A revolution ignored

These days, the mere mention of Haiti brings on an overwhelming sense of dread and foreboding.

It is the most salient and vicious example of meddling US imperialism with its textbook two-faced approach to sovereignty, human rights and democracy driven by xenophobia and deep-seated intolerance.

A friend who spent a long time there working with an international organisation trying to secure an implementation and strict observance of democratic procedures and principles complained frequently about the self-proclaimed "world's greatest democracy" systematically obstructing any such initiatives on behalf of the local people.

Haiti has literally nothing of value left that might tempt an imperial power except for its people's indomitable spirit of resistance and rebellion passed down through the generations from L'Ouverture and Dessalines.

The slave rebellion of 1791, with its living heritage, remains the singular most astonishing political accomplishment of the western hemisphere.
Here is a clue. Talleyrand, the most effective European diplomat ever and, during the French Revolution, co-author of The Rights of Man, wrote thus to the US Secretary of State James Madison: "The existence of Negro people in arms, occupying a country it has soiled by the most criminal acts, is a horrible spectacle for all white nations."

Say no more. What followed was an embargo which, in its severity, was not dissimilar from the one visited on another "insolent" island, Cuba, close to 200 years later.

The sophisticated new social and political ideas of European Enlightenment and, paradoxically, the ideals of the French Revolution were put into rigorous practice by black revolutionaries such as the proto-socialist Dessalines.

"We have all (negroes and mulattoes) fought against the whites. The properties we have conquered by the spilling of our blood belong to us all. I intend that they be divided with equity."

But they weren't. The nouveau riche, arriviste elite of opportunists had other plans. In October 1806, Dessalines was assassinated.

As Hallward points out, "The colonial race war with France was over, Haiti's postcolonial class war began."

And so it continued for the next 200 years. The mulatto oligarchy has clung to power by a succession of murderous regimes of which the names of "Papa and Baby Doc" Duvalier became synonymous with crimes against humanity.

The cycle is temporarily broken when the ideals of the slave rebellion are given new impetus by the catalytic adoption in the 1980s of the theology of liberation. Enter the revolutionary and charismatic priest Father Bertrand Aristide.

Aristide "managed to combine a concrete strategy for acquiring practical political power with the uncompromising inspiration of liberation theology," stresses Hallward.

A popular movement with dedicated base structures mushrooms all over Haiti. Its programme: "Dignity, transparent simplicity, participation." In a direct affirmation of Freire's teachings: "The poor themselves became the actors."

It was christened Lavalas, from Aristide's radio interview on November 22 1988. "Alone we are weak, together we are strong, together we are the flood (lavalas), let the flood descend, the flood of poor peasants and poor soldiers, the flood of the poor jobless multitudes."

Aristide, like Mirabeau during the French Revolution, knew that "the assembled people take no orders" and trusted the masses implicitly to guide and protect the changes set in motion.

The crux was to neutralise the terrorist army and the Tonton Macoute assassins. Aristide's political skills achieve this in 1995 and the army is dissolved, ending the support for the Macoutes.

However, the real possibility of a second socialist state in the Caribbean prompts one of the unholiest alliances ever, comprising the army-infiltrated US-run police, the oligarchy, liberal politicians and theologians, professionals, academics, journalists and, surprisingly, "progressive" international charities.

The US invades for the third time in 2004 and hundreds of Aristide supporters are slain.

Tragedy and farce become undistinguishable from one another, but defeat is real and doubly hurtful as, in Haiti's people's hour of need, the whole world looks the other way.

The West's collective penchant for selectively playing the proverbial three monkeys is exposed time and time again by Hallward's passionate, erudite and surprisingly edge-of-the-seat writing.

Significantly, it is crowned by a fascinating 30-page interview with Aristide from 2006.