=?x-unknown?q?25629=3A__Wilentz_=28reply=29_Re=3A_25601=3A=A0?==?x-unknown?q?_Ewen=3A=A0=28reply=29=A0_RE=3A25598=3A=A0_BobCorbett?==?x-unknown?q?_=28ASK=29_Aristide's_famous_=22Pere_Lebrun=22_?==?x-unknown?q?spe_ech=2E=A0_=28fwd=29_=28fwd=29?=

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Amywile@aol.com

I wrote extensively about this speech at the time. No of course, Aristide was
not stupid. Never. He did not mention Pere Lebrun by name once, but obviously
was referring to it, to the smoke that you smell, that it was a tool of
SOMETHING.

Bay yo sa yo merite.
Give them what they deserve. Looking back on it, I can't say he could have
been clearer in his meaning.

He felt he could speak Creole to his followers without its being attended to,
much less really comprehended by nonHaitian listeners, and that gamble   --
based on long experience, not just his own but in Haitian history -- proved
wrong in the event. He had not counted, for one thing, on Haitians translating
the speech for their Embassy friends with utter and devastating accuracy.

His defense of this speech would have been, though never explicitly, that
Pere Lebrun was the people's only "legitime defense" at the time, since the
rule

of law was obviously not in force.

(By the way, Arafat, too, thought he could speak with two tongues: Arabic in
one venue, English in another and get away with saying quite different things
in the two languages... didn't work for him either, not in this day and age).

Amy Wilentz