21318: Esser: The American Learning Zone (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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

CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.org

April 14, 2004

Return to Haiti
The American Learning Zone
By TOM REEVES

I returned this month from Haiti as part of the first independent
U.S. observer delegation since the removal on February 29 of
President Jean Bertrand Aristide. More than a decade ago, I helped
organize the New England Observer Delegations to Haiti -- nine
diverse groups of prominent Boston area people who went to Haiti
after the first coup d'etat against President Aristide. We witnessed
a reign of terror by the Haitian military, in which at least 3,000
democracy activists were slaughtered. We also witnessed the almost
universal jubilation of the Haitian urban and rural poor (85% of the
population) on Aristide's return.

This time I went to see the results of another coup against Aristide,
one clearly planned, funded and orchestrated by the U.S. I felt a
terrible déjà vu: massive violence against the poor, especially
against Aristide's Lavalas movement; the very same paramilitary and
former Haitian army officers committing the atrocities. Convicted
mass murderers acting as judges, administrators and police. Despite
intimidation and brutal attacks on the poorest neighborhoods, we saw
overwhelming support for Aristide among the poor, and violent hatred
of Aristide by the tiny elite. A crucial difference was the attitude
of the professionals and many intellectuals. They expressed a sense
of betrayal by Aristide, and joy at his fall. Yet one of them told
me, "The Haitian people elected Aristide, and only they should have
been able to take him down."

We heard from people who witnessed night--time raids against Lavalas.
In one case in the poor neighborhood of Bel Air, we were told U.S.
helicopters came with blinding lights, heavily armed U.S. fired into
crowds, killing between five and twenty persons (March 17). Members
of our group interviewed relatives of victims and eyewitnesses to
this attack. In case after case, we were told that known criminals
and former army men were incorporated into the police. They harassed
or beat Lavalas supporters and hounded for "arrest" former government
officials.

A stream of people came to see us from their hiding places at great
risk to tell us this. Jeremy was one. Now 21, he met Aristide at age
11. He worked for Children's Radio (Radio Ti Moun) funded by
Aristide's foundation. Jeremy tearfully recalled the past month: He
fled the radio station as it was trashed. He was chased and saw his
young companions beaten. He ran from his aunt's house as three former
military came looking for him. They shot his aunt and she died on the
way to the hospital. This happened a week before we arrived. Jeremy
had been afraid to go to her funeral.

A woman came to us from the community group, Ai Bobo Brav, victims of
the last coup. I'd met her last March when she told me, "Every
Haitian baby knows Bush's game." Back then she'd forecast the coup.
Now she was living it. "While your President was sleeping in his bed,
they kidnapped our president. They dragged him off. It was so
disrespectful. It hurt me so. She wept.

Driving back to Port Au Prince from Jacmel on Friday, I saw a cow
munching on garbage by a sign in English advertising a school. The
sign said, "Welcome to the American Learning Zone." The U.S. State
Department point man on Haiti, Roger Noriega (also involved in the
Iran--Contra plot in Nicaragua) told an audience in Washington last
year that Cuba and Venezuela should pay close attention to events in
Haiti. One of the first acts by U.S. marines after landing in Haiti
this year may have been to establish a perimeter around Mole St.
Nicolas, the peninsula opposite Guantanamo, jutting into the narrow
strait between Haiti and Cuba. Local residents reported to Haitian
news media that U.S. military structures were being built on the site
long sought by the U.S. as a companion base to Guantanamo.

What interests provoke such an expensive, brutal lesson in Haiti?
Haiti has no oil. Of course there are thousands of sweat shop workers
who toil for less than a dollar a day. Of course there are big US
companies that supply rice, wheat and other staples supplanting
Haitian rice and cassava, so that nearly 70% of the food consumed by
Haitians must be imported, mostly from the U.S. This for a country
that once provided more wealth to France than all its other New World
colonies! And then there is Aristide, the little Liberation Theology
priest who preached a message of conflict between the tiny elite and
the desperately poor majority. Haiti is so close to Cuba -- that
other obsession of U.S. foreign policy. One of Aristide's first acts
was to establish ties with Cuba. More than 500 Cuban doctors remain
in Haiti, helping the poorest communities. They must be remembering
Grenada, where a U.S. occupation twenty years ago ousted Cuban
doctors. Most of all, Haiti sits in what the U.S. sees as it's back
yard, it's playground, it's lap. Upstart, uncontrolled forces there
are just too close to home. So -- Venezuela and Cuba and others
beware: Haiti is the American (imperial) learning zone.

