The people and the president
International Viewpoint #243 March 1993
IN SEPTEMBER 1991 a military coup overthrew Haiti's radical elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide with the connivance of the United States. However, since then, the impoverished Carribean island has remained in turmoil and the US is now considering reinstating Aristide on its own terms. Arthur Mahon explains the US' motives and the prospects for a revival of the radical left in Haiti if Aristide returns to office.
ARTHUR MAHON February 18, 1993
Demonstrators protest against the treatment of Haitian refugees in a detention camp in Florida
W HY, in the beginning
of January, did Bush - and then Clinton - suddenly decide to bring tremendous pressure to bear on the men in power in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince? Is this due to the fear of the 200,000 Haitian boat people who, according to the American press, were going to descend upon Florida when Clinton took over if they had no hope that Aristide would
In fact, the real explanation lies elsewhere. Now that the ferocious repression has achieved most of its objectives, the American administration is increasingly worried about the political failure of the coup d'etat. The government of Marc Bazin, which has served as a cover to the dictatorship since last spring, has few friends.
By the end of 1992 the United States was convinced that there were very few ways out of this crisis: the convocation of general elections (in exchange for which Bush would have insisted Aristide accept his conditions) or else the quick return of the constitutional president (Aristide) to Port-au-Prince, under close scrutiny.
But Aristide has plenty of enemies in Washington, as in the American embassy in Haiti, who have the means to delay his return as long as possible. 30
Bazin's failure was made plain as day on January 18, when the legislative and senatorial by-elections were massively boycotted by the population. In the department of Artibonite, for example, the Peace and Justice Committee of the Gonaive diocese observed that only 1% of possible voters cast a ballot. The streets of Port-au-Prince, usually overflowing with activity, were deserted until the evening
The goal of these elections was to provide new deputies and senators for the alliance which brings together the MIDH (Bazin's party) and the PANPRA, led by the former Maoist Serge Gilles. These parties intended to obtain what they failed to obtain in the elections of December 16,
Four members of the PANPRA are participating in the government but, more and more, its activists - and even its deputies — are quitting its ranks. PANPRA's job was to obtain the support of the Socialist International (also represented by the KONAKOM, which calls for Aristide's return) for the dictatorship.
However, on February 9 and 10, in Aristide's presence, the council of the Socialist International "denounced the January 18 elections" and declared its support for sanctions "against the de facto military government"
Some 45 international observers, sent by the UN and the Organization of American States (OAS) arrived in Haiti on February 13 and 14, and will be followed by a civilian mission. Bazin finally agreed to its deployment after securing a number of important concessions. The UN and OAS text outlining the goals of the mission was changed. Its goal is to "help to guarantee respect for human rights in Haiti"; but, unlike the initial text, authorities" no longer have to commit themselves to implement its recommendations as soon as possible.
What comes next? The UN and the OAS are preparing new negotiations with the men in power in Port-au-Prince. Mass mobilization will be a decisive factor. From the very beginning, the policy of the putschists and their entourage has been to prolong negotiations, to go back on signed agreements, and to gain time until the end of Aristide's mandate. Clinton, on whom Aristide seems to have placed great hopes, has already acquired the habit of breaking his promises.
There is already talk of a general strike aimed at bringing down Marc Bazin. In the current situation, the mass movement has a big role to play. But is its capacity to mobilize what it was a few years ago?
A "radical" left, which had the goal of setting up a popular regime, reached its height during the mobilizations that preceded and followed Duvalier's fall. In
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International Viewpoint #243 March 1993
1986 and 1987 the Duvalierists were thrown onto the defensive. While the popular movement felt that, as in Central America, it was on the threshold of big changes, these hopes didn't last very long and in the summer of 1987 the military government emerged victorious from a test of strength with those currents favouring a democratic transition. These currents suffered a bloody defeat, leading to an enduring change in the relationship of forces.
From the end of 1987 to Aristide's electoral victory three years later, political life was characterized by coups d'etats and the internal struggles of the ruling classes, who were unable to find a way out of the crisis afflicting the country. Thus was revealed the fragility of the implantation the left had managed to achieve through the building of popular organizations. At certain points, a few of these organizations could mobilize large numbers and play a central role in the politicization of the population. But it was rare to find a popular organization that was able to consistently mobilize a section of the population.
