19348: radtimes: THE HAITI REDUX (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

THE HAITI REDUX

By Saul Landau
http://www.saullandau.net

One of my students asked me about the current unrest in Haiti.
"Reading the news accounts," she offered, "I can't figure out who
stands for what. And what role is US policy playing in the ongoing
events?"

I, too, find it difficult to extract meaning from the news accounts.

Newspapers and wire service reports ran headlines about "Rebels
Occupying Haiti's Second and Third Largest Cities," without identifying
the rebels or explaining what they stood for.

Other than their expressed hatred for and desire to overthrow the
elected government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, I found in
the news reports not the barest trace of Haitian history that would
help people get a context for the current conflict.

For example, 200 years ago, President Thomas Jefferson refused to
recognize the first black and second oldest republic in the Hemisphere.
In the early 1790s, inspired by the French Revolution, Toussaint
L'Ouverture, a former slave, led an uprising and overthrew the
French masters.

In 1862, almost sixty years later, Abraham Lincoln finally recognized
Haiti.

In 1888, the United States began its habit of intervention when US
forces responded to the Haitian authorities' seizure of a US ship
that had landed illegally. In 1891, US troops landed "to protect
American lives and property...when Negro laborers got out of control."

Woodrow Wilson deployed the Marines in 1914 and again in 1915 "to
maintain order during a period of chronic and threatened insurrection."
They remained as an occupation force under Warren Harding, Calvin
Coolidge and Franklin Roosevelt.

In 1934, FDR ended the two decades of occupation by turning the
reins of government over to a clique who looted the country until
in 1956 Francois Duvalier (Papa Doc), staged a military coup and
declared himself president for life.

Papa Doc created a brutal dictatorship backed by the Tontons Macoute,
a Haitian Praetorian Guard. Upon his death, Jean Claude, or Baby Doc,
Duvalier replaced his father until his overthrow in 1986. Both
mouthed the anti-communist line, brutalized their own people and
received US support.

In 1990, Haitians overwhelmingly elected as President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, a populist Catholic priest. He served nine months before
a military coup, led by General Raoul Cedras, backed by the CIA,
ousted him and instituted three years of military rule: political
violence against all opponents and looting.

President Clinton procrastinated. Finally, in 1994, he dispatched
troops to reseat Aristide as president. But Clinton limited the
military's goals. He did not order the troops to disarm members of
the illegal military gangs or train new security forces to protect
Haitians in the countryside, where paramilitary thugs harassed the
farmers.

Aristide's most prominent enemies and flagrant human rights abusers
-- fled to the United States or the Dominican Republic. But they
had stashed weapons on the island and waited for the opportune
moment. Human rights violators like Col. Emanual Constant, a former
CIA agent, walked confidently through the streets of Queens, New
York. Some former army and Tonton Macoute officials have returned
and "joined" the "opposition."

The media has identified Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a former army officer
and member of FRAPH, Front for the Advancement and Progress of
Haiti, during the post-1991 military coup. But little has been
reported about the nature of the atrocities committed by this
"leader" of the rebels.

Although such hooligans more than cloud the political "opposition's"
legitimacy, large numbers of Haitians do feel disappointed with
Aristide. The three year wait before Aristide resumed his legitimate
place as president, seemed to have changed him and the inchoate,
populist Lavalas Party he leads.

By 1994, following the Pope's order, he had shed his collar. The
secular Aristide no longer showed the same assurance. The exile
years had taken their toll.

By the late 1990s, those democratic and progressive minded people
around the world who saw him as "the deliverer" also felt disheartened.
Aristide's religious charisma seemed to dissolve in frustration.
First, the man who had vowed to build a new, developing Haiti, free
of corruption, got IMF'd.

He refused to privatize the public's wealth as The IMF and World
Bank -- and US loan agencies demanded. Aristide had seen what these
policies had done to the desperately poor in the third world. His
refusal to obey led the dictates of the imperial financiers led to
his punishment and to his inability to accomplish even minimal
reforms.

The cynical "expectations" went side by side with a double standard
on which to judge Aristide. While the Colombian government on the
western side of the Caribbean received increased US aid for bad
behavior, Aristide was held to standards that no third world country
could have maintained. Washington offered meager resources and then
deemed his effort to improve police training inadequate. When
violence occurred, the details somehow became obscured, the
perpetrators unnamed and the blame fell on Aristide.

Neither news stories nor editorials asked the obvious question:
What resource-starved, infra-structurally underdeveloped and
politically chaotic third world country could accomplish economic
development, social order and political stability in a few years?

