17563: Blanchet: FOOD FOR THOUGHT -- Aristide's Contradictions (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Max Blanchet <MaxBlanchet@worldnet.att.net>


Aristide's Contradictions

Daniel Simidor:
Dec. 21, 2003

Because the presidency wields so much power, it is customary
among Haitians to feel intense resentment toward the personality
at the helm in the National Palace.  Haiti's abject conditions, the
agony of its physical environment, the unrelenting corruption
and disrespect for human lives among its rulers, are reasons
for much grief and anger, even among those outside Haiti who
do not endure this situation on a daily basis.  Still, presidents,
however blood thirsty and corrupt, are not the cause of all that
is evil.  The president, his government, and the machinery of
the state they run, respond to ever more powerful social,
political and economic forces, both internal and external.  To
understand the root causes of Haiti's fatal history is to
understand how those powerful forces impact on one another,
and also how the human element is factored therein.  The
study of the many contradictions opposing those forces is
especially useful in understanding the present juncture in
Haitian politics.

There are three major contradictions shaping up events in
Haiti today.  There is the contradiction between Aristide and
his handlers in Washington.  There is the contradiction
between Haiti and imperialism, US imperialism in particular.
And there is the contradiction between the Haitian people and
the Lavalas regime.  The pro-Lavalas newspaper Haiti-Progrès
collapses the first two contradictions into one, and pretends
the third one doesn't exist.

Aristide and His Handlers

The US government takes the position that any government
that relies on Washington's might to stay in power, and on
Washington's handouts to balance its budget, is nothing but
a rubberstamp government.  What is the meaning of sovereignty
when you cannot feed your people without surplus food from
the United States?  The US imperialists consider Haiti a failed
state, one they choose to manage indirectly through the OAS,
the UN and other international organizations, including the NGOs.
Aristide on the other hand sees himself as The Leader, a
strongman especially anointed by the people. In the tradition
of Haitian politics, one never surrenders one's power voluntarily,
regardless of what the Constitution says. But what is a strongman
to do when one is running a "failed state" that depends on
Washington's good will to make ends meet?

Aristide first tried to solve this contradiction by putting pressure
on Washington.  After September 11, he accused the Bush
administration of "economic terrorism" against Haiti, because
of the US veto on World Bank and AIDB loans to his government.
But he soon dropped these denunciations of the US, following
George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq, focusing instead on the French,
at a time when France was being denounced in the US.  Since
then, and thanks to a battery of well-paid lobbyists, US policy
toward Haiti has shifted along the lines of what Robert Maguire
calls "limited engagement."  Washington has removed its objections
to the IADB loans, and has put the opposition on notice that
Aristide will serve his full term.  Aristide for his part has ended
all criticism of US policy, and has grown steadily more subservient
- on the economic front with the free trade zones alongside the
border with the Dominican Republic, and in handing over to
the DEA a growing number of drug kingpins, some of them
presumably with Haitian citizenship.

Haiti and US Imperialism

The contradiction between Haiti and US imperialism goes back
a long way.  The last 15 years are remarkable, however, for the
dramatic loss of sovereignty Haiti has suffered, especially since
the 1994 US invasion that restored Aristide in power.  Haiti is
now a ward of the United States, a pawn in US party politics,
a colony of a new type where the US can intervene at will,
directly or indirectly, without provocation.  Haiti's extreme
poverty and dependence, added to the entrenched corruption
and ineptness of the regime in power, only reinforce this
loss of sovereignty. Any future government with a progressive
agenda will have a tough time keeping a US invasion at bay.

The contradictions between Aristide and his handlers and
between Haiti and US imperialism are two distinct contradictions.
There are of course obvious links between the two: Aristide's
subservience to Uncle Sam and the neoliberal economic agenda
will have a huge negative impact on Haiti's future independence.
But even at this late date, many people in the solidarity movement,
unable to sort out those contradictions, still hold allegiance to
the reactionary Lavalas regime, in spite of their evident good
intentions.

The People v. Aristide

The third contradiction, namely that between the people and
the Lavalas regime, is sharpening as we speak.  It is not to be
confused with the contradiction between the Lavalas regime
and its rightwing opposition, which is a secondary contradiction
over the spoils of power between two hegemonic groups.

