21234: Tortora: On retuning from Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Vivian and PatTortora <vtortora@capecod.net>

You can see it in their eyes, in the way they nervously look around, in the
way they wring their hands. These are people in hiding, in fear of their
lives, wondering if they could trust all these Americans asking all these
questions. They have names like Jean Marie, Esperance, Antoine, and Yolande.
(I use only first names for security reasons) They are Haitians, many of
whom have suffered through yet another "uprooting" (dechoukej in Creole,
Haiti's native tongue, similar to a coup d'tat ) This was the 33rd time
since Haiti gained it's independence in 1804 that a government in Haiti had
been violently overthrown, and the second democratically elected government
since 1991 to be removed in this fashion. Many Haitians call what happened
to their government a "coupknapping" followed by an American 'intervasion".
Haitians are very clever with descriptive words and phrases. I say most,
because even though President Jean Bertrand Aristide has come under
considerable criticism since he was elected to his second term as President,
most of the poor, who is his base and encompasses 90% of the population,
still support him. But no matter what side of the political spectrum
Haitians verbalize they are on, the majority believes he was "removed" by
force and extra constitutionally.

 Haiti has only been a democracy since December, 1990 when it successfully
held it's first free and fair elections. In September, 1991, President Jean
Bertrand Aristide fell to the violent forces of the former military rulers.
In 1994, when he was returned to power, he disbanded the army the day he
took office. Before Aristide, the military was used to inflict terror on the
population. The 1991 coup was perpetrated by angered ex-military officers
with the support of members of the elite and business classes. The Haitians
call the several subsequent military governments "Duvalierism without
Duvalier.

 I have just returned from my fourth trip to Haiti, this time as an
independent member of an emergency fact-finding twenty-member observer
delegation coordinated by Haiti Reborn/Quixote Center. Ours was the first
delegation to be in Haiti since the "removal" of the President on February
29th. Haiti Reborn will be publicly issuing an official report of this trip
shortly. I want to emphasize that these observations are my personal ones.

We met with an average of three groups or individuals daily from March 23rd
to April 1st., including representatives of labor unions, human rights
groups, victims of violence, members of the overthrown regime, International
Red Cross officials, Organization of American States, United States Agency
for International Development, U.S. Embassy personnel, and the interim
president Boniface Alexandre, formerly a supreme court justice, Many working
class Haitians would only speak to us off the record, as they were concerned
about reprisals from the political opposition in their country. Haiti
continues to experience politically motivated violence every day.

Although it is difficult to sort fact from fiction in Haiti, particularly
since all of the radio stations that were sympathetic to the former Aristide
government were forced off the air, one of the facts that I am confident in
is the role U.S. foreign policy has played in the destabilization of Haiti's
nascent democracy. Historically, the U.S has had a difficult time
recognizing the first independent black republic in its hemisphere, when
Haiti's slave population defeated Napoleon's army and declared themselves
free in 1804. It was not until 1862 that Washington established relations
with Haiti. After all, how could we accept a free black country in our
hemisphere when we were a slave holding society ourselves?

Since that time, and especially since the U.S. Marines occupied Haiti from
1915 to 1934 our policy has been to control the political process in Haiti
for the advantage of  "American owned businesses and U.S. agencies rather
than directly benefiting poor people in foreign countries" (see Washington
Office on Haiti, Democracy Intervention in Haiti, March 1994) As per USAID's
mission statement, it is a foreign affairs agency committed to "continued
American economic and moral leadership".

 Why not just let Haiti live? After all, they don't want very much. As
Aristide said in his past, his aim was to move Haiti "from despair to
dignified poverty", a very modest goal. But USAID's democracy Enhancement
Project, as per it's project paper of 1993 obtained through a Freedom of
Information Act request, states "Given current sensitivities, the new
relationships (with Haiti) must be approached judiciously to mitigate
against possible"anti-american" backlash. At the same time, we must not be
timid in the pursuit of key foreign policy objectives which our project is
designed to serve". As this and other documents show, U.S. foreign aid has
many preconditions attached, and I am not talking about legitimate
accountability requirements. It is used as a tool to manipulate poor
countries into creating a climate that will be conducive to corporate
investment in low wage enterprises and to compromise the independence of
these countries to serve the geopolitical and economic interests of the U.S.
Wake up America. Recent U.S. manipulations in Haiti appear to again play out
the U.S. policy first articulated in 1948 by George Keenan, then head policy
planner for the U.S. State Department. He wrote " we have about 50% of the
world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population.In this situation, we cannot
fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming
period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to
maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our
national security. We should cease to talk about vague and .unreal
objectives such as human rights, the raising of the standard of living.the
day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power
concepts. The less we are hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."

We are waging low-intensity conflict in our hemisphere. We should be better
than that. Our moral heritage demands that we be better than that.



Patrick Tortora