An Interview with Jeb Sprague
The Assault on Democracy in Haiti
by DAVID ZLUTNICK, CounterPunch
Jeb Sprague is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the
University of California at Santa Barbara, where his research is focused on
Haiti. He has written for numerous publications including Al Jazeera, the Miami
Herald, Inter Press Service, and many others. He received a Project Censored
Award in 2008 for an article coauthored with Haitian journalist Wadner Pierre.
Sprague just released his first book, Paramilitarism and the Assault on
Democracy in Haiti, the subject of this interview.
David Zlutnick interviewed Sprague when he passed through
San Francisco on a book tour. The conversation focuses on paramilitarism and
its consequences in Haiti, but also touches on the roles of outside powers and
their influence, Haiti’s vibrant social movements, and the country’s most
recent developments. What follows is an edited transcript of the full
interview. To view an ten-minute editedselection of the video, please click
here.
***
San Francisco, CA. September 10, 2012—
DZ: While much of your new book focuses on the recent past,
you describe Haiti’s paramilitary history in four waves. Could you begin by
giving a bit of this history, going back to the US occupation and subsequent
dictatorships?
JS: So my book, the recent part really relies on interviews
and Freedom of Information Act request documents that show what elites talk
about behind closed doors and to try and get at the roots of paramilitary
violence. But before that I try to give the larger context of contemporary
paramilitary violence in Haiti. And my basic argument is that there have been
four contemporary waves of paramilitarism in Haiti. The first wave, which is
basically the Tonton Macoutes, which was institutionalized under
Duvalier—François “Papa Doc” Duvalier [Haitian president, 1957-1971]. And right
when this was started as sort of a Cold War, right-wing project in the early
‘60s, the CIA threw Marines at the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, basically
trained the Tonton Macoutes—a Marine force in Port-au-Prince. And so the Tonton
Macoutes lasted all the way up until the mid-1980s when Papa Doc’s son, “Baby
Doc,” was forced out of office.
And the Tonton Macoutes—it became this very much pervasive
force around the country, really leaching off the poor, sucking the resources
of the state, killing tens of thousands of people, and also creating a
symbiotic relationship with the military and with the rural sheriffs, called
the “Section Chiefs,” which had been set up before [Papa Doc]. But this whole
sort of military-security-paramilitary apparatus came together to secure this
regime—this Cold War, repressive regime. Because there was also this miniature
Cold War going on in the Caribbean, especially after the Cuban Revolution [in
1958]. And then across the [Hispaniola island] border in the Dominican Republic
there was a similar repressive regime.
So that’s what I argue is really the first wave of
paramilitarism. And then the second wave of paramilitarism comes about after
the fall of Baby Doc. Elites try to control a transition to a more palatable
kind of regime that the West can accept. And so what happens is basically the
Tonton Macoutes take off their blue uniforms and some of them are sort of
repositioned in other places around the country where the local people don’t
see them. And they do all these things to maintain this paramilitary apparatus,
but to make surface-level changes. And they become what is called the
“attaches,” where they work alongside the military as these “military attaches”
where the can carry out brutal massacres, targeted assassinations, targeting
people from the pro-democracy movement from below, which has been around since
forever in Haiti.
And what about more recently, in the past couple decades?
And so once democracy finally came about in Haiti in the
early-1990s, after this huge struggle from the popular movement, the Ti
Legliz—the small church, liberation theologians—finally you had a popularly
elected government in 1990 [under President Jean-Bertrand Aristide], taking
office in February of 1991. And soon thereafter, about seven months into this
first democratically elected government, you had a coup d’état where sectors of
what they call “the families”—Haiti has an extremely unequal society and there
are these families that live—a lot of them live in Port au Prince in
neighborhoods like Petionville—and these families supported—a number of the
families supported this coup. The top echelons of the military were not happy
with the progressive reforms that were being carried out. So after the coup
there was really the third wave of paramilitarism, what they call the FRAPH
[Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti], which actually it’s
well-documented the CIA station chief was coordinating with them their wave of
terror. They killed thousands. Human Rights Watch claimed that they killed
4,000 but it’s probably a lot higher than that. And they would target
progressive business people that were against the coup, priests, young
activists protesting—this was happening basically between ’91 and ’94, this
paramilitary group.
And then ultimately this post-coup military dictatorship
that had come to power, it became such an embarrassment for its international
backers, it was such a narco-corrupt state of brutality that by late-1994 the
US with UN support acted to bring down the regime. A lot of the top military
guys in the regime left the country to mansions in Central America or some went
to New York and the US, and the US would even rent or pay them for some of
their property in Haiti when they left. And so the US did everything they could
to try and buy these guys off so they wouldn’t see justice. The elected
[Aristide] government was reinstalled in 1994 but it had to sort of accept
these deals with the US and the so-called “international community” to bring
down tariffs and allow a certain number of the old military to go into a new
police force. And that really laid a seed for a lot of problems in the future.
