Haiti's Orphan Democracy

The New York Times

February 7, 2006

Op-Ed Contributor

By AMY WILENTZ
Los Angeles

TWENTY years ago today, in the elegant but down-at-the-heels central square of Port-au-Prince, the Haitian people celebrated the departure of a dictator and the end of nearly three decades of a nightmare dynasty. In the smallest hours of Feb. 7, 1986, Jean-Claude Duvalier, his chain-smoking wife at his side, drove his Mercedes sedan right up to the open door of a United States Air Force jet and fled the country for the South of France. Along with about 50 members of the foreign press corps, I was there at François Duvalier International Airport, named for the fleeing man's father, who had visited disaster after disaster on his native land.

Now it was morning, and it seemed all of Haiti had descended into the square, each person waving fanlike branches cut from street-side trees. It was as if a forest had come to town to cover up the traces of the hated regime.

A brighter day was dawning, so most people thought, and so I thought, although it was clear that there would be difficult moments ahead. Mobs surged through the city and countryside, hunting down supporters of the ancien régime. Yet Haitians in general were ecstatic. Surely democracy, with that joyous popular will behind it, would triumph.

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