The
Accomplished Destruction Of Aristide,
The Planned Destruction Of Hugo Chavez
By Heinz Dieterich
03 March, 2004
Rebelion.org
The
drama of Haiti and of the Aristide administration implies many dangers
for Cuba and Venezuela. It is the final outcome of Washingtons
Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) against popular governments in Latin
America: namely, subversion-destruction.
The last phase of
this strategy can be seen in Haiti, its initial phases in Nestor Kirchners
Argentina, and its middle phase in Hugo Chavezs Venezuela.
Sometimes this strategy
ends with the death of the Latin American protagonist, as was the case
with Salvador Allende. In other circumstances, the protagonist manages
to go into exile, as in the case of the Guatemalan president Jacobo
Arbenz. A third scenario is the re-education of the Latin
American protagonist within the empire and his subsequent political
recycling in his country, and that was the case of Aristide in
Haiti and Michael Manley in Jamaica.
Regardless of the
outcomes that Washingtons Standard Operating Procedure may have
on our countries, the initial aim of the subversive industrial/military
complex of the United States is always the same: to tame a leader or
social movement that has come to power through elections or de-facto,
and whose political agenda does not reflect the interests of Washington.
The first attempt
to dominate these movements and leaders is through co-option and corruption.
When these are not effective, then the strategy of subversive-destruction
is unleashed.
We are now witnessing
the last acts of the drama in Haiti. It started developing in 1986 when
the Haitian people managed to throw out the dictator Baby Doc Duvalier,
thus ending a history of a century and a half of military interventions
by the United States and of regimes of state terror in the service of
Washington.
When the chains
of United States neocolonialism, which had maintained the people of
Haiti in misery, were broken, a vacuum of power was created in which
the star of a slum area Salesian priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, began
to shine among the dispossessed.
With speech based
on the Theology of Liberation and its preferential option for the poor,
reclaiming the sovereign right of the country to its self-determination
against the domination of the United States, and with a passionate
rhetoric that sometimes incited violence between classes, as The
Wall Street Journal noted with concern, Aristide became a popular tribune
and the hope for change among the majority.
The 1990 elections
were the first free elections in 187 years. It demonstrated that Aristide
had the overwhelming support of the people. Aristide obtained 67.5%
of the votes despite having survived several assassination attempts
from right-wing paramilitaries and having been expelled in December
1988 from his Salesian Order instigated by the apostolic nuncio.[1]
Washingtons candidate and ex-employee of the World Bank, Marc
Bazin, merely obtained 15% of the votes.
These results raised
the red flag in the White House and set in motion a subversive-destruction
strategy against the popular government. It was successful in seven
months. The new president, elected by a majority, took possession on
February 1991 only to be overthrown in a bloody coup detat on
September 30th.
The subversive strategy
of post-electoral de-stabilization was preceded by another, pre-electoral
intervention strategy that used different approaches to get rid of the
rebel priest that was trying to implement what Washington considered
was a populist model of democracy, that is, a democracy
with the participation of those at the bottom.
The National Endowment
for Democracy (NED), the public subversive international arm of the
Republican Party and the Democratic Party of the United States, financially
backed the supporters of Bazin and the former members of the Duvalier
dictatorship, so as to impede the electoral triumph of Aristide. With
the same aim, NED financed radio stations that demonized Aristides
candidature.
The main workers
union in the United States, AFL-CIO collaborated, at the behest of the
Department of State, in financing right-wing unions, some with direct
influence over Duvaliers the secret police. The official US agency
for international development, USAID, subsidized and advised the right
wing factions that favored the United States.
All of these measures
did not impede Aristides triumph at the polls nor his assuming
power in February 1991. Faced with the defeat of Bazin and the danger
of popular democracy, Washington organized a coup detat that would
put an end to the priests experiment in the island. At the head
of the coup was the narco-general and CIA collaborator, Raul Cedras,
who was trained at the notorious School of the Americas in Fort Benning,
Georgia.
His right-hand man
was Col. Michel-Joseph Francois, also trained at Fort Benning. Together
with Emmanuel Constant, another CIA agent, they controlled two key organizations
for the destruction of Aristides democratic government: the National
Intelligence Service (SIN) and the death squads, known as FRAPH. Both
organizations have been established and maintained by the CIA.
In the first two
weeks of the coup, more than a thousand people lost their lives in a
state terrorist campaign that systematically destroyed popular and democratic
organizations that had supported Aristide. When the terror ended, Cedras
and Francois had assassinated more than four thousand Haitians.
The administration
of Bush Sr. in collusion with the main US media immediately started
a propaganda campaign against the deposed president making him responsible
for what happened due to his violations of human rights,
exactly as it did during the coup against Hugo Chavez.
For its part, the
Organization of American States (OAS) decreed an embargo against the
coup plotters that was never seriously implemented by the European nations
nor by Washington.