In the political landscape, the popular organizations often took up the anti-imperialist and anti-electoralist ideas of the left. The popular organizations could not remain on the sidelines of the anti-imperialist and anti-government struggle. However, most of these organizations concentrated their efforts on politics to the detriment of organizational work with the population around their everyday problems although certain among them organized significant campaigns against the high cost of living and for the re-building of the Creole pig stocks (which were decimated in the early 1980s with the aim of replacing them with pigs imported from the United States).
Among the organizations that most sought to play the role of a political party, the case of the Autonomous Confederation of Haitian Workers (CATH) is particularly noteworthy. The small nucleus of leaders which ran this organization determined its orientation without any rank and file control. The collapse of this nucleus under the weight of intrigues, political differences and corruption led to a disastrous split of the organization.
These popular organizations could not replace a party which could have expressed the interests of the oppressed on the political terrain. Was the building of such a party possible in the years which followed the overthrow of Duvalier? Repression, sectarianism and the lack of activists in the heart of the mass movement would have made such a party-building project difficult, and the few attempts made came up against additional obstacles: the lack of democratic traditions, police infiltration, and activists using their political activities to make money.
The lack of a party to give political expression to popular and democratic sectors was cruelly felt. During the mobilizations of the summer of 1987, the traditional parties of the reformist left were able to monopolize the political scene to the detriment of popular sectors. In March 1990, General Avril was forced to give up the reins of power; in spite of the mass upsurge, the political terrain was occupied by a coalition of parties which, with the agreement of the American embassy, handed the power over to Ertha PascalTrouillot - fully aware of her connections to the Duvalierists. When Jean-Bertrand Aristide declared his candidacy for the presidential election, he could not do so under the banner of a party which spoke to the interests of the masses. Indeed, the left was going through its worst period.
Over the last few years, the Haitian left has encountered a number of difficulties, not unlike those of the Latin American left - faced with a number of failures, a difficult international situation, and a lack of perspectives.
It has also come up against its own specific difficulties. It emerged after a long period of dictatorship lacking an experienced core of activists able to establish links with struggles of previous periods. The education of those activists that did exist was characterized more by its Stalinism than by exchanges with the Latin American left.
Problems of programme
Another of the left's handicaps was the lack of thought given to programmatic questions. In the 1960s and 70s, the Haitian left engaged in a number of abstract debates on the nature of Haitian society and the coming revolution. After the overthrow of Duvalier, it deepened its knowledge of Haitian society and the mechanics of mass mobilization.
But the old debates were not re-examined in the light of the new experiences. What was needed was the formulation of a set of programmatic points based on the immediate and longer term interests of the oppressed — within a perspective of permanent revolution and the beginning of the transition to socialism. The complexity of the social formation did not make
It was also necessary to see the struggles in Haiti as part of a wider pro-
No new deal for boat people
SINCE the military coup that ousted Aristide more than 40,000 Haitians have fled their country by sea in an attempt to reach the United
States. Last May American president George Bush ordered the
US coastguard to directly repatriate
Haitians seized on the high seas.
During the election campaign Bill
Clinton promised to end this practice, but in fact has authorized a US military blockade of the island to prevent people leaving - justified as a means of saving lives. As elsewhere a distinction is to be drawn between (acceptable) "political" and (unacceptable) "economic" refugees with the former having to present their case to US officials in Haiti itself, thus exposing themselves to further repres-
Aristide, meanwhile, has urged Haitians to "stay at home and reesta blish democracy", reflecting his confidence that Clinton will help him back into the office from which he was so rudely evicted. * cess spilling over national borders. However, as much before Duvalier's downfall as after, the importance of the international context was underestimated.
From an international point of view, the circumstances of the birth of the Haitian nation and its century-old isolation from the rest of the Caribbean and Latin America makes the job of conceptualising the building of a new society that much more difficult.
The establishment of a popular regime in Haiti would allow for the implementation of a series of measures which would bring tremendous relief to the oppressed. However, this tiny country on the periphery, scarred and with very low labour productivity, will not be able to solve its central problems by itself. A people's government could not survive without an international extension of the revolution.
Many of the difficulties that the Haitian left has encountered are linked to the specific nature of Haitian society. The numeric weakness of the proletariat (both urban and rural) and its instability - as well as the growing "lumpenization" of the cities — make for formidable obstacles. A large part of society is made up of a number of - partly secret - traditional networks and organizations which
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International Viewpoint #243 March 1993 tend to be divided along clan lines and are generally linked to religious practices.