But at the same time the return of the government allowed
restarting a lot of the progressive projects that it had initially started in
’91 when it was first elected. One of the most popular things was that Aristide
disbanded—his government disbanded the military, disbanded the rural section
chiefs, and the paramilitary forces had to go underground or flee the country.
It also started these judicial processes to hold accountable gunmen in some of
the larger massacres; and not only the gunmen but started going after the
financial and intellectual authors of these massacres—something that’s almost
never done. It was a pretty strong justice process that hasn’t really been
looked at. One of the more famous trials is the Raboteau Massacre trial in
Gonaives where there were dozens of military and paramilitary men that were
found guilty and put in jail. This was the first time in Haitian history that
this was ever done, so this was a really big deal.
So flash-forward into 2000. The democratic forces in Haiti
are just starting to try to get things back together. I mean [there were] a lot
of problems and contradictions, but Haiti is slowly progressing. So then what
happens, what I argue, is there is a fourth wave of paramilitarism. What
happens is that a group of these police and military that were connected with
the US—they had actually been trained in Quito, Ecuador with support from the
US, and in Haiti they call them the “Ecuadorians”—this group, they basically
formed the core of the new paramilitary force. They often called themselves the
“New Army;” their acronym was the FLRN [National Revolutionary Front for the
Liberation and Reconstruction of Haiti]. And they based themselves out of the
Dominican Republic and what happened was all throughout 2001—or towards the end
of 2001, then 2002, 2003, they carried out this war of attrition where they
would run raids, attack the National Palace. They tried to carry out a coup but
they didn’t have sufficient forces. But they were carrying out these
assassinations of Fanmi Lavalas activists and supporters in the center of
Haiti, in the Hinterland, where a lot of the agriculture is based. Fanmi
Lavalas was the party of Aristide, the most popular political party in the
country, especially among the poor.
And so eventually this fourth wave of paramilitarism started
to wear down on the government. And there was also a fifth column within the
government of ex-military, some of which even claimed to be Lavalas but they
were—but what I’ve been able to get at through my research, these Freedom of
Information Act documents, I show that this fifth column was actively plotting
against the government from within the government. That’s something the book
really looks at, the different sectors that were behind these paramilitaries: a
wing of the Dominican government, the foreign ministry and the military; a wing
of local bourgeoisie, some of which are neo-Duvalierists; some of what I call
“transnationally-oriented capitalists,” who are, you know, primarily concerned
with the global economy—textiles, sweatshop owners; and then there’s also
connections to French and US intelligence. More work needs to be done on that
[latter point], but it’s very hard to uncover that linkage. So this is that
fourth wave of paramilitarism, which eventually led up to the 2004 coup in
which the Bush Administration—George W. Bush—I think with a US Navy SEAL team,
took him from his house, took him on an unmarked plane—like all those rendition
planes—and flew him to the Central African Republic. I think a lot of people
know about that through Democracy Now! and all the coverage that was given to
that.
Wasn’t there a US private security company that was also
linked up in the 2004 coup? I used to write about these military contractors
and I recall coming across the Haitian coup in my research. A group similar to
Blackwater or Triple Canopy or one of those, although I forget which one.
Yeah, there was US private security that the Haitian
government had actually been using for years prior, that had actually been
working for the Haitian government to do security for top officials in the
government. Because one of the problems was there was this infiltrated fifth
column, so they would actually—it’s kind of ironic they would hire this private
company from the US, but Haiti is such a donor-dependent country, even with a
progressive, left-leaning government there’s so many contradictions and it’s so
hard to avoid these things. But what happened was when this paramilitary
campaign ramped up and got more and more widespread, there was this private
security firm—and it was very controversial because I think the US embassy and
State Department intervened with this corporation—I think they might actually
be based out of San Francisco—and they got their teams to stand down when the
US Navy SEALs went in to take Aristide out of the country.
[Note: The military contractor protecting Aristide was the
Steele Foundation, based in San Francisco as Sprague said. It is made up of
former US special forces, intelligence agents, and other security experts. It
has been reported that the Bush Administration blocked the Steele Foundation
from sending reinforcements to Haiti to protect the Aristide government as
rebel attacks escalated immediately preceding the coup.]
You began to talk about who is supporting these
paramilitaries. Could you speak a bit more about whose interests are being
served by these groups? And why are these backers prone to using such massive
and decimating violence for their advantage instead of other less physically
destructive types of social coercion we may see in other states?
