williambplowman.com - photography and commentary by William B. Plowman

A heavy mist had rolled in when we reached the roadblock at the tiny mountain-top village of Puilboreau. The burning tires and twisted wreckage of old cars thrown across the road was a familiar sight on our trip up from Port au Prince into the Central Plateau following the anti-Aristide rebels. But absent this time where the tense gunmen we had encountered time and again. No one here seemed in command or control of anything.

Figures moved in and out of the haze of smoke and rain. A boy, covered in grease and oil, moved a barrell and our vehichle inched through the barricade and parked. People moved about aimlessly and floated by in a daze. The Puilboreau Police Station had been recently burned out and looted. A teenage boy, armed with a metal rod, patrolled the grounds wearing a red motorcycle helmet and women's heeled shoes. While a old man carrying an umbrella in one hand and a mango in the other jumped in and out of a burning tire. It was a nightmarish scene that spoke of Haiti's descent into darkness.

Three days earlier I joined a convoy out of the capital with generous help and friendship from Peter Bosch, Joe Raedle, Mike Stocker, Kuni Takahashi and Carol Guzy. Our caravan headed north over dirt roads and mountain switchbacks that gained us only about 40 miles our first day. Repeated flats and a cracked oil pan conspired against us.

The town of Hinche had been taken the night before we rolled in. The prison had been emptied and the police station gutted by fire. Vehicles had been stripped to their bodies and documents were strewn everywhere. Two officers and one prisoner had died in the melee. After surveying the scene we headed to an NGO on the outskirts of town for some information and they offered us a much needed meal and a place to sleep.

The next morning we followed a contingent of ten rebels in pick-up trucks through banana plantations and across shallow streams not really knowing what we’d find. One soldier wore a United States Marines camoflagued shirt and a black wool ski mask. Another wore a clear plastic medical respirator over his mouth and nose. When we the town of Marrisade ex-death squad leader, now rebel leader, Louis Jordel Chamblain led his troops in a victory lap through the town to cheering crowds. Down dusty roads, past tin roofed huts and across a soccer field the celebration continued until dark. Momentum, they sensed, was on their side and Haiti's second largest city Cap Haitian was next on the list.

Pushing north towards Cap Haitian later that night we came upon another roadblock. The headlights pointing at us drawing eerie silhouettes of pistols and automatic rifles. This time manned by 30-year-old policeman Macis Lacombe and a heavily armed and highly drunk man known only as Jungle. We were obliged to spend the night in the parking lot of his station. Our prescence adding a bit of safety against any rebel attack. No one slept.

The station was now manned only by Lacombe and Jungle. Most had fled. Lacombe was nervous and admitted to drinking "a bottle and a half of rum" to steel his resolve. Though willing to defend the Aristide status-quo Lacombe was pragmatic. "In 1996 I was earning 800 Haitian dollars a month and buying a coke for 3 Gourdes." He continued, "Now I'm earning the same and buying a coke for 15 Gourdes." Lacombe then pulled out 100 American dollars from his wallet. He would use this cache to fly out to Port au Prince should things turn dire.

The mood up to Cap Haitian and back south to Gonaives was dark. We were stopped at multiple roadblocks and everyone was on edge. Somewhere south of Puilboreau a man wearing a black wool cap and sunglasses and carrying a shotgun with a sidearm sticking out of his pants agreed, after some tense deliberation, to escort us through to the rebel stronghold. We followed as he sped off on the back of a motorcycle, the stock of his shotgun resting on his thigh.

The residents of the rebel held town of Gonaives were on the streets . A city under siege for nearly two weeks, the residents were cut off from desperately needed supplies. Food stocks had run low and doctors had fled for their lives. But the residents were out demonstrating in force. Drunk on rum, heavily armed with guns and machettes, they marched through town. We followed them to the southern most point and made our exit to Port au Prince.

I would return to Gonaives two days later to find the residents had turned on themselves. A food distribution deteriorated into looting when a few, then many, smashed windows and stormed the building. People poured into the structure. Some climbed to the roof and dropped into the patio. Within minutes armed gangs arrived firing into the air and stealing from looters as they attempted to make off with boxes of cooking oil and flour. Each gang threatened the other when their cut looked to be shrinking. Pick-ups filled with boxes sped off and returned for more. And within an hour the building was emptied.

Events were escalating at a rapid clip. It was only a matter of time now before the rebels would march on Port au Prince. A loose collection of pro-Aristide gangs known as the Chimere, mythical fire-breathers, had already begun to seal the capital off. The Chimere, often at war amongst themselves, blocked the roads with burning tires, shipping containers, refrigerators and all matter of wreckage. I would return to Port au Prince while I could still get in and wait for the inevitable. But even moving in and around the city proved difficult. Some journalists were dragged from their vehicles at gunpoint, carjacked, and relieved of their equiptment.

At 4 am on the morning of Febraury 29 I awoke to a call that President Jean Bertrand Aristide had fled the country. There would later be a good deal of speculation on just how voluntary the decision to step down was. Word of his departure seemed slow to reach the street though. Around 8 am a small band of Aristide supporters cheered as the Haitian flag was raised over the presidential palace. But news had suddenly spread and within minutes there was automatic weapons fire from multiple corners around the square. A Texaco station was hit with a hail of rocks and bullets. As the station went up in flames looters charged in through the windows stealing cans of coke, candy bars and anything they could get their hands on. The entire city, it seemed, was in anarchy.

By dawn bodies lay dead, execution style, in the streets of Port au Prince. Dirty rags wrapped around their mouths and hands and feet tied behind their backs. But the madness that had gripped the capital the day before seemed to have faded some. And by midmorning the rebel forces, led by former Port au Princce police cheif Guy Philippe, finally came into town. The caravan snaked its way through the city, stopping at police stations to cheering crowds along the way. Undoubtably many of the same revellers had been on the streets days before cheering “Cinq Ans!” the pro-Aristide war cry of the presidential term, five years.

But the rebels left the capital the following day. United States Marines and French soldiers now patrol the streets as part of a multi-national peace keeping force. But security and a solution are still a long way off. Gunfire still peppers the streets and every morning the victims of political violence lay dead on the roadside.

Click on the Latest Photography link to find a selection of images from my Haiti assignment.