Haiti A Failed State History Essay

Haiti has had a long and troubled history, marked by its relations with the outside world. It has produced popular uprisings whose implications have extended beyond its own borders, provoking international responses that have helped to shape it internally. Yet Haiti presents a unique case for the study of popular movements, and the sobering realities of an unequal international system. Indeed in few places in the world are the problems of economic underdevelopment, authoritarianism, instability and inequality displayed so starkly; T. D. Allman described the country as “to this hemisphere what black holes are to outer space. Venture there, and you cross an event horizon” (cited in Farmer 1994, 225).

Studies of Haiti rarely fail to point out the fact that once the world’s richest colonial protectorate, and the first free black republic, Haiti has since become the poorest country in the Western hemisphere by a fair distance. It also stands as the most unequal country in a region which already has the highest levels of inequality in the world; with 1 percent of its population in command of more than half of the country’s wealth, and 5 percent in ownership of most of the arable land (Sletten and Egest 2004, 6). Whilst inequality and poverty are commonplace in Latin America and the Caribbean, Haiti stands apart from its regional neighbours in this regard; its GDP per capita being less than half of that of Bolivia (the second lowest), and with 56 percent of its population living beneath the absolute poverty line, compared to less than 25 percent in all other countries in the region with the exceptions of Nicaragua (45 percent) and El Salvador (31 percent) (ibid, pg. 9/10). The implications of Haiti’s poverty in terms of infant mortality, health, literacy, life expectancy, and the day to day lives of its population are staggering and have been well documented (See xyz).

As an extension of this sharp inequality, it is often noted that Haiti’s political system has long been marked by instability and repression of the population: “only seven of its forty-four presidents have served out their terms, and there have been only two peaceful transitions of power since the beginning of the republic” (Fatton, 2006, pg 1). Those who have run the country for most of its post-independence history, namely a small cluster of wealthy families, along with the military contingent they are tied to, argue with some confidence that force is a necessary product of such deep poverty, in that it is required in order to police it (Farmer 2004, 15).

Recognition and discussion of these two aspects of Haitian life – namely its poverty and chronic authoritarianism – usually form the empirical backdrop of most readings of Haitian society and its political system. Yet discussion of the causes and possible cures of these societal maladies tend to explain the country in terms of its internal components, and the attendant domestic failures of the Haitian state. This notion, not always bluntly stated, helps to buttress the familiar designation of Haiti as a country defined by economic failure, with no democratic tradition and perpetually in need of Western assistance (expand + references). Haitian anthropologist Robert Fatton remarks on this trend that “with few exceptions, the literature on Haiti has tended to emphasise the role of individual leaders in the making of a country’s politics; [leading] many to assume that the crisis confronting Haiti is nothing but the consequence of ‘bad leaders’ and thus the solution to the crisis is the coming to power of ‘good’ leaders”, an assumption which for him overlooks the “predatory structures of the country” and the way these sharply constrain individual choices (Fatton 2007, ix).

Yet whether attributed to ‘bad leaders’ or the predatory socio-economic structures of Haitian society, the way the notion of a ‘failed state’ is presented and discussed in regards to Haiti tends to imply that the problem is internally contained, a product of distinctively Haitian, and in the last analysis, usually ‘cultural’ factors. For instance a Strategic Studies Institute report reviewing the merits of various U.S. foreign policy options towards Haiti in the aftermath of the 1991 coup notes that attempts to establish democratic institutions in Haiti “would encounter trouble in a political culture marked by authoritarianism, demagogy, intolerance, suspicion, intrigue, violence, corruption, and class hatred. Nor should one expect democracy to flourish, even if Aristide is restored, for he too is a product of that culture” (Schulz and Marcella 1994, cited in Wisner 1995, 44). Likewise, former head of USAID (footnote) Lawrence Harrison’s ‘Voodoo Politics’, an extended essay in Atlantic Monthly deals primarily with the vexing question of “Why [this] benighted country [has] experienced since independence a virtually unbroken chain of brutal and corrupt leaders?”:

“Why have repeated efforts to encourage democracy and due process – including the US occupation – failed? Why are the vast majority of Haitians illiterate? Why has the abuse of power at all levels permeated Haitian history? Why is the country that was once the richest in the Caribbean now the poorest? Ã¢â‚¬Â¦ I believe that culture is the only possible explanation for Haiti’s unending tragedy: the values and attitudes of the average Haitian are profoundly influences by traditional African culture, particularly the voodoo religion, and slavery under the FrenchÃ¢â‚¬Â¦. sustained by long years of isolation from progressive ideas, open political systems, and economic dynamism.” (Harrison 1993, cited in ibid, 45; see also Rotberg 2004; Herbst 2004).

Other studies do not subscribe to this cultural thesis yet still follow much the same pattern in confining the source of Haiti’s problems to its internal structures. Wiarda’s work on US policy in Latin America invokes purely endogenous factors in explaining why Haiti is so politically and economically unstable. “Its topsoil has been eroded over the centuries, it has almost no resources or democratic infrastructure (political parties, trade unions, peasant associations, pluralist interest groups, functioning governmental institutions), no democratic tradition” (1995, 38). BLAH BLAH BLAH.

