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Haiti
uncertainty after Aristide In November 2000 Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was re-elected on a majority of over 90% by citizens who supported his plans to invest in health and education. But on February 28 2004 he was forcibly removed from office. Ardain Isma (left) explains why the Aristide regime collapsed so quickly and considers the role of the United States The events in Haiti last February that catapulted the abrupt departure of Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power, however dramatic they may have seemed, were nothing more than déjà vu all over again. To many, Aristide’s departure was “liberation” — something they had long sought, and for that they couldn’t be happier. His hardcore supporters felt consternation. They could not believe that once again, international meddling in Haiti’s affairs brought down their president. However, whatever one’s opinion, it could be difficult to find any Haitian compatriot who is not at least worried and at most humiliated by the turn of events. Those who stand to benefit the most from this current situation may never publicly express their incertitude. Aristide may be gone, but the power crisis that generated his removal in the first place and the uncertainty about the country’s future remain virtually intact. The world’s
first black independent republic, the country that once symbolized hope for
hopeless people around the globe and the one that was once called La
Perle des Antilles for its beauty and its richness seems to be lost in a
hole of darkness and a never-ending political transition. Eighteen years after
the Duvalier dynasty ended and at its two-hundredth birthday, political and
economic independence for the people of this Caribbean nation is still a distant
dream. At the roots of Haiti’s seemingly endless problems lies its entrenched
poverty, its huge disparity between rich and poor and a state bureaucracy that
is so corrupt that dishonesty in public affairs has long become the norm rather
than the exception. If you track
Aristide’s records, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to realize that
his government was a time bomb ready to explode. Many observers saw it coming.
More than seventy percent of the population is unemployed, but yet everyone has
to spend in dollars, making an already difficult situation nearly impossible to
bear. The national industry is virtually dead, by all account. Old factory
buildings have been transformed into large depots where foreign goods, mainly
from Miami, are stockpiled to later invade the local market, thereby forcing
small farmers to go out of business and abandon the countryside in order to go
filling the slums surrounding major cities in a desperate attempt to find jobs. This alarming
reality has created an unprecedented and dangerous effect. Poor neighborhoods in
big cities, especially in the capital, have now become breeding grounds for
predator-leprechauns in search for new recruits as demands grow for their
underworld criminal activities. Lawlessness has become the law of the land.
Shockingly enough, the Aristide government was doing the same thing by using
money as a means to recruit disenfranchised youths in these same popular
neighborhoods. It created “vigilantes” in order to bring fear into the
general population, while trying to control increasing discontents. A True Liar As he returned from
exile in 1994, Aristide reaffirmed his
promise he made to the people back in 1990. He told them that he was going to
work tirelessly to lift them “from misery to poverty with dignity.” He
reiterated his commitment to staying “married” forever to the people. The
masses, head-over-heels in love with their man, couldn’t be happier. At first,
it looked like there was a symbiotic relationship between the two parties.
Appearances can surely be deceiving, however. It didn’t take long for many
observers to realize that the “marriage” was none other than a farce, a
political charade that was later going to transform into a bitter “custody
divorce.” Behind the
divorce was a series of deceptions committed by Aristide during his days in
exile in the early 1990s. In September 1991, Aristide was overthrown in a bloody
coup that left thousands dead if everyone could remember. He was sent to Caracas
Venezuela where Carlos Andres Perez, then president of that country, immediately
converted into Aristide’s mentor. In mid-November of that same year, Andres
Perez spearheaded a meeting between Aristide and his foes in Cartagena, Colombia
under OAS (Organization of American States) hospices in order to try to return
constitutional order to Haiti. The US ambassador to Haiti traveled personally to
Cartagena to oversee the meeting. Manipulated
by American diplomats at the meeting, Aristide was encouraged to harden his
position in order to make it easier for the coup plotters to walk away without
making any major concessions. Nonetheless, a decision was made where Aristide
would name a prime minister whose task was to work toward his eventual return to
the country to resume his presidency. He
then named Victor Benoit from the Social Democrats bloc to be the Prime Minister
designee. The coup plotters quickly rejected Benoit, complaining that he was too
close to the Lavalas movement to be an honest broker. Aristide was later moved
to Washington to stay indefinitely, where his advisors told him he would be best
positioned to lobby the Bush administration (George Bush Sr.) for his return.
