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Haiti: ‘regime change’ by other means
PRESIDENT BERTRAM Aristide left Haiti on 28 February. Forced
to resign by US diplomats and armed opposition militia, he claims he was
kidnapped and removed to the Central African Republic.
Aristide was the victim of a creeping coup, in which the US
actively supported reactionary armed gangs who launched a reign of terror
against Haitians. This is Bush’s latest regime change. In the assessment of the
New York Times (Editorial, 5 March), the US "practically delivered Haiti into
the hands of an unsavoury gang of convicted murderers and former death squad
officers under the overall command of Guy Phillips, whom American and Haiti
officials believe to be a drug trafficker".
This time, US imperialism is working in tandem with French
imperialism. Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, his foreign minister,
were the first to demand that Aristide step down. The French government
evidently saw the crisis in Haiti as a chance to restore relations with the Bush
administration. "France... made a shrewd calculation that the situation could be
turned to its advantage. Haiti was an opportunity to relaunch international
crisis management with the US", commented the Financial Times (3 March).
France’s right-wing government has not forgiven Aristide for
his request last year for $22bn in compensation for money taken by France in the
19th century. This symbolic call, made for populist reasons as Haiti was
approaching the 200th anniversary of its independence from France, irritated the
French rulers. They considered Aristide an annoying thorn in their side, who
must be removed.
The United Nation (UN) security council immediately approved
the regime-change and the deployment of foreign troops. Under cover of
‘humanitarian’ concern, the security council provided legitimacy for yet another
imperialist intervention. After invading Haiti, the US formed a council of
‘seven eminent persons’ which selected a new prime minister from a handful of
chosen candidates. And this is called ‘democracy’.
Many aims are served by the intervention into Haiti. By
seizing on the crisis and so-called rebellion as a pretext, an opportunity arose
to install a regime that Washington considers reliable, to disarm what is left
of Aristide’s paramilitary gangs, enable the new regime to rebuild a state
apparatus – a new army and police force – while continuing to hold the poor
masses in chains.
At the same time the intervention also delivers a warning to
other regimes in Latin America which could come into conflict with the US – in
particular to Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Bush calculates that the intervention
could help his presidential campaign, hoping that Haiti will provide a quick
success, not a quagmire like Iraq or Afghanistan. At the very least it may serve
to stop refugees from Haiti reaching the US. Already, the US has sent back many
Haitians trying to reach Florida’s coast. A continuation of the crisis could
have increased the numbers of refugees, along with horrendous pictures of boat
people in desperate need. Bush, like Clinton before, fears such a scenario,
particularly in an election year.
Aristide was neither anti-capitalist nor socialist. He won
support and respect as a radical priest influenced by liberation theology in the
1980s. But he moved steadily to the right after winning the presidential
election in December 1990. His programme was left-leaning populism. Calling for
redistribution of wealth and social reforms, Aristide won a landslide victory
with nearly 70% of the vote. He was the first democratically elected president
in Haiti’s history. The US sponsored candidate, former World Bank official Mark
Bazin, who served as finance minister under the brutal ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier
dictatorship (1971-86), only got 14.2%.
There were big hopes when Aristide took office in February
1991 and started to implement his three main reforms: price controls on food, a
higher minimum wage, and a fairer tax system. In addition, he promised to fight
corruption and bureaucracy. His radical past, his programme of reforms (however
limited), and the mass support he enjoyed at the beginning, explain why Haiti’s
ruling class and US imperialism saw him as threat.
Aristide’s administration, however, also supported the
‘structural adjustment programmes’ pushed by the World Bank, IMF and the US
Agency for International Development. Aristide submitted to the very same
neo-liberal policies that ruined the country in the 1980s, when per capita food
production declined, and real wages fell by 50%.
Nevertheless, the corrupt ruling elite vehemently opposed
Aristide’s modest reform proposals and even described him as the ‘communist
priest’. His attempt to raise the minimum wage from $2 a day to $5 provoked
fierce anger from the bosses. After less than eight months in power a military
coup led by Lieutenant General Rail Cédras overthrew Aristide, who fled to the
US.
How deeply Washington was involved in the coup is hard to
say, but some of its leaders were on the CIA’s payroll, including Emmanuel
Constant, head of the notorious FRAPH paramilitary, responsible for most of the
terror that killed around 3,000 people during the military dictatorship. The
Clinton administration put pressure on Haiti’s military to step down – because
of political pressure and the numbers of Haitian refugees. US troops invaded in
the fall of 1994.
