21428: (Arthur) Fatton: No ray of hope for native Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Tttnhm@aol.com

Fatton: No ray of hope for native Haiti

>From the April 9-22, 2004 Vol. 34, Issue of uva online

By Elizabeth Kiem

Robert Fatton Jr. is much in demand these days. For the past two months, the
armed revolt that toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power has kept
Haitian politics in the headlines worldwide. Fatton, the Haitian-born
chairman of U.Va.’s Department of Politics, is regularly quoted under those
headlines. On a typical day last month, his views could be found in dispatches from The
New York Times, The Washington Post, the Irish Times, the Australian
Broadcasting Corp., National Public Radio and Reuters.

“I don’t think it’s that they like me so much,” joked Fatton about being
courted by the media. “But there are not very many [Haiti scholars]. You can
count them on two hands.”

Fatton said that attention to Haiti in the press is crisis-driven, as is the
U.S. government’s interest in the country. But while he makes himself
available for the media, Fatton says he feels his expertise is less appreciated by
Washington policy-makers.

“Those are irrelevant consultations,” he said of meetings with the Bush
administration’s point-men on Haitian affairs, who are famously conservative and
anti-Aristide. Fatton said he would have advised U.S. officials to seek more
compromises from the opposition in Haiti before assisting in Aristide’s removal
from the country.

He said the ouster of the populist priest Aristide and his replacement by a
nonpartisan government, headed by technocrat Gerard Latortue, is unlikely to
change Haiti’s fortune. Without more reliable commitment and financial
assistance from the international community, he said, there is little chance for Haiti
to overcome its poverty and political instability.

Moreover, Fatton is emphatic in his belief that the majority of Haitians
still support Aristide, despite the broken promises and corruption associated with
his administration.

“The very poor don’t recognize themselves in the opposition. … I wouldn’t
want to be in the position of the prime minister,” he said.

As expressed in his 2002 book, “Haiti’s Predatory Republic: The Unending
Transition to Democracy,” Fatton’s outlook for his homeland is bleak.

“When you look at Haiti, you have a political crisis, you have an economic
disaster and an ecological catastrophe. Then you have a moral crisis. All of
them are linked to each other … so [overcoming these problems is] a huge task.”

Fatton was raised among the Haitian intellectual elite during the successive
dictatorships of Francois Duvalier and son, Jean-Claude. He recalled a sense
of security during his youth, interrupted by bouts of political upheaval,
during which his family left the country to live in Europe. His parents, now
retired, are living in Haiti, but Fatton long ago chose to become a member of the
“diaspo.”

“It’s not the lifestyle I would want,” he said of his decision not to live
in Haiti, with its stark demarcation of classes, and where the elite now employ
private security and erect physical barriers against the impoverished
majority.

“If I wanted to go to the places I used to go 30 years ago, I would be a dead
man,” he said. But, he added, the police state of the Duvalier reign was
equally unpalatable.

“I always felt absolutely disgusted. That’s why I left. I can’t cope with
the social structure. It’s something that to me is repugnant.”

Fatton left Haiti permanently in 1973. After studying at the University of
Paris, he enrolled in Goshen College in Indiana and then received a Ph.D. from
Notre Dame. U.Va. offered him a teaching position in 1981, and he became
department chairman in 1996.

In addition to his study of Haiti, Fatton is well known for his scholarship
as an Africanist. He has written about civil society in Senegal and South
Africa and draws many comparisons between the restive socio-political climates of
Haiti and many African nations.

Fatton noted that even as Haiti struggles through another political power
struggle, the republic is celebrating its bicentennial. He said the leaders of
the 1804 revolt against the French are in part responsible for the country’s
history of authoritarianism.

“Those fellows, whatever their greatness in terms of being slaves and rising
up against the slave owners, were nonetheless extremely authoritarian and saw
themselves as messianic figures. That’s very much what you have now.”

Fatton is married to Cynthia Hoehler-Fatton, a professor of African and
Caribbean religions at U.Va. They have a young son, Luke, for whom Fatton has great
ambitions.

“When he was born, I put a soccer ball next to him,” said the self-described
“soccer nut.”

He said his passion for the great Latin pastime dates from the day in 1974
when, as a rookie sportscaster, he called the winning game that qualified Haiti
for the World Cup.

“It was carnivale for three days in December,” he recalled.

Fatton plans to step down from chairmanship of his department this summer and
take a yearlong sabbatical to complete a new book. He said he is looking
forward to handing over the administrative responsibilities to his colleague
Sidney Milkis, the James Hart Professor of Politics.

“I’m not keeping the Haitian tradition of trying to be a leader for life,”
he said with a laugh.


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Solidarity with the Haitian people's struggle for justice, participatory
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