FROZEN EMPIRE This is a story about a young Roman Catholic priest, Jean Bertrand Aristide, who tried to change Haiti by taking on Haiti's cruel dictators: Francois Duvalier and his son, Jean Claude Duvalier. The fact he risked his life by confronting them daily was enough for average folks. He went one important step further by winning a stunning election victory in 1990, a political miracle by taking on the establishment, put into place in the late 1700s. To win, Aristide had to deal with formidable barriers: culture, language, politics, poverty and a 200 year old tradition. When a writer or a news reporter uses himself to explain a point, I normally don't like it. I'm breaking the rule for a simple reason. If I explain my reason for wanting to do this novel, you the reader may relate to the dilemma I faced, dealing with a subject outside my own cultural background. If you do, you may want to read this fascinating story about Haiti. I hope so. Soon after I visited Haiti for the first time in 1963, I had a difficult time understanding this former French colony, now a republic, the first in the Western Hemisphere to break away from a colonial ruler. My difficulty was symbolized in an attempt to understand a Haitian exile news contact I had developed over the years in San Juan, Puerto Rico, my home for 35 years. It wasn't a question of communication. Since he lived in the U.S. Virgin Islands and came to Puerto Rico frequently, he spoke perfect English and French. I preferred talking and knowing him in French for two reasons. One, as a reporter, I learned a long time ago, it's a good idea to make the person you're interviewing comfortable. My reasoning is quite simple: if you listen in the mother tongue, he or she may forget they're speaking to a U.S. news reporter, raised in an English speaking world. There was a second reason. If one is going to dominate the French language, you'd better use it as often as possible. Too many of my journalist and business friends, when given the opportunity to use English, do it rather than bother with French. If the person insists on English, here is a way to handle it. "If you don't speak French, I'll be glad to speak English with you." Many times it works. If it doesn't, speak French and let them speak English. Anyway, they get the idea and conversation can begin. My difficulty understanding my Haitian contact was a matter of political definition. Example. I could never grasp why his political and economic solutions for Haiti's problems sounded too much like ones favored by father and son dictators, Francois and Jean Claude Duvalier. It was the kind of conflict I not only had with him, but with other Haitians and Haiti itself. I concluded, it would be too easy to blame my difficulty on him, the others and Haiti. It was probably my own lack of knowledge of what it was like being raised in a country, rich at the beginning and very, very poor at the end. It short, I wanted to know `why' I had the conflict with my Haitian friend. In starting the process, I took the advice not of a journalist or a fellow writer, but an English professor at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. In her Tennyson class back in the 1950s, I asked why we were spending so much time talking about Alfred Lord Tennyson's England and so little time reading his poetry. It was a stinging reply. "Young man, if you don't understand Tennyson's world, how can you begin to understand what he has written?" So 40 years later, I took her Tennyson postion to probe Haiti and allow Haitian events and Haitian politicians and people to tell the story. At the end, maybe, just maybe, I could better understand the others and my Haitian friend who lived in the Virgin Islands. I've reached the end, and I believe I do. My friend's definition of politics was over 200 years old. How could I understand what he meant if I only used my U.S. concept of politics as a measuring stick? During this writing journey, I found what could be called a shocking discovery. Believe it or not, Haiti was one of the richest colonies in the Western Hemisphere at the beginning of the 19th century. So rich and so well located, Napoleon considered making Haiti the capital of France's Western Hemisphere Empire. Why not? Look what France had at the time. For a short period after 1800, France owned land between Louisiana to Canada, the same size of the United States; and all of Latin America. If Napoleon had defeated Wellington at Waterloo in 1815 and if he had retained land called the U.S. Louisiana Purchase for $15 million in 1803, Napoleon would have had what many thought the perfect place to headquarter France's New World Empire. Haiti was an important communication and trading junction, near Latin America and the United States and one of the close sailing points linking France to the New World. Now locked in poverty, surrounded by the Spanish language, Cuba to the west and the Dominican Republic to the west, Haiti has been isolated from the start. Besides not wanting to reach out to their neighbors, Haitian leaders had a similar internal problem. In those first days in Haiti, I was warned not to use Spanish. Haitians, I was told, didn't want anything to do with Spanish speakers. If the general population spoke Creole and if the elite used French and English, there was little opportunity for development or communication domestically without a common language. So what does the Napoleon period and isolation have to do with anything? A lot, I think. Two patterns dating back to that period and just before drives Haitian life and politics today. Right after Haiti gained political independence, all Haitian leaders from Francois Toussaint L'Ouverture to Jean Claude Duvalier copied the way French kings had run their kingdom before the French Revolution and before Napoleon. With the fading of French influence in the Caribbean and Latin America, my friend, his friends and Haiti were so isolated change was thought impossible. Aristide was the first political leader who wanted to change the way things had been done for nearly two centuries. He wanted to change, what I call, the FROZEN EMPIRE. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO ORDER THIS BOOK CONTACT NAT CARNES