In September
23rd, 1992, Aristide met with the de facto leaders in Washington. A protocol was signed between the
two parties allowing Aristide to go back to Haiti at an unspecified date. In
return, Aristide agreed to provide an amnesty to the people who overthrew him.
When he refused to exempt Raoul Cedras and other coup plotters from amnesty for
crimes committed against the people, the Bush administration quickly distanced
itself from him and began to blame him for the ultimate failure of the accord. After two
failed direct negotiations with the military and worldwide condemnation of the
coup, Aristide was no closer to returning home than he was in the early days of
the coup. In the winter of 1993, the Clinton administration took office.
Aristide began to realize that if he was going to return to Haiti, he had to do
more than just show that he had the people on his side. He started to believe he
had to begin to move away from being the president of the people and to start
becoming a more conformist president, like many of his colleagues in Latin
America. That was an
encouraging sign for many of Aristide’s supporters and advisors in Washington,
among them Joe Kennedy and Randal Robinson, who had long been demanding that he
show some flexibility in his positions in order to give the young Clinton
administration the breathing space it needed to “help” him return to Haiti. The Clinton
administration then told Aristide that in order to facilitate the United
States’ effort to “help” restore democracy to Haiti, he had to reconcile
his differences with his enemies, mainly with the business community in Haiti.
Aristide was encouraged to look for a non-Lavalas prime minister acceptable to
his enemies. The maneuvering that followed, with Gladys Loture, Aristide’s
staunch supporter and advisor, paved the way for the nomination of businessman
Robert Malval, something that the bourgeoisie in Haiti cheered. But this
infuriated Antoine Izmery and his supporters within the Lavalas coalition. They
found it hard to swallow the fact that Aristide was finally embracing the very
same people who conspired to overthrow him. On July 3rd
1993, Cedras and Aristide signed a UN-brokered agreement on Governors Island,
New York, creating a 10-step process for the restoration of democratic rule and
the return of Aristide by October 30th.
In the summer
of 1993 at the Ambassador Hotel in Coral Gables, a wealthy section of Miami,
Robert Malval organized the great reconciliation between Aristide and his former
enemies. At hand were almost all the great pillars of the bourgeoisie: Ben
Bijio, Nadal, Mevs, Cassis, Accra, Apaid, Madsen, Moscosso etc. All of them were
said to play a proactive role in financing the coup against Aristide. Not only did
Aristide make peace with them, but he also agreed, though not publicly, to allow
them to use state enterprises to make lucrative deals with foreign partners that
he later exploited to fill his own personal lot.
Izmery spent
the rest of his life blasting Maval’s nomination in Haiti Progres, the New York-based Haitian weekly newspaper,
denouncing what he called “the second coup against the people.” Of
course, he never lived to see the return of Aristide. He was assassinated in
September of 1993, in broad daylight on a Saturday morning in the streets of
Petionville, as he was attending a mass honoring previous victims of the brutal
regime. In the winter
of 1994, at an IMF meeting in Paris well known as the Paris Accord, the exiled
Aristide government made a series of concessions that, many analysts believed,
gave the Clinton administration part of the cover or legitimacy it needed to
intervene militarily in Haiti. Among them were:
The remaining part of
the Clinton cover-up lay in United Nations Resolution 940, adopted in July 31st
1994, giving member states the right to use all necessary means to force the
military dictatorship from power, something that Aristide lobbied rigorously to
achieve. The resolution came after the military leaders reneged on their promise
to relinquish power, which they had agreed to in the Governors Island agreement.
