Haiti is on the Block...And Off the News
by Tom F. Driver

During the second inaugural address by George W. Bush, while he was flinging into frigid January air heart-warming words about bringing freedom to every part of the world, I listened in utter disbelief, my head full of images of Haiti. Thanks to the U.S. Government's regime change there one year ago, Haiti's jails now hold more than 1,300 political prisoners, most of them detained without any kind of due process. Some 30,000 activists in the democratic movement are in hiding or exile. An uncounted number, surely in the thousands, have died from gunshot fired mostly by the national police and rogue members of the former army, although some by slum-dwelling armed gangs professing loyalty to Aristide.

In Port-au-Prince, the only place in the country where matters are well-observed, dead bodies lie in the streets, eaten by dogs, either because the victims' corpses were mutilated beyond recognition or because their relatives were afraid of police reprisals if they claimed them. The morgue is full and overflowing with hundreds of bodies that exceed the refrigeration capacity. They lie on the floor in their own congealed blood, maggots feasting upon them in sub-tropical heat.

And America, mostly unaware, was being lulled by George W. Bush: "America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way."

When did you last get news of Haiti from your TV, radio, or newspaper? Not much lately unless you make a habit of listening to Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now." Although we live in a so-called free society, our news is heavily censored. Most of that is probably self-censorship. Either it suits the interests of the corporations who own the media, or the publishers and producers don't like to allot time and space to topics that are not in fashion -- the latter dominated by what the Government chooses to call attention to.

In any case, the U.S. (with assistance from France and Canada) has plunged Haiti into a nightmare of un-freedom under cover of darkness. On the night of February 28-29, 2004, the darkness was literal: Aristide was taken out of the country by U.S. Marines on a U.S. Government airplane in the wee hours of the morning and flown to the Central African Republic, a destination the U. S. chose for him. Since then, Haiti's darkness has been figurative. It is experiencing some of the darkest days of its nightmarish history, unlit by the world's attention. Our media have eyes for the troubles in Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Darfur, and anywhere else there is terrorism, but not for the terrors of Haiti.

But Haiti is, as so often before, the test-case. I mean, the U.S. does to Haiti the things it would like to do elsewhere but often cannot because other countries are not as weak as Haiti, nor as bereft of friends and supporters. Do you want regime change in Cuba or Venezuela? Do it to Haiti instead. After all, the Bay of Pigs didn't work, nor did the attempted coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002. Haiti is easier, and if you can kill the democracy movement there, it may help block such movements in Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, and wherever.

Do you want to control the armies of Latin America? Train as many of their officers as you can at your military school at Ft. Benning in Georgia. Make sure they learn how to kill and torture leaders of civic movements aiming at land reform, majority rule, and independence from the IMF and the World Bank. If an uncontrollable national leader like Aristide abolilshes his army, get rid of him, pay some of his former soldiers yourself, insuring their loyalty to you, create chaos, and then, yielding to "necessity," put the army back in place.

Do you want to lower wages all the way from Grand Rapids to Buenos Aires? Start by making Haiti dependent on imported food (a process deliberately begun about 1980). That will ruin agriculture and force a few million people off the land and into the cities, where they'll compete for a few thousand jobs. You can do this because Haiti is weak. Wages will fall to less than $1.00 a day. Now you can use this cheap labor to pressure workers throughout the hemisphere to work for less than they otherwise would. You don't have to actually move the work there. Just the threat will do the trick.

These are the actions of empire. They are enacted through a combination of military and economic policy. The home citizens of the empire feel nothing but the benefits of easily affordable consumption. Only the poor feel the pangs of starvation and death by murder. They need hardly be noticed.

Let's be clear about Aristide. His record as President is certainly not beyond criticism. But it is a far better record than his enemies allege. And anyway, his record is beside the point for two reasons: 1) the United States opposed him from the first, before he ever became President; and 2) to get rid of him they had to do something totally illegal while pretending it was an errand of mercy; they had to remove a duly elected head of a democratic state. To make sure that no other Aristide emerges, they have to use their proxy government to destroy Aristide's Lavalas party, because its aim has always been to break up the political monopoly of Haiti's business class.

The picture I've sketched explains why the opposition in Haiti is calling for the return of Aristide. (He is presently in South Africa.) He represents Haiti's constitution and its legitimate democratic process. To further this aim, friends of Haiti from many organizations came together in Washington, DC, in early February at a gathering called Kongré Bwa Kayiman 2005, which I attended. The name honors the gathering of slaves in August, 1791, that sparked Haiti's war of independence from France.

Most of the Haitians speaking at the Kongré were people who have had to flee Haiti to escape imprisonment or death for their allegiance to Aristide. Among them were Bolivar Ramilus, a member of Haiti's parliament; Duclos Benissoit, President of the Transportation Workers Union; and Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, National Coordinator of the September 30 Foundation, an association of victims of the first Aristide coup on September 30, 1991, many of whom are now also victims of the second. Other speakers were Ira Kurzban, for years the Aristide government's legal representative in the U.S., and Brian Concannon, a long-time champion of human rights in Haiti, formerly of Haiti's Office of International Lawyers, and now head of the U.S.-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti.

Among many others present was Michelle Karshan, who was Press Secretary for the Government of Haiti from 1991 to 2004, and who will be a featured speaker at the MidAtlantic Witness for Peace retreat in April, as was Brian Concannon in 2003.

Witness for Peace has allowed itself to become part of the darkness in which Haiti suffers. We have not sent a delegation to Haiti since May, 2000. Our international team there was very short-lived. Shortage of money is one reason for this. But then Haiti always comes first in suffering and last in priorities.

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Tom F. Driver is the Paul Tillich Professor of Theology and Culture Emeritus at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the Mid Atlantic Region of Witness for Peace.