HAITI SHOULD BE A LEARNING ZONE FOR SOLIDARITY ACTIVISTS, TOO

Haiti should be a learning zone for all Americans who would
understand and counter the imperial U.S. policy of intervention
world--wide. If the U.S. can get away with covert and overt support
for a "rebellion" in Haiti led by former military and para--military,
many of whom have been convicted of murders and other human rights
violations dating to the last coup, it will be psyched for similar
operations in Venezuela and perhaps even in Cuba. The evidence is
clear: U.S. weapons (intended for the Dominican army) were smuggled
into Haiti by former Haitian military and para--military, many of
whom were trained and long funded by the CIA and other U.S. agents.
U.S. money, both government and private, flowed into the coffers of
NGOs attached to the "opposition" -- the right--wing Convergence and
the neo--liberal "Group of 184," led by the Haitian business elite
(including the sweat--shop owners) and widely publicized by the
ultra--conservative "Haiti Democracy Project"(HDP) in Washington,
D.C. Among the funders and organizers of the opposition were the IRI
and NDI, the international NGOs closely tied to the U.S. Republican
and Democrat Parties respectively. IRI and HDP operatives were
present at meetings organized by FRAPH (a CIA--funded para--military
group) and former Haitian military in the Dominican Republic -- at
which Dominican authorities claimed plans were laid a year ago for a
Haitian coup.

In Jacmel, we met students, women and union organizers who had formed
specifically anti--Aristide groups to counter the existing
organizations in Jacmel -- for the purpose of joining the
demonstrations led by the Convergence and 184 to demand the ouster of
Aristide earlier this year. Pierre J.G.C. Gestion, a leader of the
MHDR (Haitian Movement for Rural Development) proudly asserted his
connection to USAID, the State Department Democracy Enhancement
program and the NDI. "They trained us and taught us how to organize,
and we organized the groups you see here to demand the corrupt
government of Aristide be brought down."

We also met representatives in Port au Prince of SOFA, CONAM,
ENFOFANM and other progressive women's groups, as well as Batay
Ouvriye, the rightly heralded support group for the Free Trade Zone
and other mostly women workers in the assembly industries (sweat
shops). These women's and labor groups were strongly critical of
Aristide's government and the Lavalas movement. During the past few
months, they openly called for Aristide's removal, and they chose not
to denounce the opposition's "zero option" strategy of
non--cooperation and non--compromise. Yet I heard no answer to our
question: "What did you think would happen if Aristide was forced to
leave by the right--wing rebels or by a U.S. occupation?" I believe
these groups did not ask themselves that question.

I think they were blinded by their feeling that Aristide had betrayed
his progressive mandate. A good bit of their analysis of Aristide's
record was right -- though not all. Aristide did accept a compromise
when he returned. He did include, at U.S. insistence, elements of the
former army and even Duvalierists in his regime. Yet the government
put in place by this recent coup is far worse: it is full of such
Macoutes, and worse -- convicted mass murderers. It has already
militarized the police and is preparing the return of an
unreconstructed Haitian army -- the instrument of U.S. and elite
oppression in Haiti since it's creation by the U.S. at it's first
invasion in 1915.

Aristide also compromised terribly on the issues of structural
adjustment -- he did put in place the first Free Trade Zone, and lay
plans for a second one, a bitter insult to Haitian labor. He did
begin privatization. He did not protect Haitian products adequately.
Yet he did not compromise on everything. He continued to agitate for
a better minimum wage, against the sweat shop owners. He resisted
most of the demanded privatization. He held out for collective
bargaining rights for the Free Trade Zone workers. He continued to
make small steps toward agrarian reform. As Paul Farmer and others
have shown, he made greater strides in fighting AIDS and promoting
literacy than any previous government. The Latortue government from
the start has been wholly dominated by free trade enthusiasts,
neoliberal theoreticians and the worst of the sweatshop owners and
other business elite.

The women's groups told us bluntly that the situation under Aristide
was the worst in Haiti's history -- worse than Duvalier and worse
that Haiti during the 1991--1994 coup period. Yet I met these groups
during that time. They were in hiding then, terrified by the very
same elements now roaming Haiti freely, committing atrocities now as
then. When U.S. and other international delegations visited them a
year ago, under Aristide's rule, they functioned openly. They did not
appear terrorized. Their most concrete criticisms were that when they
demonstrated against the government -- during the same period as the
sometimes violent demonstrations orchestrated by the 184 and the
Convergence, and coming during a time when it was clear that former
military and para--military (the CIA--funded FRAPH) were entering the
country and preparing a coup -- police stood by as people they called
Lavalas threw bottles of urine and stones at them. All of that is
terrible -- and should not have gone without a severe criticism of
Aristide and Lavalas. But it cannot be compared to the brutal
onslaught by the Fraph and former army officers in Gonaives, Cap
Haitien and elsewhere after Feb. 5. Aristide's alleged abuses pale
beside the documented reports of the "rebels" slaughtering police and
Lavalas and mutilating their bodies; of summary executions; of groups
of Lavalas herded into containers and dumped into the sea.

Perhaps worst of all, I listened again (as I had a year ago) to the
litany of abuses the NCHR (National Coalition for Haitian Rights)
says it documented against officials of the Aristide government and
the Lavalas movement. They rightly protested cases like that of the
journalist Jean Dominique and a dozen other high profile attacks on
opposition activists and as many as three opposition journalists. Yet
during the two years leading up to this latest coup, they adamantly
refused to investigate now--verified allegations of murders, arson
and bombings against the government and Lavalas by former military
and FRAPH. They scoffed at the alleged coup attempt at the National
Palace in December of 2001, though Jodel Chamblain now boasts that
was an initial coup attempt.