In 1989, I interviewed Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley. I
asked him what reforms he would make now that he had regained
political power (he won as a Democratic Socialist in 1972 and 76,
was defeated in 1980 and won a third term in 1989, no longer a
socialist, but a supporter of IMF policies).

He laughed scornfully. "My budget has no flexibility," he said.
"The DEA offers a $29 million grant to burn ganja [marijuana] fields.
I have a choice: use the money to open the roads blocked by Hurricane
Andrew or raise teachers' pay and keep the schools open. I can't do
both. No agrarian reform. No health care." He shook his head.
"Political power without money in the budget is an illusion."

He invited me to accompany a joint Jamaican Defense Force-DEA [patrol]
who planned to raid a ganja plantation on the island's western side.
The helicopters landed, the troops and DEA agents jumped out and,
as if in real combat, unleashed their flame throwers on the ample
crop. Within twenty minutes the soldiers and agents began to giggle
uncontrollably as they inhaled the fumes of their labor.

Watching the event, the extended family whose livelihood had just
gone up in smoke, did not share the celebration. The Member of
Parliament who had also accompanied the strike force lectured them:
"This is what happens when you grow illegal crops."

"What else can we grow?" asked the grandfather of the clan. "With
the roads destroyed we cannot get crops to market. With ganja, the
airplane comes," he pointed to the landing strip in the middle of
the burning field, "takes the crop and gives us cash. Now what?"

The MP lost his pot-induced ebullience.

"Well, maybe you could start up a small factory or something," he
responded weakly.

"Dis imperialism, mon," a dreadlocked young man opined.

"Huh?" I said.

"California ganja growers take over Jamaican market," he said.
"America balance of trade improve."

Back in Kingston, the DEA agents and JDF officers invited me for a
drink. I declined. Manley would have his $29 million and raise
teacher pay to keep schools open. What a price he was paying! He
resigned shortly afterwards, a tacit admission of political impotence.

Place the current rioting in Haiti in this political and economic
context, one missing from mainstream reporting. Add the explicit
or implicit twisting of news reporting to make Haitian civil strife
appear to be Aristide's fault.

The media should have smelled the proverbial "destabilizing rat"
when reporting that on December 5, 2003 50 armed men broke into the
university in Port au Prince and began to provoke students and
professors. Aristide backers responded by demonstrating. The armed
unit attacked. One pro-Aristide man let loose a sling shot and
connected with the head of an anti-Aristide militant.

But onlookers, mostly students, bore the brunt of the ensuing
violence.

On January 12, the anti-Aristide gang organized a protest march in
the capital Port-au-Prince. Reports from non-US sources maintain
that some students joined this demonstration after receiving cash
incentives or promises to get tickets for foreign travel.

US dailies did not mention this information. Instead, the media
focused on Aristide's inability to answer "security concerns," while
anti-Aristide officials in the Bush Administration like Assistant
Secretary of Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega and Otto
Reich, Presidential envoy to the Americas, promoted a policy of
embargo against the Aristide government.

Noriega carried an old vendetta from his former boss, retired North
Carolina Senator (R) Jess Helms, who despised Aristide's leftish
disobedience.

The chaos that reins in Haiti, is far from spontaneous. Thugs who
illegally seized power and raped Haiti from 1991-94 have returned
to the island to join with people who have legitimate grievances.

Aristide may have overestimated his own support, relied on a weak
police force and underestimated the treachery of his foes. But
Aristide's mistakes or even character flaws do not invalidate his
legitimacy as an elected president of Haiti, the poorest country
in the Hemisphere.

Reasonable political sense, I told my student, dictates that we
should support Aristide's offer to compromise with the political
opposition and put down the ruffians who want full dictatorial
power, reminiscent of their illegal rule 1991-4.


[Landau's newest film, SYRIA: BETWEEN IRAQ AND A HARD PLACE is
available through Cinema Guild 1-800-723-5522. His new book, THE
PRE-EMPTIVE EMPIRE: A GUIDE TO BUSH'S KINGDOM, was published in
November 2003 by Pluto Press. Landau teaches at Cal Poly Pomona
University and is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. His
essays in Spanish are on http://www.rprogreso.com .

Saul Landau is the Director of Digital Media and International
Outreach Programs for the College of Letters, Arts and Social
Sciences California State Polytechnic University, Pomona 3801 W.
Temple Avenue Pomona, CA 91768 tel:909-869-3115 fax: 909-869-4858
http://www.saullandau.net ]

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