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Titid, Mon Amour: Saints and Symbols in Haitian Politics
| Article
# : |
19609 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1991 |
3,571 Words |
| Author
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Donald J. Cosentino
Donald J. Cosentino is associate professor in the Folklore and
Mythology Program at the University of California in Los
Angeles. He has conducted field research into Haitian popular
religion since 1985. |
After two hundred years of self-proclaimed generalissimos, presidents, and emperors, Haiti held a democratic election in December 1990. Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier and the dismal regimes that followed his overthrow in 1986, was elected president. After years of monstrous misrule, the country suddenly had found Prince Charming. Cynical members of Haiti's elite attributed Aristide's election to the "E.T. factor": Tall and bony with a droopy left eye, he was so homely you just had to hug him. But the streets of Port-au-Prince were euphoric. All over town masqueraders were wearing papier-mâché red rooster masks--the symbol of Aristide's political party. And painted on available wall and road space everywhere were red hearts enscribed Titid (the Creole diminutive of his name), Mon Amour. Haiti had a sweetheart.
On February 7, 1991, crowds pressed against the doors of Port-au-Prince's pink and cream colored cathedral. Other onlookers dangled from the limbs of the huge concrete crucifix that stands outside the building. All were craning for a glance at Titid, the new president, whose inauguration was being celebrated inside with a solemn Te Deum Mass. The rococo church was filled with an anxious Haitian elite: skeptical ambassadors; soon to be demoted army officers; the last provisional president, Mme. Ertha Pascal-Trouillot (who would be handed a summons at the end of the Mass); and all but one of the country's bishops. While those in the church, many of whom would not have spoken to the young Salesian priest several months before, nervously watched the figure in a tailored French suit, the crowds outside roared, "Yo Sezi! Yo Sezi! "They are shocked! They are shocked!"
Missing from this congregation of the elite was Giuseppi Leanza, the papal nuncio. He and his Zairean assistant had been stripped, beaten, and run out of their residence in the posh suburb of Petionville by mobs who believed them guilty of condoning a nearly successful coup attempt against the president-elect on January 6. Also absent was archbishop Francois Wolff Ligonde, a Duvalier in-law, who had fled the country. Nobody knew where he had gone, but everyone suspected it was the presidential suite of a hotel in neighboring Santo Domingo, the traditional first stop for exiled Haitian leaders. Ligonde had been implicated in the failed coup and had fled before an avenging mob. Thinking that they had him cornered in the old cathedral, a graceful wooden structure recently restored after years of work by UNESCO, the mob burned the 211-year-old building to the ground. But Ligonde had already escaped.
'They stole the
...
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