19946: Lewis: FT analysis on Haiti situation... March 5, 2004 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: David E. Lewis <DavidLewis@manchestertrade.com>

In Aristide's wake, a land long divided explodes
By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
http://www.FT.com - March 5 2004

PETIONVILLE, Haiti — From the palm-shaded swimming pools and marble
terraces of this wealthy suburb's hillside villas, the distant squalor
of Port-au-Prince looks like a tranquil, opalescent coastal setting.

The lavish comforts enjoyed here by Haiti's small class of industrial
kingpins inspired former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to label them
"rocks washed by cooling waters," while his people, the impoverished
masses in the slums below, were "the rocks in the sun, taking the heat."


In a populist drive to show the rich how poverty feels, Aristide once
urged his followers to drag the rocks from the river into the inferno —
a metaphorical appeal that lives on after his departure as armed
supporters continue to loot and burn the businesses of the upper class
in a frenzy of revenge.

"Aristide sold people that image, that we were the rocks in the water,"
said Michael Madsen, an industrialist of Danish descent who is the
embodiment of the light-skinned elite whom Aristide demonized as Haiti's
economic vampires.

"He told his people to take us out, to show us what it was like on the
outside. Why didn't he encourage them to come themselves into the water?
Because he was incapable of building anything. He only knew how to
destroy."

Two days before Aristide stepped down, gunmen armed by his Lavalas Party
broke into Madsen's Haiti Terminal port freight yard, he said,
ransacking the offices to punish him for supporting the political
opposition. It wasn't long before desperate slum dwellers began looting
the shipping containers in the yard, which were filled with food,
clothing and electronics.

In the torrent of reprisals unleashed against his perceived enemies in
ideology, class and color as his power vanished, Aristide succeeded in
sharing the pain of the poor with some of the elite that had never felt
it.

But the strategy of sacking enterprises owned by Aristide's political
opponents promises to only widen the social gap between the industrial
dynasties that have controlled the economy for generations and the
impoverished masses that will have even fewer jobs. As U.S. Marines
patrolling the capital refuse to intervene to halt the looting, the
damage could spread.

Aristide, who departed early Sunday, had long promised a "cleansing
flood" — his party's translation of the Creole word lavalas, whose close
French derivation more accurately means "deluge." The inundation of the
last few days has wiped out the workplaces of thousands and perhaps the
gains of the relatively few blacks who succeeded, under Aristide, in
penetrating the so-called bourgeoisie.

How much longer the attacks on the rich will continue is uncertain, but
the damage has dealt a staggering blow to an economy that was already
the poorest in the Western Hemisphere and spiraling downward. At least
$160 million in property has been destroyed, estimated Maurice
Lafortune, head of the Haitian Chamber of Commerce.

The loss could represent half this devastated nation's private
investment, said importer Sandro Masucchi, whose Honda auto dealership
was looted and burned on the morning of Aristide's departure.

The roots of the mob rampage run deep in Haitian history.

The minuscule population of whites and mulattos — as those of mixed
black-and-white ancestry are called in Haiti — thought to be no more
than 1% of the populace of 8.5 million, has long occupied a
disproportionate position in the equally tiny echelon of the wealthy.

That is a consequence of landownership dating to Haiti's 1804
independence, when some offspring of French colonial masters and African
slaves acquired property amid the panicked exodus of the Europeans after
the slave revolt triumphed. With no redistribution of land, the haves
and have-nots formed along racial lines. Color was so obsessively tied
to status then that Haitians put names to 64 racial mixtures and
assigned each a place on the social hierarchy.

In 1884, British Ambassador Spencer St. John wrote prophetically of the
young state's racial fixation. "There is a marked line drawn between the
black and the mulatto, which is probably the most disastrous
circumstance for the future prosperity of the country."

Those now heading family empires insist that the color issue faded at
the start of the last century, when the same waves of immigration that
brought Irish, Italians and Germans to work in U.S. factories also
infused fresh blood into Haiti. Business deals and marriage crossed
racial lines sooner than in the United States, say the racially mixed
third- and fourth-generation descendants of the immigrants.

During the 30-year dictatorship of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his
son, Jean-Claude, the mulatto industrialists prospered and paid little
heed to either the poverty that afflicted the masses or the repression
of the Duvaliers' political opponents. The elite's protectors and
political delegates were the generals of the Haitian National Army.