Fritz Longchamp, then Haiti’s UN ambassador, interpreted the resolution as
“a great victory for the people of Haiti.” The
resolution could have been a victory for Aristide and his personal entourage,
but certainly not for the people. Following UN Resolution 940, the Association
of Haitian Jurists and Lawyers (ANJH) released a document saying the
“resolution was in gross violation with the UN charter, since Haiti was not at
war with any other member states.” This argumentation was a valid one, and
many legal experts agreed. However, the document had no weight and no political
significance, since it was signed by Calixte Delatour, who then was president of
ANJH and who was once the principal ideologue of Raoul Cedras, who argued for
the justification of the coup. Strange twist, that Calixte Delatour later became
Aristide’s justice minister, the man who said that if thousands of people must
be killed to preserve the coup, so be it. As he
returned from exile in 1994, Aristide was already a changed man. From the
rolled-sleeve-straight-talk charismatic priest he once was in the mid-eighties,
he became a button-down politician whose sole ambition was to get rich, like the
rest of his predecessors. He rejected his populist messages and his folkloric
dialogues with the masses. In part, he was putting into application lessons
learned from his “friends” from the Congressional Black Caucus who told him,
while he was in exile in Washington, that mainstream politics can only be done
within the corridors of the United Nations, in the diplomatic circles of
European and North American capitals, and most importantly, in lavish offices of
foreign policy think-tanks in Washington, not from the slums of Cite Soleil, a
shanty town near Port-au-Prince where Aristide built his political career in the
mid-eighties. A good
student, he really was. He moved away from his political base, alienated his
political allies and squandered the meager resources of the state treasury to
pay his lobbyists in Washington. According to Steve Miller, in an article
published in the Washington Times, from 1997 to 2002, the Aristide government
“spent 7.3 million dollars lobbying the US government.” This was by far the
largest sum spent by any country in Latin America and the Caribbean for such an
endeavor. For example, the Dominican Republic and Honduras spent 1.18 million
and $815,000 respectively. Steve Miller continued to say that out of the 7.3
million dollars, 5.38 million was used to pay the Florida law firm of Kurzban,
Kurzban, Weinger & Tetzeli that served as Haiti’s general counsel in the
United States. How was the
rest of the rest of the money spent? According to the Miller article of
Washington Times, five hundred and seventy-one thousand dollars went to pay a
lobbying firm directed by Ron Dellums, who was once the leader of the Black
Caucus. Another $367, 967 was used to pay a firm directed by Hezel
Ross-Robinson, the wife of Randal Robinson, one of the founding members of the
TransAfrica Forum and a longtime friend of Aristide. Despite all
these huge expenditures, the Haitian government received virtually nothing in
return. Aristide overlooked the Bush administration’s sharp detest for his
regime, something that Congressman Charles Rangel of New York called “the
ideological hatred of Aristide.” In a desperate attempt to fall into the Bush
administration’s favor, in April of 2003, the Haitian government signed a
contract with a Republican lobbying firm headed by Tew Cardenas, former chairman
of the Florida Republican Party. According to the Miami Herald, the Haitian
government was reportedly paying $35,000 a month for the deal. The Miami
Herald also reported that the Haitian government was paying between $6 million
and $9 million annually to an American Security firm named the Steele Foundation
for some 60 bodyguards to protect Aristide and his family. A
Strategic Blunder Every
responsible head of state must center his leadership on three principles:
sovereignty, security and prosperity. In the case of Aristide, his leadership
was centered on two things: personal security and greed. His obsession to
eternalize his power left him no room to believe that he could rely on the
Haitian people for his safety, let alone the security of the country. Convinced
that he could rule indefinitely with Washington’s blessing and to make sure
that his rule would never again be jeopardized, he dissolved—for good
reasons—the corrupt, ragtag Haitian army through an executive decree without
any contingency plans. This action created two reverse effects: exposing the
country’s vulnerability, and creating the conditions for Haiti to become a de
facto US protectorate. The desire of most Haitians to acquire a geo-strategic advantage on the island notwithstanding, without an army, it’s hard to imagine how Aristide and, by extension, the country could survive a foreign invasion, even if the entire population were ready to fight to preserve the country’s territorial integrity. He replaced the army with an ill-equipped, ill-funded police force that was in any way effective to do its job, let alone protecting Haiti from external threats. It
