19061: Esser: Throttled by History (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com


Published on Monday, February 23, 2004 by the Guardian/UK

Throttled by History
by Gary Younge
 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- As civil war encroaches, civil society
implodes and civil political discourse evaporates, one of the few
things all Haitians can agree on is their pride in Toussaint
L'Ouverture, who lead the slave rebellion in Haiti that established
the world's first black republic. "The transformation of slaves,
trembling in hundreds before a single white man, into a people able
to organize themselves and defeat the most powerful European nations
of their day is one of the great epics of revolutionary struggle and
achievement," wrote the late Trinidadian intellectual CLR James in
his book The Black Jacobins. The transformation of that achievement
into a nation riven by political violence, ravaged by Aids and
devastated by poverty is a tragedy of epic proportions.

The nation's 200th anniversary this year looks back on 13 coups and
19 years of American occupation, and now once again looks forward to
more bloodshed and instability. The country's political class must
bear their share of responsibility for where they go from here.
Western powers, particularly France and the United States, must also
take responsibility for how they got to this parlous place to begin
with. If Haiti shows all the trappings of a failed state, then you do
not have to look too hard or too far to see who has failed it.

The most urgent issue is to stem the descent into gang warfare and
political anarchy. In this the Haitians have been let down by poor
domestic political leadership on all sides. In the nine years since
Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Lavalas party has been in power, economic
improvements have been few and human rights abuses have been many.
With no army and only a few thousand poorly trained police, Aristide
has relied on armed gangs to sustain his authority. In 2000, he
rigged parliamentary elections in favor of his own party, sparking
outrage and laying the basis for a broad-based opposition, which has
gathered pace and strength in recent months.

But while the political opposition, based in Port-au-Prince, has
grown in size it remains diminished in direction and devoid of
strategy. With no agenda beyond forcing Aristide to resign, it offers
only the possibility of even more chaos. With no desire to negotiate
a settlement, it offers the certainty of stalemate. Its ability to
destabilize, and inability to lead effectively and constructively,
has left a vacuum now filled by an armed opposition, comprising
henchmen from previous dictatorships. Up to their necks in blood and
armed to the teeth, these men have poured across the border from the
neighboring Dominican Republic in the past week and are taking over
towns and ransacking police stations. Yesterday there were reports
that they had seized the country's second city, Cap Haïtien.

The relationship between those who seek to remove Aristide peacefully
and those committed to violent methods is increasingly blurred. The
political opposition says it shares the aims of the armed rebels but
not their methods. Even if that is true in principle, it is rapidly
becoming meaningless in practice. The rebels care little for human
rights and less for human life. No one doubts they could get rid of
Aristide; no one seriously believes they will restore democracy.

But if the bicentennial offers a bleak backdrop for the immediate
fate of the first black republic, it also offers the opportunity to
place these events in some historical perspective. For ever since
Haitian slaves expressed their desire to breathe freely, western
powers have been attempting to strangle its desire for democracy and
prosperity at birth.

"Men make their own history," wrote Karl Marx. "But they do not make
it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances
chosen by themselves, but under given circumstances directly
encountered and inherited from the past."

 From the outset Haiti inherited the wrath of the colonial powers,
which knew what a disastrous example a Haitian success story would
be. In the words of Napoleon Bonaparte: "The freedom of the negroes,
if recognized in St Domingue [as Haiti was then known] and legalized
by France, would at all times be a rallying point for freedom-seekers
of the New World." He sent 22,000 soldiers (the largest force to have
crossed the Atlantic at the time) to recapture the "Pearl of the
Antilles".

France, backed by the US, later ordered Haiti to pay 150m francs in
gold as reparations to compensate former plantation and slave owners
as well as for the costs of the war in return for international
recognition. At today's prices that would amount to £10bn. By the end
of the 19th century, 80% of Haiti's national budget was going to pay
off the loan and its interest, and the country was locked into the
role of a debtor nation - where it remains today.

Any prospect of planting a stable political culture foundered on the
barren soil of economic impoverishment, military siege and
international isolation (for the first 58 years the US refused to
even recognize Haiti's existence). In 1915, fearing that internal
strife would compromise its interests, the US invaded, and remained
until 1934.

In short, if those who now preach negotiation and compromise had
practiced those values in the past, Haiti might have had the time and
support to nurture the kind of political traditions that could at
best forestall and at least withstand its divisions today. Haiti is a
timely reminder of how western democracies have wilfully amassed
their wealth on the backs of impoverished dictatorships.

So Haiti lurched from coup to coup, most notably under the
dictatorship of "Papa Doc" Duvalier and then his son, "Baby Doc",
supported by the US and France. In 1990, Aristide appeared as the
best hope to break the cycle. With an overwhelming democratic
mandate, the ascetic priest and liberation theologian was literally
swept to power, as Haitians brushed the floor ahead of him with palm
leaves. Deposed in a coup, he returned in 1994 with US military
assistance.

But, in return for political freedom, Aristide was compelled to
accept economic enslavement, bound by terms imposed by the IMF and
the World Bank. Post-colonial military aggression gave way to the
brutal forces of globalization. Before Aristide had even considered
fixing the elections, the west had already rigged the markets. Take
rice. Forced by the agreement to lower its import tariffs, Haiti
suddenly found itself flooded with subsidized rice from the US, which
drove Haitian rice growers out of business and the country to import
a product that it once produced. When the country fined American rice
merchants $1.4m for allegedly evading customs duties, the US
responded by withholding $30m in aid.

None of this excuses the shortcomings of either the current
administration or its detractors. But it helps explain why the roots
of the current crisis are so deep, and spread so far. Aristide has
been dealt few cards, and those he had he has played badly. He has
tainted a nascent democratic culture. But to allow him to be deposed
at the hands of former dictators will destroy it altogether. Aristide
could do far better for Haiti. Haiti could do far worse than Aristide.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
.