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An Interview with Robert Fatton

Counterpunch

Robert Fatton is the Haitian-born author of Haiti's Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democracy. He teaches political science at the University of Virginia. Fatton talked to Eric Ruder after the U.S. government engineered the toppling of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

IN 1994, the U.S. invaded Haiti and returned Aristide to power. What happened at that point? WHEN ARISTIDE comes back to power, he's a very different fellow. In order to get back, he has to depend initially on the U.S. Marines. The assumption was that it was the only way he could get back into power--with American support. He had to make all kinds of compromises, and that led to very compromising alliances. He had to accept the International Monetary Fund's structural adjustment program. He had to accept integrating all the government people who had actually participated in the Duvalier regime. He had to make huge concessions. When Aristide went back, he felt absolutely impeached by the possibility of another coup. So he disbanded the army--and created some poorly trained police units. When they were first created, they were to a large degree groups from the popular organizations in the slums, and they were given some weapons so that if there was an attempted coup, they could resist it. What happened with the passage of time is that you have the beginning of fragmentation within the Lavalas movement that Aristide led. By 1995 and 1996, Lavalas is really divided over what do you do with power, given the precarious nature of the government in Haiti. ...You have all these limitations that were reluctantly accepted by Aristide. The result is that the Haitian economy now is probably the most open economy in the world. This has had devastating consequences for the vast majority of Haitians. The very few jobs that we had have been lost. The agricultural sector is in really horrible shape. It seems to me that we could more or less produce enough rice for the country. But, what has happened is that with the opening of the market, subsidized American rice has permeated the Haitian market and destroyed rice production in Haiti--because the American rice is significantly cheaper. Also, with all of the compromises, you're talking about the beginning of real corruption within the Lavalas movement. ... The government that you had in the last four years under Aristide is a government increasingly marred by corruption. If you go to Haiti, the people in the government ride around in huge SUVs, they have big houses. Clearly you had a very different reality from the rhetoric that "we are defending the poor." ...If you went to Port-au-Prince, you would see big billboards saying, "Aristide cries Haiti"--that kind of bizarre messianic assumption that one individual, and only one, is the embodiment of everything. By the end, the Lavalas movement was lodged with Aristide himself--with all of the problems which that entails. In spite of all of that, I'm convinced that Aristide is still the most popular individual in Haiti. And that tells you something about the opposition.

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