The contradiction between the people and the Lavalas regime
has evolved over time from a situation of near absolute loyalty
and trust, to the dramatic denunciations of the regime over the
last two weeks.  Originally, the people saw Aristide as an
alternative to the predatory politics of the past, a promise that
for once government would work on the side of the people.
Between 1985 and 1990, a number of demands had been
formulated through the people's grassroots organizations.
The four primary demands were for justice, agrarian reform,
employment, and sovereignty for the country.  On all four
counts, the country has regressed instead of progressed.

This is not to say that Lavalas alone is responsible for that
regression.  The 1991-1994 military coup, financed by the
bourgeoisie and approved by the CIA, dealt a major blow to
the people's aspirations.  The conditions for Aristide's return
to power in 1994 aggravated that blow, especially in the
economic arena.  The two to four billion dollars the
"international community" reportedly spent on its two-year
occupation of Haiti did nothing to alleviate the worst ravages
of the coup years.  Finally, US initial hostility and the
withholding of international assistance, in the aftermath of
Lavalas' hegemonic grab for power through the fraudulent
elections of 2000, made an already bad situation even worse.

But even added to the depredations of the Duvalier years, these
setbacks do not account for the people's dramatic rejection of
Lavalas and Aristide of the past two weeks.  The people have
turned their back on Aristide because they now realize he is
no better than his predecessors.  Aristide and his Lavalas
minions are just as corrupt as Baby Doc and his minions.  At a
time when two-thirds of the population go hungry every day,
when people in parts of country boil the roots of long gone trees
to survive another day, Aristide and his Lavalas cohort have
amassed very large and ostentatious fortunes.  Their new
mansions and obscenely expensive cars are an affront to the
whole country.  And now the people are experiencing first hand
just how repressive and blood thirsty Lavalas, too, can be.

The contradiction between Lavalas and the people is the principal
contradiction in Haiti today, and when it reaches maturity it will
drive all the other contradictions on the scene, including the fundamental
contradiction between the people and its allies on the one hand,
and imperialism and its lackeys on the others.  Prompted initially
by considerations of food and freedom, the rebellion is still devoid
of class-consciousness.  At demonstrations last week, people
kneeled down in the streets, begging deliverance from God. The
US flag has been raised repeatedly in Gonaives.  Also last week,
demonstrators in Jacmel embraced the police one moment as
allies, only to driven back with police tear gas the next moment.

These limitations are expected at this stage in the struggle.  It is
also to be expected that there will be fierce competition for
leadership of the masses.  The rightwing opposition has joined the
demonstrations, maneuvering to silence the social and economic
demands that are at the heart of the people's uprising.  The same
Bush administration that militarized protest in the United States
after 9/11 has been quick to lecture the Lavalas regime on the
right to protest in Haiti.  Politics make strange bedfellows, but it
would be a mistake to dismiss on that basis the revolutionary
potential of the rebellion now unfolding.  As the principal
contradiction sharpens, Lavalas and its rightwing opposition
will draw closely together.  The US imperialists, too, will
welcome Aristide back in the fold, as a loyal if at times
willful servant.  And Haiti will once again face the threat
of a US invasion.

The stakes for the US imperialists in Haiti is to prevent
a revolt against neoliberalism from spreading to other countries.
And so it is.  On the surface, the actual movement is a revolt
against one man and the betrayal of his mandate.  But as the
rebellion grows and gains in class-consciousness, it will
develop a radical perspective against all the forces that have
driven the country to the brink of collapse.  In this bicentennial
year of its independence, the moment is historically appropriate
for what many hope will be the beginning of Haiti's second
revolution.

And now it is time for Aristide to say goodbye.  Nan pwen
renmen ki pa mande kite.  Sensing that the end is near, a fast
shrinking gang of Lavalas diehards circle the wagons and hurl
imprecations and threats at the world.  Alternately, they console
themselves with rent-a-crowd demonstrations and the discredited
notion that their opponents are a "tiny minority."  But they are at
a loss to explain how this "tiny minority" was able to mushroom
so suddenly, all over the country, into huge anti-government
demonstrations.  Still they will cling to the comforting memory
of a long gone popularity, well after the motion of history will
have driven them off the scene.

Daniel Simidor
Brooklyn, December 21, 2003