This is the Justice, Not Charity! Haiti book diary. Allie123 and I are writing these book diaries because we became shocked by the truth of Haiti’s history and what really is needed to help the Haitians after the earthquake.
"It's as if Aristide was put in charge of a house that was falling apart and was expected to fix it. But then his enemies start setting fire to the back door, they send people with guns to attack the front door, and when these people finally manage to break in they said 'Look! He didn't wash the dishes in the sink! He never repaired the leak in the roof!' They made him spend all his time trying to put out the fire and to protect the door, and then once they got rid of him they said he was pushed out because he'd failed to repair the house." (Damming The Flood, P131)
Chapter 9 of "Damming the Flood" by Peter Hallward is titled "2004: The Second Coup". It is a long and fairly complex chapter so I am doing it in two parts. The second part, next week, deals with the last three sections in the chapter, on Aristide's actual removal. Tonight I am dealing with the first five sections, on the progress of the coup itself.
The coup was difficult to get going, because there was no actual foothold in Haiti, especially in the poor neighborhoods. The ex-FRAPH and ex-army troops gathered in the Dominican Republic could raid, but there was nowhere for them to stay, they always had to go back out of the country. Their attempt to get support in Port-au-Prince involved paying off a gang leader named Thomas Robinson and known as Labanye, but didn't really give a good return until after the coup. The "democratic opposition" had better luck in the port city of Gonaives, north along the coast from Port-au-Prince.
A foothold in Gonaives
The rest of the section title is "The seizure of Raboteau, September, 2003". This is a Gonaives slum down by the seaside, and the site of the Raboteau Massacre during the first coup. Amiot "Cubain" Metayer was a Lavalas militant who survived being hunted by Tatoune and the FRAPH. He and his brother accepted asylum in the US after the massacre, but soon returned to Gonaives. A Convergence Democratique (CD) figure blamed Cubain for an arson attack, with virtually no evidence to support the assertion. Aristide was pressured by the US and OAS to compensate him, and to prosecute Cubain. This temporarily drove a wedge between Cubain and Aristide. Tatoune's followers used a bulldozer to break him out of prison, where Cubain was also being held. Briefly Cubain joined in anti-Aristide protests, but they soon became reconciled, and the prosecution was dropped due to lack of evidence and witnesses, to the outrage of the US.
Then on Sept. 19, 2003, Aristide announced the new election that the US had been demanding. Two days later Cubain was brutally murdered; the culprit is not known, but it was curiously convenient for the democratic opposition. Cubain's brother Buteur joined up with Tatoune to lead protests against the government. Soon Cubain's Cannibal Army was an extension of Tatoun's organization, and joined in attacking police and government offices and killing Lavalas supporters. The post-coup minister of justice arranged for Tatoune's pardon for the Raboteau Massacre, and Tatoune walks free in Gonaives today. The post-coup prime minister Gerard Latortue and his nephew Youri are both from Gonaives. Youri was in a notorious anti-gang unit in the army; when the army was disbanded he became part of the palace guard unit of the police (the USGPN). When he was dismissed from the USGPN for involvement in drug-running, he claimed to have spent a couple of quiet years in the country, but somehow he emerged as a buddy of Guy Phillipe (one of the organizers of the "rebel army" over in the Dominican Republic, as described in Chapter 7).
Gonaives thus became the toehold for the "popular uprising".
The February 2004 Insurgency
The insurgency was hidden behind a series of masks. First was Cubain's brother Buteur. He was publicly blaming Aristide for Cubain's death, so it sort of looked natural that he had turned against Aristide. This served to partially conceal Tatoune, who was actually running operations in Gonaives. Then Guy Phillipe turned up, saying he had walked in with three other rebel leaders from the Dominican Republic to "reinforced" Buteur. Phillipe was also in some sense a mask; Jodel Chamblain, who had been Tatoune's commander in FRAPH, was the one who was bringing in two truckloads of ammunition, weapons, and reinforcements. Before Chamblain arrived with the guns, the uprising was spluttering out, due to being chased out of most location by a combination of police and local FL activists. They were able to handle losers like Bouteur, but Chamblain's fifty or so well-armed forces were able to considerably outgun the goverment's supporters.
The government pulled its scattered forces back to defend Port-au-Prince, and Aristide still tried to negotiate. This was possibly the fatal mistake that allowed the insurgency to succeed.
From Cap-Haitien to Port-au-Prince
The control of Gonaives allowed Chamblain to starve Cap-Haitien of supplies, and basically take over the north. As Chamblain started to roll up the country, many police bravely stuck to their duty, but many more did not. About a quarter of the police force was ex-army and still had ties to Phillipe and his followers. Many of the remainder, short on supplies (ammunition was only coming from South Africa) were intimidated or paid off into standing down. Toward the end, Fanmi Lavalas activists were on their own in organizing the defence of Port-au-Prince.
A negotiated settlement
The democratic opposition greeted all these events with joy. While they did not at first admit their long connection with the "insurgents" they spoke of them as patriotic heroes, and stiffened their opposition to Aristide's compromises even more. From the US, Roger Noriega pressed Aristide to accept such conditions that he would have been almost entirely powerless in government from that point on. Oh, gotta do a block-quote.
Nevertheless, on Saturday 21 February, the ever-intransigent Aristide agreed to Noriega's terms withoug discussion. "Completely and entirely I have accepted," he said. "In a word, yes" (Six weeks later, Noriega would explain that Aristide's downfall was the result of his "wilful refusal to give any quarter to or compromise with political adversaries."
This fiendish compromising by Aristide alarmed the democratic opposition. Rosamond Pradel of the opposition said "If we accept the plan without the departure of Aristide, we are going to disappear as an opposition". Fortunately, the US was able to get the assistance of an ally, France.
Time grows short, I will include "The French Connection" in next week's diary.