According to witnesses, when a FRAPH member turned up dead in Cité Soleil, a sprawling slum in Port-au-Prince, in December of 1993, Constant’s men descended within hours. Carrying machine guns and machetes, they torched a thousand houses in revenge, killing more than a dozen people. The Human Rights Watch/Americas-N.C.H.R. described how “they entered the neighborhood, looked for specific persons and shot them on sight, doused the precarious one-room shacks with gasoline, set them alight… Firefighters were turned back by armed men… [who] nailed doors shut, imprisoning people in their homes.”
Constant, who some witnesses claimed was at the scene, denied FRAPH’S involvement. “If I was going to really react, there would be no more Cité,” he later said. But by the autumn of 1994 he was no longer merely the head of FRAPH; he had become, in the eyes of most Haitians, the embodiment of the regime: the voodoo lord of death, Baron Samedi, himself.
A MYSTERIOUS ESCAPE
In July of 1992, Brian Latell, the leading C.I.A. analyst for Latin America, visited Haiti to gather intelligence as policymakers in Washington tried to assess military rule in Haiti. Afterward, in a report later obtained by the press, he wrote, “I do not wish to minimize the role the military plays in intimidating and occasionally terrorizing real and suspected opponents, but my experiences confirm the [intelligence] community’s view that there is no systematic or frequent lethal violence aimed at civilians.”
Playing down the bloodshed (Latell called the head of the junta, Lieutenant General Raoul Cedras, “a conscientious military leader”), the report conflicted with those coming from human-rights organizations, the press, and even the State Department. But, along with subsequent C.I.A. reports, it had a profound impact on U.S. foreign policy and on the decision of whether to launch a military invasion to restore the exiled Aristide to power. Whereas President Bill Clinton was pushing for such a move, many in the C.I.A., along with elements in the Pentagon, feared that Aristide was a dangerous populist. In fact, Aristide was a problematic figure. (He had once suggested necklacing his enemies with burning tires.) But a crucial C.I.A. report, which was circulated on Capitol Hill just after the Harlan County incident, seemed to exaggerate his instability, claiming that he was so unbalanced psychologically that he had once had to be hospitalized. The charge later proved to be false, but at the time it fuelled American opposition to an invasion and contributed to the ongoing vacillation in Washington. “There were factions in the process who didn’t want to get involved in Haiti and could use these intelligence reports to strengthen their position,” a former Clinton Administration official says.
The evidence of “systemic” and “frequent lethal violence aimed at civilians,” however, was overwhelming. And in September of 1994, three years after the coup and almost a year after the Harlan County’s retreat, President Clinton finally ordered a full-scale invasion to end what he called the “reign of terror.” “We now know that there have been… over three thousand political murders,” he said. In preparation for battle, Constant changed FRAPH’S name to the Armed Revolutionary Front of the Haitian People and, according to news accounts, stockpiled weapons and “secret” powders that, he declared, would be able to “contaminate water so that the GIs will die.” He claimed that one of these powders had been ground from the bones of AIDSvictims. Appearing in camouflage pants and a black T-shirt, a machine gun at his side, he no longer gave any hint of the diplomat. “Each FRAPH man,” Constant said, “must put down one American soldier.”
But before war broke out the junta, faced with the might of the United States, agreed to relinquish power. Thousands of U.S. soldiers easily seized the island. Surprisingly, FRAPH was allowed to remain an active force. When asked why, U.S. soldiers said they had been told by their superior officers that FRAPH was a legitimate opposition party, like Republicans and Democrats. U.S. soldiers even stood by, insisting they were not a local police force, while FRAPH members beat back civilians who had spilled onto the streets expecting liberation. It was only after random bands of FRAPH members mowed down a crowd of Haitians and shot and wounded an American photographer, and a radio conversation was intercepted in which Constant and his men threatened to “break out weapons” and “begin an all-out war against the foreigners,” that U.S. forces reversed their stance. On October 3rd, they stormed FRAPH headquarters. A jubilant crowd gathered outside, cheering them on. Inside, amid piles of nail-embedded sticks, Molotov cocktails, and trophy photos of mutilated corpses, soldiers surrounded more than two dozen FRAPH members. They bound their hands and gagged them, while the crowd shouted, “Let them die! Let them die!” As the soldiers departed with their FRAPH prisoners, the crowd rushed inside, smashing the headquarters.
Back at his father’s mansion, Constant listened to a police scanner, waiting for the soldiers to seize him. His wife and four children had already fled. At one point, he yelled at a journalist, “Everybody who is reporting the situation bad… by the grace of God, they will wind up in the ground!” But though other FRAPH members were taken into custody Constant remained free. The U.S. Embassy spokesman, Stanley Schrager, whose assassination Constant had called for only two days before, even arranged a press conference for him outside the Presidential Palace. News footage shows Constant standing under the glaring sun, sweating in a jacket and tie. “The only solution for Haiti now is the reality of the return of Aristide,” he said. “Put down your stones, put down your tires, no more violence.” As he spoke, hundreds of angry Haitians pushed against a barricade of U.S. soldiers, shouting, “Assassin!” “Dog!” “Murderer!”
“If I find myself in disagreement with President Aristide,” Constant pressed on, his voice now cracking, “I pledge to work as a member of loyal opposition within the framework of a legal democracy.”
“Handcuff him!” people yelled from the crowd. “Tie him up! Cut his balls off!”
As the barricade of troops gave way, U.S. soldiers rushed Constant into a car, while hundreds of jeering Haitians chased after it, spitting and beating on the windows. At the time, U. S. authorities insisted to reporters that the speech was meant to foster “reconciliation,” but a senior official told me later that it had been a disaster: “Here we were protecting him from the Haitians when we were supposed to be protecting the Haitians from him.”
Throughout the occupation, ensconced in his house, where, he says, U.S. soldiers routinely came by to check on his safety, Constant tried to reinvent his past. “We’re the ones who kept this country secure for a year,” he told reporters, adding, “Aristide needs an opposition, and… I am the only organization right now that… can allow us to say there is a democracy.” But the incoming government took a different view-and within a few months Constant was ordered to appear before a magistrate investigating charges of torture and attempted murder against him. On the day of the hearing, people saying they were victims waited for Constant outside the courtroom. He never appeared. Later, he told me that on Christmas Eve of 1994, with a small suitcase and what money he could stuff into his pockets, he had crossed the border on foot into the Dominican Republic, made his way to the airport, and then, using a valid visitor’s visa that he had obtained before the coup, caught a plane to Puerto Rico. From there, he flew to the mainland United States without incident, ending up days later on the streets of New York City.