For Whom the Dogs Spy: Haiti: From the Duvalier Dictatorships to the Earthquake, Four Presidents, and Beyond

For Whom the Dogs Spy: Haiti: From the Duvalier Dictatorships to the Earthquake, Four Presidents, and Beyond

by Raymond A. Joseph
For Whom the Dogs Spy: Haiti: From the Duvalier Dictatorships to the Earthquake, Four Presidents, and Beyond

For Whom the Dogs Spy: Haiti: From the Duvalier Dictatorships to the Earthquake, Four Presidents, and Beyond

by Raymond A. Joseph

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Overview

When the 2010 earthquake struck Haiti, Raymond Joseph, the former Haitian ambassador to the United States, found himself rushing back to his beloved country. The earthquake ignited a passion in Joseph, inspiring him to run for president against great competition, including two well-known Haitian pop stars, his nephew Wyclef Jean and Michel Martelly. But he couldn’t compete in a democratic system corrupt to the core.

Joseph’s insider’s account—having served four presidents—explores the country’s unfolding democracy. He unearths the hidden stories of Haiti’s cruel dictators, focusing on the tyranny of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who used the legend of voodoo to bewitch the country into fearing him.

Joseph’s terrifying experiences while infiltrating the father-son regime are chilling. Threatened by Duvalier’s budding gestapo-like police, Joseph sought sanctuary in America. His grueling experience in Haitian politics gave him a unique outlook on international affairs, and he excelled in his ambassadorial career in the United States.

Deep personal knowledge of politics allows Joseph to speak candidly about Haitian history. Readers will be surprised at how important the country of Haiti has been in global (and especially American) history. In this decades-spanning work, he challenges common misconceptions about Haiti. The country is rarely referenced without a mention of it being the “poorest in the Western Hemisphere,” a reductive label unfit for summarizing its rich history. There is no discussion around Haitian history beyond the war of independence. In For Whom the Dogs Spy, Raymond Joseph provides a compelling, modern-day look at Haiti like no other.

With this book, Ambassador Raymond Joseph warns readers about Haiti’s current political leaders’ attempts to impose a new dictatorship. His hope is that Haiti can right itself despite the destruction it has suffered at the hands of man and nature.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781628725407
Publisher: Arcade
Publication date: 01/06/2015
Pages: 352
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Raymond A. Joseph was a reporter at the Wall Street Journal for fourteen years. He has worked in international affairs for decades, serving as both the Haitian chargé d’affaires and ambassador. He has collaborated closely with major political figures including Ronald Reagan, Rudy Giuliani, the Bushes, and the Obama administration. Joseph lives in New York.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

January 12, 2010: A Life Change

January 12, 2010, changed my life. Undoubtedly, many people, especially in Haiti, may make the same claim. In my case, the change was so profound it even surprised me. Instead of going into retirement after my second stint at the Embassy of Haiti in Washington, as I had envisioned, and concentrating on writing my memoirs, I decided to plunge into the internal politics of my country — for better or for worse.

Around 4:45 p.m. on that day, I was at the US Embassy when I received a telephone call from an official at the State Department who asked whether I had heard what happened to my country. I had not. He proceeded to tell me about an earthquake of a magnitude 7.0 on the Richter scale that destroyed the capital of Port-au-Prince and surrounding towns; that casualties, including the dead and wounded, were thought to be in the thousands.

"Really! Thank you," I said. "I will call you back." And I hung up.

Immediately, I picked up the phone to call Haiti and dialed the Foreign Ministry, my immediate boss. No answer. I tried the Prime Minister's office. No answer. And the President's office at the National Palace. No answer. I made a fourth call to the cell phone of the Secretary General. Ambassador Fritz Longchamp picked up and, in an anxious voice, asked: "How did you get to me, Ray? This is a miracle. I just parked my car, because there is no possibility of driving. I am walking on Bourdon, houses are falling, right and left. I don't know how I will get home, because there is a small bridge to cross to get to my house and I don't know whether it has not crumbled."

"Have you spoken to the president?" I asked.

"No!"

"To whom have you spoken? Any official?"

"To nobody."

And the telephone conversation went dead.

Then the images appeared on CNN. The National Palace, the seat of power, crumbled; the buildings housing various ministries, across from the Palace, flattened. It was desolation all around. I concluded that the officials were all dead! A feeling of helplessness engulfed me.