was obvious last January when a few hundred armed thugs hired by foreign
interests, crossed the border with the Dominican Republic and derailed
Aristide’s presidency. The police simply melted away in the face of
“rebel” advances. In every civilized society, the role of a police force is
to protect lives against internal threats, not to fight outside invaders. Why
Did the Aristide Regime Collapse so Quickly? Putting
aside the police force inability or unwillingness to neutralize the “rebel
army,” the rapid overthrow of the Lavalas government resulted from other
fundamental reasons that must be underscored:
The
latter factor is the most important of all. Unable or unwilling to fulfill his
promises, Aristide had been considered a traitor in the eyes of many of his
supporters. They voted for him wholeheartedly regarding his promise to lift them
from “misery to poverty with dignity.” Instead of delivering education, he
delivered juvenile delinquency. Instead of eliminating poverty, he contributed
to its expansion while everyone watched, with great sorrow. He became one of the
wealthiest people in the country, surrounding himself with foreign bodyguards,
traveling mostly by helicopter and rarely setting foot in the poor neighborhoods
where he once was the people’s hero. While
destroying state institutions, he was institutionalizing mob rule, creating in
every town and every city paramilitary thugs as a vanguard to protect what he
called “the Lavalas Revolution.” In
September 2002, Aristide unleashed his chimères against the opposition
loyalists, after a failed attempt to remove him from power. As a result, many
people were dead and opposition headquarters were burned.
These actions outraged the international community. The OAS intervened to
negotiate a political settlement. As
a result of the negotiations, the OAS passed Resolution 809, requiring the
Haitian government to do the following:
Aristide
did none of these, although he agreed to do all of them at the discussion table.
Under heavy international pressure, he arrested few gang leaders. Among them was
Ronald Cadavre, a notorious criminal from the slum of Cité Soleil near
Port-au-Prince, who later died in prison under suspicious circumstances. The
Dangerous Game As a clumsy disciple of
Machiavelli, Jean-Bertrand Aristide somehow believed he could outsmart or even
sacrifice everyone, if need be, to eternalize his power. This would not exempt
the very same people he depended on to defend his regime: the chimères. A great
illustration is the case of Amiot Metayer. Under pressure from the international
community, Metayer, one of the most feared gang leaders in the Artibonite region
and head of a so-called “Cannibal Army,” was arrested in 2001. He escaped
from prison a few months later and retreated to his base in Raboteau, a famous
slum in Gonaives — a city located in the Artibonite region, about 90 miles
north of the capital. Everyone
was outraged at the government indifference or lack of will to arrest him again.
Along with some other dubious figures, he was left to roam the streets of
Gonaives freely until the then newly-appointed US ambassador, James Foley,
effectively ordered Aristide to do away with Metayer. Two days later, he was
found dead, his body dismembered, near the city of Saint Marc, 60 miles north of
the capital. Metayer’s
decapitated body was paraded on Internet sites around the world as a way to show
the cynicism that existed in the Aristide government. He used the gang leaders
when it deemed necessary; he liquidated them when they became an embarrassment.
Obviously, no one needed to be that highly intelligent to understand the game,
as did the Cannibal Army henchmen. They quickly turned against Aristide,
renaming the Cannibal Army “the Artibonite Resistance Front,” and declared
themselves in direct opposition to Aristide. This was the beginning of an armed
resistance to the regime that shortly thereafter signaled the introduction of
the endgame. Despite
these political mishaps, Aristide could have gotten away bruised, but not
demised, if it weren’t for what happened on December 5th 2003, when
he unleashed his chimères to take on the Haitian State University students who
had been demonstrating for weeks, demanding greater autonomy from the state and
a better learning environment. The armed gangs broke into the university
compound while beating everyone inside, including the university dean. This
incident sent shockwaves through the entire population, who claimed that even
under the dark days of the military dictatorship in early 1990, the students
were allowed to demonstrate freely within the university compound, without
police interference. To everyone, Aristide had seemingly crossed the line.
