"Blanc. Hey, blanc." Typical Creole greeting, pesty young street zazou talk to white foreign journalists and tourists in the Brooklyn section of La Saline. After I shut the car door, these three street urchins lost interest and departed. But a fourth refused to abandon his grip on my fingers. Out of sight, I folded a dollar bill into a thumb-sized square, pressed it into his hand, clamped his fist around it, and told him to "run." He turned and scrambled away before the other boys could pounce.

On the edge of La Saline everyone does their bathroom duties in the tidal flats, surrounded by pigs, wiping with plastic shopping bags. The water is black. The odor never leaves you. Haiti never leaves you.

You don't see fat people in Port-au-Prince, at least in the slums. Men are lean, and have the taught muscles of constant labor. Because there isn't much room in the crowded cardboard, tin, and cinder block shelters that house families, distant relatives, friends, and girlfriends often sleep in relays. Outside, men and women will play dominos or cards under a single lightbulb, waiting for their turn. I encountered this exhausted woman looking after two toddlers beside an open sewer in the Brooklyn section of Cite Soleil, the country's most crowded slum. She never noticed me.

This lady sold baskets of mangos beside a mural in Leogane. She knows those Tontons Macoutes. They came through town with their machetes and guns, raping and murdering. "They're dead. Lavalas people [a people's movemnet mainly of slum folk who wanted to use the country's assets to help the public condition] killed them during the dechoukaj in 1987" - the bloody rampage against Duvalierists. "Caught them, put a tire around them, lit them on fire, then chopped them into little pieces."

The 1987 election was a farce. On the day that 50 men carrying automatic weapons and machetes burst into the courtyard of the Ecole Argentine de Bellegarde in Port-au-Prince and fired on voters, paramilitary forces also attacked three Catholic churches. During this time the army totally abandoned its responsibility and turned the streets over to the Tontons Macoutes. As bands of gunnmen drove about shooting randomly and torching electoral offices, polling places, and one gas station, this election monitor pled for protection at a Delmas polling station.

In the months leading up to the 1987 elections, members of Lavalas daily faced off against troops. This confrontation occurred just outside Cite Soleil on November 22, 1987.

Lavalas members regularily defied police during election rallies in support of Aristide in November 1987.

Troops block a huge crowd of Lavalas members packing the streets on Harry Truman Boulivard near the National Palace on December 17, 1990

In 1987, every intersection in Port-au-Prince was blocked by demonstrators manning barricades of burning tires, dismantled telephone poles, and the skeletons of stripped automobiles. The Army was patrolling. Trucks full of troops were everywhere. Convoys of armored vehicles followed by a jeep-mounted recoiless rifle rumbled through the city. Lavalas members would swarm over them, singing and offering peace branches.

On election day, November 29, 1987, seven bodies were discovered at sunrise on the streest of Port-au-Prince. But women in the Bel-Air slum near the National Cathedral defiantly lined up to vote. At 6 A.M., they proudly displayed their registration cards.

While these troops guarded a polling place near the National Palace, others within shouting distance abandoned their duties and turned a blind eye to paramilitary forces who killed at least 14 people voting at the Ecole Argentine de Bellergarde, then permitted some of the gunnmen to return and finish off the wounded with machetes.

A Lavalas member displays a stained thumbs up just after voting on November 29, 1987.

Voting under the gun in Bel-Air December 16, 1990.

Voter displays his stained hand and the ballot he was about to cast during the December 16, 1990 elections that finally overturned Duvalierism and elected Jean Bertrand Arsitide president of Haiti.

Aristide and his body guards leaving the a polling station just after voting on December 16, 1990.

Troops arrive to clear crowds around a body near Aristide's burned out church in November 1987.

You never knew about the bodies that turned up on the steets of Port-au-Prince in November 1987 and January 1988. Depending on who I spoke with, this woman had fallen off a Tap Tap and was run over. Or was shot by gunmen and then run over. Once again, the shell casings scatterd along Grande Rue seemed to indicate another ramdom asssassination. Her crime could have been nothing more than refusing to hand over a cigarette.

On December 9, 1990, someone threw a grenade into a group of school children. Five died. Thousands attended their funeral.

A small coffin containing the body of a child killed in the election violence of November 1987 is laid to rest.

A family prays over the casket of a woman killed in the January 1988 election violence.

A day after Aristide was elected president of Haiti, thousands of Lavalas members packed the park beside the National Palace. Many carried large photographs celebrating their leader, in whom they now placed their hopes.

Jean Bertrand Aristide celebrating his election victory in the bandstand near the National Palace on December 17, 1990 -- the first time Haitian blacks had been able to democratically empower themselves .

Mass celebrations around the National Palace on December 17, 1990

Street urchins beside the Port-au-Prince National Cathedral, November 1987.