Central argument

This paper will look at Western policy toward Haiti, and the effect that this has had on Haiti’s political and economic development, both historically and in response to the election of Reverend Jean-Bertrand Aristide in YEAR. It will be argued that, contrary to the above, Haiti’s destiny is only partially in the hands of Haitians, and in fact a major part of Haiti’s future lies in policies that are pursued abroad, notably in the United States as well as international financial institutions such as the World Bank and IMF that Haiti have now become heavily dependent on. Furthermore, the international community, far from being an ineffective but dependable source of assistance has itself over the years played an important role in the country’s collapse, and continues to influence the trajectory of Haitian political and economic development, in conjunction with on-going class conflicts internal to Haiti. As Paul Farmer argued, while

“Haiti may capture the headlines of the American press, understanding of what is at stake here remains, at best, persistently superficialÃ¢â‚¬Â¦.journalistic and even scholarly commentary on Haiti has tended to depict the country as isolated and disconnected – a static country of backwards peasants caught in a time warpÃ¢â‚¬Â¦. It is far more comforting to attribute the on-going violence in Haiti (or Guatemala or El Salvador) to factors native to that setting. Among the most popular explanatory models are those invoking ‘cultural’ factors: voodoo, in particularÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ But depicting Haiti as divorced from ‘the outside world’ turns out to be a feat of Herculean oversight, given that Haiti is a creation of expansionist European empires – a quintessentially Western entity. There is, simply, no other way to understand Haiti” (1994, 45, 53, 56).

In short, Haiti’s failures and challenges ought to be seen within the context of the larger historical system in which the country is embedded. The reduction of on-going violence and crisis in Haiti to domestic factors, such as its long history of authoritarianism, economic underdevelopment, archaic formal state structures, or of some of the cultural factors invoked by Harrison is problematic in that, while all of these internal phenomena are surely important factors, they are (a) not the only ones; (b) nor are they strictly speaking internally contained at all, since they emerged out of Haiti’s colonial history and have been influenced by Haiti’s relations with the outside world ever since.

With this in mind, the discussion will look at some of the formative episodes of Haiti’s colonial and post-colonial history Before exploring the domestic and international impact of Haiti’s Lavalas movement in sweeping into power its own candidate Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the role played by political forces both inside and outside of Haiti in undermining this government and shaping the political landscape that followed up until the 1990s. The conflicts that characterize Haitian society today are rooted in and very much formed by the enduring effects of these earlier periods, and neither the significance of Aristide’s presidency nor the coup and policies that followed can be adequately explained in isolation from them. Indeed the very “structural basis of Haiti’s social polarization and its economic vulnerability is a direct legacy of colonial slavery and its aftermath” (Hallward, 2010, 9).

3.2 Slavery and Independence: an unsightly spectacle

As is often noted in studies of Haitian history, Haiti emerged not just as 2the first free nation of free men to rise within, and in resistance to, the emerging constellation of European empire” (Lowenthal 1976, cited in farmer 2006, 163), but the only recorded case in human history of an enslaved population successfully overthrowing colonial rule and establishing an independent polity governed by the former slaves. Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) under French administration was the world’s richest colony, and responsible for a significant proportion of France’s wealth today; generating more revenue for France than all of its other colonies combined (Kim 2000, 66). The unrivalled output of Saint-Domingue’s plantation economy was maintained in large part by the density of the labouring population (far higher than other colonies), and the unmatched brutality of its slave system, which is widely regarded to have few parallels in history (FOOTNOTE). The capital drawn from this production system, not just in Saint-Domingue but across the New World propelled the development of virtually all of the major European cities, with France benefiting disproportionately from the leading commercial engine under its auspices (James, 1980: !98( QUOTE)-see scribd).ÂÂÂÂÂ

Yet the extreme violence meted out so routinely was a sign that the status quo was a brittle one; and the slave system’s rigid internal class divisions, stratified along such polarising, racially defined lines, played an important part in its eventual collapse and the shape that Haitian society would take into its transition to independence. Power was divided, broadly speaking, among three groups: the wealthy white plantation owning elite, a privileged stratum of Mulattos who had property and freedom but little to no political rights; and the imperial representatives of French power in the island (Hallward 20110, 10). That Saint-Domingue’s slaves were able to rise up in a well organised slave revolt and defeat a colonial power with no outside support, while beating back successive onslaughts from not only French, but also Spanish, British and American forces – who themselves had booming business with the colony, and saw an opportunity to seize the prize from France – reflects both the magnitude of the interests involved in the island, and the remarkable achievement of the popular forces there (Robinson, 1996: 259; Matthewson 2003).

