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International Viewpoint #260 October 1994
IN THE wake of
W the US occupation in instruments: a reorganised military and police on
Haiti we were the one hand, and an economic restructuring, on sent the the other. This will bring Haiti back in line with the rest of the Caribbean, where formal democrafollowing draft cy, dominated by an elite, have eagerly accepted a statement from neo-liberal economic programme.
the US
Everyone in Haiti believes that the US embasrevolutionary sy and US agencies, from the CIA to US Aid for socialist
International Development (AID) were involved in the coup that overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide organisation, three years ago. After all, General Raoul Cedras et
SOLIDARITY.
al were on the CIA pay-roll. But then Washington leisurely waited while State terror took its course before giving the "final" ultimatum to the coup leaders. The wait allowed the popular movements to be weakened by repression. As a result, 5 thousand were killed, 300 thousand driven into hiding, and 40 thousand attempted to leave the island in boats — most of whom were returned by the US
Coast Guard into the hands of the military.
So Washington sent the troops in like some cowboy who's been asked to save the town. The majority of the Congressional Black Caucus thought Washington could intervene on the side of good this time, helping to alter the balance of forces. But that is a misreading of Washington's motives and aims. Haiti, after all, is an important source of cheap labour for the two hundred US businesses that employ over 100 thousand
Haitians. And US AID has already spent over $26 Million to keep it that way. It worked with Haitian busi-
ASHINGTON'S plans for Haiti are now fully outlined. They include an occupation carried out through two government in opposing the raise of the minimum wage from fourteen to fifty cents and hour.
Washington "lost" the 1990 Haitian election, when Marc Bazin, the candidate the US backed with more than $2 million, was one of many candidates who lost to Aristide and lavelas movement. Following the coup Bazin was illegally installed by the military — but he didn't last. So the one alternative to Aristide that Washington had was quickly used up.
### Submission
Now Washington has set the stage to win what they have not been able to through other means. They demand that Aristide submit to a gain through other means. They demand that Aristide submit to a structural adjustment policy, to an amnesty of those who used State terror against the popular movement, and to a recognised military and police force These conditions are an attempt to repudiate his demand for justice and sever his government from the grass-roots organisations that were his base.
Of course the US media lap-up all of Washington's proposals like so much cream. Why question the ability of the
US military when they have trained and armed the
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Haitian army in the first place?
The first US occupation (1915-34) led to the suppression of peasant revolts, a disarming of the popu-
Notebooks for Study and Research
No. 22, 'Women's Lives in the New Global Economy'.
Eds. Penny Duggan & Heather Dashner lation, and a complete overhaul of the Haitian army. Since that time, it has been reorganised, armed and
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trained by the US military. Sixtyfive percent of the Haitian military has already received US training!
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HAITI nessmen during President Aristide's
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9
International Viewpoint #260 October 1994
According to Allen Nair's 3 October article in the Nation, Major Louis
Kernisan will be in charge of retraining Haiti's policy. He sees the infamous section chiefs, who terrorise the rural population, as, on balance, a positive force. Nairn captures Kernisan's sensitivity to civil rights:
"Popular uprising? Under the watchful eye of 6 thousand or 7 thousand international observers? I doubt it. This is only the kind of shit they've been able to get away with when there is nobody watching... They tried that before and it brought them two years of embargo and their little guy in golden exile in the States."
While US spokespeople emphasise that the "worst" human rights violators will be removed from the army, it looks like the fox is in charge of the chicken coop!
### Popular movement
However, the US plans can be pushed off centre by the intervention of the popular movement in the streets of Port-au-Prince and Cap Haitien. US soldiers stood by and saw members of FRAPH (the para-military goon-squad) shooting into demonstrations. Back home, the American public got a good look too, through the extensive media coverage. So, after initially standing on the sidelines, the US military was forced to begin to disarm the Haitian military, and then FRAPH. But despite these moves, the basic US goal remains the same: to insure the continuation of a repressive apparatus. Accompanying this first goal is the other aspect of Washington's programme: the econo-
A structural adjustment plan, presented by Aristide "advisers", Leslie Voltaire and Leslie Delatour, to the World Bank last August commits Haiti to halve its civil work-force, privatise public services, slash tariffs and import restrictions, end price and foreign exchange controls, grant aid to the export sector, enforce an "open foreign investment policy", rewrite corporate law, limit the scope of State regulation, and create special corporate courts with judges who are particularly sensitive to the problems of economic efficiency. In return, Haiti would receive $800 million in "aid", including $80 million for its foreign
Imposition of this plan would jetti son any possibility of raising the minimum wage, granting aid to the peasant sector, subsidising prices so the poor 10 would have access to basic foods, or relaunching needed health, sanitation and literacy campaigns. Although the Haitian Economic Plan promises to invest half of the proceeds from privatisation in providing infrastructure and housing in the poorest areas, the promises are vague.
