of a cancer growing in his neck, Gerry gave a greeting, asked us to convey his thanks and to tell the people that he loved them.

Five days after our return from Haiti, Bill Quigley was summoned back to that country to accompany Fr. Gerry out of prison and on to Miami, where he is now receiving treatment for cancer.

Ed. note: On Feb. 7 René Préval, former prime minister for Aristide, and himself president from 1996 to 2001, was again elected president. He was the overwhelming choice of Haiti's poor. Runoff congressional elections April 23 will choose the new legislature. The Haitian bishops expressed hope that Préval's election will bring a stable democracy, and that U.N. peacekeeping troops will be withdrawn quickly. Before now, Préval was the only democratically elected president to have finished his five-year term and transferred power peacefully. They were non-committtal on the return of Fr. Jean-Juste.