More Than A Little Priest

By AMY WILENTZ/WASHINGTON

As deposed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide addressed the Organization of American States in Washington last week, the scene outside was reminiscent of the good old days in Port-au-Prince. Thousands of Haitians sang and danced and demonstrated on his behalf outside the white fortress-like building on Constitution Avenue. The atmosphere was heady, anticipatory. There were drums. "While he is trying to get justice in there, we are with him out here," said a Haitian protester, who waved a long red-and-blue banner that said it all, in simple terms: WE WANT ARISTIDE. In Haitian Creole they have begun to call him Msieu Mirak, or Mr. Miracle.

Back in Haiti, Mr. Miracle had been an embattled figure, the tumultuous center of a brewing storm. After the Duvalier dynasty was overthrown in 1986, the slender but resilient priest slowly emerged as the embodiment of hope. Aristide's church was filled with the excitement that lit up Haiti's poor, its unemployed, its peasantry and most of all its youth, when he and other liberationists taught that there was a slim possibility for democratic change.

When a band of hired thugs killed hundreds of peasants in Haiti's northwestern province in July 1987, Aristide was there to denounce the massacre. Four months later, when paramilitary forces burned down a central market in Port-au-Prince, Aristide was there to excoriate the perpetrators and to raise money to rebuild the place. When one military dictator after another came to power promising democracy down the road, Aristide dismissed them, one after another, with an ironic Creole proverb and a blistering sermon. He never gave the least philosophical quarter to those he perceived as "roadblocks to the liberation of the Haitian people."

Aristide is a man of contradictions. Soft-spoken and relaxed in private, he is like a pillar of fire when he addresses the public. As a priest he spoke tirelessly against what he considered "sham" elections -- then he became a candidate himself. In 1987 he thought the new, liberal Haitian constitution was a fancy-dress costume being worn by a brutal dictatorship; as President he learned to use it well. A longtime champion of human rights, he has been reticent until very recently about condemning mob violence.

Aristide came of age in the Roman Catholic Church in the 1970s, at a time when priests throughout Latin America were developing the concept of liberation theology. As a young seminarian in Haiti, however, he was known more as a biblical scholar than a firebrand. But when he returned in 1981 after studying abroad, he was nonplussed by the poverty of the Haitian people. "I had been away for some time," he said about the shock of returning, "and so my eyes were reopened to the squalor and misery." Ordained in 1982, Aristide became a liberationist and soon found himself in conflict with the conservative bishops. In 1988 he was ousted from his religious order for preaching politics.

His outspokenness earned him little favor with the military dictatorships under which he preached. The armed forces were involved in at least two violent attempts on Aristide's life. From these attacks, and from others where the military was not openly involved, Aristide emerged virtually unscathed: Mr. Miracle.

The same kind of fervor that surrounded him as a priest followed him through his short but memorable candidacy in Haiti's first free and fair presidential elections. Aristide called his movement Lavalas, which in Creole means flood , or avalanche, and Haitians flooded around him in waves as he made visits to every corner of his country. Running against a former leader of the Duvaliers' repressive Tontons Macoutes and a handful of recidivist candidates, Aristide turned a lackluster election into a colorful political cockfight.

His landslide victory came as a slap in the face to certain sectors of Haitian society. The army was concerned, since Aristide had never made deals with the military in the tradition of most Haitian presidential candidates. The economic elite was worried because they had been telling each other for years that "that little priest" was a communist. The Roman Catholic Church was nervous because Aristide's relations with the Haitian hierarchy continued to be rocky.

But, typically, the man of contradictions surprised everyone. Formerly considered adamant and intransigent, he moderated his militant tone as President. He spoke to the Haitian generals of the love he felt for them -- even as he retired them. He fell into a cordial relationship with the American ambassador after years of criticizing the U.S. government. For seven months he performed the high-wire trick of remaining faithful to his poor and clamorous constituency while trying to stay in power.

Although the negotiations for Aristide's life while he was in military custody last week were touch and go, Haitians were not surprised that he escaped unscathed. They are used to watching him emerge from the ashes without a scratch. Some even believe he is divinely protected, by either Christian powers or the powers of Haitian vodou. He shrugs off such assertions but adds, "I have been immunized against fear." In Haiti now, in the dark slums, in the bloodied hospitals, behind burning barricades on country roads, they are waiting for Mr. Miracle to return.