Antoine Adrien

Liberation theology activist and mentor of Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Antoine Adrien, a Catholic pastor whose order was forced into exile by Haitian dictator Francois "Papa Doc''Duvalier, died Tuesday after complications from a stroke. He was 81.

Adrien was the superior of the Holy Ghost Fathers order in 1969, when Duvalier forced him and his fellow priests into exile, accusing them of plotting against his regime.

Members fled the country and after three years in the Central African Republic, Adrien moved to New York City, where he was active in the democratic opposition to Duvalier and edited Sel, a review written in Creole, the language spoken by all Haitians.

He returned to Haiti following the popular uprising that toppled Duvalier's son and successor, Jean-Claude Duvalier, and was an active proponent of liberation theology. He also was a fervent supporter of fellow clergyman and now-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The army ousted Aristide in a coup in September 1991. During the three years of repressive military-backed government, Adrien remained in Haiti, in staunch defense of the elected government. U.S. troops restored Aristide to power in 1994.

Adrien directed St. Martial Catholic seminary in the capital.

Alexandre Gregoire

One of the greatest 'naive' painters

Considered one of the best of Haiti's first generation of so-called 'naive' artists, Alexandre Gregoire died at his home in the southern coastal town of Jacmel at the age of 78 years. The painter, whose works now command four figure sums in US galleries, spent most of his adult life in the army, and did not turn to painting until late in life.

He was born in Jacmel, a once thriving coffee port in southern Haiti, on August 29, 1922, and his primary schooling from 1930-37 was with the Christian Teaching Brothers. For two years, he studied cabinet making at the Jacmel vocational school, but then in 1939 he joined the army, where he played the tuba and saxophone in the army band. In the 1950s, during the presidency of Paul Magloire, Gregoire left the army and joined the band at the National Palace.

It was not until 1968 that his interest turned from music to painting. At the urging of his friends, the painters, Préfete Duffaut and Pierre-Joseph Valcin, and with encouragement from the Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince, Gregoire soon developed a unique style. His oil on canvas paintings featured humourous and playful representations of both historical scenes and everyday life. In an interview with Michele Grandjean for the book "Artistes en Haiti", Gregoire said, "My life is a prayer and the painting is a sister to the prayer."

His work is included in the permanent collections of the Musée d’Art Haitien in Port-au-Prince, the Waterloo Museum of Art in Iowa, and the Milwaukee Art Center. In 1997, his paintings featured in Island on Fire, an exhibition of Haitian art collection of Hollywood film producer, Jonathan Demme, at the Equitable Gallery, New York.

* Alexandre Gregoire, painter, born August 29, 1922; died July 28 2001

Singer Martha Jean-Claude Dead at 82

Haitian singer and actress Martha Jean-Claude, whose engaged music inspired Haitians struggling against dictatorship for decades, died at age 82 on Nov. 14 in Havana.

Known as "the daughter of two islands," she was a symbol of the fraternity between Haiti and Cuba, where she lived most of her life and raised four children.

Martha Jean-Claude, known affectionately as Mamita, came to fame in Haiti during the 1940s, most notably during Port-au-Prince's bicentennial festivities in 1949. As a child, she sang at the Port-au-Prince Cathedral and, in 1942, began her professional career with folkloric concerts at the Rex Theatre, where she was often accompanied by fellow singer-dancer Emérantes Despradines.

In 1952, she was imprisoned for publishing a play, "Avrinette," which the regime of President Paul Magloire found subversive. She fled to Cuba on Dec. 20, 1952.

"I left Haiti after spending several months in prison while pregnant," she recalled in an interview. "I gave birth two days after getting out. One month after leaving prison -- my husband was in Cuba -- I left to join him." She had married Cuban journalist Victor Mirabal, whom she met after one of her shows. A few months later, they married in Venezuela.

Together they had four children: Linda, an opera singer in Madrid; Sandra, a musician living in Amsterdam; Magdalena, a doctor living in Cuba; and Richard Mirabal, a musician and director of the Martha Jean-Claude Foundation, based in Pétionville, Haïti.

