18245: (Chamberlain) re: 18237: Haiti: Crushed by U.S. power (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

Marvellous how the Ameri-left -- in this case Socialist Worker and its
writer Helen Scott -- rewrite history for their own Greater Ideological
Convenience...

We read:


> In the 1980s, a mass movement known as "Lavalas"--meaning
a cleansing wave or flood in Haitian Creole--toppled the hated
Duvalier regime and embarked on a process of "dechoukaj"
(uprooting) of the entrenched power structure.


There was no Lavalas movement in the 1980s.

The name first appeared only after Aristide had been hastily declared a
candidate in October 1990 and was still being steered around town by Evans
Paul (who may even have invented the name).  It first came up, I think, in
the Aristide manifesto presented on 15 Nov 1990 and entitled "Le Projet
Lavalas."

Aristide had very little to do with the fall of the Duvaliers in 1986 and
was unknown outside PauP.  Even then, PauP never rose up.  All the work was
done by the people of Gonaives and elsewhere.  The Duvaliers gave up when
they lost control of the provinces.

The dechoukaj (which was mainly looting and killing) was over by 1990.  The
"entrenched power structure" remained.  Aristide made some attempts to
attack it in his seven months before being overthrown.  Though his
gratuitous public humiliation of the entire army leadership in his
inauguration speech (as they stood beside him and two months after they had
"permitted" a free election and were led by the benign Gen. Hérard Abraham)
was not the cleverest of tactics and was the reason for his eventual
overthrow, quietly cheered on (but not led) by the élite and a few dark US
forces.

The business élite clambered aboard the Aristide bandwagon as soon as he
was elected, offering help (gratefully received) in the hope that they
could still run things the good old way (with a few adjustments) and
Aristide obligingly and famously surrounded himself with many light-skinned
upper-class advisers.  The people who'd initiated and organised his
candidacy (9 months earlier he'd sworn never to take part in any elections,
which he denounced as "bourgeois") were cast out as dangerous rivals (Evans
Paul, who was his campaign manager, and the Convergence Démocratique
coalition).  This was the start of the divisive politics towards his own
(educated, as opposed to "rouleau compresseur") supporters in the
"République de Port-au-Prince" that also contributed to his downfall.

The presence on many occasions of "Pè Lebrun" gangs to intimidate/attack
institutions such as the courts and parliament was the forerunner of
today's "chimères."


We also read that:

> Independent left formations such as Ben Dupuy's
National Popular Party are few and small, partly
as a result of the coup regime's decimation of the left.

Nearly 10 years after Aristide's return, they are still "few and small"
because of "the coup regime's decimation"...?  In fact, they were "few and
small" before the coup regime, simply because they had no support and were
mired in personality squabbles and in the factionalism for which (for
example) Ben Dupuy has been famous throughout his 30 years as a political
activist.  But let's hear it for that good old slogan of "It's always
somebody else's fault, never ours!"


        Greg Chamberlain