The Haitian Lazarus

March 15, 2011
The Haitian Lazarus
By AMY WILENTZ
Port-au-Prince, Haiti

SAY the name Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti this week, and it’s as if the revolutionary slave leaders Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines were still riding over the plains and mountains here, astride Delacroix-worthy steeds, making their descent with sabers drawn upon the vast plantations of the French masters.

The Haitians one meets on the street or in their little shops or in the market or on the byways of the countryside and in the shantytowns of the provincial capitals are for the most part pleased at the prospect of former President Aristide’s return this week from seven years’ exile in South Africa.

But when members of Haiti’s tiny elite, small middle class and growing international community here discuss Mr. Aristide, they look over their shoulders, shake their heads, raise their eyebrows. They speak in whispers or in great gulps of nervousness.

Cut off their heads and burn down their houses, Dessalines told his troops, who went on to win a historic and singular victory over the French Army in 1804. Two centuries later, the elite, some of whom are descendants of the French colonists, still have a profound fear of the poverty-stricken general population.

They understand fully that the triumph of the slaves never brought about the structural changes in Haitian society for which those early, bloody battles were fought. The ruling class still fears the overturning of the customary order. Revolution is a scary thing.

When the slaves gathered in 1791 to plot the end of French rule, there were about 500,000 of them on the island, and some 40,000 French colonists.

Today the demographics are even more skewed, with about nine million people living in unimaginable poverty, while a microscopic elite guards among themselves whatever wealth is to be had here. Among all this flits the aid and development community, who have arrived in droves since the January 2010 earthquake, with their airy expensive apartments, S.U.V.’s, vans and pickup trucks, and packets of money to hand out.

In some places, the schism between haves and have-nots is almost farcical. Around the Place Boyer in Pétionville, the wealthy town above Port-au-Prince, clubs and restaurants with security guards cater to the elite and to foreigners, while across the street, in a refugee camp, hundreds of Haitians huddle under tarps and in tents in the mud and wind of the season’s unpredictable rains.

It’s perfect volatile tinder in which to toss the match of Mr. Aristide’s return.
Plunk a three-cornered hat on Mr. Aristide’s head and sit him on a horse, and he is another revolutionary leader.

The people in those camps are his people — though not, by far, his only people.

•

Jean-Bertrand Aristide has a complicated history.

During the troubled times after the ouster of the dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986, he repeatedly confronted the interim junta with enormous, even foolhardy, personal courage.

A Roman Catholic priest from a shantytown parish, Father Aristide gave sermons in those days that were biting and vituperative, intended both to enrage the country’s rulers and make the people laugh at power.

His amazing escapes from the many assassination attempts against him made him a kind of folk hero, a Lazarus who could not be eliminated.

I knew him then, and remember him rising from these attacks, each time with a greater following.

For a long time, Mr. Aristide had no money; he had no social standing; he had no political party; he had no powerful foreign friends; his own church reviled him.

These were all points in his favor among the Haitian people.
For a long time, the people were his only power.
While all other politicians (except for those whom he has supported) have had to rush around stuffing ballot boxes, altering counts and paying for votes,
Mr. Aristide has twice been elected in clean balloting.

The first time was in 1990, in the first successful election after 29 years of dictatorship by Mr. Duvalier and his father, François.

He won handily, but, with his leftist rhetoric and his huge support from the poorest sectors, he was not exactly the leader that the international community had envisioned when they promoted democracy and elections in Haiti.
Reluctantly, international monitors certified his election.

Finding himself alone in a political sea of the entitled and the empowered,
Mr. Aristide believed that all he could trust in the end was the brute power of the street — the “rouleau compresseur,” as it is called in Haitian politics, or the steamroller.

He was almost pathologically reluctant to work toward agreement among his advisers, among equals. He shares this distaste with many Haitians, who believe that theirs is a fatally polarized society and that consensus-building here almost inevitably leads to capitulation to the elite, and by extension to the international community.

Seven months after he took office, Mr. Aristide was overthrown by the Haitian Army with the tacit approval of the United States and the international community.

The steamroller did not save him, and he was sent into exile. His second term was much more violent, with supporters repulsing perceived conspirators with guns and machetes. There were also allegations of human-rights abuses and corruption.

It ended with another coup, in 2004, that was again supported by members of Haiti’s business elite and tolerated, at least, by Haiti’s international allies, putting an end to the people’s flailing baby steps toward power.

