Hope Beyond the Horizons: A Dream Solidified

By Ed.S. Paul Mathias M.Ed.

During the ruthless times of the infernal regime of Francois Duvalier (Papa Doc) and Jean-Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc) in Haiti lived a man whose hope could be found nowhere but beyond the distant skylines. His confidence birthed a dream that forced him to keep his children on a low profile. They could barely write their names to avoid being detec

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: May 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643455440

Ed.S. Paul Mathias M.Ed.

The author is a first-generation immigrant American from Haiti who went through the system from the bottom up. He maneuvered to master the language, earned a bachelor's degree in French, a master's in counselor education, and a specialist degree in educational leadership. He is presently completing his Ph.D. in Religion with an emphasis in Christian Counseling. He either lived some of the experiences or he knows someone who did. He is a compassionate person with a counselor's mind, a poet's spirit and a writer's heart. He lives to change humanity one person at a time.

Book preview

Dedication

his novel is dedicated to my beloved wife, Martha, whom I love crazily, and to my marvelous children:

Paul II

Paulemile

Thamar

Tharyana

for whom I live.

I am also dedicating it to my wonderful mother, Altagrace D. Mathias, my late dad, Saint-Jean Mathias, and my exceptional siblings:

Smy

Sultane

the late Berthony

Soeurette

Josette

Alta

Fosia

whom I love much.

Prologue

n 1957, Haiti had just celebrated its one hundred fifty-third anniversary as an independent nation, when an infernal regime emerged in its bosom that destroyed the normality of existence and prevented optimism from shining on its territory. The murderous and cruel regime’s defenders in uniform ravaged families across the country. The claws of fear and the horns of death penetrated bones and souls to create a climax of desperateness and helplessness.

People who tried to look for a healthier life disappeared at dusk, and their lifeless bodies were found at dawn amid the bushes in desolate places. Most times, those people vanished without a trace without any idea of investigation. The murderers used others as fertilizer either in the wetland behind the walls of the deadliest prison in the Caribbean, Fort Dimanche. The elders were leaving and could not foresee the sun of spring sparkling on their offspring. The future looked somber everywhere. There was a small group amid the people who never let the thick dark cloud of hopelessness block the ray of possibilities in its sky. In their minds, they confidently dreamed of a better tomorrow, attainable no matter the price.

Hope Beyond the Horizons: A Dream Solidified opens a window of opportunity for anyone to share this astonishing, exhilarating, and informational story. It exposes the misery of individuals, the steadfastness of a family, the conviction, the courage, and the faithfulness of a young man throughout his life’s journey and his accomplishments. Discover for yourself what happened.

Chapter I

Roots of Certain Decorum: Historical Background

wenty-two kilometers, or 13.7 miles, from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in the outer southwestern part of the west department, lays a small seaside town called Léogâne. Its latitude is 18°30’38 N, and its longitude is 72°38’02 W, thirteen meters, or forty-two feet, above sea level.

Léogâne’s name was Yaguana by the aboriginal inhabitants of the island called Tainos before the infiltration of the Spaniards led by Christopher Columbus in 1492. It was the capital of Xaragua, the largest of the five caciquats, or kingdoms, that occupied the island. Bohecchio governed Xaragua with his sister Anacaona, whose name means golden flower. Anacaona was the first poetess, singer, and dancer in the kingdom. She was the wife of Caonabo, who was the king of the Maguana caciquat, or kingdom, now Dominican territory.

After the Santa Maria had gone underwater in the northern coast of Haiti, Christopher Columbus salvaged enough wood from the sunken ship to build a fort called the Nativity, where he left many Spanish sailors who could not return with him on the other two boats. The Tainos—called Indians by the invaders because they thought they arrived in India when they saw the territory—were the aborigines of the land. Columbus named the island Hispaniola, which means little Spain due to its natural attraction.

After the departure of Columbus, the Spanish sailors had raped the Taino women, stole their gold, and strangled the men. The aggressors were dead by the time Columbus had returned. He suspected that Caonabo, the king of Maguana, had directed his subalterns to perpetrate the crime against the sailors. Columbus pretended that he wanted to make peace with Caonabo by plotting with Ojeda, one of the Spaniards, to entice him into a deadly trap.

Ojeda offered a gift to Caonabo made of polished iron chains and handcuffs. Caonabo thought his gifts were ornaments. He agreed to wear them. None of the surrounding kingdoms were barbarous; thinking of such trick was an impossibility. They were a peaceful people. Caonabo allowed Ojeda the opportunity to capture him and take him away to his destruction. Columbus ordered to transport him to Spain as a criminal. He died in a shipwreck on high seas.

After they had assassinated her brother, Bohecchio, and her husband, Caonabo, Anacaona succeeded her husband in Xaragua. The Spaniard aliens felt intimidated by the popularity of the queen. Columbus’successor, Nicolás Ovando, despite the friendly welcome of Anacaona, ordered the massacre of her people. He burned their village, captured the queen as a prisoner, and later hung her.

At the time of Columbus’s arrival, the Taino population was unknown but estimated to be two and a half million, which was reduced to approximately five hundred in less than fifty years. They succumbed to the European diseases and died because of the slavery under which they were forced to live.

