Posted on 23-2-2004
Throttled
by history
Haiti's political class has failed it, but the first black
republic has also been squeezed dry by a vengeful west
As civil war encroaches, civil society implodes and civil political
discourse evaporates, one of the few things all Haitians can
agree on is their pride in Toussaint L'Ouverture, who lead the
slave rebellion in Haiti that established the world's first
black republic. "The transformation of slaves, trembling
in hundreds before a single white man, into a people able to
organise themselves and defeat the most powerful European nations
of their day is one of the great epics of revolutionary struggle
and achievement," wrote the late Trinidadian intellectual
CLR James in his book The Black Jacobins. The transformation
of that achievement into a nation riven by political violence,
ravaged by Aids and devastated by poverty is a tragedy of epic
proportions.
The nation's 200th anniversary this year looks back on 13 coups
and 19 years of American occupation, and now once again looks
forward to more bloodshed and instability. The country's political
class must bear their share of responsibility for where they
go from here. Western powers, particularly France and the United
States, must also take responsibility for how they got to this
parlous place to begin with. If Haiti shows all the trappings
of a failed state, then you do not have to look too hard or
too far to see who has failed it.
The most urgent issue is to stem the descent into gang warfare
and political anarchy. In this the Haitians have been let down
by poor domestic political leadership on all sides. In the nine
years since Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Lavalas party has been
in power, economic improvements have been few and human rights
abuses have been many. With no army and only a few thousand
poorly trained police, Aristide has relied on armed gangs to
sustain his authority. In 2000, he rigged parliamentary elections
in favour of his own party, sparking outrage and laying the
basis for a broad-based opposition, which has gathered pace
and strength in recent months.
But while the political opposition, based in Port-au-Prince,
has grown in size it remains diminished in direction and devoid
of strategy. With no agenda beyond forcing Aristide to resign,
it offers only the possibility of even more chaos. With no desire
to negotiate a settlement, it offers the certainty of stalemate.
Its ability to destabilise, and inability to lead effectively
and constructively, has left a vacuum now filled by an armed
opposition, comprising henchmen from previous dictatorships.
Up to their necks in blood and armed to the teeth, these men
have poured across the border from the neighbouring Dominican
Republic in the past week and are taking over towns and ransacking
police stations. Yesterday there were reports that they had
seized the country's second city, Cap Haïtien.
The relationship between those who seek to remove Aristide
peacefully and those committed to violent methods is increasingly
blurred. The political opposition says it shares the aims of
the armed rebels but not their methods. Even if that is true
in principle, it is rapidly becoming meaningless in practice.
The rebels care little for human rights and less for human life.
No one doubts they could get rid of Aristide; no one seriously
believes they will restore democracy.
But if the bicentennial offers a bleak backdrop for the immediate
fate of the first black republic, it also offers the opportunity
to place these events in some historical perspective. For ever
since Haitian slaves expressed their desire to breathe freely,
western powers have been attempting to strangle its desire for
democracy and prosperity at birth.
"Men make their own history," wrote Karl Marx. "But
they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it
under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under given circumstances
directly encountered and inherited from the past."
From the outset Haiti inherited the wrath of the colonial powers,
which knew what a disastrous example a Haitian success story
would be. In the words of Napoleon Bonaparte: "The freedom
of the negroes, if recognised in St Domingue [as Haiti was then
known] and legalised by France, would at all times be a rallying
point for freedom-seekers of the New World." He sent 22,000
soldiers (the largest force to have crossed the Atlantic at
the time) to recapture the "Pearl of the Antilles".
France, backed by the US, later ordered Haiti to pay 150m francs
in gold as reparations to compensate former plantation and slave
owners as well as for the costs of the war in return for international
recognition. At today's prices that would amount to £10bn.
By the end of the 19th century, 80% of Haiti's national budget
was going to pay off the loan and its interest, and the country
was locked into the role of a debtor nation - where it remains
today.
Any prospect of planting a stable political culture foundered
on the barren soil of economic impoverishment, military siege
and international isolation (for the first 58 years the US refused
to even recognise Haiti's existence). In 1915, fearing that
internal strife would compromise its interests, the US invaded,
and remained until 1934.
In short, if those who now preach negotiation and compromise
had practised those values in the past, Haiti might have had
the time and support to nurture the kind of political traditions
that could at best forestall and at least withstand its divisions
today. Haiti is a timely reminder of how western democracies
have wilfully amassed their wealth on the backs of impoverished
dictatorships.
So Haiti lurched from coup to coup, most notably under the
dictatorship of "Papa Doc" Duvalier and then his son,
"Baby Doc", supported by the US and France. In 1990,
Aristide appeared as the best hope to break the cycle. With
an overwhelming democratic mandate, the ascetic priest and liberation
theologian was literally swept to power, as Haitians brushed
the floor ahead of him with palm leaves. Deposed in a coup,
he returned in 1994 with US military assistance.
But, in return for political freedom, Aristide was compelled
to accept economic enslavement, bound by terms imposed by the
IMF and the World Bank. Post-colonial military aggression gave
way to the brutal forces of globalisation. Before Aristide had
even considered fixing the elections, the west had already rigged
the markets. Take rice. Forced by the agreement to lower its
import tariffs, Haiti suddenly found itself flooded with subsidised
rice from the US, which drove Haitian rice growers out of business
and the country to import a product that it once produced. When
the country fined American rice merchants $1.4m for allegedly
evading customs duties, the US responded by withholding $30m
in aid.
None of this excuses the shortcomings of either the current
administration or its detractors. But it helps explain why the
roots of the current crisis are so deep, and spread so far.
Aristide has been dealt few cards, and those he had he has played
badly. He has tainted a nascent democratic culture. But to allow
him to be deposed at the hands of former dictators will destroy
it altogether. Aristide could do far better for Haiti. Haiti
could do far worse than Aristide.
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