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Haiti: Fighting Battles but Not Winning the War
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10417 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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2 / 1993 |
2,378 Words |
| Author
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Anthony P. Maingot
Anthony P. Maingot is professor of sociology and editor of
Hemisphere magazine at Florida International University in
Miami. |
During a recent review of the Bush administration's foreign policy record in Latin America and the Caribbean, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Bernard Aronson named El Salvador as the greatest success and Haiti as the major failure. How tragically ironic. Few U.S. administrations tried harder than Bush's to bring Haiti into the family of democratic nations.
The United States contributed mightily to the success of the December 1990, elections. The freely elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, was the first Haitian head of state to be invited to the White House, and the United States increased and expedited aid to his government. The mayors of New York and Miami, cities, another first in U.S. Haitian relations. The United States, and the world, applauded when Aristide told the UN General Assembly that Haiti had finally made the critical transition to democracy.
On September 30, 1991, hours after he returned from his triumphal U.S. tour, Aristide was overthrown. Since then, neither political pressure nor an economic embargo have succeeded in restoring him to office. Once more, this small and poverty stricken island has stymied the major world powers.
The original leaders of Haiti's independence movement defeated the reconquest efforts of Napoleon I; Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier frustrated President Kennedy at every turn; and now the new rulers have embarrassed Organization of American States (OAS). How to explain this apparent invulnerability to outside pressures?
LESSONS OF HISTORY
Any analysis of Haiti must begin with a review of its history, if for no other reason than that few people have paid such a high price for the right to sovereignty. Haitian history has been an anguished mostly violent search for the meaning and ultimate purpose of nationhood. In Haiti, historical accounts are often retold in the present tense, and memories are especially long about perceived grievances, principal among them being that when push comes to shove, Haiti stands alone. Given the history of anti-Haitian sentiments more often than not racist in nature this feeling is not altogether irrational. But, as Haitian scholar Alan Tournier has argued, it is hardly constructive.
In his book, Quand la nation demande des comptes (1989), Tournier reviews the reprisals and confiscations that followed each period of dictatorship in Haitians,
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