21539: Esser: Haiti-an event horizon (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Trinidad & Tobago Express
http://www.trinidadexpress.com

April 25th 2004

Haiti-an event horizon
by Selwyn Ryan

In two previous columns (Sunday Express April 11th and 18th), we
looked at the ongoing political crisis in Haiti against the
background of that country's political history and culture ,and
sought to locate Jean-Bertrand Aristide within that matrix. But there
are many dimensions to the Aristide phenomenon, and much controversy
exists about his role in Haiti.

There are always political personalities about whom there is more
than the usual degree of controversy. Some personalities polarize
their society, and consensus about their achievements is often
difficult to come by. Eric Williams was one such personality as was
Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier. Fidel Castro and Aristide are also of
this genre. In this our concluding column about Haiti, we take a
brief look at Duvalier and then examine in greater detail the ongoing
debate about the Aristide phenomenon.

Duvalier came to power in 1957 projecting himself as the intellectual
leader of an indigenous movement opposed to US cultural imperialism
and racism. He was also a declared enemy of Haiti's mulatto elite and
their social pretensions. Duvalier remained in power for 17 years in
a country in which few leaders serve out their terms of office .Most
have either been assassinated or forcibly removed from the National
Palace as Aristide was. That he survived for as long as he did was a
function of the fact that he was not only prepared to use force and
fraud, but also race and religion to hypnotise and pacify the Haitian
peasantry.

Duvalier used voudoun, which he termed Haiti's "most original
contribution to the world", as well as Catholicism to silence dissent
and mobilise support for his regime. One of the texts in Duvalier's
Catechism of the Revolution reads as follows:

Our Doc, who art in the National Palace For Life, hallowed be Thy
name by present and future generations. Thy will be done in
Port-au-Prince and in the countryside. Give us this day our new
Haiti, and never forgive the trespasses of those traitors who spit on
our country each day. Lead them into temptation, and poisoned by
their own venom, deliver them from no evil.

Many supported Duvalier because he glorified blackness and challenged
the pretensions of Haiti's mulatto elite; others were appalled at his
wanton violations of human rights and his ideological indecencies. As
one Haitian intellectual, Rene Depectro, observed, "Haiti at the time
of Duvalier is a laboratory where newly decolonized countries can
study how our societies produce their own barbarities and monsters."
Looking at the Haitian experience, Eric Williams would express thanks
that the "Westminster model had helped Trinidad and Tobago avoid
producing its own barbarities and monsters."

Aristide has likewise been the object of wildly differing
assessments. He is regarded as a political mystic by some of his
supporters and as a bloodthirsty monster by his enemies. The
narratives and counter narratives that one now hears about Aristide
are echoes of what one heard in 1991 when he was first overthrown.
Aristide was accused of being an autocrat and a tyrant. He was
likewise accused of being a "murderer and a psycopath," and of being
"mentally unstable and untrustworthy."

 From his place of exile in Caracas , Aristide denied that he was
guilty of the charges that were being levelled against him. As he
complained, "reports that our Government incited the people to
violence or revenge have no basis in reality. Not one political
assassination occurred during our administration. Not one political
prisoner was jailed. No boat filled with frightened political
refugees fled Haiti for US shores." He also denied that he had
threatened his political enemies with "necklaces" as burning tires
were termed in Haiti and South Africa.

Some observers concede that Aristide had rhetorically attacked the
rich, the church hierarchy, the army, the macoutes and others who had
supported Duvalier, but deny that he had used or encouraged physical
violence against them. Amnesty International documented twenty-six
human rights violations which took place during Aristide's
administration. Most were said to have been committed by the army.

The US media however gave the world an alternative impression, viz.,
that Aristide was a man who was medically unfit to govern, someone
who had hijacked Haitian democracy. Howard French, the New York Times
correspondent in Haiti during the period, unintentionally provided an
excellent explanation of the US policy in respect of Aristide and the
Haitian army when he observed that "despite much blood on the army's
hands, United States diplomats consider it a vital counterweight to
Father Aristide, whose class struggle rhetoric threatened or
antagonised traditional power centers at home and abroad."

Fast forward to 2004 and we find a continuation of the same
controversies about Aristide and about who or what was responsible
for the current crisis.

Ironically, Aristide is attacked by both "right" and "left" wing
elements in Haiti and in the Haitian diaspora. While the Haitian
elite accuses him of every social sin, radical elements allege that
he had capitulated to the Haitian bourgeoisie. It is also said that
he frustrated the development of grassroots institutions in Haiti. As
a Haitian newsletter (Konba) complained editorially, "Lavalas
(Aristide's Movement) used a number of militias and gangs to spread
confusion and to eradicate popular organisations. The regime also
used drugs, corruption, theft and extortion from street merchants to
confuse and demoralise the masses". It is also alleged that the US
had damaging information about his drug dealing which it has
threatened to expose if he pushes his defiance too far.

Aristide has been accused of being engaged in a phony "kissing game"
with the bourgeoisie with whom it is said he has had too extended a
honeymoon. The claim is made that he ritualistically attacked but
never really sought to dispossess the upper classes. Indeed, it is
said that he himself had become one of the wealthiest members of the
bourgeoisie. This element has expressed regret that Aristide had been
"surgically removed" before the people had been given a chance to
settle with him, and that justice is yet to be done. In sum, those on
Aristide's left insist that he is no Patrice Lumumba or Salvador
Allende and that the claim that he is in that mould, is more myth
than reality. One critic has conceded that Aristide will continue to
exert an enormous influence on the peoples' consciousness in as much
as the Haitian state does not have the means to solve any of the
problems to which he paid lip service".

It is difficult for those of us who are not on the spot to know just
what is true or mythical about Aristide or about the role that the
Americans played in his ouster. Thus the need for that inquiry that
Caricom is demanding.We note that the interim Prime minister has
dropped Aristide's demand that France pay reparations to Haiti for
the money which it extorted in 1824 and has expressed the hope that
France will undertake development projects which the country needs.
Some members of the US policy making establishment have also repeated
ancient promises about a Marshall Plan for Haiti which no one however
takes seriously. Yet other neoconservatives are saying that Haiti is
a "diseased" or "failed" state which is "strategically useless" to
the US and possibly beyond resuscitation unless it privatises its
state sector and fully embraces free trade, policies that Aristide
was unwilling to undertake.

All of these issues need to be fully ventilated before Caricom
decides what it will do next in respect of Haiti. We seem to have
made our decision to admit Haiti to full membership of Caricom before
we had done a due diligence assessment of its political and social
system or because, like the calypsonian, we felt sorry that we had
ignored Haiti's plight over the years. Kofi Anan has expressed the
hope that Haiti will soon become a "functioning "democracy. While we
share this wish, we need to be realistic .It is not going to happen
soon. We perhaps need to heed the advice of TP Allman when he wrote
that "Haiti is to this hemisphere what black holes are to outer
space; venture there and you cross an event horizon."
.