Well, there’s this idea of “polyarchy,” right? Over the last
few decades, through globalization, with the winding down of the cold war,
dominant groups have tried to transition away from more violent forms of
coercion and oppression that are very embarrassing for them when it gets out in
the media and things like this. And they’ve tried to transition away from that
to sort of more controlled, “democratic” processes—like in the US, or a lot of
western countries—where there’s sort of a small sliver of society that is able
to participate in politics, and whatever party you choose, there may be slight
differences but the overarching things that they do are beneficial for the
global economy and the class system. So what happened it Haiti really is that
that sort of polyarchic strategy wasn’t able to succeed. Because the movement-from-below
groups in Haiti that were advocating for an alternative path toward development
where the poor would be included in the political process, they were able to
mobilize successfully election after election, even with all the problems they
faced outside and inside of their movement. And so paramilitary violence, for
not all dominant groups but for sectors of dominant groups—the upper class,
different states—this became a viable strategy and you see this playing out…
Whereas what’s interesting that we now know through
Wikileaks—through cables released through Wikileaks—that around 400 of these
paramilitaries were integrated into the police force in Haiti after the coup.
And we see cables from the US embassy talking about OAS [Organization of American
States], UN, US officials, technocrats about how they oversaw this process of
integrating paramilitaries into the police. And it’s interesting because they
never talk about—they never question the problem of integrating people into the
police that were criminals, that were killing civilians, and brought down a
legitimately-elected government. It’s fascinating to see what these elites say
behind closed doors that never appeared in the media at the time.
What is the role of foreign states in the support of
paramilitary organizations in Haiti? You’ve mentioned some direct training by
the United States, for example.
Well, earlier in Haiti’s history there’s been different
militias and a long history of local elites having different militias, and US
intervention and foreign states intervening and having different groups that
they’re allied with on the ground in Haiti. But really during the US
occupation—and there’s some interesting books and work done on this—the US
occupation in the early 20th century, they formed a sort of modern
institutionalized army in Haiti. And they did the same thing in the Dominican
Republic at the same time and the US worked to build relationships between the
two militaries. In Haiti they call it the “poison gift” because even after the
US occupation ended, this proxy force was still there to maintain the system
that the US helped set up, where they had big banks there and very pro-US
governments. But what happened was as, you know, as the pendulum goes back and
forth and popular movements are coming about in the region—very vibrant labor
movements fighting for just basic things: child safety, minimum hours of work
for a day—I mean just the different demands and things that they were fighting
for it became this very vibrant movement across the island of Hispaniola and
the Caribbean. In Haiti it was called the Movement of ’46—1946. And so the
Duvalier regime was really a response to that, to set up a really strong system
in the country that could hold off the movement from below. And right from the
start the US was supporting the paramilitaries. And that support continued.
During certain periods it was more heightened and then it would go down, but it
was there pretty much the whole time.
And one aspect of the book that I think is real interesting
that hasn’t really been discussed is the role of the Dominican Republic,
Dominican elites and their military support for paramilitaries. And so I did a
lot of interviews in Santo Domingo with people in the foreign ministry that
acknowledged that Guy Phillipe, one of the main [leaders of the]
paramilitaries, and other guys had lived at their house for a time and they
worked really closely with them. And the OAS and the regional groups never did
anything to pressure the Dominican Republic to hand these paramilitaries over
to see justice in Haiti. I mean, these are really just shocking things with all
the attention now that we have on Haiti with the earthquake [in 2010]. It’s
interesting to know historically how this has been shaped.
I have a lot of Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] documents
that show the US embassy talking about different connections to the
paramilitaries. Like there’s one document when they talk about France. They
believed that France was sending money to the paramilitaries. And the US
definitely had communication with them for years. It knew what they were doing,
it had sent people to different base camps—illegal base camps [from] where they
were running these sort of insurgent raids in the early-2000s…
What affects have the 2010 earthquake had on Haiti’s
internal politics and some of these issues regarding the more violent aspects
of politics in Haiti?
Yeah, I think it’s helpful to think of Naomi Klein’s The
Shock Doctrine in thinking about the earthquake in Haiti. And there are other
people working on that, the idea of “disaster capitalism” and how the
earthquake has— They already had a tough situation with the UN occupation and
the [René] Préval government, which was really working tightly with this
transnational policy network and these elites that are geared towards the
global economy. So they already had a system that was not focused on national
development or developing for the majority of the population. But what the
earthquake has done, it’s thrown everything into disarray and the right-wing
was really able to take advantage of this, because these guys, they’re
all—after the 2004 coup the guys that were in jail are out of jail, the other
ones don’t face any kind of being brought [to] justice. So like [current
Haitian President Michel] Martelly who was a major backer of the ’91 and 2004
coup—he was a musician and very controversial in his connection to the
Duvalierists—goes back decades.
