Lafontant's attempted coup — see /V198) allowed him to break through the first obstacles. However, the attempts to build a powerful popular movement in the wake of these mobilizations failed. On the whole, the people remained on the sidelines.
ARTHUR MAHON
Cedras, the commander-in-chief of the army, on the subject of rumours of a coup.
Thus his speech on September 27 was a message to the plotters and the bourgeoisie. He was saying to them: "Just imagine what would happen if I told this crowd that you were plotting to assassinate me."
While this may have been the intention,
Aristide's tactics were mistaken. On the one hand he frightened the bourgeoisie and the plotters, but at the same time he did not give his audience the information in his possession, nor did he try to arouse them to confront the threat of a coup.
After his election, Aristide continually called for the formation of vigilante brigades. At the same time, however, he explained that his election "sealed the marriage of the army and the people". This was inconsistent - why form vigilante brigades if the army was ready to protect the people? It seems that Aristide and his circle were convinced that the army reshuffles he had undertaken were enough to ensure the long-term loyalty of the military. It is true that the new police chief stayed faithful to Aristide during the coup, but his own unit turned out to be the spearhead of the coup.
Vigorous purge needed
Army officers sympathetic to Aristide had explained, some weeks prior to the coup, that a vigorous purge of the army urgently required.
Many things was seemed to be happening inside the army without the knowledge of René Préval, the prime minister, and also minister of the interior and of defence. According to military sources, the size of the army had increased from 7,500 to 9,000 men since the beginning of the year. Three weeks before the coup, a plane had arrived carrying two containers packed with military material. This had without doubt not tasks as minister of defence. Indeed, it is said that he was one of the conspirators, and that his name figured on the list of candidates for prime minister after the overthrow of Aristide.
The CIA was suspected of having a hand in the coup that interrupted the elections of November 29, 1987, then in the attempted putsch by Lafontant in January 1991. There is hardly any doubt that it is implicated in the coup which began on September 29. The army commander-inchief, Raoul Cedras, and his deputy, Alix Silva, have been known for a long time for their links with the US embassy. Cedras is not a Duvalierist. He is a resolute pro-American, and a determined partisan of the market economy and the capitalist system. That is why some have mistaken him for a democrat.
The security services responsible to the minister of the interior were heavily infiltrated by the CIA. This could be an advantage, inasmuch as the CIA was disposed to foil plots which obstructed its own plans. But it also explains why these services did not reveal what was being prepared, which they were obviously aware of, given the number of people involved.
After the coup, General Cedras produced a letter of resignation from Aristide, which was even published in the press. Aristide denied having resigned, and such an act hardly conforms with his personality. The letter presents him as resigning "with all his love", a rather caricatured plagiarism of Aristide's style. Moreover, who in Haiti would have the capacities to imitate so well the handwriting and the signature of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, if not the CIA?
The French ambassador used some fair-
In reality, this coup has been financed by a very broad swathe of the Haitian bourgeoisie. Indeed, fund-raising in support of the putsch was organized inside this particularly retrograde class. The necessary means were provided by the Brandts and the Madsens (pillars of the oligarchy, who enriched themselves through the coffee trade, and whom nobody has ever dared to touch) as well as the restaurant owners of Pétionville, a residential quarter to the north of Port-auPrince. After the coup d'état, the bourgeoisie of Pétionville poured out their venom on Aristide, rejoicing at being rid of him.
Forty two million dollars have been channelled into the army, Cedras pocketing five million of it. The soldiers of the Port-au-Prince police corps were bought for the price of $5,000 each, which represents around two years pay. But not all the soldiers have received the sums promised, and some, heavily armed, recently turned up at the house of one bourgeois to demand "their pay"
The putsch was prepared, or supported after the event, by all those sectors whose interests had been in some way hurt by the Aristide regime; big traders groaning under the new rigour of paying customs duties, smugglers, the mafia and international drugs networks, soldiers who up until now have carved out a big part of the revenues from diverse rackets, civil servants dismissed for corruption, industrialists indignant at the increase in the minimum wage, big landowners frightened at the perspective of land reform.
Balaguer regime implicated
There are several indications that the Balaguer regime in the Dominican Republic was implicated in the coup d'état. Two Duvalierist dignitaries who had sought refuge in the Dominican Republic received a visa to leave the country several days before the coup. Five hundred former Tontons-Macoutes who lived there had also crossed the frontier.
In some of his declarations, Aristide has placed the responsibility for the coup d'état on the Duvalierists, a small group inside the army and the drugs smugglers. In fact this coup has a clear class character. Some soldiers explained to a group of bourgeois who had picked them up as hitch-hikers that they had done this "to protect them". And the national radio claimed that the coup was directed against those "who wish to oppose the poor to the 27 rich".
alternatives, and articles on Marxism and the
International Viewpoint #216 • November 11, 1991
HAITI / USSR
The press has republished Cedras denunciations of a "dictatorship under popular pressure" and imaginary human rights violations. In one of his declarations, Cedras unveiled one of the fundamental reasons for the coup; president Aristide had committed the crime of weakening some of the pillars of the Haitian state. A fault which, beyond even the immediate economic interests of the various parties to the coup, was unacceptable as much for the army as for the Haitian bourgeoisie and for imperialism. And it is true that in retiring certain officers and changing others, Aristide and Préval challenged the power of the military hierarchy.
By encouraging the people, in some cases, to close the tribunals which had functioned against the popular interests, Aristide inspired fear in the wealthy whose power has been defended for generations by a corrupt judicial apparatus. In refusing to disown demonstrators who brought pressure on the parliamentarians, Aristide indicated clearly that he placed the authority of the people above that of the deputies and the senators.
While wishing to modify the balance of forces, put the president back on the right track and reaffirm the authority of the army, it is not certain that Cedras wanted to go as far as the overthrow of Aristide. On the contrary, it is now obvious that he began in the first hours of the coup to lose control of a good part of the army. Since then, his deputy, Colonel Silva, has even sought refuge in the United States (perhaps to hold himself in reserve). Cedras must now act under the control of the Duvalierists and the most extreme elements of the army rank-and-file. These latter wanted to physically eliminate Aristide on the day of the coup, and they are now blocking any possibility of negotiating with him.
Some elements of the bourgeoisie are beginning to regret launching this adventure. For, making up for the time lost under Aristide, military commandos are devoting themselves with less and less restraint to extortion from car drivers, as well as the pillage of traders and strong-arm entry into the bourgeois villas.
The leaders of the political parties undoubtedly saw the coup as a means of ousting the government of René Préval, something they had not dared to do themselves a few weeks ago. In refusing to come out in favour of the unconditional return of Aristide, almost all the parliamentary deputies gave de facto support to the coup. But in doing so they played the role of sorcerer's apprentice; on October 7, the army invaded parliament and, under the threat of arms, obliged those present to unseat the prime minister and install a
Russian workers have had enough!
AS the first autumn snow tell lightly, at least ten thousand people, mostly workers, assembled on October 23 In the Manezh Square in central