"This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story. It’s a story about poorly constructed buildings, bad infrastructure and terrible public services. On Thursday, President Obama told the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.” If he is going to remain faithful to that vow then he is going to have to use this tragedy as an occasion to rethink our approach to global poverty. He’s going to have to acknowledge a few difficult truths.
The first of those truths is that we don’t know how to use aid to reduce poverty. Over the past few decades, the world has spent trillions of dollars to generate growth in the developing world. The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not."
OK, good point.
"it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth — with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other."
uh, do you know anything about Haiti's history?
"As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book “The Central Liberal Truth,” Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.
We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.
Fourth, it’s time to promote locally led paternalism. In this country, we first tried to tackle poverty by throwing money at it, just as we did abroad. Then we tried microcommunity efforts, just as we did abroad. But the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism."
OK, now it gets interesting! Haitian culture, which Mr. Brooks now professes to be an expert in (how many Haitians does he know??), is resistant to development. We in the US have tried oh so hard for so many years to help these poor black people out but they just spend their time doing voodoo, and don't bother listening to our wise advice. Of course now the best option for Haiti is intrusive paternalism! Of course, why didn't we think of that??? Oh thank you David Brooks, for your ever so special analysis.
Here is a paper I wrote about the factors that block Haitian development, which includes a brief history of Haiti, especially of the last twenty or so years:
Haitian Relations: Civil Society is Not Enough To Ensure Democracy
Haiti is a country of superlatives. It is the oldest, poorest and most violent country in Latin America with some of the worst prospects for improvement, yet 8.5 million people live there and many more in the Haitian Diaspora call it home. The standards for studying Haiti are different than for studying another country, because it has the starkest outlook for development in the hemisphere. Despite the mobilization, strength and unity of Haitian civil society under Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the Haitian military and elite and the US government have outmatched civil society. They have actively blocked chances for democracy and a more equitable state under in an effort to ensure their own economic, social and political interests, at the same time neglecting the welfare of the Haitian people.
Haiti has always had its fair share of contrasts. It is a beautiful tropical island in the Caribbean well endowed with, coffee, oils, cocoas, mangoes and a striking coastline (CIA). But the country has rarely seen a decade go by without extreme political violence and 80% of the population lives below the poverty line (CIA). The current state of Haitian politics can be viewed as a culmination of the past sixteen years: since 1990 there have been 13 transfers of power in the executive branch and 10 different presidents. Aristide has been in office three different occasions and forced into exile twice. This is the current president René Preval’s second term.
The United States has had a precarious relationship with Haiti since the former French colony claimed independence on January 1, 1804. The two countries are the oldest in the hemisphere and both achieved their sovereignty through guerilla warfare, but they were far from friends. Haiti was founded on a slave revolt led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, and the US (namely Thomas Jefferson) was scared of a similar thing happening on its shores. It therefore did not officially recognize Haiti until 1862 and stood behind France, who demanded that Haiti pay reparations for French property lost (freed slaves). Not only did Haiti start its sovereignty with the disadvantage of a large population of uneducated former slaves, it also was put in an economic bind of dependency not only with France, but also the United States. By “the latter part of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, United States primacy in the Haitian marketplace was no longer seriously contested,” although Germany did control commerce on some parts of the island (Farmer 85). This American influence follows a general trend in Latin America, beginning with the Monroe Doctrine proclaimed in 1823 which instituted American dominance in the western hemisphere.
After influencing Haitian politics and economic policy throughout the 19th century (including periods where warships would be sent in to make ensure the benefits of Haitian trade), the US continued its imperialist actions when it decided to invade Haiti in 1915 under the pretext of ending “instability” in the country (Farmer 91). The Marines would go on to run the country until 1934 before ceding power to nationalists. Even though the US improved the infrastructure of the country, the occupation was hard to justify, especially after it became clear that “the social forces that created [instability] still remain[ed]--poverty, ignorance, and the lack of a tradition or desire for orderly free government" (Library of Congress). The US stayed quiet throughout the next governments, including the brutal Duvalier dictatorships. The Duvaliers were a military family who ruled from 1964-1986 and abused the country thoroughly.
When Haiti descended into turmoil after the Duvaliers were deposed the country demanded free and fair elections, an idea that the international community agreed upon. The elections provided a stage for Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a populist priest with massive support among the poor. For the next decade and a half, the political situation in Haiti was a negotiation between Aristide and the poor and everyone else. In 1990, Aristide was elected with 67% of the vote, and became the first democratically elected president in the country’s history on February 7, 1991 (Perusse 13). Relations between the US and Aristide were artificial at best; the US changed its opinion with grave consequences when it saw it suitable.
