Populism and Haiti. posted by Richard Seymour

Oh, you know, it's nice to have a theme. Le Colonel Chabert:

It was emphasized by CNN that Aristide, while campaigning for the 2000 election - there was a campaign of terror attacks against Lavalas during this period - this guy who poses as a man of the people, the defrocked shantytown priest, kissing the dirty slum-dwelling waifs, snicker snicker, had a chauffeur, as if presidential candidates of countries paying hundreds of millions in interest yearly to international lenders customarily drive themselves.

This somehow seems like a familiar ideological gesture. Galloway wears Guccis and smokes fat cigars, Trotsky dressed like a fin de siecle intellectual, Aristide had a chauffeur, Noam Chomsky has a share portfolio, Gore Vidal is a snooty blueblood who lives in an Italian villa - ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Of course it is particularly vile and hypocritical of the pampered, blow-dried, glittering, preening hosts of television shows in the richest country on the face of the earth (who, I presume, also have use of a chauffeur from time to time) to sneer at Aristide in this fashion, and compress his achievements into an anecdote. Presumably, the image of a black leader wearing suits and being driven around while his people starve is evocative. One is supposed to ask: Who does this jumped up little tinpot ruler of a banana republic povo shitpile think he is? Never mind that this particular black leader was popularly elected, yet bound by agreement with Washington to sustain precisely the 'free market' policies that allowed sweatshop owners and US capital to exploit the poor blind.

Anyway, more via Chabert. In preparation for the 2004 coup, the US, France and Canadian paramilitaries were busily training 'rebels' in the Dominican Republic. Coterminously, the media began to issue dire warnings about Haiti the basket-case, Aristide the dictator, fraud, corruption, thuggishness etc. After the coup, The Guardian's sub-editors managed to mangle an article written by Charles Arthur on Haiti, in order to call Aristide a "General". Aristide was not, of course, ever even in the military, much less a military leader. He had no army, having demobilised it in 1995. Still, they persist. Mark this:

In the dead of the night, some 400 Brazilian, Jordanian and Peruvian soldiers fanned through the maze of tin shacks and sewage canals to take out Emanuel "Dread" Wilmé, a gang leader who had refused to surrender one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the hemisphere.

When the sun rose after a five-hour battle, Wilmé and at least five of his crew were dead. So were dozens of men, women and children caught in the gunfire, community leaders and residents said.

UN officials hailed the July 6 raid as a turning point in ridding this shantytown of gangs loyal to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a populist former priest who was ousted by armed rebels 23 months ago.

But Operation Iron Fist, as the raid was called, became an Operation Band-Aid. A new gang leader quickly replaced Wilmé. And bandits and UN peacekeepers trade gunfire in the slum almost daily, injuring or killing civilians in the process.

The atmosphere of "blackness" is palpable. Gangs. Wilme has been one of those resisting the attempt to return the country to a death-squad dictatorship. The immensely popular Lavalas had a great deal of grass-roots support to organise and Wilme tried to unite what are referred to as "street gangs" against the UN invaders. Yet, they who murder and do so under the rubric of the new sweatshop regime are not gangs, any more than are those UN troops who join the new 'Haitian National Police' in cutting people down in the streets. And yes, dear me yes, Aristide was a populist.