[R-G] Peter Hallward Untangles the Truth About Haiti From a Web of Lies

[Anthony Fenton]

February 14th, 2008
Peter Hallward Untangles the Truth About Haiti From a Web of Lies

By: Joe Emersberger - HaitiAnalysis.com

In "Damning the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of  
Containment" Peter Hallward meticulously explains how, on February 29  
of 2004, the U.S. managed to "topple one of the most popular  
governments in Latin America but it managed to topple it in a manner  
that wasn't widely criticized or even recognized as a coup at all."  
Imperial powers do not reinvent the wheel when it comes to  
undermining democracy in poor countries. Hallward identifies valuable  
lessons for people who wish to limit the damage that powerful  
countries inflict on the weak.

The narrative he presents is not complicated, but to present it he  
must expose countless lies and half truths and brilliantly explore  
many simple questions that corporate journalists invariably failed to  
ask.

The story the corporate press and even some alternative media  
presented to the world, when it was coherent at all, is roughly what  
follows.

Aristide was elected Haiti's president in 1990 in the country's first  
free and fair election. He was overthrown in 1991 by the Haiti's army  
at the behest of Haiti's elite who feared that he may lift the poor  
out of poverty and powerlessness. The US, despite some misgivings,  
restored him to power in 1994 after economic sanctions failed to  
budge the military junta that replaced him. He stood aside while his  
close ally, Rene Preval, occupied the presidency for several years.  
In 2000 Aristide was brought to power through rigged elections. By  
the end of 2003 Aristide had lost popular support and important  
allies due to corruption and violence. He could only keep power  
because he had armed gangs in the slums. In February of 2004, faced  
not only with a broad based political opposition, but by armed rebels  
and gangs who had turned against him, Aristide resigned and asked the  
US to fly him to safety as the rebels were about to overrun the capital.

Hallward shows that barely anything about the widely accepted  
narrative above is true.

The US was behind the first coup that ousted Aristide in 1991, and  
supplied the junta through a selectively porous embargo. It restored  
Aristide in 1994 because the political price of playing along with  
the junta had become exorbitant. After he was restored, the US made  
sure that Haiti's security forces were infiltrated by henchmen of the  
military regime, and leaned on Aristide to implement unpopular  
economic policies - far beyond what he had agreed to as a condition  
for being restored. He resisted US pressure for further concessions  
on economic policy, and disbanded the Haitian army over strong US  
objections. In response, the US spent 70 million dollars between 1994  
and 2002 directly on strengthening Aristide's political opponents.  
Over these years many of Aristide's allies among the "cosmopolitan  
elite", as Hallwards calls them, became bitter enemies.

Often their resentment stemmed from being passed over by Aristide for  
jobs or political endorsement in favour of grassroots activists from  
the Lavalas movement. Some defectors from Aristide's camp, like Evans  
Paul, had impressive track records in the fight against pre-1990  
dictatorships and against the 1991 coup, but by 2000 most had joined  
a coalition with the far right (known as Democratic Convergence)  
which was cobbled together with US money. Invariably, these former  
Aristide allies lost almost all popular support after defecting to  
the US camp. However they were well connected with foreign NGOs and  
the international press. The elections of 2000 were not only free and  
fair, but the results completely in line with what secret US  
commissioned polls had predicted. Aristide's opponents were trounced  
but successfully sold the lie that the 2000 elections were fraudulent.

The US (joined by the EU and Canada) blocked hundreds of millions of  
aid from Aristide's government. An unsuccessful coup attempt by far  
right paramilitaies took place in 2001. Other deadly attacks on  
Lavalas partisans took place during Aristide's second term, but went  
largely unnoticed by the international press and NGOs. In contrast,  
reprisals on Aristide's opponents were widely reported.

By late February of 2004 both the political and armed opposition were  
in danger of being exposed as frauds. US destabilization efforts,  
though successful in many ways, had failed to produce an electable  
opposition to Aristide and his Famni Lavalas party. The rebels, whose  
collusion with the political opposition was becoming difficult for  
the corporate press to ignore, were in no position to take Port-au- 
Prince. Hence, the US moved in to complete the coup themselves (with  
crucial assistance from France and Canada) and not through Haitian  
proxies as they had in 1991.

There does not yet exist, if it ever will, the kind of detailed  
internal record that exists for U.S. backed coups in Chile and  
Argentina during the 1970s. Though important fragments have been  
uncovered by researchers like Anthony Fenton, Yves Engler, Isabel  
Macdonald and Jeb Sprague, Peter Hallward makes his case by carefully  
gathering uncontroversial facts (like the presidential election  
results of 2006 in which the pro-coup politicians were crushed) and  
then applying logic and common sense.

Hallward might have gone into more detail about how Aristide kept  
most Haitians on his side in the face of such a relentless onslaught  
from such powerful enemies. The social programs Aristide's government  
implemented, the inclusive and participatory nature of the Famni  
Lavalas Party were certainly mentioned in the book but they should  
have been elaborated on. There are crucial lessons to be learned  
there for people's movements around the world..

Hallward is accurate in describing his book as "an exercise in anti- 
demonization, not deification." He wrote that if Aristide "shares  
some of the responsibility for the debacle of 2004 it is because it  
occasionally failed to act with the sort of vigor and determination  
its most vulnerable supporters were entitles to expect.". Hallward  
says a certain amount of complacency took hold in Fanmni Lavalas due  
to its popularity, and that it was sometimes slow to recognize  
enemies and opportunists within its ranks, but Hallward should have  
placed more emphasis on his concluding point that the renewal of  
Haitian democracy "will require the renewal of emancipatory politics  
within the imperial nations themselves." It is mainly we, within the  
imperial nations, who need to do the soul searching and analysis of  
what we should have done better.. Aristide hinted at this crucial  
point in his interview with Hallward:

"The real problem isn't really a Haitian one, it isn't located within  
Haiti. It is a problem for Haiti that is located outside Haiti! "