19508: Esser: The Accomplished Destruction of Aristide (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

The Accomplished Destruction of Aristide, the Planned Destruction of
Hugo Chavez

Monday, Mar 01, 2004

By: Heinz Dieterich - Rebelion.org

The drama of Haiti and of the Aristide administration implies many
dangers for Cuba and Venezuela.  It is the final outcome of
Washington’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) against popular
governments in Latin America: namely, subversion-destruction.

The last phase of this strategy can be seen in Haiti, its initial
phases in Nestor Kirchner’s Argentina, and its middle phase in Hugo
Chavez’s Venezuela.

Sometimes this strategy ends with the death of the Latin American
protagonist, as was the case with Salvador Allende.  In other
circumstances, the protagonist manages to go into exile, as in the
case of the Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz.  A third scenario is
the “re-education” of the Latin American protagonist within the
empire and his subsequent political recycling in his country, and
that was the case of Aristide in
Haiti and Michael Manley in Jamaica.

Regardless of the outcomes that Washington’s Standard Operating
Procedure may have on our countries, the initial aim of the
subversive industrial/military complex of the United States is always
the same: to tame a leader or social movement that has come to power
through elections or de-facto, and whose political agenda does not
reflect the interests of Washington.

The first attempt to dominate these movements and leaders is through
co-option and corruption.  When these are not effective, then the
strategy of subversive-destruction is unleashed.

We are now witnessing the last acts of the drama in Haiti.  It
started developing in 1986 when the Haitian people managed to throw
out the dictator Baby Doc Duvalier, thus ending a history of a
century and a half of military interventions by the United States and
of regimes of state terror in the service of Washington.

When the chains of United States neocolonialism, which had maintained
the people of Haiti in misery, were broken, a vacuum of power was
created in which the star of a slum area Salesian priest,
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, began to shine among the dispossessed.

With speech based on the Theology of Liberation and its preferential
option for the poor, reclaiming the sovereign right of the country to
its self-determination against the domination of the United States,
and with “a passionate rhetoric that sometimes incited violence
between classes”, as The Wall Street Journal noted with concern,
Aristide became a popular tribune and the hope for change among the
majority.

The 1990 elections were the first free elections in 187 years.  It
demonstrated that Aristide had the overwhelming support of the
people.  Aristide obtained 67.5% of the votes despite having survived
several assassination attempts from right-wing paramilitaries and
having been expelled in December 1988 from his Salesian Order
instigated by the apostolic nuncio.[1]  Washington’s candidate and
ex-employee of the World Bank, Marc Bazin, merely obtained 15% of the
votes.

These results raised the red flag in the White House and set in
motion a subversive-destruction strategy against the popular
government.  It was successful in seven months.  The new president,
elected by a majority, took possession on February 1991 only to be
overthrown in a bloody coup d’etat on September 30th.

The subversive strategy of post-electoral de-stabilization was
preceded by another, pre-electoral intervention strategy that used
different approaches to get rid of the rebel priest that was trying
to implement what Washington considered was a “populist model” of
democracy, that is, a democracy with the participation of those at
the bottom.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the public subversive
international arm of the Republican Party and the Democratic Party of
the United States, financially backed the supporters of Bazin and the
former members of the Duvalier dictatorship, so as to impede the
electoral triumph of Aristide.  With the same aim, NED financed radio
stations that demonized Aristide’s candidature.

The main workers’ union in the United States, AFL-CIO collaborated,
at the behest of the Department of State, in financing right-wing
unions, some with direct influence over Duvalier’s the secret
police.  The official US agency for international development, USAID,
subsidized and advised the right wing factions that favored the
United States.

All of these measures did not impede Aristide’s triumph at the polls
nor his assuming power in February 1991.  Faced with the defeat of
Bazin and the “danger” of popular democracy, Washington organized a
coup d’etat that would put an end to the priest’s experiment in the
island.  At the head of the coup was the narco-general and CIA
collaborator, Raul Cedras, who was trained at the notorious School of
the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia.

His right-hand man was Col. Michel-Joseph Francois, also trained at
Fort Benning.  Together with Emmanuel Constant, another CIA agent,
they controlled two key organizations for the destruction of
Aristide’s democratic government: the National Intelligence Service
(SIN) and the death squads, known as FRAPH.  Both organizations have
been established and maintained by the CIA.

In the first two weeks of the coup, more than a thousand people lost
their lives in a state terrorist campaign that systematically
destroyed popular and democratic organizations that had supported
Aristide.  When the terror ended, Cedras and Francois had
assassinated more than four thousand Haitians.

The administration of Bush Sr. in collusion with the main US media
immediately started a propaganda campaign against the deposed
president making him responsible for what happened due to his
“violations of human rights”, exactly as it did during the coup
against Hugo Chavez.

For its part, the Organization of American States (OAS) decreed an
embargo against the coup plotters that was never seriously
implemented by the European nations nor by Washington.

In February 1992, Bush in effect lifted the embargo against the coup
plotters, backed by a fervent Democratic congressman, Robert
Torricelli.  Torricelli supported the brutal embargo against Cuba,
expecting to take advantage of the fall of the Soviet Union to
destroy the Cuban Revolution and with the same energy, was in favor
of lifting the embargo against the coup plotters in Haiti.  In both
cases, he succeeded: while aggression against Cuba increased, the
boycott against Haiti was cancelled.

