25633: Katel (reply) aristide speech (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Peter Katel <p.katel@verizon.net>

 As a Newsweek correspondent who flew into Haiti a couple of days after
 the coup, I was among the first reporters to write about the Pe Lebrun
 speech. We didn't rely on any institution's translation.

  We - that is, I and the half-dozen or so colleagues from various media
 alongside whom I worked -- obtained a a tape of the speech from one of
 the radio stations; might have been Metropole. Then I and a Haitian
 translator/guide who was helping us sat down to translate it. We did our
 work on the patio of the Holiday Inn. My kreyol was pretty much
 nonexistent at the time, but I've spoken French most of my life. Our
 translator spoke, in addition to kreyol, English and French.

 I've gone back to look at the Newsweek story, which quotes only a few
 words of the speech. My notes from that time are in storage. But Amy
 Wilentz has it exactly right - there was no mistaking the meaning.

 Aristide never said he had meant anything else, as far as I know, at
 least in the first few years after he was overthrown.

 Peter Katel