Jean-Bertrand
Aristide And
The Dead End Of Left
Nationalist Politics
World
Socialist Website
18 February 2004
To the Editor:
Referring to the
current conflict in Haiti as a right-wing rebellion indicates
a lack of understanding of the opposition movement calling for Aristides
resignation. There are several distinct groups in the opposition. In
addition to the business associations and wealthy elites
the United States left has focused on, the main opposition movement,
the Groupe 184, consists of a wide variety of civil society organizations,
including numerous peasant organizations, syndicates [unions], womens
groups, student associations, and writers and artists, some of whom
worked in earlier Lavalas administrations. These groups have traditionally
been associated with the Haitian left, and the United States right-wing
would most likely find their missions abhorrent.
The Groupe 184 has
clearly and repeatedly distanced itself from the armed insurgents in
Gonaïves, who were aligned with Aristide until their leader, Amiot
Metayer, was assassinated. The Groupe 184 organizes peaceful demonstrations,
which have grown ever-larger, particularly since thugs (chimères)
affiliated with Aristides government entered the university, beat
students, trashed classrooms and broke the legs of the university rector
on December 5, 2003. Several of the opposition demonstrations have ended
in violence, not because of the behavior of the unarmed marchers, but
because chimères, and occasionally the police, have attacked
them with bottles, rocks, tear gas and guns. The Groupe 184 is unarmed
and unaffiliated with the armed opposition in Gonaives, and has not
called for insurrection. Winter Etienne, the spokesperson of the Gonaives
insurgents, has also clearly stated that his group is unaffiliated with
the Groupe 184. He has also explicitly stated that his group acquired
their weapons when they worked for Aristide against the unarmed, civil
opposition.
As a Haitian whose
family was persecuted, arrested, exiled and/or killed by the Duvalier
government for being radical leftists and communists,
I am dismayed by the knee-jerk support the United States left is expressing
for Aristide. To me, it is part of the same colonialist mentality that
the United States has always had towards Haitithat foreign whites
know what is best for Haiti. Rather than blindly accepting the Aristide
governments propaganda, the United States left should consider
why so many of Aristides Haitian partisans, including many who
fought hard for his return to power after the 1991 coup détat,
have turned against him. The degradation and deterioration of everything
in Haiti since cannot be blamed on the lack of foreign aid alone. In
1994, Aristide once again had the opportunity to set Haiti on a new
path to change and development, and many Haitians, both in Haiti and
abroad, were eager to work with him. He (and Préval) squandered
that chance; instead, Haiti under Aristide and Lavalas has become increasingly
dangerous and unliveable, due to crime and violence perpetrated by the
government-affiliated chimères who use their government-issued
weapons to terrorize both the local Haitian population and visitors
of Haitian ancestry. That is the reason some Haitians are calling for
his resignation today.
(I am not affiliated
with any organization involved in Haitian politics.)
M-H L.D.
13 February, 2004
* * *
Thank you for your
letter. It raises pivotal questions regarding the current political
turmoil in Haiti and what way forward for those seeking to tackle the
root causes of that countrys never-ending social-political crisisdeepening
mass poverty amid great wealth for a few, the outcome of decades of
imperialist oppression of the Haitian people.
While the main opposition
groups, the Groupe 184 and Convergence Démocratique, have sought
to capitalize on the mass popular alienation generated by the Aristide
governments corruption, autocratic methods and neo-liberal policies,
they do not represent any progressive alternative. Their strident denunciations
of Jean-Bertrand Aristides human rights record notwithstanding,
the opposition forces have used similar methods of intimidation and
violence. After various electoral failures, they boycotted the last
presidential elections in 2000 and did everything to prevent, and still
oppose, new parliamentary electionsunless Aristide first resigns
and they are handed state power.
The official opposition
has pinned its hopes on creating so much disturbance and political instability
as to render the country ungovernable and thereby provoke the US government
to intervene in its favor. In numerous interviews in recent days with
world media outlets, opposition spokesmen have directed their appeals
not to the Haitian people but to the governments of France, Canada and
above all the United States.
