The Seeds of Fiction

by Bernard Diederich

  The fact that the news of this horror had taken so long to reach the outside world troubled Graham. It illustrated how tightly, in those days, a Latin American caudillo could control communications in his country. Quentin Reynolds of Collier’s magazine, alerted by six lines in a United Press wire service dispatch, flew down and discovered the terrible truth that Trujillo had attempted to hide. Albert C. Hicks in his book Blood in the Streets: The Life and Rule of Trujillo tells of the killing by a Dominican army captain of his family’s elderly Haitian servant who had been with them for decades. The officer’s wife, who witnessed the murder, ‘for a considerable period after that day had to live locked in a room in a sanatorium, a raving maniac. She couldn’t understand that her husband was simply acting on orders from El Generalissimo.’

  Before resuming the journey I cleaned off the mass of splattered insects on the car’s windshield. Then I poured drops of water on the dirt road, on each of the cardinal points of the compass. Graham liked the idea that we had appealed to Papa Legba to ‘open the gate’ for us — ‘Papa Legba ouvri barye pou nou — and for a safe trip. Graham saw the invocation as the equivalent of Catholics beginning their prayers with the sign of the cross. Papa Legba is invoked at the beginning of ceremonies when a person wishes to communicate with his gods. This powerful Voodoo lwa is keeper of the keys, guardian of the highways, crossroads and man’s destiny. ‘And this,’ Graham asked, pointing to the St Christopher medal attached to the dashboard. ‘Is this Papa Legba’s Catholic equivalent? We are not taking any chances, are we?’

  With the sun directly overhead the car felt like the inside of an oven. ‘I shouldn’t have had that beer,’ I grumbled.

  ‘But you did.’ Graham disagreed with my view that one should not drink in the Tropics until the sun went down over the yardarm. ‘I think it’s ridiculous,’ he said. ‘One should not be limited by any such code. A drink is good any time, and it is especially good for the digestion at noon — in the Tropics or anywhere.’

  The road meandered from the lush green riverside over dry, brown rolling hills where goats nibbled at stubbles of burnt grass. In the distant blue haze appeared the mountains where Maroons, escaped slaves from the large plantations that then occupied Haiti’s bountiful Plaine du Nord, had established their campsites. These Maroons, or Cimarons as the Spanish called them, led the early slave revolts against the French colonialists and played an important role in Haiti’s independence war.

  ‘How good it is you have no radio,’ Graham said. ‘We are quite cut off. Excellent!’ We could, he said, survive at least a couple of days without news or music.

  It worried me, though. There could be a coup d’état or civil war could break out, and we wouldn’t know it.

  Graham was surprisingly at ease as I drove along the rutted narrow dirt track, which required most of my concentration. I tried not to think of what could or might happen. Graham had an insatiable appetite for facts but also liked to hear all the fiction (rumours) from Haiti. We passed through Capotillo, at the small pueblo near which on 16 August 1963 Cantave’s troops had made a swift incursion into Haiti and seized the picturesque little coffee town of Mont-Organisé. That attack had been a special embarrassment to Dominican President Bosch, who had been near by commemorating the Dominican Republic’s independence from Haiti. The exile force quickly retreated to the Dominican side when reinforcements began arriving from Cap Haïtien to retake Mont-Organisé. These attacks were launched without the knowledge of President Bosch.

  Near the Dominican town of Restauración a sawmill that once had belonged to Generalissimo Trujillo was in disrepair and appeared abandoned. The mules used for dragging pine trees to the mill grazed on a neighbouring hill. El Jefe had sold the mill to Antonio de la Maza, who established a coffee plantation near Restauración. His pinewood home here had once been the centre of the area’s social activity. Years later, de la Maza led the team that assassinated Trujillo. He was later shot to death near Santo Domingo’s Independence Square by the SIM (Military Intelligence Service) one night while I was having dinner near by with a group of colleagues.

  As we came into Restauración Graham pointed to a little sign. ‘Look, they even have a Massacre Hotel.’ It was a modest wooden building with a tin roof displaying the sign: Hotel Brisas Massacre de Mariav de Rodriguez.