In Cuba, she quickly became a star on the stage, radio, and television, playing with different orchestras and in many clubs, including the famous "Tropicana." In 1957, she spent a year working in Mexico, where her "Afro Cabaret" was very popular on television.

When she returned to Cuba in 1958, the country was in upheaval and she sided with the revolutionaries. After the Batista dictatorship fell in 1959, she became something of an ambassador for the Cuban Revolution, Haitian culture, and the the anti-Duvalierist struggle, bringing her concerts to many socialist countries as well as playing at schools, Army bases, and official receptions in Cuba. She even travelled with the Cuban Army to Angola in the 1970s. She also toured Paris, Montreal, New York, Panama, Mexico, and Spain.

In 1971, she starred in the anti-Duvalierist film Si m pa rele, produced in Cuba.

"It's natural that I struggle for social justice," Martha said in an interview explaining the political character of many of her 50 songs and 8 albums. "To sing the song of the peasants, that's what is in my heart. I lean toward these people. My songs are what one calls protest ballads."

After 34 years in exile, she returned to Haiti in 1986, after the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier, and held a triumphant concert. She performed again in Port-au-Prince in 1991 with Mackandal, a musical group she formed in 1978 with her children Richard and Sandra.

Several of Martha's grandchildren accompanied her to a concert in her honor with Despradines and Cuban singer Celia Cruz at the Sylvio Cator stadium in Port-au-Prince in July 1996.

The same year, President René Préval honored her with Haiti's highest medal of honor."With her children born in Cuba, she created the Martha Jean-Claude Foundation with the goal of perfecting the artistic formation of youth and to allow better cultural relations between Haiti and Cuba," a Haitian government press release explained after her death.

Last year, Richard Mirabal, working with Cuban television, produced a one-hour documentary on her life and music entitled "Fanm 2 zile" (Woman of Two Islands).

Her last public appearance was at a reception in the Palace of the Revolution in Havana on Jul. 17 on the occasion of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's state visit to Cuba. Although in a wheel-chair, Martha bantered cheerfully with Fidel Castro and Aristide.

Born in Port-au-Prince on Mar. 21, 1919, Martha suffered in recent years from diabetes and other ailments and spent her final month in a Cuban hospital. Her family was all on hand for her death. Her funeral, attended by former Haitian president René Préval, was held in Havana on Nov. 15.

Paul Laraque

The great revolutionary poet

The great revolutionary poet Paul Laraque died on March 8, 2007, at 5 AM, in New York; he was 86 years old (September 21, 1920 - March 8, 2007). He is survived by his his brother Franck Laraque, children Max, Serge and Danielle, and many grand-children, nephews and nieces.

One of the greatest poets of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Paul Laraque united a beautiful and surrealist lyric poetry with political consciousness to "changer la vie." For him poetry could be a "fighting weapon" on behalf of people struggling against class exploitation, foreign domination and cultural alienation, in the tradition of Jacques Roumain, Massillon Coicou, Louis Aragon, Nicolás Guillén, and Pablo Neruda.

Paul was one of the poets who welcomed Alisa and André Breton at Port-au-Prince airport during the Surrealist guru's first visit to Haiti in December 1945. He left Haiti in 1961 for New York City, USA, where his wife Marcelle rejoined him the following year. Paul was deprived of his Haitian citizenship from 1964 to 1986 for opposition to the Duvaliers' dictatorship. He received Cuba's Casa de las Americas Poetry Prize in 1979 for his work Les armes quotidiennes / Poésie quotidienne ("Everyday Weapons / Everyday Poetry"). His published works include, among others, Ce qui demeure ("What has remained"), Festibal ("Slingshot"), Camourade, Sòlda mawon ("Maroon Soldier") and the anthology Oeuvres incomplètes ("Incomplete Works"). He was co-editor (with Jack Hirschman) and one of the authors of Open Gate: An Anthology of Haitian Creole Poetry, Curbstone Press, 2001. With his brother Franck, he recently published the critical memoir, Haiti: entre la lutte et l'espoir ("Haiti: Between Struggle and Hope"), Edition Cidihca, 2004.