Faced with the force of these events, Aristide succumbed.  He signed
an “accord of national unity” that left him only a symbolic function
in the government and a de facto exile in the United States, while
Washington’s puppet Marc Bazin, assumed power in June 1992, with the
public blessing of the Vatican, the Episcopalian Conference of Haiti,
and the national and imperial elites.

The betrayal and degeneration of Aristide, was taken to its paroxysm
in his exile to the United States, the systematic destruction of the
popular movement in Haiti and a massive exodus of seventy thousand
Haitians in two years.  This created the conditions for his return,
but now as a harmless leader.  Twenty-five thousand US soldiers, sent
by William Clinton, re-established he legitimate president in power.

Francois took refuge in the Dominican Republic and later in San Pedro
Sula, Honduras, where he spent millions of dollars he obtained during
the terror and through narco-trafficking with the Colombian drug
cartels.  Cedras went to live in Panama City along with the ex-chief
of the army, Biamby and enjoyed the same amenities of his assassin
accomplice Francois.

Exile to Panama was a courtesy of the Clinton administration that
guaranteed Cedras and Biamby a secure passage to Panama, where a
mansion on the beach awaited them with other imperial amenities, all
expenses paid by the United States.

Meanwhile, Aristide returned to a devastated country, which
nonetheless preserved his image as  “The Savior” among its popular
sectors.  However, this image did not correspond at all with the
objective or subjective potential of the historic moment that 1990
represented.

The process of demolishing his administration and his personality had
been profound.  It had to end inevitably in his expulsion by the same
popular forces that fifteen years before had taken him to power. 
This is what we are now witnessing and this is the result that
Washington desired.

There is no better way of killing a popular myth than by getting it
killed by its own people.  This is what Washington did with
ex-colonel Lucio Gutierrez in Ecuador.  His corrupt performance as a
president discredited the Armed Forces as possible vanguard in a
nationalistic process.  The support that the Confederation of
Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) gave Gutierrez has
generated the same disrepute for the indigenous movement and handing
over military bases and military sovereignty to the Pentagon has
attained Washington’s most deeply felt expectations for Plan Colombia.

The colonel has carried out his historic role for the empire.  The
only thing that is waiting for him is a kick and exile.  The same is
valid for the priest: he has become superfluous and will disappear
from the scene, sooner than he thinks.

The respective scenario is foreseeable.  Under the auspices of
Washington, France, CARICOM or the OEA, there will be a new “national
unity accord” whose elections will take some puppet of Washington to
the presidency.

While the Democratic Platform of the civil organization has some
social force, power resides increasingly in armed groups in the north
of Haiti.  These are made up of the former torturers and military of
the Duvalier dictatorship that have returned from their easy exile in
the Dominican Republic –among them the former leaders of the death
squads (FRAPH), Luis Jodel Chamblain and Jean Pierre Baptise, and
another bloody henchman, Guy Phillipe- and Aristide’s paramilitary
groups that have switched sides.

Therefore, in a cruel irony of history, Bush Sr.’s plan for
dominating Haiti which instigated the coup against Aristide, has now
become absolutely viable under the presidency of his son George: 
duvalierism without Duvalier.

President James Carter tried to implement a somocism without Somoza
during the last days of the dictatorship in Nicaragua, but failed,
basically because of the so-called “Vietnam trauma”.  The
possibilities of Bush Jr. accomplishing a similar objective in Haiti
are much better.

The implications of the eventual installation of a right-wing
government in Haiti are considerable for Cuba, the Dominican
Republic, and Venezuela.  The geographic distance between north Haiti
and eastern Cuba is barely 90 kilometers.  Guantanamo Base is located
in those latitudes and any maritime exodus from Haiti could be used
by the Bush administration as a pretext for unleashing force in the
region.

It is supposed that the State Department of the bellicose Colin
Powell is preparing already fifty thousand beds in Guantanamo Base to
intern Haitian refugees to the island.

For Venezuela, the detailed study of Aristide’s experience is of
vital importance.  The military coup of April 2002 failed, but the
strategy of subversion-destruction goes ahead.

The public recognition by State Department functionary, Peter
Deshazo, that the CIA finances Washington’s mercenaries in Venezuela;
the more than eighty assassinations of rural leaders and popular
leaders during the Bolivarian government; the continuous envoy of
arms to the Venezuelan paramilitaries and the increasing aggression
of the Colombian paramilitaries all demonstrate that Washington
proceeds without quarter to destroy the government of Hugo Chavez.

Since the strategy of “re-education” and  “recycling” in the style of
Aristide will not work in the case of Hugo Chavez, the conflict in
Venezuela is antagonistic.  Therefore, the defeat of the popular
forces will have an extremely high human cost, as the experiences in
Chile and Haiti demonstrate.

They are doomed to succeed.

Translated by Maria Victor

[1] Apostolic nuncios are the ambassadors of the Vatican. Translator’s
note.

Original source / relevant link: http://www.rebelion.org