Culture & Société

A Damned Paradise: Does Haiti Need Tourism? Or Does It Need Justice?

Haitian Tourism Minister Stéphanie Villedrouin sits next to the pool at the new El Rancho hotel. She is convinced that her country can become a tourist destination and has been travelling around the world in recent months to make her vision a reality.

By Samiha Shafy --- Human rights attorney Mario Joseph and Tourism Minister Stéphanie Villedrouin are both trying to improve Haiti, but they are following radically different paths. The one wants justice, the other wants tourism.

The attorney stares at a hut next to the grave. It's made of wood and mud, and is covered with a plastic tarp. "I used to live like that," Mario Joseph says quietly, more to himself than to the three women crouching behind him in the shade of a tree.

The women are keeping watch over a rectangle of freshly dug up earth, surrounded by loose stones. One of them, Itavia Souffrant, says it is the grave of her mother. Two weeks ago, the mother had diarrhea and was vomiting, but because of heavy rains the family was unable to take her to the doctor. The mother died of cholera, the same fate suffered previously by Souffrant's three-year-old daughter and by so many others in the vicinity of Mirebalais, north of the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince.

The three women at the gravesite have also had cholera, but they survived. They knew that they shouldn't have been drinking from the river, they say, but it was the only water available. The tablets to disinfect it are unaffordable, and they don't have enough charcoal to boil it.

Attorney Joseph believes that he has found a way to help them and all other victims of the cholera epidemic in Haiti. About 750,000 people have been infected with the disease and the death toll now stands at 8,500. Officials expect there to be about 45,000 new cases in 2014.

The culprit is the international community. A few months after the earthquake that rocked Haiti on January 12, 2010, United Nations peacekeepers from Nepal emptied their latrines into the Artibonite River, and thus introduced the pathogen to Haiti. Until then, cholera was one of the few plagues that this poor country had been spared.

This explains why the attorney is now standing in front of a mud hut on a humid green hill, from which vapor rises in the heat. He has returned to the world from which he came in the hopes of changing it.

Joseph, 51, is a burly man with a moustache. Wearing a long-sleeved shirt, jeans, a straw hat and sunglasses, he takes large gulps from his Diet Coke. He is asking the women questions in the search for information could help him realize his plan. It is as obvious as it is ludicrous: He wants to take the United Nations to court.

Justice for Haiti's Victims

Human rights attorney Mario Joseph is attempting to take the United Nations to court for introducing cholera into the country in the aftermath of the horrific 2010 earthquake. Felecia Paule, left, lost her sister cholera.It isn't actually possible to sue the UN; the organization invokes the principle of immunity, which seems cynical in this case. Nevertheless, Joseph, a well-known human rights attorney in Haiti, has filed a class action lawsuit in a federal court in New York, where the UN has its headquarters. "The peacekeepers knew that Haiti is a poor country without a waste water system," says Joseph. "They should have been extra careful, instead of dumping their fecal matter into the river!"

Joseph wants justice for Haiti's victims. In addition to his fight against the UN, he wants to see former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier brought to trial in Port-au-Prince. He also represents women who were raped in tent cities in the capital after the earthquake.

Joseph believes that for wounds to heal, they need to be examined and cleaned -- so that his wounded country can eventually recuperate. He wants to prevent the world from forgetting Haiti's suffering.

Joseph's adversary is sitting in her office in a yellow government building in Port-au-Prince. Stéphanie Villedrouin, Haiti's tourism minister, doesn't want the world to constantly hear any more tales of suffering coming from her country. She wants a Haiti that looks to the future and markets itself more effectively.

Four PR consultants are gathered around a table in Villedrouin's office. They have flown in from France, Great Britain, the United States and the Dominican Republic to hear about Villedrouin's vision of Haiti as the next vacation paradise in the Caribbean. The minister wants the marketing specialists to campaign for this vision in their respective countries.

"Which language should we speak?" asks the minister, smiling at her guests. She is fluent in English, Spanish, Creole and French. At 32, Villedrouin is the youngest and undoubtedly most attractive minister Haiti has ever had.

On this afternoon, she is wearing a pink silk blouse, black trousers, pumps, a diamond ring and diamond earrings. She has slightly wavy, caramel-colored hair, a smooth face and light skin. In Haiti, skin color is still a sign of social status. The poor are mostly black while the country's few white citizens usually have money and influence. Villedrouin is from the upper class.