Besides his impressive and skillful handling of the French and Creole languages in his poems, we will retain from Paul Laraque an indomitable commitment to social justice and political liberation in ways that transcend specific historical conjunctures. He experienced political heartbreaks, including the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the unraveling of the Haitian popular movement, following the hopeful winds of 1986 and 1991, but he never showed signs of discouragement or despair. Until the very end he remained a champion of Haiti's independence and the cause of political equality and human liberation in general. Until the very end he believed that Haiti will one day be beautiful and nurturing to its people again, liberated from foreign domination, and its people free from class exploitation. He will be missed.

The trilingual politico-literary journal Tanbou.com is preparing a special issue on Paul Laraque; please send submissions (poems, reviews, studies, photos, personal reflections, etc.) to : editors@tanbou.com (www.tanbou.com)

Paul Magloire

Military ruler behind Haiti's brief golden age

General Paul Magloire, who presided over what many of his compatriots - especially the wealthy - saw as Haiti's last golden age, has died aged 93. It was also a time that starkly displayed the colour divide that has bedevilled the country for two centuries.

Under Magloire, Haiti became a mecca for American tourists and world-ranking glitterati, among them Truman Capote, Irving Berlin and Noel Coward. The anti-communist ruler was also a Washington favourite at the height of the Cold War, and was feted by President Eisenhower, with whom US journalists compared him in gushing terms.

Magloire's rule as president, from 1950 to 1956, was a period of unusual peace and efforts at modernisation, before the long dictatorship of the Duvalier family laid waste to Haiti, sending it into a downward spiral of poverty, repression and disorganisation from which it has yet to recover.

A general's son himself, Magloire was a product of the new Haitian army, that dubious legacy of the US occupation of Haiti between 1915 and 1934. As a young major, he overthrew the disastrous regime of President Elie Lescot in 1946, amid an uprising by young urban revolutionaries, many of them steeped in Marxism.

But the issue of colour intervened. Magloire was from the rising, black middle-class; the two other officers in the junta were from the light-skinned elite. Together, they allowed the election of a liberal black president, Dumarsais Estimé, but his promotion of fellow blacks frightened the elite. When he tried to extend his term of office in 1950, the elite turned to the ambitious Magloire, already wealthy with their help, and he again deposed a president.

The mulattos were happy that Magloire was now fronting their shameless privilege and barely concealed racism. His rule marked the apogee of their power - some would say their last stand - and the genial "Kanson Fé" (or "Iron Pants"), as he was known, threw himself with gusto into their lifestyle. With his passion for bemedalled uniforms, horses and fine whisky, Magloire staged endless dazzling social events and ceremonies, even re-enacting the final battle for Haiti's independence from France on its 150th anniversary in 1954.

Blessed by good world coffee prices, the country's ill- endowed economy moved forward under Magloire, who refurbished towns and built roads, public squares, a cathedral, the country's first major dam and other infrastructure projects. The first attempts at economic and social planning were made, and foreign investment was successfully courted. Women were given the vote, and direct popular election of the president was introduced - though Magloire still scored a time-honoured 99% of the poll when the new system was first used soon after his 1950 coup.

But corruption, growing repression, the destruction wrought by Hurricane Hazel in 1954, and the theft of subsequent relief funds turned the tide against Magloire. In 1956, disputes broke out over when his term of office should end. Under pressure from strikes and demonstrations mounted by his rivals, the army abandoned him and he fled abroad.

After a year of political chaos, François "Papa Doc" Duvalier won the presidency in a rigged election, and Magloire quickly became the absent scapegoat. Opposition to the new regime was blamed on him, and used by Duvalier to build his reign of terror. Magloire was even stripped of his Haitian nationality.

After the Duvaliers fell in 1986, he quietly returned to Haiti from exile in New York. Two years later, the army, once more in power, briefly coopted him as an unofficial adviser; it was a token attempt to make it up to the old general it had earlier rejected.

He is survived by two sons and two daughters.

* Paul Magloire, soldier and politician, born July 19 1907; died July 12 2001

André Pierre

André Pierre, a world-renowned Haitian painter died on October 4 at his residence in Croix-des-Missions, north of Port-au-Prince. Pierre was ninety one years old and despite of the fact that he was diabetic, became blind and physically weak, he kept his verve and his good mood.