Needless to say, the emergence of an independent black republic was not a welcome sight in a colonial system still dominated by European slavery; and the precedent set was outrageous and threatening for commercial powers and slaveholding countries elsewhere still heavily invested in the slave system, and well versed in the racism that underpinned it. The French foreign minister Charles Talleyrand wrote a few years after Haitian independence that “the existence of a negro people in arms, occupying a country it has soiled by the most criminal acts, is a horrible spectacle for white nationsÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ There are no reasonsÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ to grant support to these brigands who have declared themselves the enemies off all government” (cited in Lawless 1992, 48). The event had major and lasting repercussions internationally; not only altering the distribution of imperial power in the Caribbean, but also inspiring slave revolts and independence struggles across the slaveholding world, including within the United States (FOTTNOTE). Haiti was formally free, yet the reprisals Haiti would face for this were such that as Mintz put it “No other country in modern times has confronted freedom under such discouraging circumstances” (1995, 80).

Other powers immediately supported one another’s efforts to isolate Haiti, which became an international outcast, made to suffer a multilateral boycott, and face “a level of hostility sufficient to induce Haiti’s new leaders to devote much of the limited resources to building a series of extravagant fortresses in anticipation of further assault” (Hallward 2010, 12). That being said, the most enduring blow to Haitian independence and economic development, still felt today, was France’s claim to an indemnity of 150million francs as compensation for the loss of their slaves. This demand was, under threat of invasion, eventually signed and accepted by an emerging Haitian elite who desperately saw diplomatic recognition and the lifting of a joint embargo as vital to their own survival in entering the international market on terms tolerable to them, and thus saw the debt as a very large but unavoidable business expense (Farmer 1994, 76). Through the amount was eventually reduced to 90 million francs, Haiti, being already devastated economically and ecologically by war, had to borrow at extortionate rates of interest to pay a country who already owed much of its prosperity to exploiting Haitian land and slave labour.

4. US occupation 1915-1934

The USA was the last major power to formally recognise Haiti in 1862, once the fate of its own slave population was already settled. Yet the contempt for the idea of self-governing blacks among the world’s owners was still palpable, and the ensuing period was one marked by continuous uninvited visits of European and American gunboats into Haitian waters to make claims against the treasury at gunpoint, sometimes under ridiculous pretexts, which became more frequent as the Haitian leadership struggles to meet its various debt repayments (Farmer 1994, 86-90). Historian Hans Schmidt notes that the US navy alone had sent warships into Haitian ports to “protect American lives and property” nineteen times since formal recognition (1971: 31), culminating in the eventual invasion and almost two decade long occupation of Haiti by US marines in 1915, under the humanitarian pretext of “[re-establishing] peace and order” (US Rear Admiral Caperton, (FIND ORIGINAL SOURCE) cited in Weston 1972, 217) following a five year period during which the Haitian presidency had changed hands seven times; the final time ending in a massacre of 167 political prisoners before the president was lynched in the town square.

The United States assumed the political, financial and administrative control over the country, establishing the customs receivership it was unable to secure through diplomatic channels (FOOTNOTE), and censoring the press. Haiti’s constitution was rewritten and the Haitian parliament dissolved once it refused to pass the new US drafted constitution that would permit American and European corporations to purchase Haitian land, undoing laws against foreign ownership going back to the revolutionary period (Footnote) (Schmidt, 1971: 97-99). While capital and foreign investment indeed poured in, and infrastructure, hospitals, schools and irrigation were greatly improved in parts of Haiti, the occupying force reinstituted forced public labour crews to build roads in Port-au-Prince (resistance to which brought thousands of casualties); and many peasants found themselves dispossessed as a result of new land leases, driving down the overall wage level (George Sejourne estimated 50,000 peasants displaced in the North alone – REFERENCE). As Farmer observed, “for many [investors] the real draw was not land, but cheap labour” citing the Financial America’s1926 report that “Haiti offers a marvellous opportunity for American investmentÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ The run-of-the-mill Haitian is handy, easily directed, and gives a hard day’s labour for 20 cents, while in Panama the same day’s work cost $3” (1994, 95). Yet while the interests of various US investors and banks certainly played their part in the occupation, the decision to invade was driven principally by strategic concerns with regional hegemony, dislodging the German presence in the country (1995, 56-62.)

For Haitians the legacy of the invasion was rather different. The society was heavily militarized during this nineteen year period and spent much of the occupation under martial law, while the Haitian army was disbanded and replaced with a local gendarmerie staffed exclusively with mulatto junior officers under the command of senior US marines: “The American domination over it is quite complete although an attempt is naturally made to keep this fact in the background as much as possible” (Douglas 1927, 368-369). This empowerment of the mulatto elite under US supervision at the expense of the black majority was not confined to the army, as blacks were all but excluded from public life, and a succession of mulatto client-presidents were installed by the US High Commissioner (Robinson, 1996: 265); with a crystallising impact on the racial and class divides in Haiti that should not be underestimated. As anthropologist Sidney Mintz aptly notes,

“Some of the most negative achievements were of a human kind. As the occupation identified those persons in the society with whom we thought we could deal – who talked out language, literally or figuratively speaking – it sent a message to ordinary Haitians.” Moreover, “By creating a modern army, it changed Haitian politics forever. The armed forces became the one way – other than the priesthood – for poor Haitians to rise within the system. There is no doubt that us measures in the period 1915-1934, and the care shown to the Haitian military since, have been of crucial importance to the perpetuation of traditional power” (1995, 85).

