"Alone we are weak, together we are strong; all together we are Lavalas, the flood."
- Jean-Bertrand Aristide's 1990 presidential campaign slogan
Out of all the impoverished and destitute peoples throughout the western hemisphere, none have known true misery throughout the years than the people of Haiti. They've suffered through it all: colonization, slavery, odious debt, re-colonization, dictatorship, subversion, and state-sponsored terrorism. It is the single poorest country in this hemisphere, with more than half the population living on less than a dollar a day. It is also probably the most unequal ones as well, with just 1% of the population controlling around one half of the nation's wealth.
Haiti did not get this way by accident. In Peter Hallward's masterwork, Damming the Flood: Haiti and the Politics of Containment, the brutal methods by which Haiti's imbalance of wealth and power were created and are maintained are recounted in a meticulous manner.
In this diary, I will present a history of Haiti up to 1999 using Hallward's book as my key reference. I plan on doing a part 2 diary in the future detailing how the 2004 coup was accomplished.
Haiti was originally colonized by the French as Saint-Domingue in the late 17th century. Just 100 years later, it would become known as the single most profitable colony in the world. It produced most of the world's coffee and sugar and "generated more revenue than all thirteen North American colonies combined" according to Paul Farmer. The way in which this wealth was produced was rather simple: African slaves were imported into the colony to work the plantations and ruled with what William Robinson said was "perhaps the most extreme and arbitrary terror in modern history."
"Have they not hung up men with heads downward, drowned them in sacks, crucified them on planks, buried them alive, crushed them in mortars? Have they not forced them to eat shit? And, having flayed them with the lash, have they not cast them alive to be devoured by worms, or onto anthills, or lashed them to stakes in the swamp to be devoured by mosquitoes? Have they not thrown them into boiling cauldrons of cane syrup? Have they not put men and women inside barrels studded with spikes and rolled them down mountainsides into the abyss? Have they not consigned these miserable blacks to man eating-dogs until the latter, sated by human flesh, left the mangled victims to be finished off with bayonet and poniard?"
- Henri Christophe's personal secretary describing atrocities perpetrated against Haitian slaves
In August 1791, a few years after the French revolution, a massive slave revolt began. By the end of the century, Haiti was ruled by black rebel leader Toussaint L'Ouverture. Republican France, under Napoleon, decided to attempt to recolonize the country to bring back slavery. After deporting Toussaint to a French prison where he died several months later, the French were faced with yet another slave rebellion. Napoleon would lose 50,000 men while trying to keep the Haitian people enslaved. The newly independent nation of Haiti was soon isolated by the white supremacist colonial powers, most notable the U.S. and France. The U.S. would only consider recognizing Haiti after its own Civil War, and France would only do so after demanding a large "compensation" package from the country in 1825. The package consisted of 150 million francs (later reduced to 90 million francs and would be paid off using loans from private French banks. It would not be until 1947 that Haiti will have finally paid off all of it's debts to France.
As the racial struggle in Haiti gradually ended, one of class took its place. A small colonial elite, called the affranchis, assassinated the leader of the resistance, Jean-Jacques Dessalines in 1806 for his plans to redistribute the country's land and wealth. Haiti would soon be vicitimized by a series of foreign incursions. The first U.S. occupation, which lasted from 1915 to 1934, was particularly cruel.
The American military regime proceeded to implement a kind of structural adjustment program avant la lettre: they abolished an "undemocratic" clause in the constitution that had barred foreigners from owning property in Haiti, took over the Nationl Bank, reorganized the economy to ensure more regular payments of foreign debt, expropriated land to create new plantations, and trained a brutal military force designed to fight one and only one enemy—Haiti's own domestic population (p. 14).
The U.S. succeeded in killing 15,000 to 30,000 Haitians over the course of the occupation as well as making sure that the Haitian government remained subserviant to its interests for much of the next century.
It propped up both François "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. Both of these leaders were seen as bulwarks against communism and reigned through the use of a private militia known as the Tonton Macoutes that was nortorious for extorting and terrorizing the general population. Jean-Claude Duvalier in particular became favorable to the U.S. for providing a easy investment climate complete with low taxes, low wages, repression of trade unions, and no restrictions on the repatriation of profits.