In February 1992,
Bush in effect lifted the embargo against the coup plotters, backed
by a fervent Democratic congressman, Robert Torricelli. Torricelli supported
the brutal embargo against Cuba, expecting to take advantage of the
fall of the Soviet Union to destroy the Cuban Revolution and with the
same energy, was in favor of lifting the embargo against the coup plotters
in Haiti. In both cases, he succeeded: while aggression against Cuba
increased, the boycott against Haiti was cancelled.
Faced with the force
of these events, Aristide succumbed. He signed an accord of national
unity that left him only a symbolic function in the government
and a de facto exile in the United States, while Washingtons puppet
Marc Bazin, assumed power in June 1992, with the public blessing of
the Vatican, the Episcopalian Conference of Haiti, and the national
and imperial elites.
The betrayal and
degeneration of Aristide, was taken to its paroxysm in his exile to
the United States, the systematic destruction of the popular movement
in Haiti and a massive exodus of seventy thousand Haitians in two years.
This created the conditions for his return, but now as a harmless leader.
Twenty-five thousand US soldiers, sent by William Clinton, re-established
he legitimate president in power.
Francois took refuge
in the Dominican Republic and later in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, where
he spent millions of dollars he obtained during the terror and through
narco-trafficking with the Colombian drug cartels. Cedras went to live
in Panama City along with the ex-chief of the army, Biamby and enjoyed
the same amenities of his assassin accomplice Francois.
Exile to Panama
was a courtesy of the Clinton administration that guaranteed Cedras
and Biamby a secure passage to Panama, where a mansion on the beach
awaited them with other imperial amenities, all expenses paid by the
United States.
Meanwhile, Aristide
returned to a devastated country, which nonetheless preserved his image
as The Savior among its popular sectors. However, this image
did not correspond at all with the objective or subjective potential
of the historic moment that 1990 represented.
The process of demolishing
his administration and his personality had been profound. It had to
end inevitably in his expulsion by the same popular forces that fifteen
years before had taken him to power. This is what we are now witnessing
and this is the result that Washington desired.
There is no better
way of killing a popular myth than by getting it killed by its own people.
This is what Washington did with ex-colonel Lucio Gutierrez in Ecuador.
His corrupt performance as a president discredited the Armed Forces
as possible vanguard in a nationalistic process. The support that the
Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) gave Gutierrez
has generated the same disrepute for the indigenous movement and handing
over military bases and military sovereignty to the Pentagon has attained
Washingtons most deeply felt expectations for Plan Colombia.
The colonel has
carried out his historic role for the empire. The only thing that is
waiting for him is a kick and exile. The same is valid for the priest:
he has become superfluous and will disappear from the scene, sooner
than he thinks.
The respective scenario
is foreseeable. Under the auspices of Washington, France, CARICOM or
the OEA, there will be a new national unity accord whose
elections will take some puppet of Washington to the presidency.
While the Democratic
Platform of the civil organization has some social force, power resides
increasingly in armed groups in the north of Haiti. These are made up
of the former torturers and military of the Duvalier dictatorship that
have returned from their easy exile in the Dominican Republic among
them the former leaders of the death squads (FRAPH), Luis Jodel Chamblain
and Jean Pierre Baptise, and another bloody henchman, Guy Phillipe-
and Aristides paramilitary groups that have switched sides.
Therefore, in a
cruel irony of history, Bush Sr.s plan for dominating Haiti which
instigated the coup against Aristide, has now become absolutely viable
under the presidency of his son George: duvalierism without Duvalier.
President James
Carter tried to implement a somocism without Somoza during the last
days of the dictatorship in Nicaragua, but failed, basically because
of the so-called Vietnam trauma. The possibilities of Bush
Jr. accomplishing a similar objective in Haiti are much better.
The implications
of the eventual installation of a right-wing government in Haiti are
considerable for Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela. The geographic
distance between north Haiti and eastern Cuba is barely 90 kilometers.
Guantanamo Base is located in those latitudes and any maritime exodus
from Haiti could be used by the Bush administration as a pretext for
unleashing force in the region.
It is supposed that
the State Department of the bellicose Colin Powell is preparing already
fifty thousand beds in Guantanamo Base to intern Haitian refugees to
the island.
For Venezuela, the
detailed study of Aristides experience is of vital importance.
The military coup of April 2002 failed, but the strategy of subversion-destruction
goes ahead.
The public recognition
by State Department functionary, Peter Deshazo, that the CIA finances
Washingtons mercenaries in Venezuela; the more than eighty assassinations
of rural leaders and popular leaders during the Bolivarian government;
the continuous envoy of arms to the Venezuelan paramilitaries and the
increasing aggression of the Colombian paramilitaries all demonstrate
that Washington proceeds without quarter to destroy the government of
Hugo Chavez.
Since the strategy
of re-education and recycling in the style of
Aristide will not work in the case of Hugo Chavez, the conflict in Venezuela
is antagonistic. Therefore, the defeat of the popular forces will have
an extremely high human cost, as the experiences in Chile and Haiti
demonstrate.
They are doomed
to succeed.
Translated by
Maria Victor
[1] Apostolic nuncios are the ambassadors of the Vatican. Translators
note.