19898: radtimes: Nightmare in the Caribbean (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Nightmare in the Caribbean

http://www.antiwar.com/spectator/spec39.html

March 6, 2004

In the 200 years since independence, Haiti has endured a vicious cycle of
coups: Ian Thomson examines the background to the latest crisis Shortly
after Christmas I went to Haiti for the first time in 13 years. The
collapse of the Aristide regime was still two months away, but the
Caribbean republic was already descending into chaos. At the airport of the
capital, Port-au-Prince, the familiar smells of drainage and burning
rubbish hit me forcefully and it was as though I had never been away.
Haiti's history — a vicious cycle of coups d'états — had not changed
either. Last Sunday the airport was the scene of a hurried departure as
Haiti's President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, flew out of the country into
exile. In an armed uprising backed by the US, he had been deposed by former
death-squad commanders and ex-military.

As well as being constitutionally illegal, Aristide's fall has soured
Haiti's long-awaited bicentennial celebrations. On 1 January 1804 the
African slaves on Haiti's sugar plantations overthrew their French masters
and proclaimed the world's first black republic. Recently the airport was
renamed 'Toussaint L'Ouverture' after the slave leader and national hero,
and preparations had been under way for bicentennial wreath-laying
ceremonies. The South African President, Thabo Mbeki, was in Port-au-Prince
the day I arrived and had donated R10 million ($1.4 million) to help with
the festivities. Great Britain, by contrast, had shown scant interest in
the bicentenaire and sent no diplomatic representative. I was the only
British journalist there.

I was met at the airport by my friend Alix Legros, who turned up with an
armed guard. 'For our protection,' he explained. Alix had been chief of
airport security but in 1999 had been shot at by Aristide's thugs for
refusing to let through a cocaine shipment from Colombia. Alix is an
art-dealer now, and on the way to my hotel he showed me a photograph he
still carries of Aristide as a Roman Catholic ordinand from the early
1970s. Alix, like thousands of Haitians, had once believed that 'the
Messiah' could redeem this country and its run-down people. Over the last
five months, however, supporters of Aristide have engaged in bloody battles
with the ex-police and paramilitary which have claimed more than 130 lives.
Banners stretched across the road from the airport nevertheless proclaimed:
'THE CREDO OF THE HAITIAN PEOPLE IS: JESUS, HAITI, ARISTIDE'.

When I was in Haiti in 1990 Aristide was about to become the country's
first democratically elected president since François 'Papa Doc' Duvalier
in 1957. After studying in Israel as part of his Bible studies, the frail,
soft-spoken priest returned to Haiti in 1982 to wage war on the 'corrupt'.
He was a Christ-figure for Haiti's dispossessed and a firebrand in the
pulpit. Sadly, Aristide ('Titid' to his supporters) became compromised by
power and is now reduced to the ex-dictator status of the other emperors,
kings and presidents-for-life who have misruled this country for the last
two centuries. From the outset he was faced with an impossible task. He
earned the disapproval of the Vatican hierarchy by inciting the poor to
acts of violence against the wealthy, and, unsurprisingly, the military did
not care for him either. In 1991, less than a year into office, Aristide
was deposed and bundled into a waiting car while bullets strafed the
National Palace.

Haiti's president-priest spent three years in exile, first in Caracas and
then in Washington, DC. Bill Clinton, meanwhile, buoyed up by his new
'ethical' foreign policy, schemed ways to restore Aristide to power and
topple the regime that had overthrown him. In September 1994, America
invaded Haiti for the second time since the first world war: 20,000 Special
Forces moved in by sea and air. More than 3,000 Haitians had been killed by
the military since the coup, and most of the country's eight million people
hated the junta. The regime's 7,000 troops, instead of retaliating, lay
about in their string vests playing cards. Any civilians remotely
associated with the junta, however, were slaughtered.

Eventually, in October 1994, Aristide was allowed to re-enter Haiti. Some
say he changed during his three-year exile, when he was dependent on
American 'hospitality' and surrounded by White House aides. By the time he
returned to Haiti, Aristide's term had almost expired; in the ensuing
elections, closely watched by the world, his associate Réné Preval became
President. But Aristide now had a taste for government, and in February
2001 he was returned once more to the National Palace as apparent champion
of the poor. Almost at once the demagogue began to reveal himself. Aristide
failed to speak out strongly against mob violence perpetrated by his
Lavalas ('Cleansing Flood') party, and was increasingly mired in
corruption. He is now implicated in the grossest human-rights abuses,
murder and disappearances. He created his own private militia known in
Haitian Creole as Chimè, or Chimeras, similar in kind to the Tontons
Macoute under Papa Doc. These 'personal enforcers' of Aristide were
routinely involved in graft.

