12349: Reuters: FEATURE-In Haiti's heartland, discontent grows By Michael Deibert (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Robert Benodin <r.benodin@worldnet.att.net>

Reuters
BC-HAITI-RURAL   06-18 1096
FEATURE-In Haiti's heartland, discontent grows
    By Michael Deibert
HINCHE, Haiti (Reuters) - The people of Haiti's Central Plateau have a long
history of rebellion -- from escaped slaves who helped evict would-be
conquerors to Charlemagne Peralte, a former army officer who led an
insurrection against an American occupation in the early 20th century.
In an echo of earlier struggles, some rural areas are again seeing stirrings
of a challenge, this time to what some peasant groups charge are
increasingly oppressive tactics by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's
Lavalas Family ruling party.
Grass-roots organizers in places such as Hinche, 50 miles north of the
capital Port-au-Prince, are attempting to rally farmers across the country
of 8 million people under a
banner of civil disobedience. In recent months, peasant groups have held
demonstrations and built roadblocks with burning tires along the country's
Route National 1.
One prominent peasant figure is Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the charismatic
55-year-old leader of the 200,000-member Mouvman Peyizan Papay (Papay
Peasants Movement) and affiliated groups, who was at one time one of the
president's closest confidants.
    He has been organizing in the region for 30 years and has now become a
vocal critic of the Aristide administration.
"We started organizing when we realized the problems of the peasants weren't
technical ones, but rather ones of exploitation and lack of education," said
Jean-Baptiste of the
groups' origins under the dictatorships that preceded Aristide.
He said his own group presses for change on issues ranging from
reforestation to the right to assembly.

'A THREAT TO BE ELIMINATED'
"Stolen elections, corruption, this will do nothing to help the people here,
and we refuse to accept it," Jean-Baptiste said. "We have always fought
against this and will continue to do so, and with our work today, it is
obvious that Aristide considers ... the independent peasant movements a
threat to be eliminated."
The peasant movements have gathered momentum in recent months and could pose
a challenge to Aristide and his party in the impoverished Caribbean nation,
some Haiti experts say.
"As that bond breaks down between Lavalas and the peasantry, incumbency
could prove a terrific burden in the next elections should they be free and
fair," said James Morrell,
director of the Haiti Democracy Project, a Washington-based  think tank.
"But in the proto-democracy that Haiti is, there's still no substitute for
formal political parties articulating such demands in the national debate
and registering it at the polls."
The government says it is addressing the concerns of those in the
countryside, where subsistence farmers scratch out a living, with programs
such as literacy centers and health care plans but it is still meeting
opposition.
Peasants have been vigorously protesting the government's decision to build
a free trade zone on farmland near the northeastern town of Ouanaminthe. On
May 27th, a demonstration in the northern town of San Raphael turned violent
when an armed men allegedly tied to local landowners attacked a group of
peasants and journalists.
Two peasants were killed and seven people were arrested, including two
journalists, during the clashes.
Aristide, who had the overwhelming support of Haiti's poor when he first
took office 11 years ago, returned for a second presidential term 18 months
ago. His return has been marked by a continuous challenge from opposition
parties over parliamentary elections in May 2000 which they contend were
tabulated to favor Lavalas.
He also faces rural discontent. Aristide himself was one of the Papay
Peasant Movement's strongest supporters while working as a leftist parish
priest in the late 1980s, and Jean-Baptiste served as the head of the
transition team for Aristide's successor, Rene Preval, in 1995.
During Aristide's exile after being ousted by a military coup in 1991, the
movement bore the brunt of army repression along with other popular
movements before a U.S.-led coalition returned him to power in 1994.

APPALLED BY CORRUPTION
But Jean-Baptiste said he was appalled by the level of corruption in the
final months of Aristide's first term as Haiti's president, and that the
situation under his successor
deteriorated even further.
Relations between the two sides reached a new low with the election of
Lavalas party member Dongo Joseph as Hinche's mayor after the disputed May
2000 elections. Joseph is not from the region and so was widely viewed in
the Plateau as an outsider.
On Nov. 2, 2000, men under Joseph's command fired on a meeting of the
movement in Hinche, witnesses and local media said. During the attack, which
many believe was an attempt to assassinate Jean-Baptiste, his younger
brother was shot and wounded along with five others.
Joseph has since been recalled by the central government and replaced by a
new mayor.
    National Palace spokesman Luc Especa denied the charges of repression.
"There has been no action on the part of local authorities to prevent groups
opposed to the government from meeting," he said.
"The local authorities have been instructed by the government to allow
people to meet freely and respect the rights guaranteed to them by the
constitution."
After a series of attacks on police stations in the capital and the
countryside last July, the peasant movement's political office in Hinche was
burned, and it was again threatened during the chaos that followed an attack
on the National Palace and an apparent attempt to oust Aristide last
December.
But, said Delanour Exil, an elderly member of the Plateau's first peasant
collective, "We've come too far to respond to these new pressures and stop
doing our work."
"We're finished following people like goats," added Exil, whose collective
was formed in the picturesque hamlet of Bassin Zim in 1972.
Jean-Baptiste said he had little faith in the political opposition based in
the capital, the Democratic Convergence coalition.
"The Convergence are like a head without a body, consisting of every
conceivable political wing, but with no program beyond that of opposing
Aristide. They've made no attempt to engage the people of Haiti, he said.
"We will continue to fight until there are truly fair elections. The
military regimes, and all regimes, that have blocked the progress of Haiti
had to go," he said, referring to Haiti's dark past of military
dictatorships.
 REUTERS