Baby Doc comes home

It was the summer of 1986 – my first overseas trip ever. There were 15 in our church group, and we’d just landed in Haiti for a week-long mission trip. Our guide was a man named Virgil Suttles, a long-term missionary who had served in Haiti for several years and spoke fluent Creole.

My first impression as we stepped off the plane into a curtain of humidity was the smell. Trash, diesel fuel, and oppressive heat combined to assault my nostrils with an unforgettable aroma which to this day makes me think adventure. I was 16 years old, and from that first moment, I was hooked on international travel.

We’d read the travel warnings. Only months before, the Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier known as “Baby Doc” had been ousted from power in a violent coup. The son of Haiti’s previous dictator, “Papa Doc” Duvalier, Jean Claude’s brutality was only exceeded by his extravagant lifestyle, funded by the citizens of the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere.

The cleansing was still in progress.On the way to our hotel, we drove through a chanting mob and glimpsed a horrific sight – a man being stoned in the street. Apparently he was a former member of the brutal secret police known as the “Tontons macoutes.”

During the course of that trip, I was introduced to a people living in a state of privation almost too severe to comprehend.

In the more than two decades since, the world has poured more than $1 billion per year into the country of Haiti in the form of foreign aid. When I returned there only months before the devastating earthquake of 2010, I was shocked to discover even worse poverty than I’d seen in 1986. Somehow the aid hasn’t worked.

This week, Jean Claude Duvalier returned to Haiti for the first time since his ouster, reportedly believing he could somehow “help” the situation one year after Haiti’s historic earthquake that killed nearly a quarter of a million people. And while it might be true that he couldn’t have made things much worse, it’s not surprising that he was immediately arrested by the current government.

There are those in Haiti, however, who believe life was better under Duvalier. They point to his record of building infrastructure and schools, not to mention the abysmal state of the administration now in power. But Jean-Claude is probably already regretting having listened to these supporters, and may never taste freedom again.

It isn’t over until it’s over though. Duvalier is still reported to be in possession of millions of dollars pilfered from Haiti’s public coffers. Perhaps he has enough to buy his way out. I’m also not ruling out a violent overthrow of Haiti’s ruling party.

U.S forces have intervened in Haiti at least six times since 1800, including one 19-year period of outright occupation. I, for one, won’t be the least bit surprised if 2011 brings another Haitian deployment of U.S. forces in order to quell political violence.