24347: Simidor: Follow-up on a previous post (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: daniel simidor <danielsimidor@yahoo.com>

Dear reader:

This Letter to the Editor remains unanswered more than
a week after it was sent to the powers- that-be at the
“leftist”  NACLA: A Report on the Americas.  A few
years ago that would have been it for the unsanctioned
writer, but fortunately today and thanks to the
internet, one can engage interlocutors well beyond the
editorial confines of the “petits maîtres à penser” of
any given publication.  Please feel free to forward
the open letter below to anybody on  your contact
lists.  With thanks,

Daniel Simidor

-------------------------------------------------

Dear NACLA Editor:

I was so positively impressed with Jane Regan’s
article, "Haiti: In Bondage to History?" (NACLA:
Report on the Americas, Jan/Feb 2005), that I wrote to
all my friends and contacts, and posted an
enthusiastic note on a Haitian internet discussion
group encouraging people to read it. News of Haiti in
the English-language press is so polarized between
what is available in the mainstream media and what
passes for truth in an alternative press enthralled by
Aristide’s sophisticated and well-funded lobby, that
her balanced article was like a breath of fresh air. I
was later saddened but not surprised to learn through
the grapevine of a Lavalas letter writing campaign to
discredit her. I surmise all these letters will
essentially say the same thing: that Lavalas people
are being massacred, and that the only solution is to
return Aristide to power.

In reality, while there is a lot of violence in Haiti
today, much of it caused by Lavalas armed gangs intent
on making the country ungovernable, there is no
evidence of widespread or systematic repression of
Lavalas members by the interim government. In fact,
Lavalas could predictably return to power in this
year’s elections, with Gerard Jean-Juste, easily the
most charismatic and personable political figure on
the scene, as their candidate. Sensing the danger,
Aristide immediately summoned Rev. Jean-Juste to
Pretoria and forbade him and Lavalas from taking part
in the elections. Once again Aristide had said one
thing when he meant something else. To Mbeki, the
African Union and the Brazilian government, he spoke
warmly of dialogue, reconciliation, "Ubuntu" and
peace. But in practice, he’s boycotting the elections,
he compels his followers to oppose any solution other
than his return to power, and he refuses to disown the
Lavalas armed gangs that are terrorizing the people in
the slums.

If Aristide has decided to fight it out, why doesn’t
he return to Haiti where his presence could lend some
political direction to the violence of his militias?
Malcolm X said no to exile and returned from abroad
late in 1964 to face almost certain death in the US.
Lumumba abandoned the protection of the Ghanean troops
at his compound in Leopoldville, to kiss the face of
his infant daughter who had died without his ever
seeing her. But Aristide’s way is that of the weasel
in the bush, the banker who moves money around
anonymously. He doesn’t want to fight; he has too many
assets to live for. He merely wants to make the
country ungovernable, the people’s lives even more
miserable, so that the so-called international
community will once again return him to power.

Regan’s article provides a complex and fair assessment
of both Lavalas and the current regime, and this is
what some people want to stifle. But what the skillful
Lavalas propagandists cannot elude is the tremendous
waste of the country’s meager resources under their
rule. Aristide spent more money on lobbying and on
hiring a band of US mercenaries to protect his person
than his government spent on the departments of
agriculture and public health combined. Millions more
were spent buying off the gangs that passed for
Lavalas grassroots groups. Lavalas officials – the
"Big Eaters," as people called them – paraded in
$70,000 luxury cars while in my native "Far West"
people were reduced to boiling the roots of long gone
trees to stave off hunger. The rulebook for corrupt
dictators calls for showy public works to siphon off
millions and build monuments to their names. Aristide
thus built several schools around the country but
somehow forgot to provide funds in the budget to
operate them. He also built an impressive number of
public squares around the capital to bear his and his
wife’s names.

Aside from these grand accomplishments, Aristide’s
legacy has been one of utter mismanagement and
corruption. But even more grievous for the future of
the country has been the destruction of the
independent grassroots movement that flourished10 to
15 years ago. Under Lavalas’ rule, the notion of
autonomy was not tolerated. Any group that was not
loyal to Aristide’s person was to be bought off or
hounded out of existence. Even today, armed Lavalas
gangs maintain their hegemony over the slums in the
capital. Other forces can only operate there in
hiding. The case of Weber Adrien, a well-known
community activist independent of Lavalas who was
captured in broad daylight by Lavalas militias, put
"on trial" for "treason," then shot to death and set
on fire, is one among many.

The people in Haiti do not lament Aristide’s exile.
The challenges there are far more endemic and
critical: what to do about the slums where half the
population lives in abject poverty and fear; how to
develop the country’s productive capacity, in a
context of bloodthirsty globalization where Haiti’s
agriculture and local industries have already given up
the ghost; an environmental crisis tied to the problem
of renewable water sources and affordable domestic
energy; how to restore a semblance of national
sovereignty in a strange unipolar world where the US
hegemon is running amok. In this new climate of
unbridled violence, the real challenge for the Haitian
left is to revitalize what is left of what once was a
popular movement by helping found and by working
directly with new organizations rooted in the urban
and rural masses, the only social group with a natural
interest in a new culture of democracy and
accountability, a revolutionary transformation of
Haitian society, and to move beyond the pitfalls of
savior politics.

I do not pretend to be dispassionate or neutral in
this debate. As a veteran organizer in the Haitian
exile community and as a founding member of the
NY-based Haitian Resistance Movement, I helped lead
the massive protests that shook NYC at the end of 1991
and laid the basis for Aristide’s eventual return. But
as early as 1995, it had become painfully clear that
the Aristide that 23,000 US Marines brought back to
Haiti was only a clone and a patsy for US domination.
"Privatization Equals Democratization" is one of the
slogans he raised 10 years ago. In Dec. 2002, I
published an open letter calling on Aristide to
resign, in order to spare the country a bloodbath and
the shame of a second US occupation under his mandate.
That letter earned me the distinction of being added
to the list of Lavalas enemies to be dispatched. What
happened to Weber Adrien, under different
circumstances, could also happen to me.

In that light and more to the point, let us all pay
respect to the real courage it takes for a woman and a
journalist living in Haiti today, to write as
uncompromisingly as Jane Regan does.

Daniel Simidor
Brooklyn,
Feb. 18, 2005
danielsimidor@yahoo.com



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