Nothing could more
clearly expose the oppositions profoundly anti-democratic nature
than this grovelling before Haitis imperialist masters. After
all, what are the democratic credentials of a Bush administration which
came to power by stealing the 2000 US election and which has since unleashed
the deadly power of the US military machine on the innocent peoples
of Afghanistan and Iraq in the quest for oil and geo-strategic advantage?
And what is the US record in Haiti? Throughout the last century, Washington,
under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, backed a long
line of Haitian dictators, including the infamous Duvalier family, all
the way up to the last decade when President George Bush Sr. gave his
seal of approval to the bloody 1991 military coup which overthrew the
first Aristide government.
Inside Haiti, the
opposition has turned to the most reactionary elements. Its response
to the armed uprisings in the north, led by criminal gang leaders, drug
traffickers and other dubious figures, was quite revealing. According
to a Miami Herald report, Although Aristides political opposition
has tried to distance itself from the gunmen, Evans Paul, a leader of
the Democratic Convergence ... told [a] news conference that their revolt
is a legitimate reaction to what they see as the presidents misrule.
Reports have since
emerged that leaders of the FRAPHthe right-wing death squad which
hunted down opponents of the 1991-1994 military juntahave crossed
the border from the Dominican Republic, where they had taken refuge,
to join the Gonaïves rebellion.
The political physiognomy of the opposition
Whether the official
opposition groups had a direct hand in the armed uprisings at Gonaïves
and elsewhere may be debatable. Their right-wing political affiliations
are not.
André Apaid,
the sweatshop owner who has emerged as the oppositions leading
spokesman, opposed the ouster of the military junta and Aristides
restoration to power in 1994. He calls for the reestablishment of the
Haitian army, dissolved by Aristide in 1995no matter that this
pillar of reaction, created by the United States during its 1915-34
military occupation of the country, was responsible for repeated bloody
coups.
The official opposition
is a loose coalition containing disparate elementsfrom remnants
of the old Duvalier political machine such as ex-Duvalier minister Hubert
De Ronceray to one-time supporters of Aristide. It draws extensive support
from the middle classes (peasant organizations, syndicates, womens
groups, student associations, and writers and artists, as you
put it). But its real leadership rests in the hands of what you describe
as business associations and wealthy elites.
Your quotation marks around the latter are meant, one assumes, to convey
a sense of exaggeration in the use of the term. But the fact remains
that the driving force behind the dump-Aristide movement is Haitis
traditional ruling elitea strata notorious both for its deep-rooted
fear of the popular masses and readiness to support violence and authoritarian
rule to protect its privileges.
To the extent that
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, as a young, liberation-theology priest in a
Port-au-Prince slum, emerged in the final years of the Duvalier regime
as a charismatic mass leader who laced his sermons with anti-imperialist
and socialist rhetoric, he earned the hatred of the ruling elite. Indeed,
on several occasions he only narrowly escaped assassination by right-wing
death squads.
Subsequently, I
shall discuss how Aristide came to power and his political responsibility
for the abortion of the mass anti-imperialist movement that convulsed
Haiti between 1986 and 1991. But one thing should be made clear now:
for the dominant sections of the Haitian ruling class, personified by
the millionaire businessman Apaid, Aristides populist appeals
to the dirty masseswhether in their left-wing guise
in the days of the struggle against Duvalier or in their current form
of right-wing, racial appeals against the mulatto eliteare
a dangerous promotion of class hatred that cannot be tolerated.
Of course, the issue
is presented otherwise by the opposition leaders. Their talk of Aristides
tyranny is meant to downplay their own past history and
present associations. In this regard, Apaid made a remarkable confession
in an interview with the Montreal daily La Presse: Asked about
the suspected drug traffickers who run a radio station in the north
and invoke freedom of expression, about the gunmen convicted for a massacre
under the putschist regime [of 1991-94] at Raboteau in Gonaïves,
and about two senators ex-members of Lavalas [Aristides political
party] suspected of grave crimes, who are all his allies in the struggle
against Aristide, Apaid replied, I havent negotiated anything
with them, but added: I work in conviviality. I am not the
justice minister.