At that moment, alone in my office in Washington, I gave some weight to my title of "Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary." I felt that I had to assume the responsibilities and accept the burden of the whole country, because my superiors were nowhere to be found. I was left without instructions. Yet, this was an emergency that required fast thinking and decisive action.

I began to call the authorities in the United States government and asked that certain actions be taken immediately. These included putting order and assuming control and security at the Port-au-Prince airport and setting up new communications towers. The major telephone networks were down. I asked the State Department to send the USNS Comfort, the 1,000-bed Navy hospital ship, to Haiti immediately. "Mr. Ambassador, the Comfort is more than twelve days away from Haitian shores," an official told me. "But we can give you four frigates. They will be there in the morning." Indeed they were.

Two days after the earthquake, order was restored at the Port-au-Prince airport by the US military and telephone service partially restored. The Comfort, which was docked in Baltimore at the time, was mobilized. It arrived in the bay off the capital on January 18, six days after the earthquake and six days earlier than previously promised.

At 5:15 p.m., the Dominican Ambassador to Washington, Roberto B. Saladin Selin arrived at my Embassy. He had walked from the Dominican Chancery on 21st Street, one block away from ours on Massachusetts Avenue. Ambassador Saladin expressed his condolences and those of the Dominican government and the Dominican people. Then, he told me that his Foreign Minister was in New York and wanted to talk to me. On his cell phone, Ambassador Saladin dialed Chancellor Carlos Morales Troncoso, who told me he needed an authorized signature to open the border crossings between the two nations. But he could not locate any of my superiors in Port-au-Prince. The Dominican Republic, however, was ready to take in as many of the wounded as possible and Dominican first responders were ready to cross into Haiti with equipment to help as soon as that could be authorized.

I told Chancellor Troncoso that I would sign the document his ambassador had presented me. And I did. By 6:00 p.m., the border crossings between the two countries sharing the island of Hispaniola were open. Aid started to flow in and the wounded began to arrive in Dominican hospitals — by ambulance, cars, trucks, and helicopters. The Dominican Republic became the gateway by which organizations and people streamed into Haiti.

By 5:30 p.m. Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, the Venezuelan ambassador in Washington, arrived at the Haitian Embassy, having walked from his residence on Massachusetts Avenue. After expressing his condolences and those of the Venezuelan government and people, he said he needed my signature to authorize delivery of 225,000 barrels of petroleum products — all grades comprised — to Haiti. Shipments would have to come via the Dominican border, because the Port-au-Prince wharf was badly damaged. The ambassador said the shipments would meet Haiti's need for fuel for a full month. I signed. I also teamed up with Ambassador Alvarez in a program to have CITGO, the Venezuelan government-owned gasoline company in the United States, undertake help and rescue missions to Haiti.

That evening I was on CNN explaining the layout of the capital and the initial contacts that I had with several officials and diplomats, especially from the CARICOM countries. Then the other television networks descended on me or dispatched limousines to rush me to their studios. I was nearly 1,500 miles from the scene, what was I going to say? With no information from my superiors in Port-au-Prince, I felt stuck, so I decided to turn the tragedy into a platform to tell the world about Haiti's history, especially now that they were ready to listen. I wanted to reclaim the so-called "poorest country in the Western Hemisphere" as the "Fount of Freedom" for the Americas.

By 10 p.m. that day, I learned through our consul general in Miami that the President was alive. So were the Prime Minister and all the ministers. I was somewhat relieved, but still saddened, because we had lost several of our best cadres, including some at the Foreign Ministry with whom I used to communicate. That same evening, I also learned that Signal FM, a radio station in Pétionville, the former upscale suburb five miles east of Port-au-Prince, was operating. It was the main source of information via the Internet, especially for Haitians in the diaspora. Yet, no government official had gone to Signal FM to comfort and rally the people. Why?

On that day, I resolved that Haiti needed new leadership. I decided to return to Haiti to help provide new leadership at the top. I decided to run for the presidency.

I had always worked to bring people together, to create coalitions. The highest post to which I ever aspired was that of secretary general of the various opposition movements. I never craved the post of ambassador. But at critical times in recent Haitian history, when the country was undergoing major upheavals, I was called upon twice — in 1990 and 2004 — to head Haiti's Embassy in Washington.