People were outraged, and that indignation forced a great majority of the
population to swell the streets of virtually all the major cities, demanding
Aristide’s immediate resignation. Those
actions, including many others, not only solidified Aristide’s divorce with
the people, but also confirmed that his love was only skin-deep and he was only
using them as stepping stones to achieve his political goals. In the final days,
those who hated him did so with a passion. And they were many. The December 5th
incident at the university may have been political suicide for Aristide; but to
his opponents, it was a Christmas gift. Until then, the opposition was never in
a position to claim responsibility for the many demonstrations that were taking
place throughout the country. A conglomerate of petty-bourgeois opportunists,
neoduvalierists and hardcore reactionaries from the highest layer of the Haitian
elite, the opposition was never perceived as a real threat to the Aristide
regime. Nothing united them but a common pathological hatred for Aristide. As
the daily demonstrations became larger and more and more vocal, Aristide felt
compelled to flex his political muscles. By mid-December, Aristide, through his
lobbyists in Washington, launched a major media campaign in the United States to
polish his image, portraying him as a philanthropist, a champion of the poor,
and the Nelson Mandela of the Caribbean. Headed by James Robins, Aristide’s
friend and former US representative in Haiti during the Clinton administration,
who now heads a foreign policy think-thank in Washington, the campaign could not
be stronger. Backed by an army of “super lawyers,” the media blitz was
designed to counter what Robins called “the sustained defamation campaign
against Aristide in the corporate media,” as daily coverage of demonstrations
in Haiti denouncing Aristide’s autocratic rule started to become a routine
event. In
the diplomatic front, using his leverage with the congressional black caucus,
Aristide had managed to gain tacit support from the three important political
figures within the CARICOM: Bahamian prime minister, Perry Christie, Trinidadian
prime minister, Patrick Manning and Jamaican prime minister, Percival James
Patterson. They all offered knee-jerk political support to their beleaguered
friend. Obviously, these regional leaders do not have, not even remotely
possibly, the political clout necessary to influence policy decisions in
Washington, despite what their friends from the Congressional Black Caucus might
have led them to believe. In the end, Aristide looked like a ridiculed regional
warlord using his money in a desperate attempt to buy his stay in power. His
cries for help had fallen on deaf ears. His faith was already sealed in
classified dossiers from the desk of the Undersecretary of State, Roger Noriega. A
Coup Made in the U.S.A.? The
crossing of Guy Philippe and Louis Jodel Chamblain from the Dominican Republic
border into Haiti, the two paramilitary leaders who led the move to drive
Aristide from power, raises some serious questions. Louis Jodel Chamblain was a
former sergeant of the defunct Haitian army who later joined the CIA operative
Emmanuel “Toto” Constant to found the Haitian Front for Advancement and
Progress or FRAPH from its French acronym, which means to beat or to trash in
both Creole and French. FRAPH was a creation of the brutal military dictatorship
that ran the country from 1991 to 1994. This death squad organization was said
to be responsible for hundreds if not thousands of dead innocent civilians as
the military coup leaders moved to silence any opposition to the bloody coup.
Toto Constant, in 1997, declared on CBS’s news program, Sixty Minutes, that
“everything we did in Haiti received the tacit approval of my CIA contact in
Port-au-Prince.” Among
the most visible victims of FRAPH under the leadership of Chamblain and Constant
were Businessman and political activist Antoine Izmery and former Justice
Minister Guy Malary. Both of them were gunned down in separate incidents in the
streets of Petionville, a suburban town near Port-au-Prince. According to a CIA
intelligence memorandum obtained by the Center for Constitutional Rights,
“FRAPH members Jodel Chamblain, Emmanuel Constant, and Gabriel Doublaze met
with an unidentified military officer in the morning of October 14th
to discuss a plan to kill Malary.” When
Aristide returned to Haiti in 1994, Chamblain fled to the Dominican Republic
where he had been living until his spectacular return last February. Constant is
now living freely in New Jersey. In September 1995, Chamblain was one of the
seven military and FRAPH leaders sentenced in absentia to life and forced labor
for the killing of Izmery. Guy
Philippe, a former officer of the Haitian army, received training from US
Special Forces in Ecuador. He was incorporated into the National Police Force
when Aristide took over the army in 1994. He first was named police chief in the
Port-au-Prince northern district of Delmas and then named police chief in Cap
Haitien, Haiti’s second largest city. He fled the country in October 2000 when
the authorities uncovered a plot to stage a coup against Aristide. He was living
in the D.R., since then, and was accused of masterminding hit-and-run attacks
against Haitian security forces mainly in the Central Plateau until his return
with Chamblain last February. For
