Roberto Jorquera & Neville Spencer
On January 1, Haiti marked the 200th anniversary of its independence — the first black republic in the world. Yet the celebrations were overshadowed by protests against the government of Jean Bertrand Aristide, part of a surge of demonstrations that started in September.
In December, four government ministers resigned within the space of two weeks, following the violent suppression of student protests on December 5. The Council of the University of Haiti released a statement on December 15 reminding the police that "the gross acts of intimidation and repression against the teaching staff, students and university workers were acts against the criminal code of the country".
Since September, 47 people have been killed and hundreds injured in clashes with the police and between pro- and anti-government demonstrators. Calls from various sectors of society for Aristide's resignation have grown louder.
The crisis that Haiti is facing is, however, not simply due to the policies of the Aristide government, but is partly a consequence of US policies.
Since the beginning of the century, the US has intervened in Haiti in a similar fashion to the way it has in the rest of Latin America. In 1915, US marines occupied the country for 20 years to make sure that it would pay its debt to the US. After their withdrawal in 1934, the US installed Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier who was succeeded by his son Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. Baby Doc was eventually forced out of power in 1985 after massive protests against his notoriously corrupt and repressive regime.
Aristide, a radical priest influenced by liberation theology, was first elected president of Haiti in 1990 in a landslide victory to his Lavalas Movement. His election was based on a program that promoted social reform and a push to dismantle the bureaucracy that had developed under the Duvalier dictatorships.
Within seven months of his election, the old remnants of the dictatorship staged a military coup that forced Aristide into exile, while US-backed death squads killed thousands of his supporters.
In 1994, the US supported an operation dubbed "restoring democracy" which returned Aristide to power, though only once he had signed agreements to implement neoliberal economic policies and accepted the dictates of International Monetary Fund.
However, battling popular opposition to such neoliberal policies from his own supporters, Aristide dragged his feet on their implementation and still remained prone to occasional bursts of anti-US and anti-imperialist rhetoric.
Thus, while Aristide was less of a threat to the interests of US imperialism and the local ruling class than he had been, he was far from being their ideal candidate. But while he has commanded overwhelming popular support, there has been little that they could do about him — short of engineering another coup.
The November 29, 2002, Miami Herald quoted an unnamed US official saying that Haiti is "turning into a non-country ... We're meeting to look at what our options are, which are pretty bleak".
In the 2000 election, Aristide was declared winner with a substantial majority. Claims of fraud and debate over the method of calculation of votes for parliamentary seats have been a central part of the opposition campaign ever since.
Aristide's popularity has waned since that time, this is not surprising. The economic crisis that Haiti faces is one that now places it as the 134th poorest country in the world according to the Human Development Indices. More than 60% of Haitians live below the poverty line and a little more than 50% of those live in a situation of chronic malnutrition.
One per cent of Haitians control 50% of Haiti's wealth. Unemployment and underemployment is estimated to top 50% and full-time permanent employment is estimated at only 100,000 positions. Life expectancy is just 53 years.
The US continues to demand Haiti's payment of its foreign debt at a rate of $5 million per month.
This economic crisis has led to a further social and political crisis in the country.
Protests against the Aristide government have been common in the last few years, with a steady increase since September. A significant section of society is calling for his resignation.
The opposition is varied and spread across the political spectrum. Many of the protests have not only been organised by students but also by sections of the business sector organised in the Association of Industries of Haiti and the Council of Commerce and Industries of Haiti.
The most visible political body of the opposition is the Democratic Convergence, a coalition of right and centre-right parties. It is obviously far closer than Lavalas is to what the US government would like to see in power in Haiti, but has in the past failed to come close to the level of electoral support for Lavalas.
Although the protests are significant, many suspect that we are seeing a big business media/US government campaign similar to that which paved the way for the attempted military coup against the left-populist president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, in April 2002.
The sizes of opposition demonstrations as they have appeared in the big business and international media have been inflated, while large pro-government rallies have been almost ignored. This has been coupled with attempts to paint Aristide as a brutal dictator, despite having been elected by a significant majority.
Even though popular opposition to Aristide is likely to have grown in the face of his government's neoliberal policies, it is not clear whether this shift is so significant that he would not win another election were one held now.
The impression given by the media of an overwhelming popular rejection of Aristide by the Haitian people is likely to be wishful thinking or, as in Venezuela, part of a deliberate campaign on the part of the US government and Haitian big business. If Lavalas can be forced out of government, it is the forces, like the Democratic Convergence, that they would most like to see in power in Haiti.
From Green Left Weekly, February 11, 2004.
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