The modernised army became, and remained, the backbone of real domestic power in Haiti once us forces left in 1934, exacerbating the very problems that the marines ostensibly came in to resolve; and laying the basis for the introduction of the Duvalier dictatorships in 1957: their dreaded tontons macoutes paramilitary squads and chefs de sections (rural section chiefs empowered to extort the population for ensuring docility). That would wield an iron fist over the country for the next 29 years, causing some 50,000 deaths in the process, along with the arrest, torture and displacement of many others (Hallward 2010, 14) (FOOTOTE). US Major Smedley Butler, who led the US occupation of Haiti, would later summarize his career in the following terms shortly before retiring:

“I spent thirty-three years and four months in active service as a member of our country’s most agile military force – the Marine CorpsÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ And during that period I sent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. Thus I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street” (cited in Chomsky 1985. 98-99).

Democracy Promotion and Lavalas

Needless to say the Duvalier period was a dark one for Haitian society, the brutalities and developments of which have been documented in depth elsewhere (see REFERENCE). For the purposes of this paper, and the development of Haitian society into its current form, three related aspects of this period are of key importance. Firstly, while foreign direct investment in Haiti was certainly nothing new, the 1960’s and 1970’s brought with it the large scale penetration of transnational capital and the disruption and gradual breakup of the peasant economy, as the agricultural sector was badly undercut by subsidized foreign agribusiness and land concentrated ever more narrowly among Duvalierist elites, forcing significant migration of the populace out of the countryside where the overwhelming majority of Haitians were settled, to find work, much of it in the assembly export sector (Robinson, 1996: 270). These changes were also a product of domestic policy, as both Duvalier regimes proved more than accommodating to the removal of protectionist barriers to foreign capital, suppressing trade union activity, providing transnational companies with ten year tax holidays, and removing any restrictions on profit repatriation (ibid). While Washington certainly had reservations about both Duvaliers at different stages, it was policies like this, along with the regime’s stringent anti-communist stance that won Duvalier on-going US military aid and financial support until he was on the verge of being overthrown; while USAID money began to pour in at ever increasing rates as part of development programmes designed to propel the restructuring of the Haitian economy from local production into an export platform model orientated around enclave manufacturing.

It was the effect of these measures on the peasantry that provided the social basis for the growing popular movement that would eventually unseat Haiti’s second ‘president for life’ and force the country’s first free elections, as those in absolute poverty rose from 50 to 80percent in a decade (ibid), and the authoritarian state brutally suppressed dissent and provided no channels for the population to address these grievances. Furthermore, in forcing much of the peasantry into Port-au-Prince in search of work, the “spatial isolation of the peasantry” (Farmer, 1994, 81) evaporated as previously secluded popular classes come into stark and provocative contact with the inequalities of Haitian society and the scandalous decadence of the urban elite, particularly the Duvalier family itself. Trouillot, documenting the rapid politicization of the dispersed former peasant communities notes that Haiti had “become a truly ‘national space’Ã¢â‚¬Â¦ Words and images meant to impress certain segments of the population now reached unintended audiences. In the streets of the provincial towns, despair turned into anger, and anger into defiance” (Truillot, 1990: 218-219 cited in Robinson, 1996: 272). The anti-Duvalier, and later the Lavalas movement developed out of this picture, and in such a way that it was almost entirely detached from the state system and operating outside of conventional political channels; colonizing civil society against a totalitarian state that was widely seen as intolerable, self-aggrandising and subservient to foreign power and its own narrow commercial-military elite.

What also developed out of this picture (and a much broader international picture) was a recognition in Washington that the authoritarianism of Duvalier, and of other client regimes in parts of the Third World was becoming a liability (FOOTNOTE), and adding to the threat that a popular revolution might undo the social structure with which Washington has for so long been connected and aligned. Ultimately the popular rebellion could not be suppressed, and Haiti found itself on the brink of revolution. This popular dkhoukaj (or uprooting) of Duvalierism, in combination with pressure from the United States (who could see the writing on the wall and had already withdrawn aid), forced Duvalier out of the country. This took place without an alternative unified political leadership representing the masses to assume power; and so what followed in the short term was a chaotic and violent military run transition period lasting almost five years – ‘Duvalierism without Duvalier’ as many have dubbed it – until free elections in Haiti were finally allowed to take place for the first time in 1990.

