Lavil by Peter Orner & Evan Lyon

Author:Peter Orner & Evan Lyon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso

THEY’LL BRING IN SOME PEOPLE AND SAY THE LAND IS THEIRS

But the way things work now is that if somebody wants somebody’s land, they’ll bring in some people and say that the land is theirs. You’ll see young children shouting, “That’s my land. You took my land!” That’s how it started in our region—now this way of doing things has spread all over Haiti.

Someone from the younger generation told a man, a senator—I will not say names—that there was land in the mountains for sale. Part of that land was ours. And then recently this senator came, and said to me, “If it’s your land, where are your papers?” He had about a hundred people with him, and a carload of police officers with guns—and a lawyer, and a surveyor. The lawyer was a crazy guy—making lots of noise—and the surveyor was from Carrefour. He didn’t even know the land up here. I was there with my son-in-law, and with a couple of friends. After one hour of disputing, all kinds of words were being thrown up in the air, he told the people he had with him, “You know what, why don’t you go mark off the land that you believe is for the Wynne family, and the rest of this is now your land.” They started dancing and screaming, “Yayyyy, Senator, this is our land, we’re going to take it all.” The senator said, “I’m not staying,” and he left us in the middle of all those people with machetes—some of them had guns.

Later, the people the senator had left behind beat our horses. One of them had a miscarriage, a beautiful horse—she lost her baby. We went to get the policeman and he said, “No, you have to go get the judge—you know, judge de paix.”8 So my son-in-law went to get judge de paix. After that my son-in-law went with the judge and two security guards we have through U.S.A.I.D.9

My son-in-law had a gun and so did the security guards, and they took the judge down to the center. At the center, there were policemen who took the guns away from the security guards. I don’t think the police had realized that my son-in-law had a gun too. When they got to a certain point, they saw the mob coming, and my son-in-law told them not to come further.

The mob came closer and started throwing stones, and my son-in-law said, “Do not approach.” When they kept approaching, he shot up in the air. Somehow the mob grabbed one of the security guards and beat him with a stone. They almost killed him. The policemen were there and did nothing.

The same week after the invasion, we were sitting in the yard and we heard a big thump hitting the gate. Our gate is made of tin, and we were wondering, Who’s knocking? But it wasn’t a knock, it was people passing by throwing stones.

A couple of months later, two friends from the neighborhood, a husband and wife

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