Haitian Teachers Strike, May 1997

On the last day of my trip to Haiti I found an unexpected adventure. It was Thursday, May 15. I had just returned to Potoprens [Port Au Prince]the previous day from Jacmel on the autobus and learned from Pastor Rick [staying at Saint Josephs] that a Teachers Strike had started that week. Knowing that I am a Trade Unionist he well knew that this would be interesting to me.

Pastor Rick said that the Teachers at the public schools had been unpaid for many months and had finally walked out this week. The streets of downtown Port au Prince had been closed by demonstrations. He reported that the police had killed two people during part of the operation. Later, reading usenet and mailing list news, there was no mention of fatalaties except one person killed by a gasoline bomb in her car. Conspiracy theories are afoot.

The previous day I had tried to go to the National Museum, which I had just discovered next to the National Palace. Michael [of St Josephs] said he was in it about ten years previously, when it was basicaaly a Papa Doc museum. His bowler hat was in it.

So, this Thursday, my final day in Haiti, I resolved to head down town early to go to the Museum to search for remnants of Papa Doc's bowler hat. I found the strike at the Alexander Petion Lycee instead. It was in the way of my path around the Cathedral.

I was starting to walk up a street [in my usual preoccupied fashion] when I heard muffled booms, or pops. I thought that it might be gunfire [talking heads came to mind] but soon realized that it was the sound of rocks half the size of my head crashing onto the street in front of me.

It was then that I realized that the citizens of the neighborhood were all huddling inside doorways to the left, and that a commotion was emanating from the roof of the large building to my right. Masked young men on the roof! Throwing rocks at vehicles on the street! Revolution in the air!

I worked my way forward, hiding behind trees, trying to get a better view. A gentleman on the other side of the street motioned me over to the shelter of his streetside kiosk which was in the shadow of the wall around the school.

The Marchand spoke no anglais, we made gestures of amusement at each other. I took some pictures of the protesters thru a break in his galvanized roofing. Most of the people on the street seemed detached and bemused by the whole affair.

When a car would approach the corner and begin to enter the block whence mountains fell, the crowd would yell out for it to go back. One small car entered the danger area too quickly for the warnings to take effect. The sound of boulders smashing on the pavement began; the auto kept on going up the street, slowly. The driver didn't realize what was happening, as I didn't at first when I was on foot.

Suddenly the range was found; rocks crashed onto the hood and roof of the car. It came roaring backwards down the street to whoops of amusement from the crowd, myself included. When it backed up around the corner we saw that the windshield was smashed and a large part of the crowd ran after the car to check on the passengers. There did not appear to be any injuries.

Two UN military vehicles came by with armed Pakistani soldiers. That made me very nervous as the Pakistani have developed a reputation as reckless peacekeepers. They did not enter the zone of confrontation, luckily. I did not get a picture of that.

I worked my way around the neighborhood with the intention of seeing the other side of the school. A long trek brought me to another block, this one filled with people. I am sure that foreigners are not seen on foot in these neighborhoods very often, even in the best of times. With the prevailing civil unrest I was perhaps over enthusiastic in approaching the front lines.

I sensed no overt hostility from any of the citizens and advanced half way down the block towards the school wall. I took a few pictures. A young man walked in front of me and sat down on a stairway, motioning to me not to take a photograph. I nodded back to him and held up my hands, to say without words that I wouldn't take his picture.

What we had there was, a failure to communicate. I realized later that his message to me was to stop taking pictures altogether.

Never having actually been a front line combat photographer before, I thought that my inner conviction as a trade unionist would provide me with the spiritual blessing to walk among the Kreyol red army faction safely.

Well, I took one more picture of the street and was rapidly disabused of my notions of impunity.

Suddenly I was surrounded by one hundred angry young men, shouting at me in Kreyol and demanding my camera. Aha. A mistake.

"Mwen Allez, Mwen Allez" I said to their demands. I was escorted out of the neighborhood with an exciting ceremony. I didn't run. It is important to retreat with dignity, I think. To walk like the warrior Socrates. It worked, anyway.

Go here for news stories on the Teachers Strike and Dispute

name: teacherstrike.html
created: 24 May 1997,
modified: