[R-G] America's Role in Haiti's Troubled History

[Anthony Fenton]

Copyright 2007 National Public Radio (R)
All Rights Reserved
National Public Radio (NPR)

SHOW: News & Notes 9:00 AM EST

October 29, 2007 Monday

LENGTH: 1162 words

HEADLINE: America's Role in Haiti's Troubled History

ANCHORS: FARAI CHIDEYA

BODY:


FARAI CHIDEYA, host:

I'm Farai Chideya and this is NEWS & NOTES.

In February of 2004, anti-government forces overthrew Haitian  
President Jean- Bertrand Aristide. As rebels approach the capitol, a  
U.S. military escort arrived to help Aristide leave the country. They  
delivered him to the Central African Republic, a destination of  
Aristide's choosing according to American authorities soon after the  
U.S. released a statement written in Creole that said Aristide had  
resigned his presidency and fled Haiti fearing for his life. But  
Aristide disagreed. He claimed he was forced to resign by U.S.  
forces, kidnapped and taken to Africa without his consent.

In response, a small delegation from the U.S. and Jamaica chartered a  
flight to the Central African Republic to demand Aristide's return to  
the Caribbean.

Activist Randall Robinson helped organized that trip, and he's  
written about it in his new book in "An Unbroken Agony."

Randall Robinson, welcome.

Mr. RANDALL ROBINSON (Founder, TransAfrica; Author, "An Unbroken  
Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President"):  
Thank you. Very nice to be here.

CHIDEYA: Well, when CBS' "Nightline" asked Assistant Secretary of  
State Roger Noriega why Aristide was taken to the Central African  
Republic, he answered, that's where he'd like to be taken. Do you  
believe that?

Mr. ROBINSON: No. That is very far from the truth. First of all, the  
rebels did not overthrow the government. At the time, the closest  
they would ever get to the capitol was the point at which they enter  
the country from the Dominican Republic. They were diversion. The  
abduction was planned and carried out fully, wholly by the United  
States.

CHIDEYA: What do you think - before we move on - that the record is  
now, you obviously, in this book, detail an account that the U.S.  
government would not agree with. Where do you think most people, if  
they know it all about how these events transpired, do you think they  
agree with you or the U.S. government?

Mr. ROBINSON: Well, the - I don't think people have the facts and I  
don't think people have been told the facts. I think that Secretary  
Powell lied. I think that Secretary Rumsfeld lied. In operatic ways  
they lied - huge, sweeping stories.

The fact is - and I detailed this in the book - I called the  
Aristides at home early on the day on Saturday, February the 28th,  
and talked to the president. We were planning ,and he was planning to  
be interviewed on Sunday in the capitol, at the palace, by Tavis  
Smiley, who was flying down with the group including Tom Joyner and  
Cornel West. The interview was to be followed by an interview with  
George Stephanopoulos. And so the president had no plan to leave the  
country.

And so he knew where the rebels were. They had no chance with 200  
people to overrun a capitol of a million people that were sympathetic  
to the democracy. Aristide was overwhelmingly popular in the country.  
And the U.S. explanation makes absolutely no sense.

When we got to the Central African Republic upon meeting with  
President Bozize, it became even clearer that the Aristides have been  
abducted. He was holding them against their will as a favor to France  
and to the United States. And before he could release them, he had to  
clear it with France and the United States, and he said as much.

CHIDEYA: Haiti's history is a history of revolution and colonialism.  
Give us just a sketch of how you feel the West has reacted - France  
and the U.S. - to that history and to that legacy.

Mr. ROBINSON: Disgracefully. Haiti was the richest colony in the  
French global empire. In 1791 in August, when 40,000 of the 465,000  
slaves revolted, ex- slaves defeated the armies of France, Great  
Britain, Spain, in line the best that Europe could send against them.

Well, this frightened Thomas Jefferson who said that Tucson should be  
reduced to starvation. It frightened George Washington who thought  
there would be a contagion of inspiration that would affect slave  
plantations in the United States. It jolted Western Europe because of  
their situation with the Atlantic slave trade.

And so it was a major event in the hemisphere. When in January 1804,  
these ex- slaves declared Haiti an independent republic. France  
imposed reparations in 1825, the first time in history a losing  
country had ever imposed reparations on the winning country. But by  
then, Haiti had no army and France did and they threatened to  
reinvade. And the United States and France and the European powers  
have abused Haiti from 1804 until the present.

To some degree, angry about the revolution that destroyed Napoleon's  
chances for empire, rebuked by a group of ex-slaves. They had never  
forgotten nor forgiven that. But to another degree, there's an  
enormous American sympathy with the elites in Haiti - the white  
elites and mulatto elites in Haiti.

I don't know of any country in the world, after the reformation of  
South Africa, where there is a more perfect correspondence between  
money, wealth and poverty and skin color than you will find in Haiti.  
One percent of the population owns 50 percent of the country's  
wealth. And the large majority of Haitians get by on less than a  
dollar a day.

Aristide came to power from the peasant community, a brilliant but  
poor man with a commitment to relieve the poverty that gripped the  
vast majority of Haiti's people. And he said that I'm going tot raise  
the minimum wage from a dollar to $2 a day. That enraged the elites.  
And anytime in the Haiti's history, Frederick Douglas talks about  
that very same subject. Any time that the blacks and Haiti pushed for  
a better lot in a way that would reduce the privilege of the elites,  
the United States has been sympathetic to the elites.

And so what we have in Haiti is a conflict of race and class, and the  
United States has consistently put itself on the wrong moral side of  
this divide. And so that is the case with Aristide on all of these  
questions with Bill Clinton and with George Bush on questions of  
structural adjustment and how it would benefit the elites and how it  
would hurt the poor. They were on the wrong side of the issue.

Seventy percent of the people in Haiti are poor farmers who get by on  
an income of $225 a year. Virtually, everything that the Clinton  
administration and the Bush administration did hurt the poor people.  
And they quashed President Aristide because he was sympathetic to  
their lot and lied to cover it up.

A cursory investigation would reveal and prove what I have presented  
as what actually happened. And I know this because I was directly and  
centrally involved in the story.

CHIDEYA: Randall Robinson, thank you so much.

Mr. ROBINSON: Thank you for having me.

CHIDEYA: Randall Robinson is founder and past president of  
TransAfrica, an organization established to advocate for Africa and  
the Caribbean. His latest book recounts the saga of Haitian President  
Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Haiti's tumultuous history. It's called  
"An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a  
President."