  ‘Before all the trails run cold you might think of writing a book about the massacre,’ Graham suggested.

  ‘An American, Alfred Hicks, already wrote it,’ I said.

  ‘I haven’t heard of it.’

  ‘It came out in 1946. Blood in the Streets. But it’s been out of print. I’ve never been able to find a copy.’

  ‘When I get back to London I’ll see if I can find you one,’ Graham promised.

  Dust rose up like a blanket from the road and our little car sucked it inside like a vacuum cleaner. We had the swirling dirt in our eyes, and it ground like sand on our teeth.

  We reached Villa Anacaona, a gritty village that carried the name of the Taino-Arawak Indian poetess-queen of the region of Xaragua, today the southern part of Haiti. Anacaona! in her people’s language meant ‘golden flower’. She had married Caonabo, the cacique (chief) of this central region through which we were passing. Christopher Columbus had ordered his soldiers to take Caonabo prisoner, and en route to Spain the ship sank and all aboard were drowned. In a treacherous act Governor Nicolas Ovando had his men seize Anacaona and hang her in Santo Domingo.

  The last time I had been on the border was on 14 July 1963, when Duvalier’s collaborator-turned-enemy, Clément Barbot, had been caught and killed outside Port-au-Prince. There had been a rumour of yet another uprising against Papa Doc, and the border was the closest I could get to Haiti.

  We knew that Papa Doc’s terror was only as far away as the other side of the road; his long shadow loomed all along this sad frontier. Again and again we found our thoughts and conversation returning to the enigma of the regime’s violence. What lay behind its grotesque terror? Many people had been murdered, and for what? So that one power-driven psychopath could totally control the destiny of five million impoverished people? Graham knew about such things in other countries, but he saw Haiti under Duvalier as a true nightmare with Papa Doc exuding a unique evil.

  ‘Why are we stopping?’ he asked when I pulled over.

  We had reached the centre of the island of Hispaniola and the so-called International Road, which was a 54-mile stretch of mostly gravel and grass that passed for a road and wound back and forth through Haitian territory alongside the Libon River.

  ‘If something is going to happen it will be along this stretch,’ I said. ‘We should be alert.’

  Graham stared out the window. ‘I have never felt such pervasive fear in a country as in Haiti,’ he confessed. His words were always measured, like those slow miles of the rough border track, even though he had to raise his voice above the rhythmic rattling of the little Volkswagen engine.

  We continued. And a few minutes later Graham sounded the alarm. ‘There in the hill.’ He pointed. ‘Tontons Macoutes.’

  Bajeux, who had been sleeping in the back, was now wide awake. The hill was on the Haitian side. But Graham’s sighting was not confirmed.

  ‘We are a good target,’ he said, still scanning the low brown hills.

  We were the only target, I thought.

  Both countries were supposed to have maintained this section of the road, which crisscrossed the boundary, but it was obvious that neither had bothered to do so for years. Papa Doc couldn’t care less about a road he didn’t wish to share in the first place. To discourage incursions by the Kamoken, in June 1963 he had ordered a swath three to five miles wide cut along this central section of the Haitian side of the frontier. He called it a cordon sanitaire and warned that he regarded it as a war zone and anyone caught trespassing would be shot on sight. Graham called it a Voodoo Curtain. Peasants and their livestock were herded by Tontons Macoutes out of the no man’s land. For days the whack of machetes
felling trees and slashing undergrowth was heard along certain sectors of the border. A huge cloud of smoke from the burning homes of peasants, their corn crops, grass and underbrush hung over the region for days.

  ‘There they are!’ Graham pointed ahead. ‘The Macoutes!’

  But his sighting proved to be a group of poor Haitian children who scrambled down the hill and on to the road in tattered clothes begging for cinq cob — five cents. These emaciated children were defying Papa Doc in search of food.

  ‘Ask them where they come from,’ Graham said. But it was too late. They’d scampered off into the hills, their little fists holding tightly to the Dominican coins we gave them.