Indeed, cocaine smuggling from Colombia had reportedly tripled in Haiti
since the former priest returned in 1994. Alix drove me downtown and in the
capital's main square, the Champs de Mars, he pointed out a group of Chimè.
Mandrill-faced young men, they wore Ralph Lauren T-shirts and braided hair,
their knives and handguns visibly tucked into waistbands. Aristide had
recruited them, some as young as 15, from the shanty towns to suppress
political dissent. Some of them had worked as luggage handlers at the
airport, where they guaranteed uninterrupted smuggling. Cocaine usage had
made these thugs unpredictable. On 5 December last year they raided the
State University in Port-au-Prince and, using an iron bar, broke the
rector's legs.

The United States first grew wary of Aristide's commitment to democracy in
1995 after he disbanded the Haitian army. Aristide hoped he had removed the
threat of another coup d'état in this way. However, the disaffected former
troops began to foment uprisings and eventually toppled Aristide from power
earlier this week. The current crisis, though, dates from Haiti's
parliamentary elections of 2000, which the opposition claim were
gerrymandered in President Aristide's favour. Concerned by allegations of
electoral fraud, most foreign donors withdrew aid and the US imposed a
blockade. Needless to say, the blockade hit Haiti's urban poor hardest;
most Haitians subsist on less than $2 a day, and those who live amid the
filth of Port-au-Prince have a life expectancy of 53 years.

At a press conference held in the National Palace last New Year's Eve,
Aristide arrived flanked by two minders and his wife Mildred, an
American-born Haitian attorney. Smiling nervously, the 50-year-old
President took his place at the head of a long conference table. 'I am
ready for you,' he addressed the journalists huddled together at the far
end of the reception room. Aristide is a tiny, sparrow-boned man, seemingly
mild in his gold wire-framed glasses. Yet he clearly had a messianic sense
of his place in Haitian history. 'Haiti is the mother of liberty,' he
announced, 'and I am mother to the Haitian people.' This is the familiar
rhetoric of Duvalierism.

The next morning — 1 January — a taxi took me back to the National Palace
for the bicentennial jamboree. Aristide had spent $15 million on the
1804–2004 festivities, much of it presumably on security. Police patrolled
the presidential lawn with sub-machine guns as Mr and Mrs Aristide stood
with robed African potentates and other dignitaries at the top of the
palace steps. At a signal, bare-chested young men who were painted gold and
wearing cutoff trousers to symbolise slavery marched in solemn procession
towards their President. They were followed by drum majorettes and flag
displays.

An estimated 10,000 Aristide militants stood clamouring for a better view
outside the palace, but under the pressure a metal fence suddenly
collapsed, allowing the crowd to surge across the lawn towards their idol.
Hand-picked from the slums, they brandished chains in memory of slavery.
'Titid or death!' they shouted. Riot police prevented them from rushing on
to the presidential dais but two foreign journalists were hurt in the
stampede. (Fortunately I had managed to climb a tree.) Aristide continued
to address the excited crowd as he vowed to serve out his five-year term
until 2006. 'Titid five years! Titid five years!' the faithful roared, and
Aristide harangued them in turn: 'Happy New Year! Happy New Year! Happy New
Year! How many times did I say it?' Up went the cheer: 'Three times!' It
was hard to believe this was the same man I had seen at yesterday's press
conference; Aristide's rhetoric, by turns inflammatory and poetic, worked
like a tinderbox on the crowds.

At the same time, on the far side of Port-au-Prince, riots had left six
dead. The road out to the airport was black from piles of burning tyres,
and strewn with rocks and trailing telephone wires. Police vehicles had
been turned over and set ablaze, their windscreens smashed or daubed in
paint: 'A bas caca Aristide!' Now, two months on, Aristide is overthrown
and his angry supporters settle scores with machetes as the White House
sends in marines to occupy Haiti once more. The same nation that helped
reinstate Aristide a decade ago, the United States, had a plane waiting
last Sunday to take him back into exile. Amid the looting and lawlessness,
political power in Haiti continues to come from the barrel of a gun.

Ian Thomson's Bonjour Blanc: a Journey Through Haiti is re-issued in May
with a new preface by J.G. Ballard.

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