Opposition leaders
are deliberately cultivating ambiguity as to the policies they want
to see implemented by a post-Aristide government. When asked in the
same La Presse interview about the oppositions attempt to develop
a common program, Apaid said, The contentious points have been
pushed aside, as for example: should the economy be based on the national
space or on globalization and openness? Should workers or investors
be protected?... This left-right battle will keep tensions up for six,
eight, ten more years.
Apaid may refrain
from openly stating his own position in the left-right battle,
but his actions as owner of the industrial glove maker, Alpha Sewing,
speak for themselves. According to an August 1998 report on Alpha Sewing
by Action Alert, a labor rights group: Workers report skin and
respiratory problems because of work done unprotected with heavy chemicals.
Workers work approximately 78 hours a week. 75 percent of the women
do not earn the minimum wage.
Based on the above
observations, it is entirely accurate to characterize the official opposition
movement and the armed rebellion in the northwhatever the exact
nature of the ties between themas a right-wing challenge to the
elected government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide. To recognize this political
fact and to bring out the real agenda of opposition forces in Haiti
does not mean political knee-jerk support for Aristide as
you imply in your letter.
It is true that
elements in the US commonly identified as left, such as
Workers World and the weekly Haiti-Progrès, are raising the threat
of reaction as a cynical means to drum up support for an Aristide government
whose popularity has plummeted because of its policies of privatizations,
mass layoffs and price-subsidy cuts. The irony is that your own position,
glorifying the Haitian opposition movement, is but the other side of
the same coin. You share with the pro-Aristide lefts the
view that the most one can do is support one or the other of the bankrupt
bourgeois factions now at each others throats in a deadly feud
for the crumbs of power.
The World Socialist
Web Site insists rather that working people in Haiti, the United States,
and internationally should take an independent class standpoint. Principled
political opposition to Aristide must be based on the recognition that
he has played a crucial role in derailing a mass popular movement, which
contained within it the potential for revolutionary change.
The political record of Jean-Bertrand Aristide
Jean-Bertrand Aristide
has now been in power for 10 years, both directly and through his so-called
twin René Préval who was Haitis nominal
president from 1996 to 2001. His failure to improve the countrys
social conditionsthey have in fact grown far worseand the
subsequent political resurrection of the forces of reaction represent
the most damning indictment of Aristides left nationalist
politics.
Let us now briefly
review Aristides political career since his fateful decision in
late 1990 to seek the presidency. In December of that year he stood
against Marc Bazin, a former World Bank economist who was then widely
seen as Washingtons favored candidate. This represented a 180-degree
shift for a man who had until then denounced the coming elections as
US made and advocated their boycott.
What caused this
turnaround? As the day of the ballot drew closer, agitation among the
popular masses increased dramatically in response to the electoral campaign
mounted by the Duvalierist forces under the leadership of Roger Lafontant,
the strongman of the regime in its dying days. Nearly five years after
the colossal upheavals that had toppled Baby Doc Duvalier,
the Haitian ruling class became increasingly alarmed at the prospect
of another eruption of the oppressed masses into the countrys
political life.
It was at this point
that significant sections of the Haitian bourgeoisie turned to the former
radical priest Aristide as a means to contain such a movement. A necessary
precondition was to divert it from the streets into electoral channels.
And Aristide obliged them. He quickly set aside his past anti-capitalist
and anti-imperialist rhetoric, agreed to head a coalition
of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois political formations, and campaigned
on a platform of national reconciliation, in particular
for a marriage between the people and the military. Aristide
won a landslide victory in an election for which working people and
the oppressed had come out en masse.
His first government,
which took office in February 1991, was marked by feeble attempts at
social reforms, including a token rise in the minimum wage, coupled
with preparations for the imposition of IMF-inspired austerity measures.
