HAITI Crushing a Country

Some weeks ago, according to a story going the rounds in Haiti, Dictator Franc,ois Duvalier sent a secret emissary to John Kennedy's grave in Arlington Cemetery. There the emissary collected a pinch of earth, a withered flower, and in a small bottle took a sample of air from the graveside. He then returned to Haiti, where he delivered the items to Duvalier. "Papa Doc," as Duvalier calls himself, wanted them for a voodoo incantation, hoping to imprison Kennedy's soul, make it subject to his will, and thus influence the U.S. State Department's decisions regarding Haiti.

The tale may or may not be true. But most Haitians believe it. They believe almost anything about Duvalier. In his eight years of power, the onetime country-doctor-turned-dictator has alienated almost every friend and neighbor. The U.S. has all but suspended dollar aid, maintains only the most pro forma diplomatic relations. His own people regard him with horror. Yet through murder, terror and voodoo mysticism, Papa Doc has set himself up as "President for life" and wields unshakable control over his tiny country. Unlike the smoldering Dominican Republic, which occupies the other half of the island of Hispaniola, Haiti is filled only with deadening silence as hope drains away and the country lapses deeper into a zombielike trance.

Ruin & Starvation. Haiti has always been poor. Now it is getting poorer. Per capita income averages $70 a year, per capita food averages 1,780 calories a day, and life expectancy is a bare 32 years -all three the lowest in the hemisphere. Illiteracy is 90%, and population density is 415 persons per square mileboth the highest of any Latin American nation.

The one paved road in Haiti, running north from the Port-au-Prince capital of Cap-Haitien, is now in ruins, pot-holed with foot-deep craters that all but disembowel any cars and trucks that travel it. Construction on the $40 million Artibonite Valley irrigation project has stopped, and 30-ft.-high cacti choke the rich sisal fields outside Port-au-Prince. Bankruptcies are rising sharply in the capital, and in the countryside starving peasant mothers beg visitors to buy their babies for two gourdes, or 400 U.S., in hopes that the infants will survive. The country's once flourishing tourist trade has dwindled from $5,000,000 in the 1958-59 season to less than $500,000 last season. In many areas, tax collections are only 20% of what they were two years ago.

Bogeywomen. All the while, Duvalier's reign of terror continues. Shortly after coming to power, he "organized his tonton macoute, meaning bogeymen in Creole, a vicious, plainclothes gestapo that collects taxes and blood money from merchants, tortures and murders suspected anti-Duvalierists. To help the tonton in their grisly business, there is now even a ladies' auxiliary -the fillette lalo, a group of pistol-packing molls who are just as predatory as their male counterparts.

Last year a handful of Haitian exiles made their way into the country and tried to rally the peasants in revolt. Nothing came of it. "Doc will stay in power,'' said a Haitian army officer in a Port-au-Prince bar. "The people know that they will be killed instantly if they get out of line." He slammed his fist on the table. "Like that," he glowered, "we will crush anyone who causes the slightest bit of trouble." And like that, Papa Doc is slowly crushing the life out of his forlorn little country.

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