Columbus’ son, Diego, started the importation of African slaves to the island as early as 1505. The slaves drew attention because of their robustness and endurance. A new people gleaned from different parts of Africa repopulated the whole country. It became the richest colony ever and earned the title La Perle des Antilles, the Pearl of the Antilles, by the French who later took over the Spaniards.

The African slaves decided not to continue living in such abject conditions. There were several sporadic unsuccessful slave revolts throughout Haiti. After the French revolution, at the end of the eighteenth century, slaves and mulattoes all over the country had organized themselves and attacked the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. After many battles, they defeated Bonaparte’s mighty army and repealed slavery out of the country. The French were beaten and had to vacate the premises, and Haiti claimed its independence on January 1, 1804, as the first and only successful slave revolt in the world.

Haiti became the first African-descent nation in the world to free itself. The mulattoes fought alongside Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the general who led the winning battle. The general Alexandre Pétion was one of the most noticeable. He became the president of the republic of Haiti in the west and the south, after a split with Henri Christophe, who became king of Northern Haiti after Dessalines’s murder in Port-au-Prince on October 17, 1806, in a plot set by political rivals.

After that, when Simon Bolivar in South America was struggling in the fight for independence, he and his troops took refuge in Haiti. Pétion assisted Bolivar, who became the conquistador of most of South America, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, to set those countries free from Spain. Pétion gave him money, weapons, and volunteer soldiers to help fight for his freedom and thousands.

Everyone takes pride to be born in a land filled with so many stories, but most people in Léogâne felt indebted to their ancestors. The former slaves who inherited the place where the great Queen Anacaona once lived want the best for themselves. They all aspired to have daughters like the queen. Each family wished for their children to succeed. They looked at each child as the future of his/her family. As goes the saying Pitit se richès malere (Children are the wealth of the poor), so go the families. More children meant more chances for a change in the household. It was customary that a family had a dozen offspring. Patience was the key to anyone’s success. The inhabitants of the region believed with patience, one could find the nipples of an ant, even its belly button, with extra care. Many of those families hid their hope in the distant and unreachable horizons.

Chapter II

A Family in Agony among Many

n the late 1970s, there was one family near the city of Léogâne, in a town called Bounda-Chita, whose fortune was not at all plenty; parents could not afford to send their children to school. First, schooling represented another financial hardship, and second, the parents feared that the officials would target and kill the literate youngsters who, once educated, would demand change. Their town was remote from the city. The city people saw themselves as better than those coming from the countryside. They took pleasure calling them moun mòn (mountain people). The family’s visits to the city were basically limited to needs, not pleasure.

The town existed in the middle of the mountains. The roads were very dusty, and when it rained, the hills got muddy and slippery. The two corridors that led to it were dirt roads not big enough for two donkeys to walk in opposite directions without crashing into each other. On either side of the road were fences made of kandelab (lacteal or candelabra plants), doliv (moringa), and medsiyen benni (Jatropha curcas), which would grow into trees. Between each tree, the inhabitants placed branches of thorny acacia. Behind those natural fences were cornfields, sugarcane, cassava plantations, and banana plants. Depending on the season of the year, one might find different harvests.

Its population was peaceful and respectful. Their local economy was agricultural. As a rural area, it was green. Near that town, the people were fortunate enough to enjoy a hospital since the former first lady, the wife of the late dictator François Papa Doc Duvalier—who held the country hostage for fourteen years (Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, 2004) before his death—was from the area. Simone Ovide Duvalier was the mother of the then dictator Jean-Claude Baby Doc Duvalier, who was only nineteen years old when his father made him president for life. Simone had seen daylight in the city. That was the best thing that could have happened to the town although it was not easy for the peasants to see a doctor when there was a need.

For the government to keep its hegemony, its supporters had to design a system for everyone to be under control to avoid any plot that might have overthrown the regime. To that effect, there were different people in uniform defending the regime, four of which were the most common. The first kind was the army people who wore the traditional khaki. That branch of the armed forces of Haiti trained the recruits to be soldiers. They did not need a high school diploma to register or join that group. They earned their promotions by what they did or what they had to show. Those with less education could spend their entire lives without ever receiving an honor for promotion. They existed everywhere in the capital and every city or town in the country.

There would be a captain in charge of the local station. The captain, or commandant, never remained in one position too long to avoid aligning himself with any home group that would help any revolt against the administration. They changed them, and so it was for the soldiers. Because of the repetitive movements, it was difficult for those men to keep a healthy family or have a wife with them. Everywhere they stationed, they left two or three kids behind with different women. Those kids grew up with false ideas that they inherited power from their father, whom they wouldn’t know, in most cases, was a soldier. The town of Bounda-Chita had a few of those children.

There was a second class of men in uniform. They wore the golden khaki. The primary condition to join was a high school diploma and a healthy physical body. They trained them for four years in the prestigious army school called Académie Militaire d’Haïti (Military Academy of Haiti). Upon graduation, they became officers of the army. They earned promotions much faster than the traditional military members. The graduates were professionals who served at different levels of society while remaining a soldier. Society portrayed them as a privileged group amid the armed forces. They would send some of them to supervise different stations in different places throughout the country, but they would not stay for long lest ’twas punishment for something they might have done.