Haitian movie director Arnold Antonin dedicated a documentary to Pierre's talent as a painting master. This movie recalled a statement that André Pierre, Salvador Dali and Picasso were the most three fabulous painters of the twentieth century.

Last August 5, the Haitian Ministry of Culture and Communication, together with many cultural organizations, paid a tribute to him in "Centre d'Art", a gallery in the middle of the Haitian capital. Paintings, sculpture and a bust of the artist were shown.

André Pierre spent his childhood on the streets and raised himself. He was a very hardworking man. He practiced different kinds of crafts like stonebreaker, midwife and "chef de section" (literally, in English, chief of section). He was 46 when he started his painting career. He was a Vodouo priest. His works of art can be seen in important collections in Haiti and abroad.

Until his death, Andre Pierre had been living quietly in his modest house in Croix-des-Missions (north of Port-au-Prince). His residence was surrounded by the smaller houses of his relatives.

Gérard Pierre-Charles

Gérard Pierre-Charles was a leading figure in Haitian politics for almost half a century. A Communist in his youth, he later became a supporter of the radical priest-turned-politician Jean-Bertrand Aristide, only to fall out with him and become one of his most resolute opponents.

Pierre-Charles was one of the founders of an underground Marxist party in 1959, during the dictatorship of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, and was forced to go into exile in the following year. He spent the next 26 years in Mexico, where he studied Economics and later taught at the national university, and became a well-known figure in academic and political circles. He helped to organise the Haitian Unified Communist Party (PUCH), and finally returned to Haiti in 1986, following the overthrow of Jean- Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

It did not take long for Pierre-Charles to part company with the Communists, and throw his support behind Father Aristide, a priest whose work in the slums of Port-au-Prince had turned him into a popular political figure, at the head of the Lavalas ("flash flood") movement. Aristide was elected president in 1991, but overthrown by the military a few months later, and went into exile.

While he was absent, Pierre-Charles was responsible for turning the Lavalas movement into an organised and disciplined political party, Organisation Politique Lavalas (OPL). That was as close to holding public office as Pierre-Charles ever came. Aristide returned to Haiti in 1994, after the military regime was removed by a United Nations force headed by the United States, and served out the remainder of his term of office.

But Pierre-Charles soon fell out with him, and the OPL split: Pierre- Charles kept the initials but renamed his party Organisation du Peuple en Lutte (Struggling People's Organisation), while Aristide formed a movement fiercely loyal to him, known (in Creole) as Fanmi Lavalas, or the Lavalas Family.

As Aristide became increasingly reliant on armed thugs to underpin his regime, and his re-election in 2000 was surrounded by allegations of fraud, Pierre-Charles became one of his most implacable critics. He accused the former priest of betraying his democratic ideals and becoming both a dictator. Aristide's supporters responded by burning down Pierre-Charles' house, research centre and party offices.

OPL joined an anti-Aristide coalition known as the Democratic Convergence, which organised protests against the government and called for fresh elections. When an armed insurrection against Aristide began in early 2004, led mainly by former soldiers and policemen, Pierre-Charles and the Democratic Convergence supported their demand for Aristide to resign, but did not formally align themselves with the gunmen. After Aristide's hasty departure at the end of February, several members of the Convergence joined an interim government, set up with United Nations backing to organise fresh elections.

Gérard Pierre-Charles was born in a small town on the south coast in 1935, and worked at a cement plant in Port-au-Prince as a young man. He gained his first political experience there by founding a union. He later trained as an economist in Mexico, and wrote a number of books, including Radiografa de una dictadura ("X-Ray of a Dictatorship", 1969).

He was noted for his clear, analytical mind - a rare enough quality in a country where politics is a highly emotional business. His supporters conducted a campaign to nominate him for the Nobel peace prize last year. He died of heart failure in Cuba, where he had been taken for medical treatment.

Gérard Pierre-Charles, politician and economist: born Jacmel, Haiti 18 December 1935; married Suzy Castor (three sons, one daughter); died Havana 10 October 2004.