•

Mr. Aristide gave the Haitian people two invaluable things: self-confidence and a voice,
and thereby earned their lasting loyalty.
That’s not nothing, after 200 years of repression, but it is perhaps his only positive legacy.

During his first exile, in Washington, Mr. Aristide agreed to make compromises and concessions that were entirely the opposite of what he’d always stood for.

Like a kidnapping victim negotiating his own ransom, he was willing to accept any demand in order to be allowed to return to Haiti.

Here was a people’s president who, from a comfortable banishment, lobbied successfully for a brutal embargo against his own country, and who, returning to power in 1994, accepted international demands for a rapacious end to Haiti’s import bans.

Here was a Haitian patriot and intransigent denouncer of all collaboration with “imperialists” who was brought back to Haiti on the shoulders of an international military intervention led by the United States, and who countenanced the establishment afterward of what was essentially an international occupation force run by the United Nations, which controls the forces of order in Haiti to this day, Mr. Aristide having disbanded the army that helped oust him.

Mr. Aristide, of course, did not see this as hypocrisy. Above all, he felt, the people wanted him to return. And he was right the first time he returned, and he’ll be right the second time.

The Haitian people want justice and a decent life, and they think he’s the man to give that to them. Yet they have already poured their love onto him and he has repaid them with nothing but dreams.

By the end of Mr. Aristide’s two abortive terms, the Haitian revolution had once again failed. The only Haitians whose lives he improved were those to whom he personally gave jobs or for whose communities he personally — for reasons of political loyalty or old connection — provided housing or schools.

He changed nothing structurally; he put in place only one institution, his own Aristide Foundation for Democracy, which runs a small university, mobile schools in five earthquake camps and many youth and women’s groups.

•

In the past weeks, as Mr. Aristide plans his return, the United States has been putting pressure on the South African government to prevent him from coming back to Haiti at such a fraught political moment.

Jean-Claude Duvalier, the ousted scion of the old dictatorship, has just come back to Haiti himself in a surprise move, and can be seen here and there, dining in expensive restaurants like the ones in Place Boyer, and moving around the city in big, rich-man’s cars.

MR. DUVALIER’S appearance provided further justification for Mr. Aristide’s return, for if the former reviled dictator can come back, how about the first democratically elected president?

Haitians are preparing to vote (or not to vote) on Sunday in a contested runoff presidential election. The sudden entrance onto the proscenium of both controversial former leaders — one stage right, the other stage left — has highlighted the unreality of the current campaign, which pits a constitutional scholar against a popular musician.

Mr. Duvalier is unlikely to be permitted to run for office. And Mr. Aristide has said that he wants to return as a simple educator and to open a medical school. Having technically served his constitutionally allotted two terms, he could come to power now only if he were to pull off some Machiavellian scheme.

Whatever Mr. Aristide chooses to do in Haiti, his voice is likely to be very powerful, as long as he can avoid assassination.

Given his popularity, he should be able to influence election results far into the future, if not the one immediately upon us. As always at election time, violence simmers just below the surface, and has exploded once already in this voting season because of anger over fraud.

Meanwhile, those who helped to overthrow Mr. Aristide or who thwarted his ambitions or who disagreed with him are worried for their own security after he returns.

“Aristide does not have to open his mouth for his vengeance to be done,”
one young man said to me last week, with admiration. There is a perception of an impending payback time.

The incredible thing is that a narrative most Haitians thought was over is now to begin again. Because he is such a potent symbol of democracy for a huge number of people here, Mr. Aristide keeps popping up in Haitian history like a return of the repressed.

In traditional Haitian belief, a person’s soul goes back to Africa, or lan guinée, when he dies. For Jean-Bertrand Aristide to reappear in Haiti from his African exile would be a real resurrection.


Amy Wilentz is the author of “The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier.”

Posted on 15. Mar, 2011 by Ezili Dantò in Blog, News, Essays and Reflections

Obama administration stops Aristide’s return to Haiti: Obama Fears Lavalas, returns Duvalierists, refuses Aristide. According to news reports the Obama administration is stopping the return of Haiti’s first democratically elected president back to Haiti. In contrast, Obama administration has no problem with the return to Haiti of the bloody baby doc dictator, Jean Claude Duvalier, who along with his father, Papa doc Dulavier, where together responsible for the death of 60,000 to 100,000 Haitians from 1957 to 1986. Seems like US support for strongman death squads and dictators has not changed under the Barack Obama administration.