This period, while under military administration also housed one of the most important developments in modern Haitian history; as out of the mass based contingent of the opposition that expelled Duvalier, an extraordinary range of ti legliz (Creole for ‘little church’) local church group movements, trade unions, grassroots peasant associations, community councils, youth groups, women’s groups, and various other organisations populaires sprang up in loose and informal association with one another, and became the vehicle for the mobilization of Haiti’s poor majority. Much of this activity found its inspiration and ideological underpinning in liberation theology’s ‘preferential option for the poor’ – an ecclesiastical affirmation of the right of the poor to defend their own interests, and a reorganisation of popular discourse around “questions of agency in suffering” (Farmer 2006, 58), extending as it did into “a critique of the wealth, corruption and brutality of the elite” (Hallward 2010, 16-17). Incrementally, many of these popular organisations began to appropriate the functions of the state in the local communities, or rather fill the vacuum left by a government that had not performed many of these functions in the first place:

“peasants now had the freedom to engage in group self-help activities such as pig marketing cooperatives, collective work teams, and farm implement distribution systemsÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ almost every city neighbourhood had a committee that cleaned up the streets, burned trash, elected leaders, and sought to communicate the neighbourhood’s demands for change to the government. Many of them engaged in small scale civic projects ranging from human rights investigations to adult education and road constructionÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ organised [and politicised] literacy campaigns sprouting in every part of the country”, as did independent radio, articulating popular concerns, with its correspondents in the provinces (Levin 1995, 424-426)

Many of these local and regional groups had banded together to form broader coalitions, such as the national Congress of Democratic Movements (KONAKOM) and the Group of 57, and the National Popular Assembly (APN), coalesced into a national movement that became known as Lavalas (the Creole word for ‘avalanche’ or ‘flood’); with outspoken priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide as the symbolic voice for change at the forefront of the movement. As Levin notes, “a much longer account would be necessary to do justice to the richness and diversity of this popular sector” (ibid, 427); yet what is important for this paper is that these organisations populaires became a highly representative driving force for democratisation and popular empowerment in Haiti, and one might reasonably have expected any external power interested in promoting in Haiti to have devoted resources in support of their efforts (Robinson, 1996: 284).

Instead while millions of dollars of US aid poured into the country during this interlude in variations on democracy enhancement programmes, (including think tanks, human rights groups, and political parties (FOOTNOTE)) all of this bypassed the hundreds of popular organisations and was funnelled primarily towards the electoral campaigns of elite candidates; “[NED] judiciously funded and cultivated an elite alternative to Duvalier style authoritarianism, which would provide the basis for the 1991 coup” (Arthur and Dash 1999, 233), indeed these very constitutions would before long emerge as major opponents of Aristide and financial backers of the military coup that would remove him. Former World Bank official and later coup-government Prime Minister Marc Bazin (also a former Finance Minister for a brief sell under Duvalier) was marked out as a favourite among other centrist US supported politicians, and received NED campaign contributions of well over $12million (Griffin 1992, 669; although another source claims the contribution figure to total as much as $36 million, see Levin 1995, 430). Indeed the pro-market centrist Bazin was regarded as a safe bet as winner for an election that was expected to yield a miserably low turnout.

Aristide was for a long time reluctant to take part in the 1990 elections, regarding formal elections as a sham and a stumbling block to the movement, in forcing compromise and accommodation to the existing power structures; while tactical debate had already raged within the Lavalas organisations about whether meaningful democratic change could be effected through formal Haitian electoral procedures or not. Yet Aristide eventually bowed under pressure from fellow priests and Lavalas organisations to run for office and announced his candidacy at the last moment, less than two months before the election. He resolved in a November press conference that “if we’re going to participate in the elections, we must take them over entirely” (cited in Farmer 1994, 153). This remark was to prove to be more than just mobilising rhetoric, as without any of the connections, support and resources showered on other candidates from outside, or any time to organise an effective electoral campaign, Aristide swept the elections by an overwhelming margin of 67.5 percent of the vote in a field of eleven candidates. Bazin, who had outspent Aristide by a ratio of 20-1 trailed closest behind with 14 percent of the vote, and “a normally uninterested Haitian electorate increased its registration almost overnight from 40% to 90% in response to Father Jean Bertrand Aristide’s candidacy//” (Griffin 1992, 699). As poor neighbourhoods all over the country erupted in celebration, few caught the promise of the moment better than radio journalist Jean Dominique: “to feel linked, intricated, with millions of people, millions of people who could feel for one second – one second in a century, one second in light years – this sense of being together, of doing things together, of moving forward together with them: I think it was a wonderful experience, the most wonderful experience of my life” (cited in ibid). For the first time in their country’s history, the people had elected their own president rather than having one imposed by the army, the US or by a faction of the ruling elite.