The third group of people in uniform was a special task force group called Le Corps des Léopards (the Body of the Leopards). That team carried camouflage US Army uniforms that made them resemble the animal whose name they took. It wasn’t necessary for the members to be high school graduates although they promoted that they had to have a diploma. But they had to have a certain academic level for the rigorous training they received. People knew them to be the meanest in term of defending the safety and power of the president. They had their leader but were still under the leadership of the general of the armed forces. Jacques Gracia was the général de brigade (general of brigade).

The fourth kind was a group of gunmen and women, created by Francois Papa Doc Duvalier; it was the most dangerous among the four groups. They were a different breed. Their uniform was blue jeans shirt and pants, with a cap of the same color. Often they had a red handkerchief on their shoulders or around their necks. They carried a brand-new machete with a case hanging on their side. Many times, the weapon would be in their hands, and for those in the cities, they may have had an old rifle that shot one bullet at a time. The people called the males Tonton Makout and the women Fillette Lalo, or Fiyèt Lalo.

This group received the least training, if at all, for any confrontation if any group of rebels was to revolt against the regime. They were the class to make sure one would walk a straight line. They expected one to walk, talk, breathe, and even think a certain way. If one dared think or did any of the above, he/she risked exposing his/her life and that of his/her family, friends included. Most of the adherents were illiterate and had no social skills. They chose them amid the peasants and empowered for equalizing the army’s power and the people’s minds. Their official name was Milice des Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale (Militia of National Security Volunteers or MVSN). In 1958, Dr. Francois Duvalier created the militia, and 1959 he declared it to be a paramilitary group.

It was very sinister in many cities and towns throughout the country, depending on who was the local chief. The VSN Bureau was an isolated small building painted pale-blue. In front of the building, one could see a lonely flagpole. The flag itself floated as the people were moving with not much hope. The gallery was so somber; it was considered by many like an introduction to a death sentence. On either side of the main entrance were one or two tiny rooms. The interrogation room or torture chamber was toward the back. As a detainee walked toward that destination, he/she would gasp for air because each step represented a giant step toward the end of life. In the back sat the cells where they threw the lifeless bodies to await the final moments at night before an open-back jeep or a pickup truck pulled up to transport the corpses for disposal.

The militia was everywhere in the country. Its members were bloodthirsty. Their presence intimidated innocent families. They acted like hyenas to find whoever they may devour. Without detecting someone red-handed in an action the government opposed, they couldn’t receive the promotion to higher positions or receive more recognition. That only meant when the time arrived for them to get that promotion, they’d even give up their family members such as a brother, a sister, a mother, or a father, along with distant cousins, friends, or neighbors. There was one family in Bounda-Chita who refused to let its dream die without even throwing a fist to defend its honor and the future of its children. It was certain they couldn’t trust anyone with the family’s hope, fearing that people would betray them.

Life in Bounda-Chita appeared healthy, but under the surface, there was rage, despair, and hopelessness. It was like a still body of water that showed no movement while strong currents were running deep. Although the family felt tremendous stress just like the others, in plain reality, it was never hungry. Both the husband and his wife, Raphael and Cilia, were farmers. They cultivated breadfruits (Artocarpus altilis, lam veritab), which they roasted, boiled, or fried. They had breadnuts (Artocarpus camansi, labapen), which they either boiled or roasted, soursop (Annona muricata, kowosòl), which they either made juice with or ate raw. Sweetsop (Annona squamosal, kachiman), plantain, banana, and sugarcane, which they used to make syrup, were plenty, along with ethanol and bagasse. The peasants used bagasse as a multipurpose substance. Some used it as sugar to sweeten their coffee, tea, porridge, etc. Others used it as medication for whatever they thought would be useful to them. They sold syrup and ethanol to provide themselves the necessities for the household, such as gas oil for the lamps, laundry bar soap to wash their clothes, and cooking oil, salt, and other spices to cook. They also used the ethanol for medicine.

The peasants had seasonal combite (konbit) where everyone gathered together to help one person plow his/her land for farming while others were drumming and singing. During the konbit, the owner of the farmland provided food and water for everyone. Most of them provided the ethanol as some stimulant to the participants who wanted it. After preparing one person’s farmland, the group moved around and supported the next person until they finished taking care of everyone in the group.

Everyone in the region had similar goods. The abundance of their harvest only meant food to eat for the season, but not much business for the family. In many instances, the exchange of the limited goods had to take place if they wanted to consume something different and if it were available in the immediate locality. Products of various kinds were available around the year. No one was ever desperate, but it was customary that kids walked around naked, or half-clothed. The quality of life reduced to a level like that of the Middle Ages. The peasants made their houses with intertwined flexible pieces of wood covered with mud, painted with lime, and made some with palm tree leaf sheaths. People said one couldn’t sneeze too hard inside of those houses without having to repair either the walls or the roof.

Near the entrance to the property, one would find an uncovered semiprivate minispace they considered as the kitchen. Most houses didn’t even have one. They used three big rocks as