Actually I can explain it this way: In March of 2011 when
the elections happened, I was in Haiti and I visited with a few others an
ex-military training camp about ten minutes outside of Port au Prince and there
they train guys for what they call “private security”—where they’re going to go
work for private security firms because there’s a lot of elites and foreign
embassies and NGOs, they hire local private security. But they were training
under the Duvalierist banner, the black and red flag of Duvalier. And so it’s a
scary situation and they have these camps set up across the country that came
about after the [2004] coup. Now what’s happening is they’re advocating for the
return of the military [officially disbanded by Aristide in 1995], to rebuild
the old military, of course under a different name and they try to say it’s
something else, but it’s really the same old crowd. The main reason they want
to do that is they want a sufficient “security,” military force there to put
down any protests or resistance to the larger economic processes that are going
on in Haiti.
They have extremely cheap mining concessions—some of the
cheapest that are being doled out in Haiti where vast swaths of the country are
being opened up to these transnational mining firms. There’s a lot of mineral
resources that these extractive industries are going in for. And also, of
course, the cheapest labor in the whole Western Hemisphere. So while textile
companies have been shutting down in other parts of the Caribbean, Haiti is a
place where they want to set up shop. Textile industries can come in with very
light manufacturing lines and it’s easy to move them and so it’s this sort of
downward spiral where they can go to whatever country has the fewest labor
standards and a non-unionized workforce and they can really profit off that.
And if there’s problems they can shut down shop and leave real quickly. But the
biggest problem is really that the rural economy is really what needs to be
rebuilt and it’s really difficult because there’s a dominant developmental
strategy of these big transnational capitalists, these big corporations.
As you mentioned there is currently an attempt to
reconstitute Haiti’s military, which was disbanded in 1995. Why and how is this
taking place? Is this a formal institutionalization of the existing
paramilitaries, or their remnants?
Right now the right-wing is in power in Haiti, so there’s
been a few targeted assassinations that people believe are connected to these
ex-military and paramilitary forces, and they’ve had a few marches, but for the
most part it’s not like the old age of the Tonton Macoutes where you have the
Tonton Macoutes station in every neighborhood, with the blue-uniform guys with
the machetes and Uzis patrolling the neighborhoods. But they have these camps,
and they’re sort of there in reserve. They know from history they can’t go back
to the exact model they had in the past, this very blatant paramilitary force.
And this is, I think, similar to what’s going on in other countries and regions
where they need to secure a more palatable, a more—a force that’s seen as more
acceptable. And so that’s why they want to bring back the military.
But the problem is historically this military is
interconnected with the paramilitary forces. The guys go back and forth to the
same jobs. And the people who want to set up this military are historically
tied to the Duvaliers, the Duvalierist regime. So it’s very important for
solidarity activists in North America to link up with the Haitian grassroots
and grassroots human rights groups, grassroots media—anti-coup media—to really
build up pressure for this not to happen and for the Haitian people to be
allowed to take part in the political process. Because what happened in the
last election, in 2011, I mean Martelly only received something like a little
over 16% of the registered voters actually voted for him, so an extremely low
turnout. And with all the focus on the earthquake and helping people, which is
really important, we also need to pay attention to these on-the-ground dynamics
and really not be fooled…
What hopes are there for a resurgence of popular, democratic
movements in Haiti? Where do you see reasons for optimism in the near future?
The optimism, I think if we look at the history, the
unending struggle and the vitality, persistence, and the inspirational things
that the movement from below in Haiti has done. I mean there have been so many
important voices that have been silenced by paramilitaries, like [human rights
activist] Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine who disappeared in August of 2007 and still
to this day we’re waiting to hear news about him. Where is he? What has
happened to him? These voices that have been silenced— That’s another part of
the book, to document this history and to have this long memory. And if you go
to Haiti and you talk to people from the popular neighborhoods and the
countryside, people—the history is passed down through the generations, through
talking, a lot through the radio. And so people know what’s going on. But it’s
real important to build up transnational forms of solidarity where groups are
working together across borders. Because if we look at dominant groups, states,
corporations, they’re more and more interfused, working together across
borders, especially with finance and production being more and more
functionally integrated across borders. We see them really working together in
that manner. So if we want a better world, then we also need to work together.
David Zlutnick is a documentary filmmaker living and working
in San Francisco. His latest film is Occupation Has No Future: Militarism + Resistance
in Israel/Palestine (2010), a feature documentary that studies Israeli
militarism, examines the occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, and explores
the work of Israelis and Palestinians organizing against militarism and
occupation. You can view his work at www.UpheavalProductions.com.