In the hemisphere’s poorest country, a large majority of the population became organised and active and elected someone from their own ranks on serious issues that everyone knew about: control of resources, cultural rights, issues of justice; and not simply on election day by deciding between a handful of candidates who occupy the same social position and manage to appear because they’re financed by the same corporate institutions. Furthermore the reason for Aristides’s on-going popularity in Haiti is not that he embodies a demagogic charisma or is seen to have made no mistakes, but that in the eyes of most of the public he is not a politician but an activist and an organiser. Unlike many other revolutionary leaders, Aristides’s liberation theology rejects any hierarchy of the leader and led; “for Aristide as for Mirabeau ‘the assembled people take no orders’. If there are leaders, they lead only as a voice or instrument of a collective [authority] that leads through them” (Hallward 2010, 22, 22). Aside from the result’s immediate significance for Haitian politics, a major part of the significance of the Lavalas electoral victory was that it

represented not only a new option for the Haitian majority but alsoÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ for the Third World – a model in which popular sectors organized in civil society take primacy over the state. In the words of many observers, this was the first political revolution since the end of the Cold War. And it was one whose democratic legitimacy could not possibly be called into question. (Robinson, 1996: 290)

This point is also important, not only because of the ideological challenge posed by the movement’s example, but because of Washington’s formal commitment to promoting democratic structures around the Third World, in the face of Aristides’s overwhelming and unquestionable democratic mandate.

Aristide’s Presidency and the Coup

Less than a year of Aristides’s administration had passed before he was overthrown by a military coup that not only thwarted reformist attempts to improve the lot of Haiti’s poor majority, but also brought about the virtual destruction of Haitian civil society and began a brutal counter-revolutionary campaign against Aristides’s popular support base.

While beforehand, many centrists and liberals in Haiti were quite happy to use Lavalas type popular pressure to edge out their reactionary Duvalierist rivals, Aristide once in office did not govern like they, or even militant Lavalas members would have expected, and many of the liberal elite class who had sought to ride the crest of this popular wave for their own ends soon found themselves in the opposition’s pro army camp; scores of them “joining a US funded front that called itself the ‘Democratic Convergence’ and adopted the restoration of the army as one if its first and most insistent demands” (Hallward 2010, 36). Aristide did during his brief time in office launch a major literacy campaign, managed a marginal increase in the minimum wage (something he was sharply criticised for by USAID on grounds that it would harm investment), enforced customs duties, purged the army of many of its most senior officers and ordered the elimination of the long standing and hated system of rural section chiefs – a major instrument of repression and extortion inherited from the 1914-1934 occupation (FOOTNOTE) – replacing it with a police force accountable to the ministry of the interior rather than the military, a reform that was quickly reversed following the coup (DOJ 1993, 31 cited in Hallward 18). Yet the Aristide government on the whole enacted a mild reformist and pragmatic economic program, much of it in keeping with austerity measures written by the World Bank and IMF, who approved new loans during his presidency (Fatton 2002, 79). As may scholars on Haiti have noted, it is not strictly speaking the policies carried out themselves (though to be sure many of them antagonised powerful interests) but more decisively the long term threat that popular participation, and the momentum of the Lavalas movement posed (or seemed to pose) to the privilege of the highly paranoid elite families and the army that produced the panic eventually culminating in Aristides’s ouster. This is also why the brunt of the post-coup terror was aimed squarely at Aristide’s supporters and the mass based peasant organisations that had put him in office.

Washington manifestly did not expect Aristide’s electoral victory, nor did they welcome the Aristide government with open arms, and were particularly dismayed to see his cabinet staffed largely with Lavalas activists rather than moderate politicians well acquainted with the United States (FOOTNOTE). $84million of previously approved aid was suspended to the new government on grounds that it could not certify that human rights were being respected (a policy that was never applied to previous dictatorships); much of it according to Amy Wilentz redirected towards “those sectors of the Haitian political spectrum where opposition to the Aristide government could be encouraged” (Wilentz, cited in Farmer 1994, 173; see also Robinson, 1996: 292). That being said, it certainly does not follow that the United States, having demonstrated hostility towards the new government encouraged or participated in its violent overthrow, particularly since Washington’s call for free elections in Haiti in the first place was motivated by a desire to avoid the pitfalls of authoritarian or military rule in the Third World. The coup itself, as Robert Fatton has stressed is better understood as a reactionary default on democracy by a domestic elite still very much able to exercise coercive power, who “feared a social explosion that would end their domination” and ultimately still “controlled the force of arms” (1999, 221, 223). The response from Washington one the coup government was already consummated, and the terms on which Aristide was allowed to eventually return is more telling in this regard.

Within Haiti, it is difficult to overstate the level of outrage and collective anger that the overthrow of Aristide provoked among the population; the Haitian masses were in an extreme revolutionary state of mind and thousands of men and women were ready to leave their jobs and dedicate themselves to any form of army that Aristide might have formed. Others were ready to help pay for that army, which would have vastly outnumbered the coup forces, although most of the weaponry were monopolised by Haiti’s military and commercial elite, who could rely on outside support if they were seriously threatened. A sympathetic US aide notes his conviction that those who thought a violent uprising would succeed were “very much mistaken: the attempt would have led to immense bloodshed without a victory. In my opinion their wish was the father of their thought” (cited in Hallward 2010, 45). Even if Lavalas were to win the immediate confrontation with the official army, Nicaragua’s recent experience with US covert intervention and terror shows that the prospects of a longer war with the ruthless people behind the Haitian army are far from encouraging. Aristide himself was resolute in his rejection of an armed struggle for similar reasons: #”you’re kidding yourself” he said, “if you think that the people can wage an armed struggle. We need to look at the situation in the eye: the people have no weapons, and they will never have as many weapons as their enemies. It’s pointless to wage a struggle on your enemies’ terrain, or to play by their rules. You will lose” (cited in ibid, 45-46, 351).