Aristide filled a void in Haiti left by the absence of civil society during the Duvalier years. He had started as a small parish priest in the slums of Port-au Prince, and gained recognition for his anti-government stance, his liberation theology and his calls for reform. The government controlled dissent with a security force known as “tonton macoutes,” who “killed tens of thousands” of enemies of the state (Farmer 108), leaving little room for any form of citizenship. Aristide was “the sole voice against the army’s excesses,” and because of that he became one of the only vehicles for the poor to represent themselves (Farmer 145). From this, one can conclude that Aristide not only played a large role in Haitian politics, but that he basically was the catalyst for Haitian civil society.
Civil society as defined by Oxhorn is “the social fabric formed by a multiplicity of self-constituted territorially- and functionally-based units which peacefully coexist and collectively resist subordination to the state, at the same time that they demand inclusion into national political structures” (Oxhorn 2). In a country where the state is run by elites and the military along with US influence, the definition of civil society shifts to include the executive branch. In a larger scale, Aristide’s presidency was the main civil society institution resisting subordination to the larger powers (the three main Haitian political actors), while at the same time Aristide was reacting to the poor’s demands for more benefits of state governance. Civil society also flourished under Aristide, whose compassion for the poor was unprecedented among Haitian heads of state. His ability to mobilize the poor meant that thousands of people would show up for rallies supporting him, even when he was in exile. As Farmer writes, “Throughout Haiti, people turned to Father Aristide for comfort, counsel and hope” (Farmer 152).
Aristide was the Lumumba of Haiti: a hardheaded leader with massive popular support yet despised by a few people with power who saw him as a threat. He was confrontational and had no real concern for appeasing the traditional Haitian powers. In his inauguration speech in 1991, he announced in Kreyol that now “The rocks in the water will know the suffering of the rocks in the sun” (Deibert 34). He launched his presidency by reducing his salary and calling on his colleagues to follow suit (which they declined to do), establishing a an adult literacy program, raising the minimum wage to $5 a day and trimming government expenditures, and embarking on an anti-corruption campaign (Farmer 167-8, Perusse 15). In true democratic style, Aristide wrote that he “had chosen a government representative from those two Haitians out of three who voted for Lavalas,” his party, which translates to ‘the flood’ (Aristide 162). Among the most controversial reforms was his “demakoutization” plan, in other words ridding the police force of the tonton macoutes who terrorized the people and restricted citizenship under Duvalier and the five years of military rule after (Maguire 2). Rotberg describes Aristide’s developments best:
“As far as the Haitian army and the nation’s wealthier classes were concerned, however, the new president posed a considerable threat. He attempted to bring the army under democratic, presidential control. He made commercial life uncertain for businessmen. He interfered with the links between soldiers and drug smugglers” (Rotberg 6-7).
By September, 1991, the Duvalierist regime had been out of power for less than eight months, and that was already too much. They were not ones to back down from confrontation, so Aristide’s reforms were met with a coup on September 30, 1991 that forced him into exile in Venezuela and Washington, D.C.
The 1991 military coup was the first in a series of events that severely blocked reform and democracy in Haiti. It exemplified the military’s attitude and disregard for the only legitimate leadership the country had had since L’Ouverture. Indeed, legitimizing their regime proved to be the hardest task for the military, and calls for Aristide’s return did the army government in.
Although the coup was excessively violent and so was the administration that followed it, the White House under the Bush I administration employed a favored diplomatic technique of contradictory criticism. Articles in the New York Times and other major newspapers indicated that “American officials…signaled privately that they were moving away from their unequivocal support of Father Aristide in light of concerns over his human rights record,” completely ignoring the fact that “more than 1,500 people were killed” in the first few days of the coup alone” (Farmer 183) After a while, though, the military regime was too messy even for post-Cold War US foreign policy. Their view of the coup was that “if Aristide had been overthrown…it was his own fault” (Farmer 186). This selective criticism of human rights abuses was astounding, especially because “during 1991 and 1992, the coup government presided over 99.8% of recent, documented human rights abuses, while the Aristide government presided over 0.2% of these abuses,” as recorded by the Haitian Platform for Human Rights (Farmer 222). With those figures in mind, calls for the restoration of the legitimate government, including Aristide as head of state, got louder and louder. The push for Aristide’s restoration as president of the republic was one of the only ideas that Haitian civil society and Washington agreed upon.