During the crisis, however, my urge for national leadership had to be put in abeyance. I threw myself totally into managing what I could from Washington. The Mayor of Washington, Adrian Fenty, offered to help. Three days after the catastrophe, the Mayor's staff with help from Homeland Security set up a Command Center at the Embassy. We were equipped with twenty computers and as many monitors, plus staff. On January 19, a week after the earthquake, Mayor Fenty came to the Embassy to observe the work of the Center and to give a joint press conference with me where he pledged the city's support in Haiti's time of need.

The Command Center was operational on a 24-hour basis. While in Washington, we had a virtual view of Haiti, especially of the Port-au-Prince area. From the basement of the Embassy, our operators were linking families together in Haiti and coordinating aid in the Washington metropolitan area. Also, the Embassy coordinated with the State Department to facilitate the travel of several Haitian officials who were stranded abroad.

The Greater Washington Haiti Relief Committee changed its name to The Greater Washington Relief Fund and went into action. Two years earlier, after Hurricanes Ike and Hannah had devastated Gonaïves, in north-central Haiti, I had urged the various Haitian humanitarian groups in the Washington metropolitan area to form a permanent organization to be ready in times of crisis. The earthquake of 2010 was their first major crisis and they performed admirably.

With no official instructions or directives from my superiors in Port-au- Prince, I could have done what a Haitian diplomat told me was the grounds of his successful career. "You know, my friend," he told me, "whoever presents his head gets it chopped." On that basis, he had been in the Haitian diplomatic corps for nearly four decades.

Oblivious of what others said or thought, during the first days following the earthquake, I plunged into full representation of Haiti at all levels. Meanwhile, I kept hoping that the higher-ups in Port-au-Prince would eventually speak up or contact me. When, on January 14, two days after the earthquake, Haiti's President René Préval spoke publicly, it was to display his despondency. "My palace collapsed," he cried. "I am also homeless! I don't know where I am going to sleep tonight!" Dressed shabbily, the words from President Préval's mouth left most Haitians at home and abroad adrift and disgusted.

Despite any negative feeling I may have had concerning the performance of the president during the crisis, I defended him. Appearing on several television programs, I challenged people to put themselves in his shoes. "Imagine that Washington would have been crushed as badly as Port-au-Prince is," I said. "Imagine the White House destroyed. The Pentagon, Police departments, the CIA and FBI headquarters! Imagine the banks, hospitals, restaurants, schools. Imagine that there are no means of communication, because all the telephone companies have been silenced. So are the radio and television networks. For, almost everything is concentrated in Port-au-Prince, the capital, which is destroyed."

"Do you think your president would have appeared immediately on the air to speak to the Nation?" I asked.

While I spoke like that publicly, internally I kept saying to myself, But Signal FM was still operating and all our top officials were alive. Why did none of them show up? Haitian officials seem to be guided by the same principle that my diplomat-friend shared with me and felt it best not to question authority. If the President of the Republic has not spoken, no one, not even the prime minister, dares to say anything. Any action on their part would appear as usurpation of power. Some said, "The President was under shock." If so, he should have delegated power to someone less shocked. He should have put aside his dislike of Signal FM which had been critical of him and his team. The country needed to hear him.

Mario Viaud, the proprietor of Signal FM, told me that he was ready to make the station available to the government, but no one had contacted him. Therefore, he remained the private voice that kept listeners informed, especially in the diaspora. Other stations, more restrictively, because of their lack of Internet connection, were also operating locally like Mélodie FM and Radio Maximum. No official visited them to rally the people.

Meanwhile, from Washington, I responded to any direct or indirect attack on Haiti. Reverend Pat Robertson, the conservative evangelical icon from Virginia, gave me the best opportunity to shed light on Haiti.

In an interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, Rev. Robertson said that the earthquake that hit Haiti was God's punishment for the pact that the Haitian leaders had signed with the Devil to obtain their independence. He was no doubt referring to the "Ceremony of Cayman Woods," in northern Haiti, not far from Cap-Haïtien, Haiti's second largest city. On August 14, 1791, a slave named Boukman, of Jamaican ancestry, presided over a big nocturnal religious ceremony that is considered the debut of the slave insurrection against the French slave holders. It was their usual Saturday night Voodoo ceremony and one would suspect that it would be well attended. At one point in the ceremony, a huge pig was slain and its blood passed around for all to taste. The sharing of the blood represented a pact to work against their oppressors.