Changing the Image

"The first thing people always tell me is that Haiti is a devastated country," she says. "We have to change that image."

The earthquake that struck Port-au-Prince in January, 2010, was the worst in a series of natural disasters that have ravaged vulnerable Haiti, a country torn by regime changes and civil wars. More than 220,000 people died.

Still, something bordering on hope emerged for a short time after the tremor. Might it this time be possible to build a better country out of the ruins? When, if not now -- now that Haiti was in the global spotlight and governments and private donors alike were promising billions of dollars for reconstruction? Aid organizations had muddled along in Haiti for decades. This time, though, they pledged to do everything differently -- and everything right.

More than four years later, most Haitians have given up hope. The tent camps in Port-au-Prince have all but disappeared, but they have been replaced by new slums on the surrounding hillsides. They look as if the next heavy rain could flush them into oblivion. The government had some of the shacks painted in bright colors so that the view from new hotels in Pétionville wouldn't be quite so depressing.

And yet, despite everything, does hope still exist in Haiti?

Villedrouin embodies the way she would like to see Haiti: dynamic, modern and elegant. She grew up in Venezuela, where her father served as the Haitian ambassador under the Duvalier regime. When the dictator was ousted in 1986, the family returned home, where it owned restaurants and hotels. Villedrouin attended a tourism school in the Dominican Republic, returned to Haiti and began convincing important people to support her vision. The fact that she became a cabinet minister at 29 is partly due to her connections, but also a result of her talent to fill people with enthusiasm for ideas that sound almost as audacious as Mario Joseph's plan to take the UN to court.

"We have to start with France," says Villedrouin. France, she notes, has a large community of Haitian immigrants who could easily be won over as tourists. She also points out that the French have a historic connection to their former colony and might be interested in visiting the country.

The next stops in the marketing campaign are Germany, Great Britain, Spain and Russia.

Saving Haiti

Villedrouin believes that her plan could help Haiti pull itself out of poverty. Tourist attractions and hotels create jobs. Hotel owners can support Haitian farmers by buying local meat and produce. And the general population also benefits from the roads and airports built primarily for tourists, such as the Hugo Chávez International Airport in Cap Haïtien, modernized with Venezuelan aid. Once the tourists arrive, says Villedrouin, things will begin looking up for Haiti.

From listening to Villedrouin and Joseph, it becomes apparent that although they represent contradictory approaches, they sometimes have the same goal: to save Haiti. Many have failed at the task. Indeed, everyone who has tried has failed, and some have even spent their entire lives in the process. Haiti was once the richest colony in the world. Today, countless tragedies later, it is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

The current list of the "25 most interesting people in the Caribbean," published by the magazine Carib Journal, lists names such as Usain Bolt and Rihanna, but it also includes two Haitians: Mario Joseph and Stéphanie Villedrouin. After being made aware of that fact, Joseph is so amused that he almost chokes on his Diet Coke. "The government would be overjoyed if the minister were the only Haitian on that list," he says.

Joseph walks down the path leading from the shack and the old woman's grave to the road, where his car is parked. One of the three women, whose name is Lizette Paul, walks behind him so that he can give her a lift. Joseph drives past a gray shell of a building without windowpanes. Inside, small children are sitting on wooden benches, singing at the top of their lungs.

Looking grim under his straw hat, the attorney says that missionaries built the school. Only a 10th of all schools in Haiti are government-run, he explains, while foreign aid workers operate the rest -- a shameful state of affairs, Joseph says. Lizette Paul concurs. In fact, she says, she voted for singer Michel Martelly in the presidential election because he had promised free schools for the poor. But now, three years into Martelly's term, she still cannot send her three children to school.

Paul, 43, first met Joseph in a church. He had come to Mirebalais to speak with victims of the cholera epidemic and tell them about his plan to file a class action suit on their behalf. Paul's one-and-a-half-year-old daughter died in the epidemic, as did her father and her brother, who had supported her and the children financially.