Although on the surface this looks like a distinctly positive change in US-Haiti relations, it is a façade that masks the ultimate futility of Haiti’s civil society. For the United States, Haiti’s military government was a problem not because of its massive human rights abuses or illegitimacy (for those issues were not a hindrance in the cases of Mobutu’s Zaire, Pinochet’s Chile, Trujillo’s Dominican Republic, the contras in Nicaragua and many others), but for reasons such as bad press, lobby groups and a growing refugee problem. Haitian refugees had been floating into Miami on makeshift boats and rafts to escape the horrific living conditions and political oppression at home, with many dying on the way. The amount of Haitian “boat people” intercepted by US Coast Guard and Navy had skyrocketed from little over 1,000 in 1990 and during Aristide’s presidency to 31,401 in 1992 alone (Fauriol 88). This was becoming a major problem for the Bush administration, whose policy was hardly one to commend. Under him all refugees “intercepted on the high seas” were to be repatriated (Perusse 45). Even though the Cédras government had no popular support, civil society opposed its existence and watchdog groups warned of abuse, the regime won out for the time being.
The election of Bill Clinton in 1992 brought new hope to Haitian-American relations, especially since he had campaigned to reverse Bush’s refugee policy. Although he went back on his word regarding the refugees, he did address the Haitian governance problem through diplomacy before declaring in July 1994 that “all diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis had been exhausted, and the [UN] Security Council voted to authorize the creation of a US-led multinational force (MNF) ‘to use all necessary means’ to restore the democratically elected government of Haiti” (Niblack 5). On September 14, 1994, the US announced Gen. Cédras’s deposal by October 15th, when Aristide would return (much to the joy of the Haitian poor, who took to the streets in celebration) (Perusse 104). The arrival of Aristide would then appear to be a major step forward in relations between him and Washington. But his restoration came to pass only because it suited US foreign policy, underscoring the inability of Haitians to determine their own political fate.
Aristide’s second term in office went much more smoothly than his first, though the standards for “smooth” in this case are admittedly low. His actions included “retiring most of his Army’s high command and reducing the number of soldiers drastically,” and training a police force, and although most of the country remained in extreme poverty, the general consensus was that “participatory democracy [under Aristide] may have a chance to develop under roots” (Rotberg 11). He finished his term in 1996 and transferred leadership to fellow Lavalas party leader René Préval in free and fair elections. Préval then became the first president in Haitian history to be democratically elected and serve his entire term.
After Préval’s term ended in 2000, presidential elections were held in which Aristide won. Although the opposition parties contested eight parliamentary seats in the local and parliamentary elections, Aristide’s Lavalas party won more than 80 percent of the 7,500 seats up for grabs (Chomsky 18). He became president for the third time in 2001, yet had never completed a single term. Within a year of Aristide taking office there were two separate attempts to overthrow his government by former members of the army he had disbanded in 1994, one in July 2001 and one in December of that year, as well as a number of student protests against Aristide in 2002. (BBC). The growing opposition against Aristide during this time asserted that he was the one responsible for inciting violence and destabilizing the country, not the other way around.
Among other initiatives during this tenure, Aristide demanded that France pay back (with interest) the money Haiti had reimbursed France’s former slave owners after getting independence. This number amounted to US$21,685,135,571.48, and became a rallying point for the Lavalas party: “The number 21 appeared all over the place in Haiti, along with the word ‘restitution’” (Chomsky 21). The international community did not take these initiatives too seriously. Perhaps his most popular measure taken was in April, 2003 when the state recognized voodoo as a official religion on par with others; this finally legitimized the religion practiced by the majority of Haitian society.
The second major event that demonstrated Washington’s lack of commitment to sustainable democracy in Haiti was its role in the 2004 coup that swept Aristide from power once more. This coup more again illustrated that the US’s disdain for one leader’s international and domestic policies could and would triumph against democracy and civil society in that country.
The armed forces who forced Aristide from power in 2004 were the same group as the ones who led the coup in 1991. “People like Louis Jodel Chamberlain, the former number two man in FRAPH, Guy Philippe, a former police chief who was trained by US Special Forces in Ecuador and Jean Tatoune, another leader of FRAPH” played large roles in both illegal transfers of power, proving that a popular uprising against Aristide is not what unseated him (Chomsky 59). FRAPH was a known human rights abusing paramilitary group called the Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti, who were also leaders in the 91-94 coup against Aristide, who were trained by the US in Ecuador, and some of whom were on CIA payroll (Chomsky 52). In an interview with Amy Goodman, the General Counsel for Haiti since 1991, Ira Kurzban, charged that “the US is arming the opposition and did it through sending weapons to Dominican Republic, which were then given to the opposition and came across the border” (Chomsky 53).