This was under conditions where the oppressed masses who had propelled
Aristide into the National Palace, in particular his supporters among
the youth, were pressing hard for a meaningful redistribution of wealth
to alleviate poverty. After little over eight months in office, the
dominant sections of the Haitian ruling class lost confidence in Aristides
ability to contain the revolutionary strivings of the masses and backed
a military coup by the man Aristide had appointed head of the Haitian
armed forced, General Raoul Cédras.
The response of
Aristide, whose life was spared thanks only to an intervention by the
French ambassador on the night of the coup, was to have catastrophic
political consequences for the Haitian peoples struggle for their
social emancipation. While his supporters in the popular neighborhoods
of Port-au-Prince were being machine-gunned, Aristide appealed for the
coups opponents to remain peaceful so as to avoid
civil war. This didnt prevent a civil war, but only made it one-sided.
It is estimated that over 3,000 people were killed during General Cédras
three-year rule.
But most politically
damaging was Aristides decision, after finding refuge in the United
States, to base the struggle against the military junta not on appeals
to the American and international working class to assist their Haitian
class brothers and sisters in throwing off the yoke of military terror
and capitalist exploitation, but on the very force that had played the
central role throughout the twentieth century in maintaining Haiti into
the most abject poverty and oppressionthat is, US imperialism.
That Aristide and
his inner circle basically threw themselves at Washingtons knee,
begging for support, flowed organically from their social nature as
representatives of a petty-bourgeoisie whose class outlook is shaped
by the gruesome day-to-day reality of imperialist oppression, but which
lacks any genuine independence from the national bourgeoisie and from
imperialism itself. In a previous historical period, when the Cold War
conflict between US imperialism and the Stalinist bureaucracy in the
Soviet Union provided the national bourgeoisie with some room to maneuver,
and existing constraints on the international mobility of capital allowed
for a limited possibility of national economic development, petty-bourgeois
nationalists such as Cubas Fidel Castro or Nicaraguas Sandinistas
could pose as radical anti-imperialists and even socialists. But by
the time Aristide was forced into exile the Soviet Union was on the
brink of formal dissolution and in response to the economic shocks of
the 1970s, the advanced capitalist powers had become increasing aggressive
in their dealings with the so-called Third World, demanding the dismantling
of tariff barriers and state-owned industries as a condition for credit,
investments and access to advanced technology.
That Aristides
career as an anti-imperialist proved so short, and his transformation
into a lackey of Washington such an unpleasant spectacle, was thus not
fundamentally a result of personal failings. Rather it was rooted in
the fact that he had come onto the scene at the very point when any
objective basis for implementing his petty-bourgeois nationalist program
of using the nation-state to foster indigenous industry and implement
limited social reforms in an attempt to overcome the legacy of imperialist
oppression had collapsed.
In any event, Aristides
pleas to US imperialism fell initially on deaf ears, as the Republican
administration of George Bush Sr. all but openly welcomed the eviction
of the former radical priest at the hands of its main prop in Haiti,
the US-built Haitian armed forces. However, the military juntas
brutal rule soon led tens of thousand of Haitians to try to cross the
sea to Florida, and the influx of Haitian refugees became an issue in
the 1992 US presidential election with Democratic hopeful Bill Clinton
denouncing Bushs policy of systematically denying Haitian refugees
the right of asylum.
Following Clintons
election to the White House, pressure built on him to solve the refugee
problem. His administration finally decided in 1994 upon a military
intervention to restore Aristide to power, so as to justify completely
closing the USs doors to poor Haitians and dispel the growing
impression that the Clinton administration was impotent before Cédras
and the Haitian junta. Aristides return, however, was made conditional
on his providing a host of right-wing guarantees, most importantly a
pledge to carry out IMF-style neo-liberal policies.