The excuse the Obama administration is currently bandying about for keeping Aristide in practical house arrest in South Africa is that Aristide’s return before the fraudulent run-offs on March 20th where Duvalierists Martelly and Manigat are running against each other in an election that excluded the majority of Haiti’s people, had more dead earthquake victims voting and denied Aristide’s political party, Fanmi Lavalas, participation is that Aristide’s return would disrupt the Duvalierists candidates selection.

The majority of Haiti’s people and the candidates had asked for the November 28, 2010 fraudulent earthquake elections to be annulled. Hillary Clinton flew to Haiti and insisted the sham go forward with the March 20th Duvalierists run off. To help the disenfranchisement of Haiti’s people move forward, the US, France and Canada allowed Baby Doc Duvalier back into Haiti. (Haiti message to US Embassy in Haiti: The Will of the People .)

Yesterday, Aristide’s lawyer, Ira Kurzban issued this statement in reference to the Obama administration “request” that South Africa not allow former president Aristide to return to Haiti before the conclusion of the US’s Duvalierist sham elections all set to go forward on March 20, 2011.

Here is my response to the Department of State’s statement issued this morning: President Aristide’s desire to return home is unrelated to the election but to a desire to be in Haiti to carry on his educational work. However, he is genuinely concerned that a change in the Haitian government may result in his remaining in South Africa. The Department of State has previously said that this is a decision for the Haitian government. They should leave that decision to the democratically elected government instead of seeking to dictate the terms under which a Haitian citizen may return to his country. The claim that President Aristide voluntarily left Haiti and could have returned the past seven years is disingenuous and is belied by the US government’s active involvement in his removal as the democratically elected president of Haiti and the U.S. government’s active role in insuring that President Aristide remained and apparently continues to remain in South Africa.” – Ira Kurzban, March 14, 2011*

Haiti: U.S. Asks South Africa to Delay Aristide’s Departure New York Times, By REUTERS | March 14, 2011

The Obama administration said Monday that the former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide should refrain from returning to Haiti before the presidential runoff election on Sunday. A State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, said that Mr. Aristide, above, had the right to return, but doing so this week “can only be seen as a conscious choice to impact Haiti’s elections.” A delay, Mr. Toner said, would “permit the Haitian people to cast their ballots in a peaceful atmosphere.” He said the United States was asking South Africa, where Mr. Aristide has lived in exile since 2004, to delay his departure. Mr. Aristide’s lawyer, Ira Kurzban, said the United States “should leave that decision to the democratically elected government instead of seeking to dictate the terms under which a Haitian citizen may return to his country.”

Haiti Message to the US Embassy in Haiti: The Will of The People

Pye kout pran devan. I write this note, to pran devan - get ahead - of the international double-speak, outline for the US Embassy the obvious "will of the Haitian people."* Those "More schooled in the patterns and privilege of domination" than any local puppet Haiti government rigging elections could ever be. Pye kout pran devan - the most likely scenario to be played out in these disaster elections. By the time United States policymakers in Haiti are finished playing with Haiti, they will hang Preval out to dry, ignore the process was not inclusive, not fair, not free even before one ballot was cast; ignore that most of the candidates asked for the (s)election to be annulled by midday of the farce, their voters then stopped voting - and go on with their farce. But with Manigat and Martelly. I think that's most likely what they will do.

They've already set it up.

Everyone is supposed to forget the cast and un-casted ballots we saw all strewn around; the untold numbers of voters with ID cards unable to vote; those who couldn't find their polling places; video evidence of ballot stuffing and children playing around in the piles of ballots. There’s no unco-opted Haitian voice high enough in the Western power citadels to effectively point out that Haiti’s frustrated young are using the Martelly vehicle to drive their frustration, their discontent somewhere. Even if its over-the-cliff with Martelly in the crumbled palace driving seat. The marginalized, totally disenfranchised have died a thousand deaths. What’s another? Haiti has suffered through two Bush coup d'etats, Clinton's famine, the apocalyptic earthquake, the charity organizations enriching themselves with the earthquake donations, a hurricane, over a million still in tarp camps nearly a year later and imported UN cholera. (See also, Scientists Trace Origin of Recent Cholera Epidemic in Haiti .)