years, these two individuals had been under close surveillance of the Dominican
Secret Service, which is a proxy of US intelligence. It is quite suspicious that
these men could have sneaked into Haiti with such a large cache of weapons,
accompanied by more than 500 people, without being detected. As these leaders
and their armbands swept through the northern part of Haiti, and as Aristide
cried and begged for help, France, Canada, and the United States delivered an
ultimatum to the Haitian government, saying that it should resign, effectively
giving Aristide the choice to either be killed or sign his resignation. Now
that Aristide was cornered with his back against the wall and the US, France,
and Canada had to practically block any attempt to rescue his regime from
violent overthrow, the opposition not only hardened its stance against Aristide,
but also was confident enough to publish a document outlining a step-by-step
agenda for the removal of Aristide without a single reference to “rebels” in
the north. In Haitian politics, he who controls the guns, controls the political
process. The opposition leaders must have had some assurances that the armed
thugs in the north were simply doing a job, and they were in no position to
seize political power. Less
than two weeks earlier, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said, “There is,
frankly, no enthusiasm right now for sending in military or police forces to put
down the violence that we are seeing. We must find, instead, a political
solution.” This political solution mentioned by Colin Powell was based on a
proposed power-sharing agreement between Aristide and the opposition that would
have transformed Aristide into little more than a figurehead of a government,
almost entirely controlled by Washington. Even that was not sufficient for the
opposition, now headed by Andre Apaid, a wealthy sweatshop owner who was said to
be one of the financial backers in the 1991 coup against Aristide. Whatever
caused Aristide’s subsequent capitulation to the IMF, his reconciliation
message with the bourgeoisie, and his overall corruption, the wealthy elite
never stopped seeing in him a beardless Fidel Castro who needed to be executed.
The wealthy in Haiti knew perfectly well the choice for President Bush between
Aristide and them had to be easy, for they were and forever will be the natural
and historical allies of the Republican Party. One
day before Aristide’s removal, White House press secretary Scott McClellan
released a statement saying that Aristide should “examine his position
carefully, to accept responsibility and act in the best interests of the people
of Haiti.” This statement was clearly a stinging rebuff to Aristide’s vain
hopes that the Bush Administration would come to his rescue to prevent his
demise. The
most compelling evidence of the US’s tainted hands in the Aristide overthrow
was a series of diplomatic and psychological maneuverings that took place in the
final hours leading up to the mysterious departure of Aristide. This was just
hours after he announced he would not step down, and urged his own armed gangs
to remain vigilant, specifically at night. The Haitian government understood
that the so-called “rebel army” numbered more than a few hundred men, and
that Haiti is a mountainous country, which would have made it difficult if not
impossible for Guy Philippe’s henchmen to be everywhere at the same time.
Aristide was betting on his own security entourage, the National Palace Special
Forces, and a special security force called the “Swat Team,” which was
backed by hundreds if not thousands of chimères to protect his presidency. Reacting
to subsequent international pressure and Philippe’s barrage of threats to
arrest him from his base at the Mon Joli hotel in Cap Haitian, Aristide’s
Minister of communication, Mario Dupuy angrily reacted. “All of this is
well-orchestrated psychological warfare designed to bring fear into the
government,” he said on national radio. He was referring to the 1954 violent
overthrow of Guatemalan President, Jacobo Abens, when the CIA dropped leaflets
to give the impression that the rebel army was a much bigger force than what was
originally anticipated. This was part of an effort to stimulate genuine fear,
and ultimately to convince the military hierarchy to brake ranks with Abens, and
side with the “rebels.” Many
observers agreed that Aristide was not about to give up power at the time the
presidency was declared vacant and he did not “forfeit his legitimacy” as it
was aired on NPR, National Public Radio that quoted Charles Baker, vice
president of Association of Haitian Industries (ADIH) and a prominent leader of
Group 184, one of the main opposition groups. And
so what happened during the night of February 29th in Port-au-Prince
left many unanswered questions. Aristide, now in exile, is claiming that what
happened to him that night was a political kidnapping. His sharp and explicit
accusation directed against the US leaves no doubt that he did not relinquish
power voluntarily. Whether the US did or did not play a proactive role in
Aristide’s downfall, the overthrow of the Haitian government, perceived as
democratically elected throughout the Hemisphere and other parts of the world,
effectively disarms Washington of all democratic pretensions and exposes what
Noam Chomsky calls, “the predatory character of resurgence imperialism.”
