My wife and I and our friends, Kent and Shelly, left Haiti on Tuesday afternoon. We decided to do so on Monday afternoon as we were hearing an increasing number of reports about chime (pronounced sheemair) setting up roadblocks in Port-au-Prince and steeling cars and looting. We knew that American Airlines, the primary airlines for flying to and from the U.S., would likely suspend service at some point.
I feel relief that we are not in Haiti right now. We are mourning for our Haitian friends and Haitians in general as they receive yet another blow: a terrible economy that continues to spiral downward as a result of this conflict, the political uncertainty and increased insecurity, discouragement because of being let down by people who you trusted to help you...
Yesterday, Kathy Kern with Christian Peacemaker Teams, who lived in Haiti during the coup years in 1993-94, telephoned me. Below is the article she wrote for Mennonite Weekly Review, a national Mennonite newspaper based in Newton, Kansas:
By the time this column appears, the government of Jean Bertrand Aristide may have fallen. In 1993 and 1994, I served with CPT in Haiti and remember the disinformation campaign the CIA propagated against Aristide, accusing him of mental illness and the advocacy of violence. I remember anti-Aristide journalists and congresspeople magnifying the violence of Aristide supporters while playing down the exponentially greater body-count racked up by the leaders of the coup that deposed Aristide in 1991. I remember the armed paramilitaries of the coup regime swaggering through the streets of Jeremie, where I was stationed, casually dispensing death threats. I remember of the joy on the faces of Haitians I knew when Aristide finally returned, on a U.S. helicopter, to Haiti.
Currently, I am having difficulty knowing what to think about Aristide as I watch news reports of the carnage in northern Haiti. I have been reading wildly irreconcilable analyses about his leadership written by journalists and representatives of organizations working in Haiti that I respect.
On February 25, after weeks of effort, I was finally able to contact John Engle, a CPT reservist who recently returned to the States from his home in rural Haiti. Engle lives in poor community but also has many connections to Haitian intellectuals and bourgeoisie who were once ardent Aristide supporters. Both poor and affluent former supporters say that Aristide must resign, because his government has become hopelessly corrupt, according to Engle.
He cites Camille Chalmers as an example. Chalmers served as Aristide's chief of staff from 1993-1994 while Aristide was in exile, and resigned when Aristide agreed to comply with the development mandates of international donors. He then became the executive secretary of PAPDA, an organization that advocates development policies that will not further impoverish Haiti's people. Engle sent me a draft of PAPDA's statement calling for Aristide's immediate resignation. The statement further stipulates that a new provisional government must make a complete break with the current corrupt system and its enslavement to international monetary interests, and that the change should not occur with the help of foreign militaries.
When I asked Engle about whether U.S. pressure on Aristide to put the Haitian economy in the hands of private corporations might have transformed him from a populist to an authoritarian ruler, he agreed that the economic pressures compromised Aristide. But Engle also believes that some U.S. progressives are too quick to absolve Aristide of his anti-democratic actions by blaming them on the mandates of globalization and a racist U.S. foreign policy.
I told Engle that removing a democratically-elected president through non-democratic means does not seem to bode well for Haiti. He said that since a new parliament has not replaced the one that has expired and since Aristide's forces have put the press under attack, the necessary structures for removing him democratically do not exist. However, he made a clear distinction between progressive Haitians who are calling for Aristide's resignation through nonviolent means, e.g., strikes and boycotts, and the paramilitaries that are currently conducting murderous rampages in the north of the country.
After speaking with Engle and reading his weblog (http://JohnEngle.blogspot.com ) I am uneasy. He freely admitted that other people I know and respect in Haiti might give me a different perspective on Aristide and recent events. I still think it can't be good that the armed factions of Aristide's opposition include army and paramilitary officials known for their past brutality. It can't be good that Otto Reich at the National Security Council and Robert Noriega at the U.S. State Department‹both involved in efforts to destabilize the Nicaraguan government in the 1980s are directing current Haiti policy.
More than uneasiness, though, I feel grief for the Haitians I knew in 1994 who longed for a democratic government. They deserved better than what they got.
JohnEngle.info
TheExperiment.info
John@TheExperiment.info