Individuals are inserted into a set of power relations and economic dependencies based on religion and the family. Any long-term strategy would have to take these factors into account, and keep in mind the important place of voodoo in all aspects of Haitian life.
Paradoxically, Aristide's presidential candidacy and subsequent presidency aggravated the crisis of the left, which was not at all prepared for this situation and had to quickly rethink its strate-
Aristide's candidacy was conceived as the bearer of a democratic transition which had been blocked. For Aristide, such a transition implied an alliance between the popular sector and certain fractions — or, rather, fragments - of the bourgeoi-
One of the pillars of this alliance was made up of anti-Duvalier personalities calling for a struggle for a "state of law" and the defense of the 1987 constitution.
As such, Aristide's candidacy left itself open to several dangers: one was the chance that these democrats, whose political positions were never particularly firm, would act as a break on the popular movement. On the other hand, the candidacy could have provoked a disastrous confrontation with the Duvalierists and the army.
The Haitian left found itself torn hetween those who insisted on these dangers and those who preferred to focus on the enthusiasm which greeted Aristide's campaign. The latter saw the need to be a part of the experience or at least to be with the masses. The semi-insurrection that met the attempt in January 1991 to block Aristide's inauguration in January 1991 led many to overestimate the relationship of forces and the level of popular
In fact, both those who decided to denounce Aristide from the left and those who favoured a line of critical support were both confronted with a major problem: in the cities, the mass movement remained very weak. Worse, the emergence of a new regime had a perverse effect on a segment of the activists who had played a part in the electoral victory. 32
The overwhelming majority of "popular" organizations which had emerged in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince were reduced to a few individuals most concerned about finding a way to pressure the state into giving them a job.
The prevailing misery and the lack of a democratic culture have led to a struggle for survival and a job, a race to occupy positions in the state. The mechanisms at work under previous regimes continued to operate, including in the ranks of the president's entourage.
Aristide himself did not give serious attention to the struggle against these tendencies and for the self-organization of the population. These two aspects were linked; the authors of a balance sheet produced for the political organization Lavalas ("Avalanche") wrote regarding government efforts to mobilize the population: "Throughout, informality reigned in the designation of responsibilities. This fed the tendency towards the self-promotion of a few personalities and activists. They took over the running of the organizations in all areas, at the expense of cooperation, the sharing of experiences and collective effort. Such practices, viewed with a critical eye by a number of activists, compromised certain creative initiatives which could have been effective had they been planned and coordina-
The balance sheet goes on to discuss Aristide's call on February 4, 1991, for construction of a Lavalas organization: "However, the need to set up such an organization, understood in varying degrees by different people, was ignored by others — when it was not opposed outright in the spirit of the prevailing cult of spontaneity [...] From
February to September 1991, the Lavalas
Organization did not get beyond an embryonic and partial stage."
The lack of honest and competent cadres able to run the state, the difficulties of the left and the popular movement, and the weakness of democratic traditions are factors which from weighed heavily
February to September 1991 and will continue to do so for a long time to come.
The dictatorship which followed the September 30,
1991 coup inflicted heavy blows on the left and the popular organizations. Here is the typical testimony of
"Yves, a political militant from Limbé", published in the November 1992 issue of
Haïti Information Libre: "I sleep every night with two shirts, two pants and my socks. I always have to be prepared to escape in case someone comes to arrest me in the middle of the night. Sometimes I spend two days here and five somewhere else with friends...
"Since December 8, 1991, I have been sleeping in three different places. I have to make journeys of several kilometres by foot, crossing mountains at night... Today, I have serious money problems, and my garden was destroyed when a local official and his gang let loose a herd of cows on it".
A number of peasant groups have been destroyed; this was one of the objectives of the coup d'etat: to put peasants who have radicalized and politicized in the past period back in their place. The networks of popular organizations have not been dismantled, however, even if it is very difficult to organize meetings, especially in the countryside — the siege of the countryside by the army and the paramilitary forces is much tighter than it was under Duvalier, though the level of repression varies greatly from one village
Certain local leaders are being rather careful - they know that the political situation could quickly change.
But, even if Aristide returns to the
National Palace it is unlikely that the climate of fear will quickly disappear. Over the last year, courageous student mobilizations have not succeeded in bringing other layers of the population into the fray. *