In our shallow, narcissistic, celebrity-driven globalize pop culture, the novice Martelly is merely a tool to be used by those “more schooled in the patterns of privilege and domination” than any self-serving Haiti politician could ever dream to be. Martelly is the valve that releases accumulated surface pressure while reinforcing the “violent Haitian” narrative. Brilliant US/Euro move. A no brainer. Bottom line, once the US Embassy is done manipulating, its so-called Nov. 28 election will count. I’d really like to be wrong, to believe that Haiti’s beleaguered people will sidestep the UN/US use of Manigat and Martelly to divide the initial block of 12, calling for annulment. That the Haitian people will not play into the hands of the enemy; will have enough strength left to continue demanding for the annulment of this charade even if Martelly is put back in the run-off. That they won’t take Martelly’s re-inclusion as a victory, fall for the ol' okey doke; won’t allow this latest disaster, the disaster elections, to help push through a Haiti Clinton/Oligarchy cohort. Except when fairy tales end, reality steps into view. *

This is the how they've set it up to resolve: Quoting a December 7th statement by the U.S. Embassy in Haiti expressing concern over the CEP’s announced result which it said were “inconsistent with the published results of the National Election Observation Council (CNO), which had more than 5,500 observers and observed the vote count in 1,600 voting centers nationwide,’ CNN reported that:

The CNO, a European Union-backed local election monitoring group, had said Celestin was running behind the other two candidates.” (See, Anger sweeps Haitian capital despite calls for calm in election unrest By Moni Basu, CNN | December 8, 2010.) Right after the UN reportedly convinced Martelly and Manigat to stop calling for annulment by telling each they were in the lead, I wrote: "If these farcical elections are not annulled, whoever wins will have no legitimacy, will depend on UN/US to maintain their rule. That means next president of Haiti will accept and legitimize the people's brutal repression, as their rule is dependent on it ."-- Ezili Dantò of HLLN

Aristide Lawyers Demand U.S. Prosecute "Kidnappers" Of Aristide and His Haitian-American WifeShare
We speak with Ira Kurzban, lawyer for the Haitian government. Today, he is invoking the Multilateral Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Internationally Protected Persons against the US government. He serves Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell with papers asking that the U.S. prosecute the people involved in what they call the kidnapping of President Aristide and his wife Mildred, who is a U.S. citizen. [includes transcript]
Lawyers representing Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide today are serving Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell with papers asking that the US prosecute the people involved in what they call the kidnapping of Aristide and his wife Mildred, who is a US citizen. The lawyers are invoking the Multilateral Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Internationally Protected Persons.

The request that the United States fulfill its obligations under the Convention stems from what Aristide’s lawyers call the intentional commission of internationally recognized crimes that were "part of a coup d’etat organized and implemented by officials of the Government of the United States of America to remove and replace the democratically-elected President of Haiti..." The demand specifically references the kidnapping of the Aristide while on board an aircraft belonging in whole or in part to the United States.

In a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft, Aristide’s lawyers said, "These criminal acts appear to have been carried out by U.S. government personnel acting under the orders of high-ranking United States government officials, including the United States Depute Charge de Mission in Haiti, Luis Moreno, and possibly Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega (Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs), Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld." Aristide’s lawyers are also calling on the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to initiate a fact finding mission to Haiti to investigate what they say are summary executions and continued violence against Lavalas supporters.

•Ira Kurzban, a Miami-based lawyer. Since 1991, he has served as General Counsel for the government of Haiti.
Michele Montas, Award-winning Haitian journalist.

•Amy Goodman Reports from South Africa on Aristide’s Planned Return Trip to Haiti After Seven Years in Exile

•DN! EXCLUSIVE: Authorities Search and Copy U.S. Journalist’s Notes, Computer and Cameras After Returning from Haiti

•Human Rights Attorney Bill Quigley on the U.S. Deportation Death Sentence and the Undermining of Meaningful Elections in Haiti

•Did Baby Doc Duvalier Return to Haiti to Pressure Préval in the Election?

•Novelist Edwidge Danticat: "Haitians Are Very Resilient, But It Doesn’t Mean They Can Suffer More Than Other People"

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined by Ira Kurzban, who is a Miami-based lawyer. Since 1991 he served as the general counsel for the government of Haiti. Welcome to Democracy Now! Ira Kurzban.

IRA KURZBAN: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: It is good to have you with us. Can you explain what this lawsuit is all about?