"At least there is someone like him in the government, someone who does his job," says Paul, pointing at the attorney. She says that she very much hopes to receive her compensation from the UN soon. Joseph shakes his head. He looks tired. "I'm not part of the government, Lizette, you know that," he says. "I'm an opponent of the government." The woman looks at him uncomprehendingly and says nothing.

'This Is About Emotions'

Joseph's Haiti, the land of the wounded, is everywhere. One would have to be blind to ignore it. Villedrouin's promising Haiti also exists, but it isn't immediately apparent.

The minister has sent her PR advisers on a tour. "This is about emotions -- either you love Haiti or you hate it," she told them as they left. "To find out, you have to see it, sense it, taste it and feel it."

The four men are now sitting in a white, air-conditioned minibus as it rattles along hellish roads throughout the country. They say nothing as the bus passes piles of debris, mountains of garbage and slums. Finally, they arrive in gated oases of calm: hotels with private beaches that charge between $15 and 20 (€11-15) for their use.

Most Haitians live on less than $1 a day. Most of the people basking in the sun on the hotel beaches are aid workers, UN employees and groups of American missionaries. They are no tourists yet.

Two of the tourism experts, the Frenchman and the Dominican, visit a place that is normally off-limits to anyone arriving by land: the Labadie Peninsula. It lies 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of Port-au-Prince, and is hidden behind a tall, black, barbed-wire fence patrolled by security guards.

About two dozen men are loitering outside the fence. They watch silently as a gate into the restricted zone opens for the visitors. Royal Caribbean, the American cruise line, has leased the peninsula and developed it into a sort of high-security playground for cruise-ship passengers. Those who go on land here remain behind the fence, where they can swim, snorkel and go jet-skiing.

The two men are taken along the coast in a boat. Wild, green and untouched mountains rise from the blue waters of the Caribbean. Citadelle Laferrière, a 19th-century fortress on the UNESCO World Heritage list, sits atop a 970-meter (3,180-foot) mountain in the distance.

He sees potential, says the Frenchman. What a gorgeous landscape, and what a pretty little spot of sand, that tiny island back there, he exclaims.

One-Eyed Among the Blind

That's Amiga Island, says the skipper. Christopher Columbus supposedly landed on that spot of sand in 1492 during his voyage of discovery to the New World, and gave it its name. The Frenchman looks at the captain with amazement.

Tourism? In Haiti? Attorney Joseph shakes his head. "You'd have to sprinkle sand in the tourists' eyes so that they'd see a different reality," he says. But his next words are surprising: The minister's ideas aren't all that preposterous. Perhaps she can achieve something positive, he says, even if she is part of an incompetent government. "She's a one-eyed person among the blind."

On his way back to Port-au-Prince, Joseph travels along dirt roads filled with potholes, past scrawny horses carrying heavy loads and garishly painted vehicles to which too many people are clinging. Joseph drives an air-conditioned SUV with bulletproof windows, which he had installed because of the death threats that come with his work.

The road passes through the village of his childhood. Frail goats wobble around, and there are mud huts, but there are also small concrete houses and a small school. Joseph slows down to look out the window. "My life here wouldn't be any different that Lizette's," he says, "if I hadn't been lucky enough to go to school."

Raised by their mother, Joseph and his three siblings grew up in a mud hut. Their father left the family when they were small. His mother took in washing for a living and sometimes sold rice. "The primary school cost nine Gourdes a year, and my mother could hardly scrape together the tuition for us," he says.

As one of the most gifted pupils, Joseph was permitted to attend secondary school and a group of missionaries paid his tuition. Beginning in the 10th grade, he started working as a teacher, which enabled him to continue going to school, graduate and study law.

"Baby Doc" ruled Haiti at the time. Nineteen-year-old Jean-Claude Duvalier came into power in 1971 after the death of his father and he ruled the country the way he had learned from "Papa Doc" François. Joseph remembers how the Tontons Macoute, Duvalier's paramilitary force, would beat farmers in his village. His aunt's husband was arrested one day and then disappeared, he says, and the family never found out what had happened to him.

Indifference and Friendliness

Joseph began campaigning for human rights. In 1996, he joined the Bureau Des Avocats Internationaux in Haiti, which had been founded a year earlier with the support of American attorneys, and Joseph now runs the institute's office in Port-au-Prince. "I was really excited when Duvalier returned," he says. "His return could be an opportunity to show the world that abuse of power will no longer remain unpunished in Haiti."

