Caribbean briefs
20 years later, Catholic Church echoes pope’s plea for change in Haiti
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)– Twenty years on, Pope John Paul II’s dramatic call for change in Haiti still reverberates.
Then, it tolled the knell for Haiti’s 29-year Duvalier family dictatorship.
Today, the Catholic Church’s plea for change suggests that Haiti’s first freely elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, resign.
Yesterday, the church commemorated the papal visit with a Mass at Port-au-Prince cathedral and the opening of a new parish outside south-coast Jacmel town.
With tens of thousands of people watching on March 9, 1983, John Paul stepped off the plane, bowed to kiss Haitian soil, and his skull cap fell off.
“‘The government is going to fall,’ the people said, interpreting it as a sign,” recalled Lilas Desquiron, now minister of culture.
Fire sweeps through eastern Guyana town, destroys 19 businesses
GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) — A fire swept through the commercial district in the eastern town of New Amsterdam, destroying 19 stores and leaving 100 people temporarily unemployed, police said yesterday. No injuries were reported.
The blaze in Guyana’s second-largest municipality lit up like a tinderbox Saturday because the buildings are mostly wooden, dating to the 19th-century. Investigators pointed to faulty electrical wiring in one of the buildings as the probable cause.
Four firefighter units took more than two hours to control the flames, which stopped just short of the 113 year-old town hall and a state-owned gasoline station.
The Guyana Fire Service cited malfunctioning water hydrants and low water pressure in mains for taking so long to control the fire. There have been drought-like conditions in this north-coast South American country for the past five months.
President Bharrat Jagdeo said he would visit the town of about 30,000 residents today to assess the damages.