17648: Lemieux: NY Times: 200 Years After Napoleon, Haiti Finds Little to Celebrate (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

January 2, 2004
200 Years After Napoleon, Haiti Finds Little to Celebrate
By LYDIA POLGREEN

ORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Jan. 1 — Two hundred years ago, an
army of African slaves defeated French forces on this
tropical island, ending Napoleon's ambition to dominate the
Americas and paving the way for the first black republic.

On Thursday, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide led a tense
and chaotic observance of that bicentennial, though many
found little to celebrate in Mr. Aristide's governance over
what, after 200 years of independence, remains an
impoverished and troubled nation.

Speaking to a small but enthusiastic crowd, Mr. Aristide
called Haiti "the mother of liberty," and appealed to
opposition groups, which have mounted ever larger
demonstrations against his government, to agree to new
elections this year.

"Civil society, the poor, the rich, the opposition,
everybody, must come together to heal Haiti," Mr. Aristide
said to the cheering crowd, which filled a city block and
rows of bleachers set up in front of the white presidential
palace in the center of the city.

The crowd, many of them poor and unemployed Haitians who
spent New Year's Eve on the street waiting for the
celebration, climbed atop a spiked green metal fence meant
to keep them out of the palace, toppling it and injuring
several people.

The throng rushed onto temporary risers set up for
spectators on the palace lawn, but the risers, so new they
still smelled of freshly sawed pine, also collapsed,
sending the crowd rushing further still toward the
dignitaries on the dais in front of the palace.

Policemen with submachine guns strained to hold back the
crowd, which surged forward and chanted "Aristide or
death!" The president then delivered his speech, outlining
a 21-point program that he said would lift Haiti from
poverty and political discord by 2015. That plan remains
contingent on a $21 billion payment he is seeking from
France as reparation for the payment Haiti was forced to
make to France when it won its independence.

But across the capital, many Haitians were in no mood to
celebrate or listen to plans for the future. Two-thirds of
the country's workers are unemployed, and most Haitians
live on about $1 a day. Haiti is the poorest nation in the
hemisphere and leads the region in the number of AIDS
cases. Life expectancy is little more than 50 years.

Since 2000, when Mr. Aristide was re-elected to the
presidency in voting that many observers said was flawed,
the country has been locked in political crisis. The
dispute led international donors to suspend $500 million in
aid, adding to the country's economic woes.

The political battle intensified when opposition groups
boycotted parliamentary elections, leading to a sweep by
pro-Aristide politicians. The current Parliament's term
ends this month, and if a new one is not elected, the
country will be plunged into still deeper disarray.

"Today we were supposed to celebrate, but instead it is a
day of mourning," said Bernadel Romel, who stood among
thousands of demonstrators who had planned to march to the
statue of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the former slave who led
the country immediately after its independence, across the
street from the palace.

Their path was blocked miles from the palace by policemen
in riot gear and gas masks, who fired tear gas at the
demonstrators.

"We thought Aristide would bring freedom," Mr. Romel said.
"Instead he brought only death and tyranny."

Mr. Aristede had invited heads of state from around the
globe for what was planned as a lavish celebration. But it
was a measure of Mr. Aristide's political isolation and
Haiti's persistent troubles that only one showed up.

The head of state who did attend, President Thabo Mbeki of
South Africa, brought a security guard of more than 50
people, along with ambulances, an armored car and two
helicopters. The only other government leader present was
the prime minister of the Bahamas.

The turnout hardly provided the opportunity to rally
support among an increasingly agitated public that Mr.
Aristide had hoped for in commemorating the stunning defeat
that a rebel army of former slaves dealt to Napoleon's
forces, led by the emperor's brother-in-law, Gen. Charles
Leclerc.

That defeat so rattled Napoleon that he promptly gave up
his American colonial ambitions, selling the Louisiana
Territory to the United States. But their victory over the
French failed to bring immediate or lasting freedom to
Haiti's people.

For a century they struggled under a series of tyrannical
and ineffective leaders. Revolutions came and went with
dizzying speed. Between 1843 and 1889, 14 leaders were
assassinated or overthrown. This tumultuous history led
President Rosalvo Bobo to remark on Haiti's centennial that
he hoped the next 100 years would bring better days.

But much of the 20th century matched the previous one.
Chaos and tyranny reigned, culminating in the brutal
dictatorships of François Duvalier, and his son,
Jean-Claude, who fled the country in 1986.

When Mr. Aristide, a former priest who pledged his
allegiance to Haiti's poor, was elected president in 1990,
his ascendancy seemed a sign that Haiti's history of
rapacious dictators had come to an end. But he was quickly
ousted in a coup, then reinstated in 1994 by American
troops.

A decade later, there are a few signs that life has
improved for the vast majority of Haitians.

"Aristide has been in power since 1994, and nothing has
changed," said a leading businessman who is active in the
movement to remove the president, but who asked that his
name not be used because he feared reprisals. "The people
are still poor and oppressed. We are told to celebrate our
liberty but we don't feel free."

At a news conference on Wednesday, Mr. Aristide disputed
such criticism, saying he welcomed the opposition groups as
an essential part of the country's future. He said he hoped
to hold parliamentary elections this year and urged the
opposition parties to support his plan.

"The opposition are not enemies," Mr. Aristide said. "They
are playing a role in democratic society."

But protests in the streets of Port-au-Prince and other
cities have grown in recent months, and become increasingly
tense and sometimes violent. On Dec. 5, Aristide supporters
stormed the national university, a hotbed of anti-Aristide
activism, beating about 20 people who opposed the Aristide
government.

Outraged by the violence, civic groups, trade unions and
professional associations rallied to the opposition
movement, swelling the ranks of demonstrators.

Opposition groups said dozens of people have been killed
and scores have been wounded in clashes with armed groups
of Aristide supporters while the police either stand by or
participate.

In Gonaïves, the coastal city where Haiti's independence
was proclaimed and a flashpoint of the current political
struggle, militants once loyal to Mr. Aristide have since
turned against him, engaging in gun battles in the streets.


On Wednesday, as crews worked to complete the stage upon
which Mr. Aristide was to speak in Gonaïves on Thursday,
people in Raboteau, one of the city's slums, warned the
president to stay away.

"If Aristide comes here I am going to handcuff him and I am
going to kill him," said a 19-year-old member of a militia
once loyal to Mr. Aristide known as the Cannibal Army. The
young man, Bristey Metayer, waved a pair of handcuffs and
warned a visitor: "Don't come to the celebration tomorrow.
There will be blood."


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