THE COMING WEEKS could turn out to be crucial for the two countries that share the island the Indians used to call Kiskeya - Haiti and the Dominican Republic. On November 19, 1990 a general strike in the One island, two crises
December 10, 1990 • #196 International Viewpoint logue of promises from Balaguer, on September 9 these parties withdrew their support for the general strike called for the following three days by all the union and popular organizations. The General Workers' Confederation (CGT) and National Confederation of Popular Organizations (CNOP) of Virtudes Alvarez refused to sign the accord with Balaguer, but also did not support the appeal of the CPO for the September 26-28
Its manoeuvre having succeeded, the government broke its promises regarding wage rises and buried its other undertakings in exploratory commissions. so, it is everyone for themselves in Balaguer's entourage now, as they loot the
The November 19 strike came in response to two different appeals. The
A mortal sin STOP persecuting priests that are with the people", said some of the banners carried by the thousands of demonstrators who thronged Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince in August 1988. were opposing the decision of the Salesian Fathers to send Father Aristide to Canada. The protest movement took on such breadth — even the reactionary political parties came along — that airline companies refused to deliver the flight ticket to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, for fear that the crowd might attack the airport.
In the end the church gave in. But two months later, Aristide found out that he had been expelled from the order. Thus the Vatican had decided to silence a man who the supporters of the ex-dictator Duvalier had times to kill. His expulsion came three months after a band of thugs had set fire to his Church, killing twenty beggars and believers, and wounding many more. The Apostolic Nuncio was in the vicinity but refrained from intervening.
Jean-Bertrande Aristide comes from the crossroads of two worlds: on the one hand the impoverished quarters of Port-auPrince and their "barrow drivers, tragic Sisyphean figurers, condemned to eternally carry the weight of a world of sorrows on their shoulders" as he put it in a homily of 1982, and on the other, that of Jesus, chasing the moneychangers from the temple, and the prophets of Israel castigating the powerful in the name of the oppressed and voiceless. He refers to the first Christian communities, qualifies capitalism as "mortal sin" and speaks in favour of
While he is by no means the closest of the liberation theologians to Marxism, few among them have taken such an organizations that signed the pact with Balaguer called for a work stoppage of three days to demand that the government keep its promises. For the CGT and the COP, the strike was to last the whole week with the aim of toppling Balaguer. This orientation is supported parties, Communist Party, and, despite public dissensions on the subject, the People's Liberation Movement (MPL), which brings together most of the cadres — and notably the CT's secretary general - who left the Socialist Bloc (which is supporting the first option) three years ago. The CNOP meanwhile has taken up a midway position — it is demanding the organization of a referendum by the popular movement. *
FLORIDA
* Miami MILES AREA OF DOMINICAN
CUBA DETAIL REPUBLIC
Port-au-Prince Santo HAMI Domingo
JAMAICA
Cap Haitien Gonaives HAITI Port-au-Prince uncompromising stand at the side of the dispossessed. Aristide in his words and deeds has come to personally embody the struggle against the dictatorship, imperialism and Vatican policy. He has also given Haitians back a sense of dignity — a sentiment which has been held up to ridicule since the proclamation of the first Black republic in 1804.
For these reasons, as Haiti Progrès commented, when the radio announced his candidacy for president on October 18, "it was enough for all the oppressed and miserable, for all those people with little political whelmed with suffering, to hear the
HAITI / DOMINICAN REPUBLIC name of 'Pé Titid' for them to pour into the electoral registration offices." Aristide's first miracle has been to get electoral registration up to 85%.
After General Avril was forced out of power a multitude of individuals, groups and parties believed that a page was being turned, and thought they could get their hands on the levers of state. Ertha Pascale Trouillot, whose Duvalierist past was overlooked, was lauded, and hymns of praise were sung to General Abraham, commander in chief of the armed forces.
Disenchantment was not far behind. The army continued to massacre peasants and remained unable to stop the activities of the "zenglendos" — many of them military personnel - who continued to sow terror, to kill and to rob. Things reached the point when a section of the population began to look back nostalgically on the time of the Duvaliers. Madame la présidente quickly freed herself from the irritations of the State Council, specially created to control the executive. Little by little her Duvalierist friends were brought back in.
The irreversible Duvalier
Determined to govern as soon as possible and believing that Duvalierism was an "irreversible" reality, the parties directly tied to imperialism - the MIDH of Marc Bazin and the PANPRA of Serge Gilles, an emanation of the French Socialist Party - supported Ertha Trouillot against the State Council. After a series of small advances, the Duvalierists concluded that the hour had come to openly regain power.
Thus Roger Lafontant, who led the repression under Duvalier, returned to Port-au-Prince in July 1990, founded a party in October and is now standing for the presidency. The Duvalierists are coming out of their hiding-places.
Aristide put forward his candidacy the day after Lafontant, and by doing so has brought down the whole scaffolding constructed by imperialism. As he said: "the big bosses are preparing the election with pseudo-democrats and with the (tonton) macoutes of Lafontant; now they are stunned because this is an event which they were in no way expecting." The stated aim of this "people's candidate" is to "provide a means of mobilization that can bring on the tidal wave" and block the road for the Duvalierists.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide does not want to lead his people to the slaughter. He remembers the 1987 elections. The candidates sent the electors to the ballot-box while the army and the Duvalierists put the country to the sword to prevent the elections. There was a terrible massacre. For this reason Father Aristide has clearly stated: "the voting slip that we take up is an active non-violent weapon in our hands.... We are going forward, but that 15 does not mean that if we have to stop fur-
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC / SENEGAL
International Viewpoint #196 • December 10, 1990 ther on, we will not do it. This is up to the people to decide. The tidal wave has not yet swept forward. Perhaps this will happen during the elections, perhaps afterwards" He has also warned that if there is any "dirty business" on December 16, this will be like "putting the petrol into the motor of the popular mobilization to turn it into a popular revolution."
Father Aristide is well aware that "to geoisie, in the hands of a Duvalierist army supposedly protecting him, unable to keep the promises made in his sermons, and trapped between the task of accomplishing his prophetic mission and the need to avoid premature clashes. At least unless an electoral victory leads to a
The empty
massive popular mobilization that disrupts everyone's plans. But already the US embassy has warned the voters that, as the créole proverb has it, "after the ball, the drums sound loudly", and Washington has asked American citizens to put off their trips to Haiti. *
'operation tidal turn the elections into wave' organization is indispensable — the revolutionary energy unleashed by shop-window of this social phenomenon must be converted into organizational energy so that we can keep hold of our movement."
African democracy
Here lies the big difficulty. The popular organizations which are the only existing forms that can provide a framework for the movement are weaker than they were