Thus, when you write
that in 1994, Aristide once again had the opportunity to set Haiti
on a new path to change and development, you overlook the concrete
conditions of his return. As a result of his own petty-bourgeois political
orientationhis preference to turn to imperialism rather than the
Haitian and international working classAristide had his hands
and feet tied from the start. He was completely beholden to the very
force that has so long blocked Haitis path to change
and development, i.e., American imperialism. In one of historys
bitter ironies, Aristide, who was elected president on the basis of
a campaign against a former World Bank official whom he decried as the
US candidate, was put back in power by US marines after pledging
to impose a socially incendiary economic program dictated by Washington
and Wall Street.
Aristide remained
in office only until the beginning of 1996, since Clinton administration
officials had insisted that no extension of his five-year mandate would
be allowed despite the three years of Cédrass rule and
Haitis constitution barred him seeking a second consecutive term.
Aristides chosen successor and right-hand man, René Préval,
therefore ran as the candidate of Aristides party, Lavalas, and
was elected president in 1996.
It was Prévals
government that actually carried out the key elements of the IMF structural
adjustment program, leading to mass redundancies in the public sector,
the shutdown of publicly run companies such as the countrys flour
and cement manufacturers, and huge cuts in subsidies on food and transportation
under conditions of runaway inflation. The result was deepening social
misery in the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. Aristide still
pulled the strings of power behind the scenes, but since he formally
held no office he was somewhat shielded from the political fallout of
such deeply unpopular policies.
Aristide was reelected
president in December 2000, following elections boycotted by opposition
forces but deemed fair by international observers. Compared to a decade
before, however, the turnout was way down, well under 50 percent according
to most estimates.
During the past
three years, the devastating IMF-dictated policies Aristide signed onto
and his twin carried out have torn ever deeper into the
countrys social fabric. And the social crisis has been further
exacerbated by the withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars of
promised foreign financial aid as the US, Canada and other big powers
try to force Aristide to incorporate opposition representatives into
his government. Unable to offer any progressive solution to the ever-widening
social misery, Aristide has come to rely more and more on the dirty
tricks of generations of Haitian politicianspatronage repression,
racial appeals, and his own private network of armed gangs recruited
from lumpen elements.
The international working class and the
struggle against imperialism
In the end, both
Aristide and his foes in the opposition are defenders of bourgeois rule
who lack any genuine popular basis of support. They both rely on the
political backing of Washington and other imperialist forces, and on
patronage and intimidation tactics at home. Neither has the slightest
concern for bourgeois-democratic norms, let alone the democratic rights
of the masses: they know class divisions are so deep and conditions
of life so hellish for the vast majority of Haitians, that they can
only be enforced through the use of naked force.
Whether Aristide
or the opposition forces ultimately prevail may determine which section
of the political and business elite gets to plunder the statethe
most important source of wealth in a country with such a low level of
economic activity and output as Haiti. For the masses, it will make
no fundamental difference.
Those looking for
a genuinely progressive solution, one which addresses the burning needs
of the masses for peace, democratic rights, security, adequate food,
housing, health care and education will find it in the struggle to mobilize
Haitis oppressed masses against the domination of the islands
economy and state by a native business oligarchy, serving as the junior
partner of Wall Street and Washington.
The only social
force able to lead the fight for such an alternative is the Haitian,
Caribbean and international working class. But it must draw the lessons
of the tragic last two decades of struggles in Haiti. It must recognize
the bankruptcy of petty-bourgeois nationalist politics of the type espoused
by Aristide and his supporters. Imperialist oppression cannot be overcome
on a national basis, but only as part of a struggle against international
capital.
Under todays
conditions of globalization, whose great potential of progress for the
whole of humanity remains blocked by the monopoly control of a few giant
transnational corporations driven by private profit, the strivings of
the broad masses can only be fulfilled by a fundamental, revolutionary
shift at the very basis of society. The world economy must be run to
address social needs and not the profits of a few. For this, working
people in Haiti must consciously unite their struggles with those of
their class brothers and sisters in the Caribbean, South and North America,
and join in the building of an independent mass political movement of
the international working class against imperialism.
Sincerely,
Richard Dufour,
for the WSWS