History has already recorded this irrefutable fact of the spectacular joint
entry into the Haitian capital of the US marines and the “rebel army” headed
by Guy Philippe and Louis Jodel Chamblain, two days after Aristide was removed,
and just two weeks after US officials in Washington were saying that it was too
dangerous to send troop to Haiti to stabilize the situation and save the
Aristide presidency. Big
Difference a Decade Ago What
a difference a decade can make. When Aristide was first elected in 1990, there
was jubilation. Oppressed nations around the world were joyfully and cautiously
watching and waiting for Haiti to once again lead the way, as it did in 1804.
The election of Aristide convinced many in the international community that
history was made. It was the first time liberation theology—the cornerstone of
Aristide’s preaching—brought one of its leaders to power. Priests like
Brazilian Orlando Buff, Peruvian Gustavo Gutierrez, and Nicaraguans Ernesto
Cardenal and Miguel D’Escoto, the principal proponents of this Catholic
inspired movement aimed at helping the poor, gleefully applauded. In Haiti, the
base communities within the church could not be more energized. It
didn’t take long, however, for the euphoria to begin to fade. One by one,
original leaders of the Lavalas movement that brought Aristide to office started
to distance themselves from him, describing him as being autocratic,
shortsighted, and unorganized. In the final days, it could be hard to find in
Aristide’s inner circle some of the original leaders who helped him rise to
power. They were all either dead, retired from public life, or simply in direct
opposition to his government. In
his quest to remain in power at all costs, Aristide has been playing his
dangerous game twofold. While he is intensifying his intimidation campaign by
cracking down on students’ demonstrations and sending his secret police to
either beat or assassinate his political opponents, he has been using cronyism
as a carrot to secure political allegiance. Although
the removal of Aristide and the military occupation of Haiti confirm the
resurgence of the old gunboat diplomacy, but this time at a high-tech level, it
also confirms the political bankruptcy of the idea of opposing foreign
domination on the basis of petty-bourgeois nationalism. It is a grim reality of
total failure of a populist demagogy and a strange kind of “left”
nationalism that centers its political outlook on a fake anti-imperialist and
empty promises. After
more than ten years, Aristide never worked to eradicate the corrupt state
structure that was and still is the product of 200 years of gruesome repression
and economic exploitation. By becoming one of the wealthiest men in the
Caribbean, Aristide, in a sense, has succeeded in fulfilling his petty-bourgeois
aspirations. He will live lavishly in luxurious VIP towers on the Mediterranean
coastlines, while the Haitian people he’d used to amass his fortune will
continue to bear the hellish condition of the day-to-day life in Haiti. In the name of “stability”, one can only be sure that there will be strong measures put in place to make sure the country is run with very limited popular interference. How long can that last? It’s hard to say, knowing the weak state of the progressive forces in Haiti. Nevertheless, this resemblance to a solution to the power crisis could be short-lived, because deep beneath the tragic political upheavals ravaging the country lie two fundamental crises: economic starvation and exploitation. The solution to these crises will never be forthcoming from Washington, Paris, and Ottawa; and the reintroduction of a colonial-style dictatorship by re-imposing systematical repression to silence the population will not work, for it will inevitably deepen social tensions and class antagonisms. Dr. Ardain Isma is a Cross-Cultural Studies professor at Nova Southeastern University and at Broward Community College. He is the author of Alicia Maldonado: A Mother Lost. He also heads The Center for Strategic and Multicultural Studies near Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He lives with his wife and children in Plantation, Florida. Note: This article was first published by JUST Response on August 28 2004.
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