  ‘Where can they possibly spend the money?’ Graham asked, contemplating a border that appeared so empty.

  ‘They will find a vendor of bread or candy somewhere,’ Bajeux explained. ‘Haiti is one big marketplace, with everyone trying to sell something. It’s the only way to survive.’

  We came around a small bend in the road, and once again Graham moved forward in his seat. ‘There. I think I’ve spotted some movement over there.’ He pointed to a clump of bushes near a deserted military post on the Haitian side ahead.

  We detected no Macoutes or troops, but a guinea hen, that mascot of the Duvalier regime, darted across the road in front of us and disappeared into the Dominican Republic.

  ‘That hen is a defecting Tonton Macoute,’ I joked.

  ‘What a windfall the three of us would be to the Tontons!’ Graham said. He had started to call the Tontons Macoutes Tontons. ‘Imagine what Papa Doc would do if he knew we were here?’

  I knew what I would do. I had been thinking about it constantly: drive into Dominican territory as fast as the little car could take us. Indeed we were constantly on the look-out for three of Duvalier’s most notorious border henchmen — Zacharie Delva, an apprentice houngan (Voodoo priest), and Ludovic (Dodo) Nassard, smuggler and augur, who had divided up the central and northern sectors of the border; and legislative deputy André Simon, scourge of the southern region. This trio, with licences to kill, were very much alive, and one of my concerns was an unscheduled meeting with one of them.

  As we neared the next village, Loma de Cabrera, we could see five tall medieval-looking watchtowers resembling an East Germán border rather than one on a Caribbean island. They were evenly spaced along the entire length of the Dominican side of the international road.

  Loma de Cabrera had been Trujillo’s effort to build his side of the border into a buffer zone. It had proven a notable failure. Paroled convicts had been transported to the small town from urban prisons on condition that they live and work there. But that effort, as well as another involving settling Hungarian refugees to help colonize the border, did not prosper. El Jefe had wanted these settlements to act as a human fence blocking what he perceived as ‘the black tide of Haitians’. However, few settlers wanted to live out their lives in such a lonely outpost, and eventually they fled. Trujillo, who had a Haitian ancestor, both feared and hated his black neighbours.

  After we passed the town we came upon a rare road sign at the end of the International Highway near the town of Pedro Santana. The plain metal sign said ‘Haiti’ with an arrow pointing to the east. We got out of the car, stretched our legs and took photos of ourselves with the sign as if heading into Haiti.

  ‘Perhaps we should take a walk,’ Graham suggested, indicating a narrow path that led off in the direction of Haiti’s Central Plateau.

  I suggested it might prove foolhardy. We moved on.

  This was an area once home to the Haitian Caco guerrillas who rose up against the US Marine occupation and fought a tough guerrilla war under the leadership of Charlemagne Peralte, who vowed to drive the Americans into the sea. There was intense combat in 1919, but Peralte was finally killed by two Marines disguised as blacks who slipped into his camp with the aid of a traitor. One Marine received the Congressional Medal of Honor for killing Peralte. The Marines displayed the guerrilla leader’s body in Cap Haitien to prove to the more superstitious that he was indeed dead. The near-naked body of Peralte, spread-eagled on a door, was a shocking exhibit that for Catholic Haiti recalled the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. More than three thousand Haitians died in this guerrilla insurgency.

  Graham was fascinated by this little-known guerrilla war. He said he had heard the Marines had committed atrocities. He wanted to know how Duvalier, posing as a nationalist, could get away with inviting the Marines back to Haiti to train his army. Father Bajeux and I explained that Duvalier was incredibly cunning and believed that the end justified any means. By inviting the United States Marines to return and train his army he brought the United States into his corner, and this helped him consolidate his power. While the Marines helped rearm his troops, their old arms went to the Tontons Macoutes. During the 1960 student strike against Duvalier I had been arrested by one of the most powerful gang leaders, threatened with death and the loss of my manhood until I was finally taken to the Palace where I was later released. The Macoutes were armed with old military Thompson submachine-guns.

