"Long live Duvalier!" The chant rings out from table to table in the patio of a middle-class restaurant.
On the crowded, rickety "tap-tap" buses that take the poor to work, morale is low: Poverty is deeper today than it was before the poorest Haitians forced Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier into exile.Eleven years later, a symbol of the dictatorship that impoverished Haiti is back in town and apparently in no danger of being brought to justice. The return of Ernest Bennett, Duvalier's former father-in-law, has many people wondering what's in store for their struggling democracy.
"Is this what we fought and bled for?" asked 34-year-old handyman Claude Martinel, shocked to learn that Bennett and two of his sons are back.
Their return with impunity is a sign of how demoralized most Haitians have become. Repression has ended but poverty has not, and there is no evidence of protests, government action or efforts to prosecute members of a family whose name here is synonymous with corruption.
Bennett is not a politician, but his return "is a sort of trial balloon," said Gary Lissade, a past president of Haiti's bar association. "If the Bennetts return and do not get into trouble, notorious Duvalierist politicians may follow."
Most Duvalierists remain in self-imposed exile. But a 10-year constitutional ban keeping them from running for office expires in March, when elections for local councils and a third of the Senate are scheduled.
Bennett, a small-time coffee dealer, ended up a millionaire with the Mercedes Benz limousine dealership and a piece of most business deals in Haiti after his daughter, Michele, married Duvalier in 1980.
The marriage coincided with the downturn of Haiti's economy. The excesses of the regime were blamed on the first lady, who had air conditioning installed in the National Palace so she could wear her fur coats.
When Duvalier was ousted in a popular uprising in 1986, the Bennetts fled for their lives. Rioters ransacked the car dealership, pushing Mercedes Benz cars down the road - most Haitians are too poor to know how to drive.
Michele Bennett divorced and remarried abroad after Duvalier went broke in France. The Bennett family properties in Haiti were confiscated for alleged misappropriation of state funds, but no other steps were taken.
Bennett was seen by business associates last week, who only learned of his return days before. But his sons, Ronald and Rudi, have been seen regularly in suburban night clubs over the past five months. They apparently are living off money stashed abroad during the dictatorship.
The Duvaliers ruled Haiti from 1957 until the 1986 uprising.