Dreams of a Haiti That Once Was

In Port-au-Prince, corpses of death-squad victims litter the streets.

In Washington, President Clinton and his advisers struggle with What to Do About Haiti.

And, in Los Angeles, Haitian-born Yvrose Pierrot and Pierrette St. Hubert and those they’ve recruited for their neophyte Haitian Women Assn. are starting to make their voices heard.

They feel the pain of the people of Haiti and they want to help. Although undecided how political they should be, they know this: There is power in unity--and there is no unity among Haitians in L.A.

“We are a divided community,” Pierrot says. “It’s a question of class. Haiti is a small country, but the class thing is big there. It’s deep. . . . We left the country but we carry it on everywhere we go.”

In October, Pierrot called three other women; they met and organized. With more bravado than backing, they sent out flyers for a Jan. 1 gala marking 190 years of Haiti’s independence from France.

To their astonishment, 300 Haitians showed up. This was an idea whose time had come.

One of Pierrot’s first recruits to the Haitian Women Assn. was Gerry LaMothe, an engineer and a drummer in the Formula One Band, and Pierrot’s significant other. Name aside, this is not a female-only club.

LaMothe joins this day in a discussion of the Haitian problem in L.A. That problem: Lack of community leadership, no community core, no newspaper or radio station. Says LaMothe: “You say Florida, you go to Miami, to Little Haiti.” Chicago and Boston have established Haitian neighborhoods.

These members of the fledgling association seem to typify the dilemma. Pierrot, a bookkeeper, and LaMothe live in Sherman Oaks. Adeline Devesin, a caterer, lives in Covina; St. Hubert, a pharmacy technician, in Burbank.

Says Pierrot: “People tell me, ‘The only thing I know about Haiti is black people and voodoo.’ ” And that refugees by the boatload are being denied asylum in the United States.

Is it possible that Haitians in greater L.A.--6,000 by their estimate--are low-profile by choice, wishing to separate themselves from these boat people?

“Yes, big time, yes,” Pierrot says. “Haitians want to disappear here.”

Devesin is quick to retort: “We have Haitians who don’t want to be Haitian? I don’t believe that.”

But LaMothe says: “On TV, they’re showing a bunch of ugly-looking Haitians, all bones, getting off a boat, being pushed around. My friend told me, ‘I do not want to be identified with that.’ ”

Whatever the reason, Pierrot says, “We are pulling each other apart” here, just as in Haiti.

Each of these four has been in the United States between 15 and 26 years and all but Pierrot are citizens. Yet they remain fiercely proud of Haiti’s history and culture, and they are passionate in denouncing the poverty, political repression and violence that are decimating the island nation.

It is still home.

“If I am kicked out here,” Devesin says, “I have a place to go. Black Americans have no place to go.”

Haitians find they have little in common with African Americans living in L.A.--except skin color.

“I don’t think there’s any animosity, but the connection is missing,” Devesin says. “We are relating as if we were not related.”

Haiti is 90% black. “The struggle that (African Americans) went through, we did not have that.” There is not that to unite them.

These are middle-class Haitians--but with no delusions about Haiti. Pierrot speaks of schools that are free “if you have the right political connections.” St. Hubert says her brother wanted to be a doctor, “but we were not part of the Duvalier regime, so he couldn’t get in.” Admission to a public hospital, Pierrot says, is a ticket to die.

They talk of the sharp class divisions that Haitians bring with them to the United States: Those who speak proper French versus those who speak a patois . Skin shade as a caste mark.

Still they hope that, in L.A., they can help bring Haitians--doctors, engineers, mechanics, beauty operators--together.

They tend to support “what (exiled President Jean-Bertrand) Aristide stands for,” although not necessarily the man. They denounce U.S. immigration policy as racist and are debating how best to channel their anger into action.

Says Devesin: “The issue is not really them coming here. The issue is making it possible for them to stay where they are. We all have a dream--to see the community together here and abroad.”

Haiti “is sinking,” Pierrot says, literally and figuratively. But, says Devesin: “We still have our history, the most beautiful history. . . . We want people to remember we are the first black country to have its independence (won by a slave-led rebellion in 1804).”

Pierrot hopes to find people who will give two hours a week to alert fellow Haitians to what’s happening back home, to collect food and clothing for the people.

Meanwhile, as expatriates tend to, she and the others cling to the dream of a Haiti that once was. When it was called “La Perle des Antilles.”

The Haitian Women Assn. is co-sponsoring Haitian Flag Day celebrations tonight in Hollywood and Saturday night in Compton. Information: (818) 786-4514.

Space Cadets Talk about the A-train. . . .

Sixty-Eighth Street School fifth-graders Boris Rivera and Odell Smith and sixth-grader Melanie Banks plan to be in the crew when the first space train is launched in 2010.

After all, they’re the ones who came up with the concept of a space train, launched by solar-powered rockets.

They are among local students answering the Erector Space Challenge, marking the 25th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Remember? “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Space travel has lost much of its luster in the years since, but the Erector set people hope to rekindle interest with this nationwide project in which kids built models of spacecraft of the future.

Boris, Odell and Melanie put theirs together during L.A.’s Best, an after-school enrichment program, then wrote an essay explaining that the airborne steel train would be 1,000 feet long, 200 feet high and carry a crew of 50 and 1,000 passengers.

“The air inside the Space Train will be similar to Earth. Passengers will not have to wear space suits or oxygen masks.”

Nor will they have to rough it. The Space Train “will have recreation areas with televisions, movie theater, arcades, swimming pools and all kinds of food. . . . Each passenger’s seat will convert into a sleeping area.”

In short, space vacationers will travel in style to different planets and to cities built in outer space.

Designs judged most creative and imaginative will be displayed May 24-Sept. 30 at the Man on the Moon exhibit at the Hayden Planetarium in New York.

* This weekly column chronicles the people and small moments that define life in Southern California. Reader suggestions are welcome.