A candidate angling to fill the seat of the deposed Aristide is Emmanuel Constant, leader of the paramilitary Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti. He presides from a wicker chair in his backyard over a ragtag group that has been accused of committing many of the 133 political executions and 55 disappearances documented over the past four months. Constant protests his group's innocence. If I had the power to arm all 400,000 members, I would be in the palace having juice and giving interviews. Anger at economic as well as political oppression is growing in slums like the capital's Cite Soleil and in the countryside.
Fuel is too expensive, so peasants can no longer afford to transport crops into the city.
In some areas, people are reduced to eating boiled green mangoes and seeds. Relief agencies already feed some 900,000 people, but they claim that red tape from the U.N. and the U.S. is holding up supplies. In fact, the military is counting on headlines about rising malnutrition and disease to weaken the international community's resolve. Some of the most poignant scenes of misery take place at the capital's General Hospital, which has been reduced to a nightmarish warren of broken beds and piles of medical rubbish. For months it operated on six hours of electricity a day, and even now water pressure is so low that some clinics cannot be cleaned.