During 1980s, resistance to IMF-imposed structural adjustment and Duvalier's parasitic thugs grew. It was around this time that the unofficial groups known as organisations populaires (OP's) began to grow in size. They became popular by defending their communities from incursions by the security forces and militias as well as providing social services that the government could not. Small liberation theology influenced church groups known as the ti legliz also cooperated with the OP's to fight for social justice. One of the most eloquently outspoken figures for this movement was Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He began his movement in 1985 and called for a "popular revolutionary government." His sermons were well known throughout the country. As Duvailer was forced out in 1986 and replaced with a four-year series of military governments that held rigged elections, Aristide maintained his criticism of the Haitian elites and their campaign of repression against the impoverished majority.
In 1990, after massive human rights violations by Haiti's security forces gained worldwide headlines, the U.S. and the Haitian elites decided it was time for a newer approach to keeping the masses pacified. They held elections on December 16, but only after the U.S. spent $36 million subsidizing the campaign of the business-friendly "centrist" candidate. Either way, it did not matter. Aristide won with an overwhelming 67% of the vote. His grassroots network of OP's and church groups was clearly something to be reckoned with. Togther, these groups became known as Lavalas ("the Flood").
While Aristide's economic policies were initially very moderate, his decisions to increase the minimum wage by a few cents a day and implement price controls on basic food items incurred the wrath of USAID. The agency would spend millions on a lobbying campaign against the minimum wage increase alone. In September 1991, the armed forces staged a successful coup against Aristide, killing at least 300 people in the first night. They did this with financial support from Haiti's oligarchy as well as covert U.S. assisstance. The Bush administration publicly condemned the military regime, which was headed by General Raoul Cédras. At the same time, administration officials spoke of relief at the end of Aristide's democratically elected government and a leading CIA analyst would later tell Congress that there was "no evidence of oppressive rule" by the current regime.
Together with the CIA, the DIA, and the National Intelligence Service (SIN), the U.S. helped to create a savage paramilitary group known as FRAPH. Initially called the Haitian Resistance Leage, FRAPH was designed to "balance the Aristide movement." It did this primarily by engaging in mass atrocities against Aristide supporters. FRAPH's reign of terror mostly began in the summer of 1993, when it obtained a covert shipment of U.S. weaponry:
The arms shipments so crucial to the launching of FRAPH began around July 1993, according to a Haitian army officer who helped arrange the deals.
[...]
The U.S. shipments originated in Miami and included Colt .38 revolvers, 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistols, American made M-3 "grease gun" machine guns with short, collapsible stocks, Thompson submachine guns, Smith & Wesson .38 revolvers and fragmentation and gas grenades. The officer estimates that "five to ten thousand pieces" came in from Florida, packed in boxes often marked "Police Material: Do Not Open," and addressed to officers at the Haitian national palace. Although from October 1993 until September 1994 the U.S. Navy was used to enforce the embargo on Haiti, the officer says that the FRAPH arms shipments were never stopped (the Navy confirms that no Haiti-bound weapons were intercepted).
On arrival in Haiti, the weapons were stored at Colonel Francois's police headquarters, at the airport and in cargo containers, but-the officer says-not at army bases. Distribution of the guns to FRAPH and attaches was controlled by Francois and his circle, working through Constant and the senior civilian leader ship of FRAPH.
The fast influx of pistols, grease guns and hand grenades enabled FRAPH to metastasize. The officer says that FRAPH was needed to maintain control because "it was 7,000 of us versus 7 million civilians." The guns were, in turn, necessary to get FRAPH out on the streets. The idea was that, suddenly, FRAPH "would appear with all the gear of power-weapons, communication, intimidation, etc.," thereby cowing both the still-active popular movement and the exiled Aristide.
FRAPH was led by CIA asset Emmanuel "Toto" Constant. The U.S.' ties to FRAPH and Constant became public when investigative reporter Allan Nairn published his findings in the 24 October 1994 issue of The Nation.