Post-coup Haiti and Aristides’s Return 1991-1994

The public outrage soon turned to despair as section chiefs were briskly restore d to their former positions, and the military, led by Aristides’s former army Commander-in-Chief Raoul Cedras proceeded to stamp out any sign of political activity or independent association. Americas Watch’s report on the state of Haiti’s post-coup civil society documents in chilling details the staggering record of murder, arbitrary arrest, torture, intimidation and property destruction, and the testimony of many of the thousands of peasant activists and Lavalas supporters turned fugitive under the de facto military regime, unable to sleep in the same place on successive nights for fear of falling into the hands of the military (see Americas Watch 1993; also Fuller and Wilentz 1991) (FOOTNOTE). As the report notes, the goal of the campaign, largely realised, “is to return Haiti to the atomised and fearful society of the Duvalier-era so that even if international pressure secures the return of President Aristide, he would have difficulty transforming his political popularity into the support needed to exert civilian authority over a violent and recalcitrant army” or pose any other threat to the existing structures of power in Haiti (Americas Watch 1993, 1). The terror in Haiti during this period was reported by human rights groups to be worse than at any time under the Duvalier dictatorships (Robinson, 1996: 302) much of it bankrolled by US tax dollars (FOOTNOTE), as Aristides’s support base was either wipe out or sufficiently intimidated such that it would no longer exist as a political force in Haiti. Reverend Antoine Adrien captured the long term impact when he stressed that “even if you send Aristide back, it will be too late. Those returning will control nothing. All the militants are in hiding and the popular organisations are dismantled. You don’t rebuild those things overnight” (cited in Farah 11994, 3).

Within days of the coup US secretary of State James Baker came out in unequivocal terms to denounce the new government as “illegal”, adding that “until president Aristides’s government is restored, this junta will be treated as a pariah, without friends, without support, and without a future” (cited in Ives 995, 65-66); and the United States supported an economic embargo imposed on the regime under the auspices of the Organisation of American States (OAS). Yet the sanctions in practice were notably unconvincing, their tentative nature “reflected in the slow and meandering chronicle of the imposition”; and were soon modified by the Bush administration to include “exemptions for U.S. businesses operating in HaitiÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ most strikingly, the financial assets of Haitian military leaders in the United States were not frozen until January 1994, more than two years into the crisis” (Rogers 1996, 423) (FOOTNOTE). As the embargo became still more porous, the New York Times reported that it was in fact being “fine-tuned” so as to ease its effects on the starving population (cited in Ives 1995, 65); only exemptions for US firms seem to have this curious feature. While there were many heartfelt laments about the suffering of the Haitian poor under the embargo, one had to turn to underground press in Haiti to learn that major peasant organisation MPP, church coalitions, and the National Federation of Haitian Students continued to call for a real embargo.

Major disputes erupted in Washington shortly after the coup around the nature of their Haiti policy, and as US statements began to move away from the support they initially voiced for Aristide, suggesting that democracy may end up proceeding in Haiti without him, and raising dubious questions about his sanity and his human rights record that were picked up and echoed by the press (Griffin 1992, 670; Stotzky 1999, 243). Since Aristide had been elected on such a conclusive popular mandate, a major part of the dilemma for the United States was how to bridge their commitments to democratising the region with a need to contain Lavalas influence over Haiti’s political system. US foreign policy scholar and White House consultant Howard Wiarda captured the predicament well, before weighing up the viable policy options, when he made the assessment that:

“It is important for the United States to support democracy in Haiti but not necessarily Aristide. At the same time, since Aristide received such a large mandate initially and was the constitutional president, it is probably important to maintain at least the semblance off constitutionalism. The question is, can a formula best be found to accomplish this?… Aristide could be brought back as constitutional president for a short time to preserve face and constitutionality, but all would understand that he would go quickly into exile and a vice president would take over or new elections would soon be scheduled. Alternatively, Aristide would return but he and the army would agree to share power in a broadly based civil-military juntaÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ A third option would be for Aristide to return as a largely honorary or ceremonial president, but for real executive power to be exercised by a prime minister – not the Communist Rene Theodore, clearly unacceptable – but someone with a broad base of support. A forth possibility is to let Haitian political process proceed without Aristide, until a semblance of democracy is restored and the former president can be permanently shunted aside and forgotten. All of these proposals preserve democratic continuity and constitutionalism to some degree, while also recognising that someone other than Aristide ought to run the country” (1995, 39).