Although they were the only human rights group in the country
adequately funded and having trained monitors throughout Haiti, the
NCHR became completely partisan: anti--Lavalas, anti--Aristide. This
is simply not proper for a group calling itself a "Haitian Rights"
organization. During the final month before the coup, they abandoned
any pretext of impartiality, joining calls for the ouster of
Aristide, without reference to the means. After Feb. 29, they
continue to site abuses by "chimere," whom they call simply "Aristide
gangs," without documenting the connections. Though they told our
group they had "heard about" violence against unarmed Lavalas,
including the possible complicity of U.S. marines in the Bel Air
incident, the NCHR said they "lacked access" to the pro--Lavalas
shanty--towns. Of course they lacked access: they lacked any shred of
credibility as a human rights monitor.

We also heard from PAPDA (Platform to Advocate for Alternative
Development) which had called for Aristide's ouster on the grounds of
his compromises with "U.S. imperialism," as well as corruption and
human rights violations. PAPDA had functioned openly in its offices
under Aristide, right up to and through this year's coup, though at
least one PAPDA member was killed, allegedly by "chimere." Camille
Chalmers, PAPDA's director, said, "This is a sad day for Haiti. But
it was the people who overturned Aristide. The U.S. only came in to
shape the results, as they always do....Right now, the population has
regained some hope. This hope will go against the marines.
Confrontations are already happening."

Though the current government is extremely pro--neo--liberal, a PAPDA
coalition leader on environmental issues, Yves Wainwright, has
accepted the post of Minister of the Environment. "The current
political situation has not been defined," Chalmers told us. "If the
Provisional Government were to develop a logical program it would
conflict with U.S. interests. Under Aristide, we had less and less
space to organize and demonstrate -- we were repressed. As long as we
can demonstrate against the military occupation now, we will retain a
tiny space." Together, some 40 similar anti--Aristide "left" groups
have formed the RDP (Popular Democratic Regroupment) to put forward
an alternative opposition program to the government, even while some
work within that government.

One man I hoped to see, but did not, was Chavannes Jean--Baptiste.
Chavannes was at times very close to Aristide -- serving as his
spokesperson when he returned after the coup. Chavannes is founder
and leader of the MPP (a large peasant group in the Central Plateau).
Shortly after Aristide chose Preval for his successor, Chavannes
announced his break with Aristide (there was indeed an ugly
confrontation between Chavannes and Lavalas activists in Mirebalais).
By the 2000 election, Chavannes openly embraced his former worst
enemies, and joined the Convergence. Later Chavannes joined the more
palatable, but clearly neo--liberal, Group of 184. MPP has now
endorsed its "Social Contract," put forward by elite business groups.

A peasant from Mirabalais in the Central Plateau told me he had
evidence that most of the weapons and men moved from the Dominican
Republic to start the rebellions in Gonaives and Cap Haitien in early
February, came through Chavannes' turf. "No way could that have been
done without his active support." Chavannes is said to be considering
a position in the de facto government -- as minister for peasant
affairs. I was with Chavannes and his mother when they wept on seeing
the ruins and vandalism at their offices in Papay on their return
after the first coup in 1994. That damage was done by the very same
para--military and military who now occupy much of the country.
Another dissident peasant whom I met told of Chavannes' embracing and
throwing a feast for Chamblain, the convicted murderer and FRAPH
member who "liberated" Hinche, the MPP base. Chamblain now sits in
Cap Haitien, acting as "judge" condemning and punishing "criminals"
and "traitors." Such alliances may be -- as the civil society leader
told us -- just strange bedfellows in wartime, but on a personal
level, they are hard to understand.

International human rights organizations, especially Human Rights
Watch and Journalists Without Borders, and to a lesser extent Amnesty
International, have taken the NCHR reports uncritically and failed to
develop other impartial human rights contacts in Haiti. Progressive
funders like Grassroots International and NGOs in Canada, the US and
Europe also listened uncritically to their "partners" and funded
groups in Haiti like PAPDA, SOFA, Batay Ouvriye and MPP.

The primary lesson to be learned for funders and NGOS, and for all
solidarity activists, is that solidarity must first of all be with
the people of Haiti -- by the assertion of their will by voting, as
Haitians did for Aristide in 2000 (the OAS and international NGOs
certified that at the time). Beyond that, international funding and
solidarity groups (and here the criticism is equally valid for those
who were wholly supportive of Lavalas without critique) must not put
on blinders when they visit Haiti. They must listen critically to all
sides. They must watch for concrete evidence of the mass base of the
organizations they fund -- and evidence that the rank and file feel
as the "leaders" do.

It remains to be seen whether the U.S. empire will gain more from its
exercise in the learning zone of Haiti, or the international
solidarity movement. Let us hope for the latter -- since the next
learning zones may come sooner than we expect, especially if the Bush
regime lives through its debacle in Iraq and survives the November
election.

Material for this article was compiled partly from observations and
interviews in conjunction with the Emergency Haiti Observation
Mission, a group of 24 diverse people from throughout the U.S. and
Canada, coordinated by the Quixote Center in Maryland. The ideas
expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
.