30019: Simidor (reply) Re 30012: Chamberlain on Theodore, the pro-Soviet left & Aristide (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Daniel simidor <danielsimidor@yahoo.com>

What Chamberlain says about René Théodore is quite
true, except that there is more to the story -- and
others who know it better are welcome to correct me or
to add details of their own.

As I recall it, Théodore led the PUCH (Unified Party
of Haitian Communists) to dissolve itself shortly
after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  He then went
on to launch his own party, pretty much to the right
of the political spectrum.

There had been a two-line struggle inside PUCH over
its dissolution.  The majority of the party?s
intellectual cadre did not side with Théodore however,
but with Gérard Pierre-Charles who went on to launch
OPL (then the Lavalas Political Organization) and
CRESFED, a research center.

What I know for a fact is that as a different two-line
struggle developed inside Lavalas in the Spring/Summer
of 1993 over which forward -- with the Lavalas
bureaucrats arguing in favor of allowing diplomacy to
run its course, and some grassroots activists urging
Aristide to give the green light for armed resistance,
or at least for some form of self-defense as part of
their organizing efforts -- the Pierre-Charles group
acted kinda funny.

Ironically it was a peasant leader who favored
organized self-defense who sent word that Gérard
Pierre-Charles was on his way to Washington, and would
we please set up a public program in NYC so that he
could address the Haitian community.  Yet when we met
privately with Pierre-Charles prior to the forum, he
laid out a rationale for US intervention, i.e. that
even if armed resistance could succeed against the
Haitian military, the US would pull out the plug from
under Aristide.  And that prospect was unsustainable
in today?s world, without the Soviet Union, etc.

Naturally, we told Pierre-Charles that we could not
sponsor a forum with him under those conditions, so he
agreed that he would address other issues and would
not broach the question of US intervention.
Unfortunately as the forum went under way, he did not
keep his word.  And all hell broke loose -- with
Aristide?s loyalists and ex-PUCH types calling for
discipline and due process, and a loud (loutish, as
Chamberlain would say) anti-imperialist contingent
shouting down the speaker.  (As the moderator, I
simply walked away from the stage.)

For transparence sake, I should add that the folks I
hanged out with in those days did not favor PUCH or
the Soviet Union.  But I personally admired
Pierre-Charles? physical and intellectual courage, and
I certainly agree with his latter-day characterization
of the Lavalas thugs who burned down the CRESFED
research center (and of those who sent them) as
fascist elements.  But maybe that?s a different
story...

Daniel Simidor




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