Rainy Season by Amy Wilentz

Author:Amy Wilentz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Aristide disappeared into the countryside. For a week, no one knew quite where he was. Soldiers from Fort Dimanche started arresting the boys who were washing cars at the intersection near the church. Four were beaten and held overnight. Waldeck went on the radio to denounce the arrests and tell what he had seen: a truckload of grown men in uniform beating up boys, handcuffing them and carting them away to prison. The bruised children were released after a few days and proudly showed off the billy-club marks on their chests and backs, but the church people were worried about Waldeck again. No more interviews, he was told. Absolutely no television.

The young people from St.-Jean-Bosco organized meetings and press conferences to announce that they would not countenance Aristide’s removal. There was a rumor that he would be called to Rome after a few weeks at the new church. The thought was intolerable to his followers. “It’s not just Aristide we’re concerned about,” said one of the young organizers at a press conference. “The massacre at Jean-Rabel, that was one action taken against the progressive church, an attack on the church-organized peasant movement. This is the second step, and is not really just an attack on Aristide but on the urban population he represents and on the progressive church as a whole. If we don’t stop this, if we don’t say no, absolutely no, now, the tide will be irreversible.”

Aristide did not remain silent for long. After a tour of the northern province for the festival of Ste.-Suzanne, he arrived in Cap-Haïtien, and gave a lengthy sermon about the importance of self-defense (in French the phrase has a different nuance: légitime défense). The mass, which had been planned as an outdoor meeting, was moved into a Catholic school to avoid violence. The Army in the Cap was restive. Thousands of students turned out for the mass, and the school was filled past capacity, with another thousand gathered outside. Even before the service started, Army jeeps began patrolling the street outside the school. Soldiers lined the roads, ostensibly to prevent violence.

Aristide was at the top of his form. The 1987 Constitution, he remarked to his listeners, gives the citizen the right to bear arms at home. He quoted from the Gospel of Saint Luke in which Jesus tells his followers: “And he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.” He was not preaching armed struggle, Aristide said later, but merely advocating that the people not face the Army’s Uzis empty-handed. “You know those little piles of stones that women here use to do their laundry?” he said. “Well, everyone has a pile like that at home, to beat the clothes clean. I was merely suggesting another use for those little stones.” He smiled. “People have machetes at home here, too. Stones and machetes, of course, are not much of a defense against soldiers who come into the slums and the villages and open fire, but at least it’s something.

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