#5185: Resistance to the coup regime: Chamberlain answers Simidor (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Greg Chamberlain <GregChamberlain@compuserve.com>

Simidor writes:

> Ms Klarreich should read my reply to Chamberlain 
> more carefully.  Chamberlain's argument, often repeated
> here, is a flat denial of any resistance in Haiti, armed or 
> otherwise, and an admonition that Haitians stop whining 
> and be more grateful to the US, etc.  

I have never said Haitians should be "more grateful to the US."


> My response was that although there was no armed 
> resistance per se, there was a movement toward one
> and that this movement was preempted by Aristide's insistence 
> on nonviolence, peaceful resolution, the international community, etc.

Where is the evidence for a serious "movement toward one" ?
But indeed Aristide's call ensured "attentisme" and dependence.


> No amount of condescension can obscure the resistance and the 
> defiance of ordinary Haitians toward the military regime.  

This is wishful thinking of the triumphalist left.  No Haitian liked the
regime, thousands suffered or were killed but few resisted or defied.  
Like most human beings, they tried to get by as best they could, 
especially after decades of disappointment in politicians and of 
aggression by the state against the population.  Witness the 
extraordinary efforts of the poor to scratch a living from selling 
smuggled sanction-busting gasoline.  Efforts which enabled 
thousands of families to eat.  This was not in any way
dishonorable or cowardly or treacherous.


> What was missing was leadership and organization in order for the 
> country to overcome the coup. The point however was not to stockpile
>  weapons or to improvise some kind of guerilla warfare, but to mobilize 
> the population against the putschists.  But before they could go out and 
> mobilize the masses of people, the grassroots organizers had to be 
> able to protect themselves.  Armed propaganda as a first stage, that's
all 
> I'm talking about.  

Indeed indeed, but as I said none of this amounts to a serious or 
substantial record of heroic resistance during the dictatorship.  


        Greg Chamberlain