Stop the Attacks on Former President Jean Bertrand Aristide and the Lavalas Movement

On August 21, Haitian police wearing black masks and carrying heavy arms appeared in front of the home of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide as a Haitian judge issued calls to arrest him. Hundreds of people courageously surrounded the house to protect him.

One week before, President Aristide was summoned to court on false corruption charges.  This is the fourth time since his return to Haiti in 2011 that he has been the target of a politically motivated legal case. (Previous charges were dropped before he could even challenge them in court.) The judge in this case, Lamarre Bélizaire, has been suspended for ten years from practicing the law by the Port-au-Prince Bar Association for using the court to persecute opponents of the present regime. His suspension is due to begin once he steps down as judge.

Remembering the Overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Yves Engler, CounterPunch

On February 29, 2004 the US, France and Canada overthrew Haiti’s elected government.

As my first two articles in this series outlined, Ottawa helped plan the coup and was heavily implicated in the human rights disaster that followed.

But the most shocking aspect of the intervention was the role played by purportedly progressive non-governmental organizations. A slew of NGOs received tens of millions of dollars from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) to advance Ottawa’s anti-democratic policy in Haiti.

The Assault on Democracy in Haiti: Jeb Sprague interviewed by David Zlutnick

Paramilitarism and the assault on democracy in Haiti

Belen Fernandez,  Al Jazeera

In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti, certain media outlets painted a picture of a country overrun by looters and at the mercy of gang members and other criminals, including thousands of prisoners jolted free by the quake. 

Relevant details were ignored, such as the contention by prominent Haitian human rights attorney Mario Joseph that 80 per cent of said prisoners had never been charged. The media effort perhaps aided in rendering less incongruous in the eyes of the international public the deployment of a sizeable US military force to deal with quake-affected people who did not seemingly require military attention. 

Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti

by Jeb Sprague, Monthly Review Press

In this path-breaking book, Jeb Sprague investigates the dangerous world of right-wing paramilitarism in Haiti and its role in undermining the democratic aspirations of the Haitian people. Sprague focuses on the period beginning in 1990 with the rise of Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the right-wing movements that succeeded in driving him from power.

Aristide on democracy

Do not confuse democracy with the holding of elections every four or five years.... Only the day-to-day participation of the people at all levels of governance can breathe life into democracy and create the possibility for people to play a significant role in shaping the state and the society that they want.

-Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Eyes of the Heart, 2000

Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Liberation Theology

In the Parish of the Poor: Writings from Haiti by Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Reviewed by David Marx

"Hiding the truth is like trying to bury water. It seeps out everywhere." So wrote former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in what has been described as a 'soliloquy at the precipice,'In the Parish of the Poor: Writings from Haiti.

An astonishingly brave and brutal, tender and undeniably truthful account of (relatively modern day) Haiti, this book is an altogether heartbreaking account of the country’s past events, which place its recent events into even more painful perspective.

Eyes of the Heart: Seeking A Path For the Poor in the Age of Globalization

Eyes of the Heart

In this startling and passionate book, Aristide demonstrates why those on the bottom will never lie down. A graphic revelation of what happens when "free" trade overruns local markets, eradicates local economies, and creates dependence on foreign charity. 

"Wherever women are heard and respected, the face of God is illuminated. Wherever the poor are heard and respected, the face of God is illuminated". - Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Eyes of the Heart

The Haitian Revolution

by Toussaint L'Ouverture
Edited by Nick Nesbitt
Introduction by Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Haiti’s ousted premier on the leader of the world’s first black republic.

Toussaint L’Ouverture was the leader of the Haitian Revolution in the late eighteenth century, in which slaves rebelled against their masters and established the first black republic. In this collection of his writings and speeches, former Haitian politician Jean-Bertrand Aristide demonstrates L’Ouverture’s profound contribution to the struggle for equality

Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment

by Peter Hallward, 2008

Once the most lucrative European colony in the Caribbean, Haiti has long been one of the most divided and impoverished countries in the world. In the late 1980s a remarkable popular mobilization known as Lavalas, or “the flood,” sought to liberate the island from decades of US-backed dictatorial rule.

Retour de Lumumba au pays natal

Jacques Depelchin, Ota Benga

Bienvenu à toutes et à tous, Congolaises, Congolais, de naissance et de cœur, gens de partout, membres de l’humanité. Ce à quoi nous vous invitons n’est pas un tribunal et ne peut pas être comparé à un tribunal. Il s’agit d’une recherche de réponse aux questions posées et non posées qui peuvent être résumées à celle-ci : Comment un peuple dont les valeurs ancestrales étaient fondées sur l’inverse de celles implantées par l’esclavage, la colonisation, la globalisation a été amené à commettre une lente mort contre lui-même, une lente mort aujourd’hui non encore arrêtée, une lente mort qui est passée par des assassinats, des tortures, de filles et de fils dont le mal avait été précisément d’être resté fidèle aux valeurs de solidarité de l’humanité. Il s’agit d’une fidélité venant de très loin comme nous ont rappelé Cheikh Anta Diop, Théophile Obenga, Ayi Kwei Armah et tant d’autres.

Damning the Flood

Richard Pithouse, Mute Magazine, 2008

By supporting NGOs, is the left suppressing a radical politics in Haiti and elsewhere? And is it possible to defend a popular movement without deifying its leader? Richard Pithouse reviews Peter Hallward's new book on the containment of popular politics in Haiti

An Interview with Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Peter Hallward, London Review of Books, February 2007

In the mid-1980s, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was a parish priest working in an impoverished and embattled district of Port-au-Prince. He became the spokesman of a growing popular movement against the series of military regimes that ruled Haiti after the collapse in 1986 of the Duvalier dictatorship. In 1990 he won the country’s first democratic presidential election, with 67 per cent of the vote. He was overthrown by a military coup in September 1991 and returned to power in 1994, after the US intervened to restore democratic government. In 1996 he was succeeded by his ally René Préval. Aristide won another landslide election victory in 2000, but the resistance of Haiti’s small ruling elite eventually culminated in a second coup against him, on the night of 28 February 2004. Since then, he has been living in exile in South Africa.