Aristide was allowed back. But Washington’s action had made
it clear that it wanted a tame Aristide who would appease the rich. The US
forces did not disarm the death squads, which were left in waiting. The Haitian
ruling class was not convinced that Aristide would be able to contain and derail
the movement of the poor. Mass opposition, leading to parliament’s refusal to
authorise the privatisation of state-owned industries in 1995, met a furious
response from imperialism and the ruling class. However, René Préval, who acted
as president on Aristide’s behalf (after his five-year mandate expired), signed
new structural agreements with the international financial institutions. Trying
to please everyone, Aristide got the worst of all worlds. He steadily lost
support amongst the poor, without gaining the approval of the wealthy elite (1%
of the population) who own half of its wealth.
Préval’s policies deepened the social misery in the Western
hemisphere’s poorest country. Aristide maintained some popular support, however,
because, formally, he held no office. He was re-elected president in December
2000, an election boycotted by many so-called opposition groups. This followed
the ‘disputed’ senate election in May 2000, won by Aristide’s organisation,
Politique Lavalas. Allegations of fraud were used to demand Aristide’s
resignation. Both the US and the EU imposed a full embargo on aid and loans. The
impact of the economic embargo has been profound, killing thousands of innocent
poor. Effectively, Western imperialism gave full weight to the demand that
Aristide should resign.
Washington probably hoped that the embargo together with
support to the opposition would be enough to bring about regime change. But the
opposition groups, the Group of 184 – led by the US-born capitalist, Andy Apai,
a former supporter of the Duvalier dictatorship – and the right-wing Convergence
for Democracy, did not have the strength or the necessary support on the ground
to overthrow Aristide, despite the erosion of his popular support.
Last year there was a political stalemate. Social conditions
deteriorated as the economy shrunk by 2.2% in 2000-03, traditional exports of
coffee, rum and other agricultural products having diminished almost to zero.
The only ‘growth area’ has been drug trafficking. The average income is no more
than $480 a year, with the poorest 10% bringing home less than $35. Haiti has
the highest rate of HIV infection and the lowest levels of adult literacy and
life expectancy in the Americas. Forty percent of the population has no access
to primary health care. At least 70% are unemployed. Under conditions of social
and economic collapse, the disintegration of the old state apparatus and a total
deadlock of political forces, even small groups of armed men can grab power or
plunder important natural resources (as in Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and
Ivory Coast).
The ‘Structurally Adjusted Rebels’ in Haiti, as one
commentator called them, numbered no more than a couple of hundred men in arms,
though they are well-equipped. They could easily march on the capital,
Port-au-Prince, because the old regime collapsed and its armed forces went into
hiding knowing that troops from the US, France and Canada were on the way. Some
of Aristide’s armed thugs changed sides, joining the advance of the so-called
rebels. The poor masses, on the other hand, were demoralised, shattered and
stood on the sideline.
The rebels acted as the armed wing of the opposition, which
rejected the US’s power-sharing plan in February because the rebels were doing
the job for them. Opposition leaders just had to wait while the rebels marched
towards Port-au-Prince. The rebels were a private army, financed by the rich,
the drug barons and maybe even the CIA. They also were used to victimise a group
of trade unionists in one of Haiti’s free trade zones on 1 March, beating them
up after the management told them that union activists were causing problems.
The opposition lacked any kind of alternative apart from
getting rid of Aristide. There were genuine oppositionist groups, including some
student organisations, but the opposition has an overwhelmingly bourgeois,
pro-capitalist character. The new rulers will rapidly be seen as puppets.
Western powers will speak loudly about pouring money into Haiti, but the last
time US marines intervened, "they left behind eight miles of paved roads and
nothing lese". (Jeffrey Sachs, Financial Times, 1 March)
Recent events are another tragic chapter in Haiti’s tortured
history. Right-wing stooges installed by Bush have nothing to offer the Haitian
people, except more poverty and repression. Over time, new opposition forces
will emerge. The lesson of Aristide’s rise and fall is that the workers and
other poor can only rely on their own forces. They do not need any more saviours
or charismatic liberators, but their own democratic organisations and elected,
accountable leaders. Given the long history of paramilitaries and criminal gangs
linked to political bosses, they need democratic, people’s militias to defend
themselves against mafia-style violence.
For Haiti especially, capitalism has always meant domination
by foreign imperialism (the US corporations in particular) and vicious local
gangster-capitalists. The revolution that freed Haiti (formerly Saint Domingue)
from French colonialism in 1804 can only be continued through socialist change.
The future of the Haitian revolution, moreover, will inevitably be linked to a
movement for social transformation throughout the Caribbean and Latin America.
Per Olsson
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