  The Artibonite River wriggles its way across both sides of the border. At one point, in pre-Duvalier times, it served as a common water fountain, public bath and laundry for both Haitians and Dominicans near Pedro Santana. Haitians coming out of the parched hills did their washing alongside their Dominican neighbours. Now the once-thriving commerce between these border people — it wasn’t really contraband, more like a free-market system — had come to a standstill. Dominicans no longer dared buy Haitian clairin (raw rum), while Haitians couldn’t acquire basic necessities. There were only a few Dominican women washing and drying their clothes on their side of the river. I was relieved when we completed our reconnaissance of this section of the border without mishap.

  The Dominican town of Banica, through which we now passed, had also been the scene of many killings of Haitians during the 1937 massacre; and these killings were not j ust on the border but took place inland all the way east to San Pedro de Macoris. We churned into Elías Pina, across from the Haitian town of Belladere. It was here that I had first stepped on Dominican soil when, in 1951, I covered a rare meeting between the chiefs of state of the two countries — in this case Dominican dictator Trujillo and Haitian strongman Paul Magloire, during which they signed a peace pact with the usual insincere phrases. Each side was suspicious of the other, but the harmonious facade was symbolized by a public embrace by the two chiefs. However, when Trujillo embraced Magloire the Dominican tyrant’s coat-tail inched up to expose a finely embroidered gun holster; Magloire’s face was frozen by the camera in an expression of startled discovery. One of his hands had landed on the butt of Trujillo’s pistol! After I published the photograph of this famous embrace in my newspaper, I had a visit from the Dominican Ambassador to Haiti. Pointing to the photo, he called my attention to the cane that President Magloire was holding in one hand. ‘You think he needs this to walk with? This is in fact a gun,’ he declared angrily.

  Graham loved this example of Latinesque mutual trust. ‘Very Mexican,’ he laughed. He told how on his first trip to Mexico in 1938 he had learned about the famous abrazo or embrace. ‘It is supposed to be an embrace of friendship,’ Graham said, ‘but its practical purpose is to pin the other fellow’s arms down and keep him from drawing his gun.’

  Not far from the bridge over the Massacre River Graham thought we should eat. We found our lunch under a handwritten sign: ‘Rico — Pintada y arroz.’ The day’s special, guinea hen and rice, was a rewarding discovery. Under the open-sided thatched-roof little restaurant Graham was ecstatic, savouring the wild bird, all the more when he reminded us that it was Papa Doc’s emblem and on the badge of the Tontons Macoutes. A large black pig rooted in a pile of garbage at the side of the adjacent gravel street, and chickens pecked near our table. We drank a silent toast of Cerveza Presidente to the countless massacre victims slaughtered in 1937 only a few yards away.

  5 | THE POETRY OF FAITH<
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  We were tired and dirty, caked with dust. I suggested we stop at the American Mission House at Las Matas de Farfan. I had stopped off there before. ‘I assure you the priests will give us a good stiff drink,’ I said.

  Graham perked up. ‘Let’s not lose any time then.’

  Bishop Thomas F. Reilly, who headed the Roman Catholic Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer in nearby San Juan de la Maguana, was a hero to Dominicans. Graham wanted to learn all about the tough Bostonian who had been a US Army chaplain during the Second World War in the Pacific. Reilly had also been an outspoken critic of Trujillo during the dark latter days of El Jefe’s reign — in 1960 Reilly and the country’s other bishops had read an unusually candid pastoral letter in their churches condemning the widespread arrests and imprisonment of Trujillo’s critics. El Jefe responded by sending a mob to wreck the bishop’s residence in San Juan de la Maguana, and then accused him of leading a terrorist conspiracy. The bishop and most of his priests and nuns were forced to flee to the capital, where they took refuge in his order’s convent. Reilly was then placed under house arrest. Trujillo was assassinated a month later, and Reilly was detained by the dreaded SIM. However, he was saved by the timely intervention of Joaqufn Balaguer, a longtime Dominican bureaucrat who was by then acting President.

  I had interviewed Bishop Reilly on a number of occasions. He was a reliable news source.

  ‘What order did you say these priests are?’ Graham asked.