The United States ended up opting for a combination of the first and the third of Wiarda’s proposals, and began to take steps towards negotiating the terms Aristide’s return to office, first under OAS and UN mediation, but then directly, and with particularly onerous conditions for Aristide and the Haitian public. Aside from insisting on a blanket amnesty for those guilty of political crimes during the coup period, partly so that military leaders would willingly step down (see HRW 1996), Aristide, after months of deadlocked negotiations and diplomatic standoff, was gradually forced into a debilitating coalition with the political opponents he defeated so resoundingly at the polls. Each new concession made by Aristide was a blow to any possibility of changing the distribution of wealth and power in Haiti, yet refusing to negotiate risked jeopardizing international legitimacy and simply prolonged the terror in Haiti, as the situation offered no viable alternative to ending military rule but dependence on outside intervention. Ales Dupey observed that the leaky embargo was an important part of the negotiations in this sense, in that it “allowed the United States to put pressure on Aristide to compromiseÃ¢â‚¬Â¦it would have been easy to get rid of the military by enforcing the UN embargo. If Haiti did not receive petroleum for one or two months, that would be the end, everything would come to a standstillÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ [but that] would have meant restoring Aristide with even more power than before! (cited in Orenstein 1995, 99). Furthermore, one of the first acts u[on Aristides’s return was to confiscate what amounted to “160,000 pages of documents, photographs, videotapes and audiotapes” from the offices of FRAPH (FOOTNOTE), refusing to release these documents upon repeated request from Haitian authorities. As Priscilla Hayner notes “”these documents would almost certainly reveal [connections with FRWAPH in details] and the complicity of the US government in supporting” the military junta and its terrorist commanders (2001, 204); connections which have nonetheless been confirmed by FRAPH leader Emmanuel Constant (footnote), who despite being tried and convicted in absentia for his role in the murder of thousands of Haitians, remains in New York where he has been granted asylum (as have the other coup leaders including Cedras and Francois), with both Clinton and George W. Bush administrations dismissing repeated requests to have him extradited back to Haiti so he can be charged. Commentators are generally polite enough not to recall Bush’s oft repeated statement following the 9/11 attacks that “those who harbour terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves” and must be treated accordingly, by large scale bombing and invasion.

More importantly that this, Aristide was required as oar of the 1994 Paris Plan to adopt an economic program hardly distinguishable from that of the defeated candidate, Marc Bazin, the core element of which involved sharply cutting subsidies to the agricultural sector and removing import protections, along with “[the] privatisation of state enterprises, trade liberalizations, the maintenance of low wages, and financial deregulation” (Chavla 2010); an imposition that Bill Clinton last year came out and publicly apologised for (FOOTNOTE). The text of the agreement stipulated that “The renovated state must focus on an economic strategy centred on the energy and initiative of civil society, especially the private sector, both national and foreign” (cited in Chomsky, 2004, 6). The country’s resources were thus required to be directed towards the needs of foreign investors and the wealthy domestic elite who supported the coup; those sectors are designated as the core of Haitian civil society, not the majority of the peasant based population and the independent organisations that have been largely destroyed by the military. While Aristide importantly managed to force some progressive clauses into the agreement, and later resisted the privatization of state assets, threatening to jail any officials that might try to proceed with these measures (Hallward 2010, 57-58), the structural adjustment package had a devastating effect on Haiti’s agricultural sector, forcing much of the rural population into urban centres to compete for work, as

“Import tariffs on rice were cut from 50 percent to 3 percent, opening the door to heavily subsidised imports from the United StatesÃ¢â‚¬Â¦ unable to compete with cheap imports, domestic producers were pushed out of local markets. From a position of near self-sufficiency in 1990, by the end of the decade national production of paddy had fallen by almost halfÃ¢â‚¬Â¦[and] the country has been left dangerously dependent on food imports” (Watkins and Fowler 2002, 140-141).

The influx of people from the countryside into Port-au-Prince, and the ensuing competition for work (particularly in the foreign owned enclave manufacturing sector to which much of the aid is directed) has held down the overall wage level, and Haiti’s debt, now four times bigger than it was in 1980, continues to consume around 20percent of the national budget (Hallward 2010, 7). We now read that Haiti cannot feed itself, another sign of a ‘failed state’ (WORD BETTER).

Nevertheless while great compromises were made in negotiating the terms of Aristide’s return, such that (what remained of) his support base was split as a result, they certainly did not reduce Aristide to the powerless ceremonial figurehead suggested by Wiarda. Aristide was able shortly after his return to bring about the total demobilisation of the army, acknowledging that it had never been used to defend the population from external aggression and was in fact a major internal barrier to the Lavalas political agenda, the importance of which is difficult to overstate in light of Haiti’s contemporary history. Yet Aristide was also under no illusions about the acute limits of Haiti’s ability to strike an independent economic course, owed largely to the extent of its indebtedness, the vulnerability of its economy, and Haiti’s resulting dependence on foreign assistance to meet its basic needs, which gives investors and international creditors enormous leverage over policy. As the US Army Strategic Studies Institute aptly put the matter:

“In sum, the Haitian government is trapped. On the one hand, it must please foreign donors or risk losing the aid it needs to jump start the economy and avoid a further sharp decline in living conditions. On the other, it must satisfy the aspirations of the poor majority of Haitians for a better life.” (Schulz 1996, 12 cited in Hallward 2010, 8).

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