By John Ballard
I am no expert on Haiti but I know enough to be alert.
Haiti’s democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was controversially ousted out of office in 2004, has announced his intentions to return home in the aftermath of the 7.0 magnitude killer earthquake that struck his country on Tuesday.
Aristide, who has been living in exile in South Africa with his family, announced his offer to return to Haiti in Johannesburg yesterday, according to international media outlets.
’As far as we are concerned, we are ready to leave today, tomorrow, at any time to join the people of Haiti, to share in their suffering, help rebuild the country, moving from misery to poverty with dignity,’ Aristide said.
Haiti is a member of the 15-member Caribbean Community (Caricom), but was suspended from the organs of the organisation after Aristide’s departure in 2005. Caricom had taken a position that Aristide left Haiti under suspicious circumstances after he claimed he was taken out of his country by US forces. Caricom had also demanded a United Nations investigation into his departure and had refused to recognise the US-appointed administration led by Gerard Lartotue.
Like most casual readers of the news I have followed stories about Haiti for years but thanks to my a Liberal lens and poisonous extra-curricular reading of the Catholic Worker my opinions have been tilted in favor of Aristide.
Readers are invited to do their own homework about what they think should happen next. You already have full disclosure from me. My view is that if the return of Aristide can contribute even one iota to Hatian progress and stability then he should be allowed as much access to leadership as anyone. The backstory is about as tawdry as any in our time. With very little drilling here are a few items that turn up.
London Review of Books, April, 2004, Who removed Aristide?
Paul Farmer reports from Haiti
I learned about Haiti’s history while working on medical projects on the country’s central plateau. When I first travelled there in 1983, the Duvalier family dictatorship had been in place for a quarter of a century. There was no dissent. The Duvaliers and their military dealt ruthlessly with any opposition, while the judiciary and the rest of the world looked the other way. Haiti was already known as the poorest country in the Western world, and those who ran it argued that force was required to police deep poverty.
By the mid-1980s, the hunger, despair and disease were beyond management. Baby Doc Duvalier, named ‘president for life’ at 19, fled in 1986. A first attempt at democratic elections, in 1987, led to massacres at polling stations. An army general declared himself in charge. In September 1988, the mayor of Port-au-Prince – a former military officer – paid a gang to set fire to a Catholic church as mass was being said. It was packed with people, 12 of whom died. At the altar was Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the nemesis of the dictatorship and the army. Aristide was a proponent of liberation theology, with its injunction that the Church proclaim ‘a preferential option for the poor’, but liberation theology had its adversaries: members of Reagan’s brains trust, meeting in 1980, declared it less Christian than Communist. ‘US policy,’ they said, ‘must begin to counter (not react against) . . . the "liberation theology” clergy.’
Aristide’s elevation from slum priest to presidential candidate took place against a background of right-wing death squads and threatened military coups. He rose quickly in the eyes of Haitians, but his stock plummeted in the United States. The New York Times, which relies heavily on informants who can speak English or French, had few kind words for him. ‘He’s a cross between the Ayatollah and Fidel,’ one Haitian businessman was quoted as saying. ‘If it comes to a choice between the ultra-left and the ultra-right, I’m ready to form an alliance with the ultra-right.’ Haitians knew, however, that Aristide would win any democratic election, and on 16 December 1990, he got 67 per cent of the vote in a field of 12 candidates. No run-off was required.
The United States might not have been able to prevent Aristide’s landslide victory, but there was plenty they could do to undermine him. The most effective method, adopted by the first Bush administration, was to fund both the opposition – their poor showing at the polls was no reason, it appears, to cut off aid to them – and the military. Declassified records now make it clear that the CIA and other US groups helped to create and fund a paramilitary group called FRAPH, which rose to prominence after a military coup that ousted Aristide in September 1991. Thousands of civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands fled overseas or across the border into the Dominican Republic. For the next three years Haiti was run by military-civilian juntas as ruthless as the Duvaliers.
Much, much more at the link, but that will be enough to get you started.
July, 2005, Naomi Klein in the Guardian...
Aristide is certainly no saint, but even if the worst of the allegations against him are true, they pale next to the rap sheets of the convicted killers, drug smugglers and arms traders who ousted him. Turning Haiti over to this underworld gang out of concern for Aristide's lack of "good governance" is like escaping an annoying date by accepting a lift home from Charles Manson.
A few weeks ago I visited Aristide in Pretoria, South Africa, where he lives in forced exile. I asked him what was really behind his dramatic falling-out with Washington. He offered an explanation rarely heard in discussions of Haitian politics - actually, he offered three: "Privatisation, privatisation and privatisation."
The dispute dates back to a series of meetings in early 1994, a pivotal moment in Haiti's history that Aristide has rarely discussed. Haitians were living under the barbaric rule of Raoul Cédras, who overthrew Aristide in a 1991 US-backed coup. Aristide was in Washington and, despite popular calls for his return, there was no way he could face down the junta without military back-up.
Increasingly embarrassed by Cédras's abuses, the Clinton administration offered Aristide a deal: US troops would take him back to Haiti - but only after he agreed to a sweeping economic programme with the stated goal to "substantially transform the nature of the Haitian state".
Aristide agreed to pay the debts accumulated under the kleptocratic Duvalier dictatorships, slash the civil service, open up Haiti to "free trade" and cut import tariffs on rice and corn. It was a lousy deal but, Aristide says, he had little choice. "I was out of my country and my country was the poorest in the western hemisphere, so what kind of power did I have at that time?"
But Washington's negotiators made one demand that Aristide could not accept: the immediate sell-off of Haiti's state-owned enterprises, including phones and electricity. Aristide argued that unregulated privatisation would transform state monopolies into private oligarchies, increasing the riches of Haiti's elite and stripping the poor of their national wealth. He says the proposal simply didn't add up: "Being honest means saying two plus two equals four. They wanted us to sing two plus two equals five."
Again, much, much more at the link. I already read the Wikipedia article about Aristide which looks like a hit piece in light of Naomi Klein's account. Thye article says Aristide was salting away those phone company receipts for himself. I report, you decide. While you are deciding, factor in US policies that have us in bed with monarchs, sheiks and tyrants of any stripe as long as those arrangements are in our "interests."
I already referred to the impact of multiplying NGO's. Only a day or two before the earthquake I saw a feel-good piece on one of the evening news programs about Haitian workers. (We don't call them peasants any more but the mentality has not changed a lot.) (Sorry, Mark. My baggage is showing again.) They were being trained to operate sewing machines in pristine, well-lit factories that look as though they might pass a Starbucks on the way home. It made me think of the off-shore factories in Guam. Aristides' reference to "Privatization, privatization, privatization" rings in my ears.
Sooner or later the penny has to drop. The worn phrase "revolution of rising expectations" is no longer used but the impact of what it describes has not vanished.My heart goes out especially to Haiti because in two unrelated work places among my most outstanding employees were people from Haiti. Neither knew of the other and they had nothing in common except for an exceptionally sweet personality, keen wit and work ethic that would reduce the average work force by a fourth if everyone worked as efficiently as they. You might say I'm biased in favor of people I know from Haiti.
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