The United Nations Security Council, at US direction, has announced an economic embargo of Haiti. President Bill Clinton has hinted broadly at military invasion if the embargo is not sufficient to force withdrawal of the military rulers who overthrew President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in September 1991. DIANNE FEELEY, a Haiti solidarity activist in Detroit, outlines the background to the crisis. This article is based on a speech to a meeting in Detroit in March.
Throughout the 19th century, Washington's policy was to ignore Haiti. However, in the 20th century, Washington has had much more of an interventionist stance. The United States invaded with a Marine force of 2000 in 1915, raiding the Haitian treasury and building a centralised state capable of repressing its people more fully than ever before. During its 19-year occupation, the government set up by Washington established an infrastructure of roads using forced labour, and created and trained an army.
Since that time, Washington has maintained a cooperative relationship with a number of totalitarian governments. The most infamous was the 14-year reign of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier (1957-1971). During his rule an estimated 50,000 people were killed by the Tontons Macoute, an unpaid paramilitary force that prospered through corruption and extortion.
Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier succeeded his father, but by 1985-86 popular demonstrations and Washington's need to have a democratic facade in which corruption was less repressive led the White House to withdraw support. The US Embassy announced Baby Doc's exile about five weeks before it happened.
Investment
In the 1980s the Caribbean became a more important source of low-wage labour for US investment. The US Agency for International Development (US-AID) spent $100 million promoting US investment in Haiti and other Caribbean countries.
About 90% of all foreign investment in Haiti is from the United States, primarily in banking, oil, and the light assembly industries that ring Port-au-Prince. Ninety-five per cent of all the assembly exports are to the United States. There are no collective bargaining agreements, and workers earn about 14 cents an hour.
Following Aristide's election president, US-AID spent $26 million to keep Haitian products "competitive" on the world market. Concretely that meant opposing two of Aristide's proposals: raising the minimum wage (from 33 cents to 50 cents an hour) and placing temporary price controls on basic foodstuffs.
Aristide was pressured and bullied into signing the Governor's Island Accords last July. [The accords provided for Aristide's return to the presidency with reduced powers, but is being violated by the military.] He attempted to come up with an alternate proposal, but the July 3 Miami Herald indicated the kind of pressure he was under when it reported a phone call from UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who reportedly said: "Don't think, Mr President, just sign it." Other sources reported that UN special envoy Dante Caputo threatened to have UN sanctions lifted immediately if Aristide did not comply with the plan as proposed.
Washington is distrustful of what could happen under Aristide — the flourishing of a self-empowered popular movement. Lt General Raoul Cedras, who organised the 1991 coup, was trained by the United States. He has been in the pay of the CIA for years. Aristide, on the other hand, is a genuine representative of the popular movement.
The wealthy Haitian elite has a parasitic relationship to the peasantry: the wealthy pay almost no taxes and never have. The peasantry has been traditionally burdened by taxation and extortion. The once fertile country is an ecological disaster. One and a half to two million of Haiti's seven million people live in or around Port-au-Prince. It is the poorest country in the western hemisphere.
Since the coup the popular movement has carried out several successful general strikes, particularly October 15, 1991, April 26, 1992, and June 24, 1993. The people also boycotted the January 18, 1993, elections.
Organised terror
But these actions have cost the movement dearly. On International Women's Day this year, two dozen women protested in front of the UNICEF offices in Port-au-Prince. The staff refused to receive them, locking the doors to their yard and trapping the women inside. The women read statements about the sexual assaults, beatings, rapes and murders of women throughout the country, and pointed out that the political climate made it impossible to meet or march.
Meanwhile, the military and paramilitary beat, rape, kill, mutilate anyone suspected of being pro-Aristide. They burn and destroy people's homes and property, most often refusing to allow anyone — even small children — a chance to escape burning buildings.
The military has killed more than 4000 people and arbitrarily detained 28,000 others. There are more than 350,000 internal refugees; another 35,000 attempted to flee the country in boats, although the vast majority were returned by the US Coast Guard.
Between 1981 and 1991, 23,000 Haitians fled the series of brutal dictatorships in boats. All but 28 were returned. (During that same period 75,000 Cubans were welcomed into the United States.) Of the 2179 Haitians who applied for legal status as refugees in 1992, only 234 were approved — the lowest rate of approval of any county in the world.