The Clinton administration has attempted to surround President Aristide with "advisers" who will be able to "open doors" for Haiti in the international community. These will attempt to prevent Aristide's government from carrying out the radical reforms it began to initiate in its first seven months of office. But in addition, Washington has also attempted to box Aristide into holding the next presidential election in December 1995, when he will have actually been in office less than two years out of his five-year term. Nothing in the Haitian constitution necessarily calls for such an election. It merely states that a president is to serve for a five-year term and may not stand for immediate re-
Neither the Bush or Clinton administration defended Aristide against the CIA disinformation campaign (whose informants were the Haitian military officials who carried out the coup against Aristide); neither did they ever put into place a tight embargo — as Aristide and the mass movement in Haiti had demanded — against the military regime; and neither did they aid those who fled the repression. In fact, last year Haitian imports to the US increased by forty-four percent over 1992. As late as this April, the US Ambassador to Haiti, William L Swing, explained in an eleven page message to Washington that "the Haitian left manipulates and fabricates human rights abuses as a propaganda tool."
While Haiti may seem like a poverty-stricken and distant country to most to Americans, it is a significant source of superprofits for US business. Americanowned businesses forced by the embargo to shut down temporarily are impatient to re-open. As a recent Christian Science Monitor article quotes Robert Antoniadis, president of a hand-crafted gift-ware company: "I can't think why they are making us wait another month." Both US manufacturing and agricultural interests want to make sure Haiti is an appendage of the US market. State Department talk about how the Haitian markets can "conquered".
Moreover, in the NAFTA/GATT world order, US workers are told that jobs which paid $15-20 an hour will now be done for $6 an hour. Otherwise, they will go to Mexican workers for $1.50 an hour; if they do not want them, the jobs will move on to Central America for seventy-five cents and hour — and if they will not do them, then they go to Haiti for fourteen cents! In this sense, all US capital feels an interest in the cheapest possible Haitian labour.
Of the two specific demands raised in the seven-point agreement between the illegal Haitian government and Jimmy Carter one was over granting amnesty to the people Clinton had finally called murderers, rapists, and terrorists — although he conveniently left out that they are drug runners too - and the second dealt with immediately lifting the
Distrust and hatred
Why have so many US politicians expressed so much distrust and hatred for Aristide? It is not just an expression of racism towards a president who is Black, but also because Aristide is not a conventional politician who rose through the ranks of the political/diplomatic ladder. He was the spokesperson for the grass-roots movement as it flowered in the post-Duvalier period. It is a movement of peasants, trade unions, students, women, poor communities, and it is rooted in the ti legliz - the church of the poor. Aristide's base is the popular movement, the overwhelming majority of Haitians, whose demands cannot be met at the same time a structural adjustment policy is carried out. Those who hungered and thirsted for justice went to the polls in December 1990 and overwhelmingly smashed through "business as usual" in the Haitian State. They defended their vote in January, when a coup attempted to steal it from them. And now, Clinton is gambling, that they have suffered sufficiently from the repression of the last three years so that they cannot rebuild themselves in time, they will fail to rebuild the bridge between Aristide and themselves.
It is clear what Washington's programme is, and it should be clear to all that it is has nothing to do with the restoration of popular democracy, but only the facade of its narrowest outline. It is continued support to the five families that rule Haiti and the US multinationals. As a matter of fact, Carter and Clinton's call for amnesty asks President Aristide and the Haitian parliament to begin by violating Article 147 of the 1987 Haitian Constitution, which specifically prohibits granting more than "political amnes-