"Baby Doc" accumulated an estimated $800 million before he was forced to flee in 1986. Some 25 years after his ouster, he returned unexpectedly from French exile, where he had squandered much of his fortune. Since then, he has been seen dining with politically influential friends in the better restaurants of Port-au-Prince.

The political elite received the former dictator with reactions ranging from indifference to friendliness. Joseph, however, announced on the radio that he was searching for witnesses to Duvalier's crimes. More than 50 people contacted him, he says, and told him about people who had been arrested for no reason, spent years in prison without trial and were tortured.

Since then, Joseph has been spending a lot of time in court. The trial was already suspended once and now it is proceeding very slowly. Still, the dictator was at least summoned once to appear in court, where Joseph and other lawyers were allowed to question him. It was a historic victory, says Joseph, but not enough. "We cannot build a country without principles."

Joseph has a wife and three children. Ten years ago, they fled to Miami because life had become too dangerous in Haiti and he visits his family once a month. "My wife understands me, sometimes," Joseph says with a smile.

Stéphanie Villedrouin hasn't seen her husband and three children very often in recent years, either. She travels around the world, searching for partners to convince of Haiti's potential as a vacation destination. She has been traveling in the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Dominican Republic in recent days. In the spring, she spent a day at the International Tourism Exchange in Berlin. A travel agency in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg now wants to attempt to "bring Haiti closer" to its customers, as an employee puts it.

Keep Investing

When the minister is in Haiti, she frequently attends the openings of new luxury hotels, like the Royal Oasis and the El Rancho. There are plans to build a luxury resort on an island in the south. A Marriott is under construction in Port-au-Prince, signs are being made for the city's chaotic streets so that tourists can find their way around and a tourist police force of 110 officers patrols the areas around hotels and sights. Villedrouin is developing a strategy document for the next 15 years although she has less than two years remaining before a new government is elected, provided the current administration can remain in power until then.

Villedrouin is sitting in a suite in one of the new hotels in Pétionville, enjoying a quiet moment between appointments. The El Rancho, part of a Spanish chain, has pleasantly bland rooms and a pool, and it's easy to forget where you are if you don't leave the premises. Villedrouin says that she hopes to attract private investors. "I always say to them: You guys have to keep investing in tourism in this country."

And what about her? She smiles. "Well, three years ago I had no idea that I would assume such an important position for my country." She says that she is grateful for the opportunity to promote her vision. Then she abandons the attempt at modesty, which doesn't suit her. "In any case, I also want to be in a leadership position in the future. That's just the way I am," she says.

Villedrouin seems to be winning her personal battle. But can she change Haiti? She says that she respects Mario Joseph for the fact that he wants to help his country, in his way. "The Carib Journal honored him because he is apparently a capable attorney," she says. "He is doing something that he believes is helping his sisters and brothers."

The minister has no budget to build roads and she has no power to make poverty and disease disappear. The question is how far optimism goes in making things happen in Haiti's reality.

The Perfect Photo

On the tour of Haiti, Villedrouin's PR advisers visit a former sugar plantation on the Côte des Arcadins that is now a hotel. With them are two French travel writers, guests of the ministry who have been invited to write a promotional article.

A museum in the garden commemorates a bloody colonial history. Haiti is the only country in the world where slaves were able to depose their tormentors and establish their own country. The PR agents learn how brutally the country was victimized, exploited and occupied by foreign powers. To this day, Haiti has never had a chance to become a healthy country.

To lighten the mood, the hotel owner takes the group out to a reef in a speedboat, and they splash around in the water and drink chilled fruit punch. And then, just once during their tour, the two Haitis collide, that of the minister and that of the attorney.

A fisherman in a dilapidated little boat paddles up to the group. He looks like the old man in Hemingway novel: toothless and with leathery skin, calloused hands and cracked fingernails. He says nothing. He merely gazes in astonishment at the scene and waits. The group on the speedboat looks down at the fisherman, equally astonished. The foreigners ask the old man to hand them a fish, and then they take pictures and hand it back to him. It's the perfect photo, they say.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/two-leaders-in-haiti-follow-different-paths-to-save-the-country-a-981596.html
Photo credit: Ben Depp/ DER SPIEGEl

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