21031: Esser: Haiti's Occupation by Wilentz

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. E s s e r <torx@joimail.com>

The Nation
http://www.thenation.com

Comment

April 1, 2004

Haiti's Occupation
by Amy Wilentz

The American occupation of Haiti has begun again, now that
Jean-Bertrand Aristide has been neatly pushed out. Again, there are
3,000 foreign troops on Haitian soil. Again, the Haitian premier has
been handpicked by outsiders. And again, the Haitian people have been
excluded from their own governance.

Gérard Latortue, hastily chosen by a team of US-approved Haitian
"wise men," is a modern-day Phillipe Sudre Dartiguenave.
Dartiguenave, who presided over Haiti during the first phase of the
Marine occupation of 1915-1934, was a foreign-imposed caretaker and
figurehead who, like Latortue, had almost no power to govern his own
country. (The last time American troops were in Haiti was in 1994,
when they restored Aristide, a democratically elected president, to
the office from which he had been ousted three years earlier in a
military coup.)

Latortue does not seem to mind the by now almost comic place he will
hold in Haitian history--that of a stock figure, his position of
cheerful, outside-imposed leader having become part of the formula
whenever Haiti changes regimes. Latortue's jolly face is everywhere.
Recently, he made a special trip up to Gonaïves, the first town taken
over by anti-Aristide forces, and was photographed hugging various
thugs who led the small but very effective rebellion. He called them
"freedom fighters," although among their ranks are many well-known
human-rights abusers.

Those who have watched the slow-cooked coup against Aristide over the
past three years have observed with interest that not a single
prominent member of the entrenched opposition to Aristide has been
given a place in the new government. This opposition--made up of
leaders of tiny political parties, former brief presidents, longtime
presidential hopefuls and nongovernmental organization directors--was
coddled, financed and trained in "democracy" by US organizations and
groups funded by the United States. The lack of such a presence in
the new Cabinet could lead to the suspicion that the supposedly
democratic opposition, which for those three years refused all
overtures for negotiation by Aristide and his party, was being used
to foment and mask what was essentially a coup against democracy by
the island's elite, in concert with right-wing elements of the
Republican Party. (Latortue has also pointedly not included anyone
from Aristide's party in his government.)

The opposition whines now about how it has not been welcomed into the
bosom of the new regime, but if you successfully oppose a
democratically elected government (and Aristide made repeated if not
wholehearted offers of inclusion), you can't expect that the
autocrats you've empowered will then include you in. In recent years,
puffed up with importance, this opposition effectively ended all
ability of the elected government to run Haiti and certainly
contributed a little bit extra to Aristide's slide away from the rule
of law. Only now are opposition figures beginning to see what their
refusals have wrought. Useful idiots are not often needed after the
real goal has been achieved, which in this case was simply the ouster
of Aristide and the return to the Haitian status quo.

One of those whom Latortue has included in his Cabinet is Hérard
Abraham, the new interior minister and a former general in the
Haitian army, which was disbanded by Aristide upon his return to
power in 1994. Abraham supports the re-establishment of the Haitian
army, which historically has been the instrument through which the
Haitian elite maintained its hold on the country and ruled it as a
kind of kleptocracy. It was this army that ousted Aristide in 1991,
little more than half a year after he took office.

Meanwhile, CARICOM--the umbrella organization of the Caribbean
nations--has bravely condemned the ouster of Aristide, and the
deposed president himself is staying with his family in Jamaica,
where he remains uncharacteristically silent. The government of P.J.
Patterson, while showing signs of loyalty to a freely elected
Caribbean counterpart, also does not want trouble with the United
States, and has apparently asked for Aristide's silence in return for
hospitality.

Aristide doesn't play by the rules--this is one of the reasons he
became intolerable to his American foes. He flirted with Castro and
welcomed hundreds of Cuban doctors to Haiti; he spoke on behalf of
the poor and outcast; he attacked the elite, by name and vociferously
(not that he was much of a leftist in economic practice). In the end,
having been summarily ousted, he proved his lack of respect for
diplomatic and international norms by ranting in cell phone calls to
the international media about the Americans' "modern-day kidnapping"
of a democratically elected leader.

Really not very gentlemanly.

In 1991, when Aristide was inaugurated, it seemed that Haiti had come
through its darkest days and that a new phase was beginning. That was
incorrect. Today, the army is to be reinstated, the elite holds the
reins of power and a Franco-American occupation patrols the streets.
The Haitian newsreel is being played in reverse. If only we could
assume the best, in a sort of USAID-induced hallucinatory fantasy:
that the Americans would be wise trustees, that Haitian technocrats
would be elected in free balloting and run the country honestly, that
the occupation would remain only long enough to build roads and
bridges and clinics and schools. But this, unfortunately, is not what
recent events foretell.


about
Amy Wilentz

Amy Wilentz, an associate professor of journalism at Columbia
University, writes the monthly "In Cold Type" feature for The Nation.
She has worked for The New Yorker and for Time magazine, and is the
author of the award-winning The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier
(Simon & Schuster, 1989). Her novel Martyrs' Crossing (Simon &
Schuster, 2001) won an American Academy of Arts and Letters Prize.

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