It was an exhausting day. Haitians of all ages crowed the streets near
polling stations in Port-au-Prince before dawn. As the light increased so
did the numbers of people. Long lines formed. I stood at one point in a
line where I could not see the end in either direction. I saw old people
clinging together in knots, holding each other up for hours. I saw young
people passed out on the ground from exhaustion, and people stepping over
them. When that ruby red grapefruit of a Caribbean sun set, Haitians voted
by car head-lights and candles late into the night.
As an independent freelance photojournalist I had to question, how could
this be? How could people be so determined to vocalize their political will
that they would endure so much to vote? I had never covered an election
outside the U.S. and never witnessed the passionate and visceral emotions an
election can stir. It made a school gym full of over-weight Wal-Mart
shoppers singing the 'stars and stripes' in New Hampshire seem pathetic.
One voting station was set up in an airplane hanger size auto repair shop
near Cite-Soleil. Thousands of Haitians jammed in shoulder to shoulder in a
fervor. Out of this chaos of flailing U.N. registration cards and over
zealous police officers, Rene Preval was elected.
Rene Preval is the current President of Haiti who was elected on February 7,
2006. Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, has suffered
through an almost endless supply of authoritarian government leaders since
it gained independence from the French in 1804. This has left the country
environmentally plundered, and at times extremely violent. Yet as
devastated as some of the Port-au-Prince neighborhoods may look, the people
I met radiated an incredible passion for life, and a hope for the future.
In Haitian neighborhoods, art and music are
everywhere.
Unbelievably, it took the U.N. a week to tally the votes and declare Preval
the winner. During that time Haitians went from celebratory, to dubious,
and ended up angry. They demonstrated in the streets by the thousands,
running for hours singing and dancing "Preval, Preval, Preval." They raised
their voices and yelled, flooding streets and veering almost aimlessly. Men
and women drank warm rum out of little glass bottles and smoked marijuana.
Crowds built flaming barricades of concrete and trash in the streets,
isolating parts of the city and blocking the ways to the airport. Most
importantly, they followed through by demanding that their votes were not
cast in vain. The day after marked ballots were found in the Port-au-Prince
dump, Preval was declared winner with 51.15 percent of the vote.
And here we are five months later. Europe has promised more money. Attacks
on the U.N. peacekeepers are up, and twenty-nine people were kidnapped in
May, about twice as many as the month before. Prior to the elections
kidnappings by gangs were very frequent. So, has democracy saved the day?
Has Preval realized the dreams of all those poor Haitians living in the
shadow of Petitionville? Maybe Haiti has been thrust into the great
unknowns of democracy like so many other struggling nations around the
globe, only to find it the greatest of mirages. Or maybe Haiti is
different. Maybe true change can only happen when a nation is left to
itself to determine its future, without international pressures and motives.
I have to think that Haitians are ready for Democracy. The people desire
stability, economic growth, and a better standard of living. They seized on
the election to speak as a people and to commit to a system they think just.
America did not force this on them. The U.N., despite organizing and
running the elections, was almost its biggest hurdle. Haitians voted
peacefully. Hopefully this will be the first of many elections, and
hopefully Haitians have begun a tradition of democracy that will overshadow
its past. Hopefully, democracy will manifest the will of the people.
