The
Trials Of Haiti
Back
in 1990, after centuries of slavery and dictatorship, Haitians
finally got the chance to vote in free and fair elections.
They chose Aristide, a Catholic priest from a poor parish
of Port-au-Prince, as their president by an overwhelming
margin--he received 67 percent of the vote in a field of
thirteen candidates. Aristide's liberation theology--a doctrine
whose central tenet is "to provide a preferential option
for the poor"--won him a devout following among Haiti's
poor but few friends in the first Bush Administration. After
just seven months Aristide was deposed by a military junta,
which ruled the country with great violence and cruelty
for three years. Finally, in 1994, the Clinton Administration
sent troops, which restored Aristide and his government.
In the remaining year and a half of his term, Aristide made
some small progress in rooting out the endemic corruption
that various juntas and dictatorships had left behind. With
the help of the United States, he also disbanded the Haitian
Army, which the US Marines had reconstituted during the
American occupation of Haiti in the early part of the century--an
army, it was often said, that never knew an enemy besides
the Haitian people.
An
array of foreign governments and Iffies pledged their help
in rebuilding Haiti, but many of the donors insisted that
in return for their aid Aristide institute "structural
economic adjustment"--the privatization of state-owned
enterprises, for example. According to one diplomat who
spent a great deal of time conferring with him, Aristide
was "privately ambivalent and publicly ambiguous"
about the Iffies' recipes for Haiti. Too ambiguous to suit
some of his former admirers on the left, for whom neoliberal
economic reform is anathema, but also too ambiguous to win
over any of his numerous detractors on the right.
In
1996, Aristide, barred from seeking a consecutive term by
the Haitian Constitution, endorsed as his replacement an
old friend, René Préval, and for the first
time in Haitian history, a democratically elected head of
state turned over power to another. Aristide ran for president
again in November 2000. Citing the unresolved flaws in the
May legislative elections, the United States declined to
assist or monitor the presidential elections, which the
political opposition in Haiti also boycotted. Aristide won
easily, though--and legitimately, in the eyes of most of
the world. But by then he had acquired many detractors,
a large and varied cast, mostly situated outside Haiti.
To
the American right, liberation theology had long seemed
like an especially dangerous doctrine, combining Marxist
analysis with a call to connect the struggles of Christ
to those of the poor. And Aristide's preaching and criticisms
of the United States, combined with his great popularity
among the Haitian poor, made him a natural target for right-wing
politicians, such as Jesse Helms, who had denounced Aristide,
even retailing slanders against him. Some of Aristide's
early detractors are still in the American government. One
of Helms's chief aides on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
Roger Noriega, was until recently the permanent US representative
to the OAS. In that capacity, he issued a number of statements
criticizing Aristide and his government. Recently he was
nominated as the Bush Administration's chief of policy on
Latin America.
Today,
Aristide's critics argue variously that he is guilty of
fomenting corruption and violence, or of condoning them,
or, at the very least, of being too irresolute to put a
stop to them. And it may be that, as one former diplomat
told me, Aristide returned to power in 1994 with a "never
again" attitude, resolving that if his enemies had
guns and thugs, he would not be without them either. When
I interviewed Aristide, he allowed that the issue of controlling
his supporters was "a preoccupation," and added
that he couldn't control agents provocateurs who committed
crimes in the name of Lavalas. (A common sort of charge
in Haiti. Opposition leaders have claimed, for instance,
that Lavalas staged the notorious armed attack on the presidential
palace on December 17, 2001, in order to have a pretext
to attack them.) Aristide also told me, "I will do
more to try to provide security and push the judicial system
to render justice and not to delay and delay."
I
wasn't sure he'd get very far in those efforts. Haiti now
has about 3,500 poorly trained and ill-equipped police,
including many amenable to payoffs and bribes, and some
involved in drug trafficking. The United States has withdrawn
all its support for the police and judicial system and,
with the OAS, has been demanding that Aristide improve security
and the administration of justice. A State Department official
told me that the United States was trying to give "recognized
political parties as much training as possible so they can
compete nationally." In fact, Washington has long tried
to create a counterforce to Aristide's vast popular support--most
preposterously back in the mid-1990s, when the American
soldiers temporarily occupying the country were told by
their commanders that a right-wing terrorist organization
called FRAPH was the "loyal opposition" to Aristide.
More recently, public documents show, the United States
helped to create the main political opposition, the Democratic
Convergence, and has aided it in developing platforms and
strategies. In theory, this could be a laudable program;
democracy benefits from real competition. But it is sinister
if, as Aristide's supporters say, part of Washington's strategy
is to make room for an opposition by crippling Aristide's
government--by blocking IDB loans, for example.
Over
the past few years, the United States and the OAS have placed
increasingly onerous conditions on the Aristide government,
which have included satisfying the demands of the political
opposition. Foreign diplomats insisted that the senators
in the contested seats resign; all did so several months
after Aristide's re-election as president. Aristide has
continually called for new elections, but the opposition
has demanded that Aristide resign before they will cooperate.
A State Department official in Haiti told me that the United
States won't countenance such intransigence but also said
that no support for new elections in Haiti will be forthcoming
until Aristide improves "security," among other
things. But it may be, as Aristide's supporters believe,
that no support will be forthcoming until Washington thinks
elections will yield the result it wants.
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