Either way, it is clear that a strong rebel movement had taken some parts of the country by mid-February, and on February 29th, 2004, a coup took Aristide from power and into exile in the Central African Republic on a airplane provided by the US government. Washington denied that it had any involvement, with Vice President Dick Cheney saying Aristide “left of his own free will” (Chomsky 115). President Aristide, who never resigned, told a different story. He said the US marines came to the presidential palace that night and “forced me to leave the country” against his will and flew him and his family to Central African Republic without telling him the destination (Chomsky 110). He also said that “they all did the kidnapping using Haitian puppets like Guy Philippe and Chamberlain…basically, this night, I didn’t see Haitians, I saw Americans” (Chomsky 108). The 2004 coup was the nail in the coffin for Aristide, the democratically elected leader of Haiti whose inability to get along with the military and the United States has forced him out of the country of which he is the legitimate head of state.
Much of the media in America like the New York Times, the Miami Herald and the Boston Globe has focused on depicting Aristide as an incompetent and divisive leader who led to Haiti’s downfall. A major criticism of him is that he armed gangs in Haiti’s slums, called chimeres, to terrorize political opponents. Diebert contends that the “Aristide government was killing and exiling political opponents, cynically exploiting poor youths in the urban slum for its armed gangs, eviscerating the judiciary and politicizing the police” (Deibert 300). The documentary, Ghosts of Cité Soleil, shows in detail the chimeres with conclusive evidence of Aristide’s involvement. While Aristide simply denies these allegations, it is hard to believe that the man did not have something to do with the excessive violence in the country. Important figures in Haitian-American politics who support Aristide (i.e. Paul Farmer, Noam Chomsky) have little to say about these claims other than to denounce the Western media apparatus as a tool of Washington. However, the one thing everybody can agree on is that Aristide was extremely divisive; you are either on his side or aren’t. His confrontational political style was not suited for a country that had been run by the elites, the military and the US for much of its 200 year history.
The question then becomes, was Aristide doomed from the beginning? And if so, what does that mean for Haitian civil society, who supported him so unequivocally? If one simply were to look at the course of events, it would be clear that in 1991 he put forth worthy reforms such as a major shake-up of the dreaded military, a literacy program and an anti-corruption campaign, but never got the chance to see these through because he was interrupted by three years of brutal Duvalierist rule. From 1994-1995, he continued his campaign of military reform, for it was indisputable that the military was having a very negative effect on the country. From 2001-2004, after multiple attempts on his life and his power, it would not seem out of the question for someone who has exhausted all ways of dealing with opposition violence to use his own. This does not justify arming gangs in Cité Soleil, but it does make it a little easier to understand.
Aristide’s support in civil society has never really wavered—the poor have long seen him as the country’s only legitimate leader. Farmer notes that although Préval does have a popular following, the people never really saw him as anything more than “a place-holder” for Aristide (Deibert 300). In the country’s 200 year history, Aristide was the only president who attempted to do anything for the poor, whose lives are less secure than those of American household pets. That should have been commended by the United States from the beginning, instead of Washington’s concerted efforts to block participatory democracy in Haiti. Although Aristide certainly has his flaws, the alternatives to him have for the most part proven themselves to put the interests of richest enclave of the population above the 80 percent who live on less than a dollar a day. The 16 years since 1991 have not boded well for Haitian civil society, who are extremely outspoken in their protests and activities, but have little to show for it.
The situation in Haiti today has stabilized somewhat. René Préval, Aristide’s one-time ally, was reelected as President in 2006 after Aristide’s final ouster. Préval has proven himself to be a more moderate force, and with the all-important backing of the United States, he is more likely than anyone else to bring peace to the country. Aristide remains in exile in South Africa, and his return to Haiti is possible but unlikely in the near future. Although Aristide never got the chance to see his vision of Ayiti come true because of prohibitory measures taken by the US, the Haitian military and the Haitian elite, there is still hope. Oxhorn writes, “the solution is not in further repression, but the reinvigoration of civil society” (Oxhorn 2). If the demands of civil society are met by the state, Haitian democracy can flourish. So far they have not, but perhaps Aristide said it best in his inauguration speech, translated from Kreyol: “Alone, we are weak. Together we are strong! Together together, we are Lavalas! Do you feel proud! Do you feel proud!” (Deibert 37).
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