IRA KURZBAN: Well, there’s actually three separate actions, Amy. The first, as you pointed out, was a request–which is part of the multilateral Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons, in this case, President Aristide and his wife, who is the first lady–to initiate a process that would ultimately go before the International Court of Justice. In other words to initiate that process, you must serve the state parties, in this case, of course, the United States–and that’s why it is going to Colin Powell–to give the United States an opportunity to initiate domestically those prosecutions of persons before we go to the International Court of Justice. The United States has a certain period of time in which to address these wrongs and to respond. And if they fail to do so within a certain period of time, then we can go to the International Court of Justice. And that’s what we intend to do.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you intend to serve General Colin Powell papers?

IRA KURZBAN: We serve him today by mail. And I’m sure they will have received it at the State Department this morning. And the second thing that we requested was a direct request to the Attorney General of the United States to initiate prosecution under various federal statutes because kidnapping, as you know, of course, is a federal crime and, in the implementation of this multilateral convention, a number of our own domestic statutes were changed to make it a federal crime to kidnap an internationally-protected person. And, of course, here we have the added dimension that Mrs. Aristide is a United States citizen. So, what we have is a kidnapping of a United States citizen by United States Government officials. That’s a serious crime. Obviously not only international law, but under our own domestic law and, therefore, we are calling upon the Attorney General to conduct an investigation and to prosecute those individuals; and if that involves the Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and involves the Secretary of State Powell, then I think that is his obligation to do so.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s play a clip of what General Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, had to say when confronted with the allegations of kidnapping by the US, and this being a coup d’etat that has removed President Aristide and the first lady, Mildred Aristide.

COLIN POWELL: He was not kidnapped. We did not force him on to the airplane. He went on to the airplane willingly. And that’s the truth.

AMY GOODMAN: Your response.

IRA KURZBAN: Well if that’s the truth, then certainly Secretary Powell and the President of the United States should be willing to have an investigation of this. They have nothing to hide. You know, it is the classic situation where if you really have nothing to hide, and, you know, you believe that everything was done properly, let the Congress of the United States investigate this, let the CARICOM countries, through the Organization of American States, as they have requested, investigate this, and let the whole world know exactly what we did. You know, the Secretary getting up and giving kind of a bald-faced denial, I hope, doesn’t satisfy the American people. I hope we’ve learned from the Weapons of Mass Destruction claim and other things that this administration and particularly Secretary Powell have claimed, needs to be looked at further. So, in this case, I suppose the Secretary can say what he wants. But if we’re serious about it, we should have an investigation.

AMY GOODMAN: And right now, who is calling for that investigation in Congress?

IRA KURZBAN: Various members have called for it. A number of members of the Black Caucus, Congressman Rangle, Congresswoman Waters, Congresswoman Lee, and others have said we need to have a full-scale investigation of what happened here. And the problem is, of course, you know, the Republicans control both houses of Congress and probably don’t want the truth to come out. But my hope is that there will be enough concern about this issue and enough public outcry that we investigate whether or not our administration was involved in a coup d’etat against a democratically-elected president in this hemisphere. That is a very serious allegation and I haven’t made that allegation lightly. And I think we have enough facts to establish that. But I think the Congress needs to swear these people under oath, take their testimony, and investigate it.

AMY GOODMAN: And the status of Boniface Alexandre, who has been sworn in as the interim president, as well as the Council of Sages, now choosing a replacement for the prime minister, Yvonne Neptune?

IRA KURZBAN: The president of the Republic of Haiti yesterday spoke. Jean-Bertrand Aristide said that he is still the president, that there was a coup d’etat, that whatever process is going on in Port-au-Prince–which, by the way, actually is the process that the opposition asked for during that week of negotiations prior to the actual coup. The process that is being implemented now is actually the opposition’s proposal. It is not the CARICOM proposal, as the United States has said. So, what we have is the opposition in Haiti, determining a series of events that are ongoing and that are excluding, of course, the major political party in the country, which is Lavalas.

AMY GOODMAN: We’ll end today with the words of President Aristide in Democracy Now’s interview with the Haitian president yesterday in the Central African Republic, just after he had held a news conference that has gotten very little coverage. This is Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE: First of all, I didn’t leave Haiti because I wanted to leave Haiti. They forced me to leave Haiti. It was a kidnapping, which they call coup d’etat or [inaudible] ...forced resignation for me. It wasn’t a resignation. It was a kidnapping, and under the cover of coup d’etat.

AMY GOODMAN: He said this is a kidnapping under the cover of a coup d’etat. And this is Democracy Now! If you want to read the transcript of that half-hour interview or listen to it online, you can go to our website at democracynow.org. This is the "War and Peace Report." I’m Amy Goodman.