HAITI: In the Middle

Old barrels littered small Haitian airports to prevent clandestine landings. In Port-au-Prince, a spate of political murders sent oppositionists into hiding and kept nerves taut. Behind the crisis lay President Francois Duvalier's fear that he would become a stepping stone in Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro's planned invasion of the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. "Haitian exiles are being trained in Havana," said Duvalier. Exhorting his people to fight back, he raised the war cry of famed Patriot Jean Jacques Dessalines (1758-1806): "Coupe tetesl Boulé cailles!" (Cut off heads! Burn houses!).

Haiti is caught in a bind between Castro's Cuba, only 50 miles to the northwest, and Rafael Trujillo's bordering Dominican dictatorship. Duvalier would rather be accounted a member of the anti-dictatorial bloc, but that invites attack from Trujillo, whose gunboats already patrol Haitian waters and whose British-made Vampire jets fly patrols over Haitian soil. On the other hand, throwing in with Trujillo would be risky.

Beach v. Mountain. In Cuba, preparations by Castro's bearded veterans to invade the Dominican Republic are indeed under way. Colonel Alberto Bayo, sometime Spanish Loyalist soldier who trained Castro in Mexico three years ago, has been put in charge of strategy and training. The expedition leaders have been picked. But since hitting the beaches in Trujillo's well-armed police state could prove suicidal, the invaders would like to slip in through underarmed Haiti and set up guerrilla operations in the rugged mountains along the Haitian-Dominican border.

Thus the invaders must either blackmail Duvalier into cooperating or try to bounce him from office. To put a squeeze on Duvalier, Castro has given friendly refuge to Duvalier's archenemy, Planter Louis Dejoie, the defeated candidate in Haiti's mulatto-v.-black presidential elections in 1957. Dejoie confers daily with top rebel leaders, runs a program of incitement to revolt three nights a.week in French and Creole over Radio Progreso, a 5,000-watt Havana station. Fortnight ago, Dejoie announced a unity pact with rabble-rousing ex-President Daniel Fignole, a New York-based exile, and Dr. Clement Jumelle, who is hiding out in Haiti.

The U.S. Position. The incitement hit home. For a Fignole broadcast over Radio Progreso last week, so many of his poor black followers crowded around the available radios in Port-au-Prince that walls collapsed in two slum homes. Under pressure, Duvalier played tough. In recent weeks at least four oppositionists have been killed by police or the tontons macoute (bogeymen), Duvalier's band of civilian thugs. Latest victim: a Dejoie supporter named Claude Mirambeau, found with five pistol slugs in his body.

Duvalier still has backing from the U.S., which last week announced an emergency grant of $6,000,000 to meet Haiti's budget and trade deficits through September. Money is vitally needed; because of poor crops, the causes of death in Haiti this year will include outright starvation. The grant is also a frown from Washington on all plans for invasion and backyard war.