17644: Lemieux: Barbados Daily Mail: Orlando Marville-the lost 200 years (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: JD Lemieux <lxhaiti@yahoo.com>

MARVELLING: Haiti, the lost 200 years - Sunday 04,
January-2004
by ORLANDO MARVILLE
We are possibly all looking forward to a New Year, some
with a little more apprehension than others, but none with
the dread of the ordinary man in the street in Haiti,
unless of course, Aristide goes.

New Year, 2004, should be the most glorious day in the
history of not only Haiti, but every predominantly black
country in the world. Yet this is unlikely to be, under the
circumstances.

It all started over 200 years ago when a group of black
captives revolted against the might of France and defeated
the mighty forces of Napoleon.

In Europe itself, they had to wait until the little man had
become too arrogant to wait for his Waterloo. The fact is
that that victory should have been the beginning of a
glorious history of liberation for Africs everywhere.

While it did help in the liberation of the other captive
Africans in the English, French and Dutch-speaking
Caribbean and led to the independence of all Latin America,
it did little for Haiti itself.

The French imposed a financial penalty on the country of
approximately $21.7 billion in today’s money for depriving
that European power of what it considered its property. It
took 40 years to pay off that sum.

Other European powers and the United States isolated Haiti
for the next 100 years, leaving it to the tradition of
autocracy and assassination that has prevailed ever since,
with the occasional, equally inauspicious United States
intervention.

Today, Haiti is in revolt against another little man, who
started out as a populist priest, but who, like others,
found the smell of wealth too rich to resist, even while 80
per cent of his citizens wallow in poverty.

The recent spate of events started, it seems, when Metayer,
one of Aristide’s henchmen, a loose cannon himself, was
gunned down in Gonaives, a former Aristide stronghold. It
was generally felt that it was the Government which had him
killed.

Thereafter, the town turned against Aristide and, what is
perhaps more important, two of Aristide’s favourite
senators, one a former military man who became wealthy in
suspiciously short order, Dany Toussaint and Pierre Sanson,
both started talking about the need for democracy.

They began to support the student protest and the general
outcry for the president to listen to the voice of reason
out there on the street. Aristide had constantly blamed the
media.

Interestingly, his ops, or armed street gangs called
popular operatives, had attacked and killed a few
journalists and generally terrified the media into
submission or hiding. He now found that even his own were
turning against him.

Over-optimistic belief

It seems that only the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and
the Organisation of American States (OAS) have supported
Aristide in recent times, the latter out of some
over-optimistic belief that the situation would change, and
the former out of some sentimental belief that Haiti which
brought us all emancipation should be shielded at all cost,
as if Aristide were the embodiment of Haiti.

Interestingly Mr Edwin Carrington has expressed doubts as
to whether CARICOM Heads would be attending the celebration
of Haiti’s bicentennial because of the unrest there.

There is in fact a secondary and more important reason why
they should not attend: CARICOM has become synonymous in
Haiti with the betrayal of that country, by brothers who
should know better. The Heads’ safety can certainly not
therefore be guaranteed, not only now, but not anytime in
the near future.

Who is left to support Aristide?

The Black Caucus also does, much for the same reason that
CARICOM leaders have. There is the notion that there is one
of us out there (Aristide) who is beleaguered from all
sides and that we must therefore support him.

The fact is that Aristide is not one of us. He is a great
populist speaker, ineffable in Creole and marvellously
convincing in English and Spanish. His major concern is to
retain power, all power.

He would otherwise have solved most of the problems he now
has by allowing the elections back in 2000 to run their
course.

There had been instances of foul play as in the election of
the Mayor of Petionville, but that may even have been
overlooked

Haiti, I too am sorry. I tried desperately to make the good
happen. There were other brave souls with me. In the end, I
left, as did the President of the Electoral Council, an
organ which Aristide and the opposition can still not get
together to reorganise for elections due in January.

I am sorry that we could not all simply celebrate what was
a remarkable feat by the enslaved for the enslaved 200
years ago, in the place where it all happened.


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