The most popular Kreyol expression in mainstream Miami among other ethnic groups (Caucasian, Hispanic, Black Americans, and others) is "Sak pase ? Nap boule?" meaning: "What's up? Doing okay?" It has become a staple of the American language in parts of Miami Dade. This is a sign of acceptance and friendship by other groups towards Haitian culture, which was not always the case not too long ago. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a broken fan belt and a leaky tire.
Having introduced "Carl's Corner" in an autobiographical manner for the past five weeks, in order to associate the readers to experiences which may have been similar to them as immigrants, until further notice this will be the last in the series for the time being. Our commentaries from now on, if any, will be essentially on current events, either in Haiti or the Haitian community.
On Wednesday June 3, 1959, as a representative of a family enterprise, the Magic Island Tours travel agency, I guided on a night-life excursion a young American lady from Ohio, bearer of a prepaid night tour ticket from the States, addressed to the agency. Picking her up at the Ibo-Lele hotel in Petionville, we drove down to the Casino with its open-air dance floor facing the Port-au-Prince bay.
I was arrested by goons of the regime for not dancing a "kompa" dedicated to the new leader of Haiti at that time, Dr. Francois Duvalier. I found myself brutally separated from my client who had to hitch a ride back to the hotel on her own.
Brought up immediately to the dreaded Fort Dimanche's torture chambers, where many prisoners expired, I contemplated a bleak future.
In the next hours this writer would be seriously beaten; brought to court for "conspiracy against the State"; and then walked with common criminals by thugs to the National Penitentiary which awful conditions were exposed recently, by Yves Colon and Peter Andrew Bosch in the Miami Herald of March 25, 2001 and then reproduced in The Haitian Times of April 4-10, 2001. "Plus cela change, plus c'est la meme chose."
From the penitentiary due to the diligence and the influence of a father who was politically prominent in the country for the previous 50 years, I was finally released. A week later a bomb exploded in the Casino, and in view of the innuendos, three brothers, myself included, took cover at the Mexican Embassy as political refugees. From our residence in the middle of the night the Honorary Consul of Austria, who happened to be a brother-in-law, drove us there on June 15, 1959, my birthdate.
We finally received the approval to leave Haiti from the Haitian government on July 16, '59 to transit in Havana where there was another brother living there, en route to Mexico City.
Mexico City was a good place to be in July 1959. Pollution of any kind was not a problem yet. The official currency of the country, the peso, was 8 to the US dollar. Mariachi bands graced many public parks with their serenades in Plaza Garibaldi, Paseo de la Reforma, et al. One could then for a dollar request a song from a 23-piece band, compared to a small fortune today for the same demand. Paseo de la Reforma was in the heart of the city and we lived a block away in a comfortable flat.
I was one of those rare foreigners at that time to obtain a work permit from the "Distrito Federal." The problem was that work was hard to find.
There were in those days in the city two small Haitian communities. One, those in exile with the leaders still plotting the overthrow of the government back home; the other was mainly composed of University students with Haitian government scholarships, loyal partisans of the regime. Some of them became Cabinet members in Jean-Claude Duvalier's administration.
The two groups got along surprisingly well and in a sense we were ahead of our times implanting a ping-pong diplomacy among ourselves. The Nixon-China ping-pong policy would follow suit a decade later.
After six months of aimless goals and political uncertainties in Haiti I left Mexico City in December 1959, to become this time a full fledged Haitian-American citizen landing in the Big Apple to remain for the next 20 years.