I was in the Washington studio of NBC when Rev. Robertson made his offensive remarks. I declined to answer Ms. Maddow's questions about the earthquake until I addressed the statement of the conservative minister. "Some people don't know the history of their country. Otherwise, they would have known that the so-called pact with the Devil signed by the Haitians had allowed the United States of America to become the country it is today. For, it was our defeat of Napoléon Bonaparte's army that forced the French to sell the Louisiana Territory in 1803." Indeed, with the stroke of a pen, the new American nation more than doubled its territory overnight.

"It was also that pact with the Devil that allowed Simon Bolivar to depart from Haiti in 1816 with boats, arms, ammunition, and men to go liberate Gran Colombia. Obviously, Haiti is the only country which has yet to benefit from the alleged pact with the Devil."

My comments on CNBC brought me an avalanche of mail, all laudatory and supportive. I don't know what kind of response CNBC got, but I would venture to say that it must have been overwhelming. Somehow, this short history lesson had an impact that put Haiti in a new light for many. For months afterward, I was approached in restaurants, on flights and elsewhere by complete strangers to thank me for speaking out on their behalf.

The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the bloc of African American legislators in the US Congress, came to my support immediately. Soon after my intervention on CNBC, a CBC delegation, led by its chairperson, Congresswoman Barbara Lee (Democrat of California), came to the Embassy to give a press conference in support of Haiti and of what I was doing. Moreover, I was invited to Congress to address the Black Caucus. One Congressman stood up and, no doubt, echoing the sentiment of almost all, spoke emotionally, "Brother, you spoke for us when you responded to Pat Robertson the way you did."

* * *

Churches, synagogues, and schools invited me to speak about Haiti. I addressed several congregations around Washington, including in Maryland and Virginia. I traveled to states like California, Florida, Texas, Missouri, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, to tell the history of Haiti and how it is intertwined with that of the United States and of the Western Hemisphere.

I addressed students of all levels — from elementary schools like the prestigious Georgetown Day School in Washington to universities such as George Washington University, Yale, Princeton, University of Virginia and others. I was often asked about Haiti's alleged influence in changing the course of history in America and in the Western Hemisphere. With a dose of incredulity, students often asked about how a country as poor as Haiti could have helped America.

Haitians fought for America's freedom, even before Haiti gained its own independence. The participation of soldiers from Haiti under the command of French officers, like Comte d'Estaing in the Battle of Savannah, Georgia, goes back to 1779. Many of those soldiers were also at the Battle of Yorktown under General Lafayette. Finally, in 2007, the City of Savannah unveiled a monument in the center of town to the memory of the "Chasseurs Volontaires de St. Domingue," the elite fighters who covered the retreat of the American forces. Those fighters were precursors of Haitians.

However, the Louisiana Purchase remains the most important indirect contribution of the Haitian revolutionaries to the United States. Faced with the loss of their wealthiest colony, the French dispatched about 40,000 troops to the colony in 1802. Their mission was to squash the slave revolt and continue on to the "Northern Territories," or Louisiana, which was comprised of land west of the Mississippi River to the Rockies, and from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border. The French plan was foiled when the Haitian combatants signed a pact of unity at Arcahaie on May 18, 1803. Former Black slaves had teamed up with freed mulattoes to fight the French.

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "For Whom the Dogs Spy"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Raymond A. Joseph.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

1 January 12, 2010: A Life Change 1

2 Fraudulent and Arbitrary Elections 17

3 The Wyclef Jean Connection 33

4 Setting Up a Dictatorship 47

5 For Whom the Dogs Spy 57

6 Fighting Fire with Fire: The Legend of Radio Vonvon 69

7 To Eradicate the Voice 99

8 Closing Shop, New Direction: The Demise of Radio Vonvon 113

9 Preparing for a New Regime 129

10 Baby Doc's Emancipation-and Fall 137

11 The Bloody Road to Democracy 151

12 The First Democratic Elections 159

13 Squandered Opportunities: Aristide's Presidency 175

14 The Power of the Haitian Vote in America 191

15 At the Embassy in Washington 205

16 Haiti Is Open for Business 217

17 Presidential Honor… and a Congressman's Shame 231

18 President Martelly Turning the Clock Back 243

19 Flaunting Democratic Governance 255

20 A New Army and Agents of Repression 265

21 The Official Power Versus the Free Press 275

22 No Elections, No Democracy 285

Conclusion 303

Afterword: Haiti, an Ecological Disaster 307

Acknowledgments 315

Index 319

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