Big plans and corruption in rubble-strewn Haiti

CORAIL-CESSELESSE, Haiti — The sun was beating down on the rocky cactus plain when men with machetes came for Menmen Villase, nine months pregnant, shoved her onto her bulging stomach and sliced up the plastic tarp that sheltered her and her four children.

The family was one of thousands of earthquake homeless who had come to this Manhattan-sized stretch of disused sugarcane land between the sea and barren mountains north of Port-au-Prince, seeking refuge from overflowing camps in the city.

But this real estate is earmarked for building a new Haiti. Villase had walked into one of the fights over land, rooted in Haiti's history of slavery, occupation and upheaval, that have bedeviled recovery in the six months since the earthquake leveled much of the capital and killed as many as 300,000 people.

The government, already weak before the magnitude-7 quake and still hobbled by its aftermath, is trying to build anew in places like Corail-Cesselesse, a nearly empty swath of land that begins about nine miles north of the capital. But the effort is paralyzed by disorganization, bitter rivalries and private deals being struck behind its back.

Multiple families claim title to almost every scrap of real estate. Already one reconstruction official has been forced to step down for steering a public project to his company's private land at Corail-Cesselesse. Wealthy landowners vow the "new Haiti" will become yet another vast slum unless the government rebuilds on their terms.

Caught in the middle are the homeless, looking to grab a patch of ground from the thugs hired to keep them away. Even facing machetes, Villase had to be dragged from the tarp that was home for her and four children.

"I didn't want them to take the tent away," she recalled. "They said, 'We don't care. We can rip it up while you're inside.'"

Days afterward

In the moments after the disaster all Port-au-Prince began pouring into twilit streets. Homes, still collapsing, had in a moment become death traps. Camps rose on public and private spaces, squares, parks and golf courses.

Bodies were everywhere, laid out under sheets, cardboard or nothing. Dump trucks and front-loaders cleared most in the following weeks. Others were burned. Some are still being found.

The bodies have been cleared, but not the estimated 26 million cubic yards of rubble. Mounds of it make most of the capital impassable. Even with 300 trucks working daily, only 2 percent has been cleared.

The number of people in relief camps has nearly doubled to 1.6 million, while the amount of transitional housing built is minuscule.