If Aristide is to return to Haiti, Washington wants to make sure two things are clear: he is to be a figurehead, and the popular movement must be kept on a leash. While Washington may prefer the facade of democracy to outright killings in the streets and in the countryside, it is willing to live with the massacres if necessary.
Following the overthrow of Aristide, the marginalised communities in the Port-au-Prince area were terrorised; then the repression was extended into the countryside. Every leader of whatever class who supported the mass movement was ruthlessly machine-gunned down. Just a couple of weeks ago a leader of the peasant movement was shot and hung from a tree.
The paramilitary and the army feel the need to make examples of those they capture, often mutilating the bodies. Since many Duvalierists returned last September and organised themselves into the Front for the Advancement and the Progress of Haitians (FRAPH), there have been terrible fire bombings in the marginalised communities that formed the base of Aristide's support.
Upset victory
Aristide announced his decision to run in the December 16, 1990, election only 60 days before. Everyone was caught off guard. Washington backed Marc Bazin, a World Bank official who had been in Baby Doc's government, with $3 million. Yet Bazin received only 13% of the vote. The pro-Duvalier candidate, Roger Lafontant, received 11%.
Aristide, who was supported by a coalition of the majority of the popular movement plus a section of the anti-Duvalier merchant elite, organised into the National Front for Change and Democracy (FNCD), won 67% of the vote in a field of 11 candidates. (He was urged by Jimmy Carter to concede "defeat" early on election night.)
Aristide's platform was land reform, raising the minimum wage and an end to the historic corruption and lawlessness of the state.
The Haitian elites divided their votes. The popular movement, which had been robbed of the September 1987 election — when the army came out in the streets and massacred people — waited patiently at the voting booths on election day. Many waited 8-12 hours in order to cast their ballot.
However, not all of the popular movement supported Aristide. Some were afraid that voting for Aristide would lead to "a new Chile". The militant trade union federation, the Autonomous Confederation of Haitian Workers (CATH), split over the issue. The leadership believed Aristide could never win and undemocratically manoeuvred to support Bazin. This caused a split which led to the formation of a new, more militant, federation, the General Workers Union (CGT).
Aristide's victory was a tremendous step forward. His inviting a peasant organisation to a meeting at the National Palace symbolised the new situation. This was the first time in Haitian history that the majority were welcome in the palace!
The "uprooting" of the unjust and inequitable system that began following Baby Doc's departure in 1986 was once again back on the agenda. Aristide worked to dismantle the section chief system, whereby the countryside is under the economic and political domination of the most ruthless and corrupt officials.
Unless one understands that the state officials are the most lawless element of traditional Haitian society, one can't understand the dynamic of the population taking the law into their own hands and killing a hated section chief. As Aristide pointed out, he would have preferred a system of law, but Haiti had never been able to develop such a system, so he certainly understood the rage of some.
For its part, Washington responded with charges of human rights violations. But there was no state complicity in any such violation, as there had been for so many years before. In fact, both the incidents of people attempting to escape from Haiti in boats and the frequency of human rights violations decreased dramatically.
Obstacles
Aristide came into office with certain disadvantages: the Duvalier state apparatus with its police and army remained; Aristide commanded no majority in the assembly; he had neither a political party nor a coalition of popular organisations with a unified program; the constitutional system gave the president mainly the power of appointment; it was a period of economic crisis.
Just before his inauguration, Aristide called for transforming the campaign, which was termed the Lavalas ("flood") movement, into an organisation. Thus Aristide explicitly rejected becoming organisationally affiliated with the business elite of the FNCD that supported him in the election (which is why some of them funded his overthrow seven months later). He wanted to build a coalition/party that could unify the popular movement. But he didn't have a chance to build it.
Aristide and the popular movement began dismantling the old system: undercutting the power of the section chiefs and forbidding the army's presence at the workplace. The most dynamic sector of the popular movement was the peasant organisations, but public schools were established and the marginalised communities began essential sanitation projects. This self-activity explains why the elites unified so quickly to turn back the clock.