Haitians skeptical about role of Marines

By John-Thor Dahlburg
Los Angeles Times

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Hazelwood was one of the first Marines to arrive in Haiti Sunday to, in his words, "try to restore order, really. Maintain peace."

Haitians seem less certain about why Hazelwood and 1,100 other Marines came in after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide left the country, and can cite their own history as grounds for skepticism.

"Is this a force that has come to restore security, or a force to install a new government?" asked James Louis, 30, an auto mechanic. In the seaside district of Port-au-Prince where Louis lives with his two children, a line of rotting, wooden piling extending about 200 feet from the muddy shore is the sole remaining sign of one past U.S. military intervention.

In this small cove, a force of about 300 Marines and sailors came ashore in July 1915, dispatched by President Woodrow Wilson to "protect American and foreign interests" and restore order after Haiti's president of the time was torn to pieces by a mob.

The Americans ended up staying 19 years and ruling Haiti by means of a military government.

In the provinces, Marine Corps commanders served as administrators; here in the capital, the legislature was dissolved after its members declined to adopt a constitution reportedly written by Franklin D. Roosevelt, then assistant secretary of the Navy.

This earlier generation of Marines and other American occupiers built roads, bridges and hospitals, created a telephone system, eradicated yellow fever and gave Haiti its first modern system of government administration.

But the Americans also conscripted Haitian peasants into road-building gangs, repressed a widespread and stubborn uprising in the countryside at an estimated cost of 2,000 Haitian lives, and too often treated the mostly black population with contempt and disdain.

Michel Soukar, a historian, writer and radio commentator believes the 1915-1934 U.S. occupation left a deep imprint on the national conscience that endures even today.

"When the Americans came, they never bothered to find out what we Haitians wanted," Soukar said. "They didn't come in to help us really, or our economic development. They came in to defend their own economic interests. What will remain in the collective mentality is that these people never come to help us, but for their own interests."
 
That judgment may be too sweeping. When 20,000 U.S. Marines and soldiers returned to Haiti in 1994, sent by then-President Clinton to restore the democratically elected Aristide to power, they were greeted by rapturous crowds. Most of those Marines soon left, although a U.N. peacekeeping force stayed in Haiti until 1997.

Marine Col. Marc Gurganus, a North Carolina native who has assumed command of the growing U.S. force in Haiti, said the Marine Corps had learned many lessons from its long occupation of Haiti, as well as from the numerous low-intensity conflicts and peacekeeping operations it has taken part in since.

"One of them is, we try hard to win the support of the people. That's what its all about," said Gurganus, who also served in Somalia. "We hope we don't fire a single round of ammunition the whole time we're here. That's my goal."

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