When Aristide rose to national prominence from his Catholic pulpit in
the late 1980s, he embraced a socialist ideology equating ownership with
exploitation and encouraged the homeless to build shantytowns on
industrialists' land. He cast factory owners as modern-day enslavers for
the paltry wages they paid, sowing discord in the workplace. Business
owners were so angered that some backed the 1991 military coup that
deposed Aristide.

That purported collusion with the army by a few of the most powerful
families — the Brandts, the Mevs, the Accras — allowed Aristide to taint
the entire industrial class as dictatorship's paymasters. He also
dissolved the army and used jobs in the police force to reward political
patronage, essentially destroying the security institutions and
replacing them with armed bands of hungry street kids.

"The bourgeoisie are the reason Aristide couldn't do anything," said
Katho Laguerre, a 21-year-old Cite Soleil slum dweller, gesturing toward
the hills of Petionville above the capital. "The bourgeoisie have
everything, and we have nothing. That's why Aristide said we could build
houses here, that this was the living room of the people."

Charles Baker, whose apparel empire has been closed and sister's factory
torched, said the former president, unlike his predecessors, used color
to polarize the nation.

"When someone says 'bourgeoisie' in Haiti, they don't mean a rich man
who is black but a rich man who is white or mulatto and belongs to the
opposition," said Baker, a descendant of Europeans and American blacks
who came here in the 1930s. "The opposition is 99% black and of lesser
means than we are, but the image he tried to create was of a
light-skinned elite."

Aristide's use of racial politics forced the business elite to descend
from its splendid isolation and join a broad array of movements, from
independent media to peasant groups to labor unions.

"It's the one good thing he did," author and opposition activist Yannick
Lahens said of Aristide. "Everybody felt so threatened that it brought
us together."

Wealthy businessmen such as Madsen and Andre Apaid, the son of a
Lebanese father and mulatto mother, say the elite has learned a humbling
lesson from the Aristide era, when they were blamed for every social
failure.

"We have to be a society of inclusion, and we have to stay united," said
Apaid, whose telecommunications businesses have proved less vulnerable
to the crowbar-wielding vandals than the holdings of other industrial
leaders. "We have a precious thing in this unity for the first time in
our history. Where else do you see union leaders and business owners
marching together?"

Some opposition leaders, however, remain skeptical of the motivation of
the rich to work for better lives for all Haitians.

"The mentality of the elite hasn't changed yet," said Franckel
Jeanrisca, head of the Peasant Movement of Papaye. "We can't have two
classes — one mulatto and one black."

Haiti's subsistence farmers have long occupied the bottom rung of the
social ladder. Devastating environmental problems have drastically cut
crop yields, leaving them poorer than ever, Jeanrisca said.

His 200,000-strong organization, which once avidly supported Aristide,
entered a "tactical union" with the elite and other factions to drive
the president out, he said. It remains to be seen whether the
industrialists are genuinely committed to national reconciliation, he
added.

Honda dealer Masucchi, whose Italian ancestors arrived after World War
I, is one of many businessmen who contend that they became Aristide
targets not because of their money or light skin but because of their
challenge to Lavalas.

The wrecking crews targeted even small businesses owned by Aristide
opponents, such as Hans Remy's Caribbean Stitches sportswear factory.
The sole enterprise of the young black entrepreneur, its loss will
deprive 250 workers from nearby Cite Soleil of their wages.

Some fear that the security vacuum and the legions of armed thugs left
behind by Aristide will fan the flames of social conflict and feed a
cycle of destruction of capital and jobs, deepening poverty and driving
more Haitians to theft and looting for survival.

Others, such as Madsen, say the current pillaging is the death spasm of
Haiti's history of divide and conquer and that citizens will renew their
respect for law and order once a modicum of stability returns. "I don't
think the people of Cite Soleil have any problem with us. These people
are poor and doing what they can," Madsen said of the looters who had
laid waste to his shipping containers.

"I want to believe this will stop. Please, let me hold on to my
optimism."



--
Dr. David E. Lewis
Vice President
Manchester Trade Ltd.
International Business Advisors
1710 Rhode Island Avenue, NW - Suite 300
Washington, DC 20036
Tel 202-331-9464
Fax 202-785-0376
Email: DavidLewis@ManchesterTrade.com
http://www.ManchesterTrade.com