Meanwhile, Aristide was living in exile in the U.S., where he subsequently became somewhat of a cause célèbre among celebrities such as Robert Deniro and members of the Congressional Black Caucus. In 1994, the Clinton administration agreed to help return Aristide back to power through a direct military intervention (ironically, against the same people it was covertly backing). However, there was a catch. In return for restoring democratic governance to Haiti, the U.S. demanded that Aristide accept certain IMF/World Bank approved "structural adjustment" economic policies beneficial to its business interests. Aristide reluctantly agreed with this proposition, but only after hard negotiations that allowed Haiti to keep certain social safety programs.
Clinton gave a notable address to the nation in which he accused the Cedras regime being "the most violent regime in our hemisphere."
General Raoul Cédras led a military coup that overthrew President Aristide, the man who had appointed Cédras to lead the army. Resistors were beaten and murdered. The dictators launched a horrible intimidation campaign of rape, torture, and mutilation. People starved; children died; thousands of Haitians fled their country, heading to the United States across dangerous seas. At that time, President Bush declared the situation posed, and I quote, "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States."
Cйdras and his armed thugs have conducted a reign of terror, executing children, raping women, killing priests. As the dictators have grown more desperate, the atrocities have grown ever more brutal. Recent news reports have documented the slaying of Haitian orphans by the nation's deadly police thugs. The dictators are said to suspect the children of harboring sympathy toward President Aristide for no other reason than he ran an orphanage in his days as a parish priest. The children fled the orphanages for the streets. Now they can't even sleep there because they're so afraid. As one young boy told a visitor, "I do not care if the police kill me because it only brings an end to my suffering."
International observers uncovered a terrifying pattern of soldiers and policemen raping the wives and daughters of suspected political dissidents, young girls, 13, 16 years old, people slain and mutilated with body parts left as warnings to terrify others, children forced to watch as their mothers' faces are slashed with machetes. A year ago, the dictators assassinated the Minister of Justice. Just last month, they gunned down Father Jean-Marie Vincent, a peasant leader and close friend of Father Aristide. Vincent was executed on the doorstep of his home, a monastery. He refused to give up his ministry. And for that, he was murdered.
All Clinton had to do was tell the CIA, DIA, and other US Agencies to end their covert support of the Cédras regime and the Haitian people could very well have ended it themselves. Instead, a brilliant charade took place which gave the U.S. the excuse it needed to occupy Haiti and impose its will.
Nevertheless, in 1996, Aristide ally René Garcia Préval was elected President with 88% of the popular vote. He engaged in the painful structural adjustment measures that the U.S. demanded of him, but at the same time investigated the gross human rights violations committed by previous regime figures.
In the 1994-99 era, The U.S. occupation forces often engaged in shady activities. They maintained ties to ex-FRAPH members and utilized associated from previous regimes in keeping intelligence files on the Lavalas movement. They also provided impunity by spririting away war criminals such as Toto Constant to the other countries in order to protect them from prosecution. Constant himself has enjoyed a relatively peaceful existence in Queens, NY, among some of the same Haitians he terrorize during his time in FRAPH. Just recently he was charged with mortgage fraud and is now on trial. The U.S. also strangely refused to disarm the former members of Haiti's nortoriously abusive armed forces despite the fact that they were demobilized by Aristide in 1994. There were also accusations that loyalists of the old guard were being integrated into Haiti's new security forces.
By 2000, Haiti was in a precarious position. Dependent on foreign aid and with weak governing capabilities, the country was about to hold new presidential elections in which Aristide was the favorite to win. It marked the beginning of an era in which the U.S. empire, as well as Haiti's old colonial masters in France, would begin to reassert their total hegemony over the country's affairs.
In my next diary, I will explain how the U.S. and the so-called "international community" managed to sabotage Haiti's greatest chance at achieving true democracy and social justice through a ruthless campaign of sanctions, subversion, and coercion. If you want to get the whole story with all the details, then I suggest you get Hallward's book. I honestly cannot recommend it enough.