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[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

(The Guardian, 20 June 03)


Obit -- René Théodore

By Greg Chamberlain


René Théodore, who has died suddenly of lung cancer, aged 62, was the
unlikely official face of Haitian communism for more than a decade.
        The tall and unusually quiet-spoken man who returned from exile
after the collapse of the 29-year tyranny of President François "Papa Doc"
Duvalier and family in 1986 confused Haitians at first, since the regime,
the Cold War and their Catholic clergy had dinned into them that communists
were as good as savages.  Six years later, he nearly became their US-backed
prime minister.
        Born in the northern border town of Ouanaminthe and grandson of a
president, he  followed much of Haiti's intelligentsia into Marxism while
still at school.  In 1964, at the height of Papa Doc's massacres, he fled
abroad and lived most of the next two decades in France, Cuba and the
Soviet Union.  For years, his voice was a rare source of local news for
Haitians brave enough to tune in to the Creole service of Radio Moscow.
        Among the squabbling opposition factions, the communists stood out
as the only ones with any organisation or clear principles.  In December
1968, Théodore helped found the Unified Haitian Communist Party (PUCH),
which four months later shocked Duvalier by briefly seizing Casale, a
village near the capital.
        The country clearly needed revolution of some kind but Duvalier
responded by  declaring communism a capital offence.  In July 1969, spies
led his thugs to a house in Port-au-Prince where they massacred virtually
all the party's top officials.  The exiled Théodore became PUCH leader in
1978 under the nom de guerre of Jacques Dorsilien, one of several aliases.
        Soon afterwards, the founder of the Haitian trade union movement,
Ulrick Joly, brought a compatriot to see me in Paris who he introduced
simply as "Lesly."  A few days later, having apparently passed muster, I
was phoned by the mysterious visitor who revealed himself as Théodore.
        His loyalty to Moscow was not to be shaken in exile, but by the
time he returned to Haiti, Gorbachov and glasnost had taken hold and he was
quick to adjust.  His reasonableness, pragmatism and calm, all in short
supply in the chaotic immediate post-Duvalier years, won support and in
1987 he ran for president in elections the army bloodily cancelled in
mid-vote.
        He changed the party's name to the more user-friendly Movement for
National Reconciliation and ran against Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide in
new elections in 1990, considering him a dangerous demagogue.  But he could
not match Aristide's use of implicit divinity to win mass support and got
only two per cent of the votes.
        The surreal summit of his political career came three months after
army leaders overthrew Aristide in 1991 and were locked in tortuous
negotiations to end the international isolation they had brought down on
themselves.
        The reformed communist Théodore won the backing of the US
ambassador, Alvin Adams, a steely Donald Rumsfeld lookalike and
counter-terrorism expert, as the ablest candidate to head a coalition
government to negotiate the return from exile of his old enemy Aristide
with reduced powers.
        He became an incongruous guest at US embassy receptions and, in a
rare touch of vanity, after being named in January 1992 by international
agreement, handed out visiting cards marked "prime minister designate," as
he waited months - in vain - for a divided parliament to approve him in the
face of army opposition, which included the execution of his bodyguard in
front of him.
        His old comrades in Marxist clandestinity peeled off in different
directions.  His deputy Max Bourjolly returned to Paris to drive a taxi,
the Stalinist newspaper editor Ben Dupuy climbed on and off the lurching
populist bandwagon and economist Gérard Pierre-Charles publicly confessed
he had been wrong about Marxism and for a time threw in his lot with
Aristide.
        Théodore joined the rag-tag anti-Aristide coalition in recent years
but the former maths and physics teacher was also absorbed in a small
business making fine cheeses he sold to friends and connoisseurs.
        He is survived by his second wife and four children


René Théodore, born June 23 1940; died June 1 2003.