Haitian leader returns black love to sender

An Ocean Apart by Ta-Nehisi Coates

When Haitian prime minister Gerard Latortue came to
Manhattan last week, he had a curt message for his
cousins up north—butt out. Since the overthrow of
Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February,
Latortue has been under fire from African American
leaders who view him as an illegitimate steward of the
first free black state in the Western Hemisphere. Just
last month, 1,500 protestors gathered in Brooklyn to
voice their opposition to Latortue and push for
Aristide’s return. "I think Latortue is a puppet for
both Bush administration interests and the interests of
the Haitian elite," says Bill Fletcher Jr., president
of the Pan-Africanist lobby TransAfrica Forum.

But Latortue charged that his American critics were
turning Haitian strife into "a racial issue that
doesn’t correspond with the aspirations of the Haitian
population today," and that criticism of him is being
"promoted more by Afro-Americans than by Haitians, in
the name of black power." Latortue went on to argue
that African American leaders were using Haiti’s
troubles in hopes of further blemishing President
Bush’s questionable foreign policy record.

"I don’t think much of [Latortue’s] comments. This is
not the first off-the-wall statement he’s made," says
California congresswoman and former Congressional Black
Caucus chair Maxine Waters. "He is a person who’s been
put in place by multinational powers and I don’t think
he knows very much."

African Americans have long thought themselves vested
observers of Haiti. At the end of the elder President
Bush’s term, Aristide fell victim to an initial coup;
he’d been in office just nine months. Haitians fleeing
the brutal regime of Aristide’s replacement, Raoul
Cedras, were sent back to Haiti by the U.S. Coast
Guard—sometimes to be killed. During Bill Clinton’s
initial run for the White House, he wooed black leaders
by promising to offer the refugees safe haven. After
Clinton won, he promptly reversed himself—and then
reversed himself again after Randall Robinson, head of
TransAfrica Forum, went on a 27-day hunger strike. As a
result of Robinson and other black leaders’ efforts,
Cedras was forced into exile and Haiti’s first
democratically elected president—Aristide—was returned
to power.

But since Aristide fell victim to this year’s coup, his
stateside allies have found it much harder to press the
deposed president’s case. Part of it has to do with the
climate of America—the war in Iraq, not Haiti, is the
foreign policy story of the day. And it’s no secret
that Bush doesn’t enjoy the same cushy relationship
with the Congressional Black Caucus that Clinton did.
Furthermore, there was much frustration—even among
those who opposed the coup—with Aristide after he
failed to be the patron saint of Haitian democracy. Now
African American leaders, many of them loyal to
Aristide, find themselves back at square one: How do
they help Haiti, once again, move from a symbol of
black hope to an actual functioning democracy?

This year was supposed to mark Haiti’s bicentennial,
not its cornering of the market in military juntas. Yet
despite its inability to bring about a government of
the people, in the black diaspora Haiti has always been
hallowed ground. The country was established by an army
of slaves after they ran the forces of Napoleon off the
island of Hispaniola and declared independence in 1804.
It was the first and only completely successful slave
rebellion, and it emboldened black resistance to
slavery throughout the Americas. The efforts of rebels
like Nat Turner, Denmark Vessey, and Gabriel Prosser
are often tied to the success of the Haitian uprising.
As a symbol of black nationhood and freedom, Haiti has
always enjoyed prime real estate in the Pan-Africanist
pantheon.

But the country also has always been mired in poverty
and despair, conditions inextricably linked to a series
of dictators. Papa Doc "president for life" Duvalier,
for one, ruled Haiti with a big stick. In 1991,
Aristide came to power, bringing wiith him the promise
of a modernized Haiti.

Aristide’s two turns were not without rancor, even
among his supporters. "Aristide was no choirboy—the guy
did a lot of bad things," says Marx-Vilaire Aristide
(no relation) of the Haiti Support Project. Vilaire
Aristide opposed the coup and the Latortue
administration, but believes that Aristide gave a lot
of ammo to his critics. "The administration of justice,
the way the police was run, Aristide’s reliance on
gangs, in the end I think came back to haunt him."

Now it’s haunting black leaders who backed Aristide as
a deliverer of democracy. Jocelyn McCalla, executive
director of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights,
says that African American leadership and the
Congressional Black Caucus fell into an ideological
trap that didn’t allow enough public criticism of
Aristide. "I think [black leaders] could have made
stronger statements in respect to Aristide," says
McCalla. "But this idea that Haiti was this small
country being dumped on by a larger one is a sexier
angle for people like Maxine Waters. But you cannot
simply transfer local politics onto an international
scene."

There seems to be some flexibility in the caucus’s
position. Maryland congressman and caucus chair Elijah
Cummings says he hopes to play a constructive role in
Haiti’s future. "My belief is that [Latortue] is a man
who did not ask for this job," he says. "I think the
best probability for law and order, for humanitarian
assistance, and for democracy would probably be through
this government." Cummings stopped short of saying that
Latortue’s government should be fully recognized.

Waters, for her part, while supportive of Cummings,
remains hostile to Latortue’s regime. "There are people
who don’t want to spend a lot of time on what they
think is inevitable," says Waters. "There’s no big
rift. We all support Haiti. But some of us are not
going to let go of [the coup]. If they can get away
with removing the democratically elected president in
Haiti, they could do it anywhere."

Yet some supporters of Haitian democracy have been
compromised by the fact that they were on Aristide’s
payroll. In March it was widely reported that Haiti,
between 1997 and 2002, had spent over $7 million on
lobbying in Washington, D.C. By comparison, The
Washington Times noted that the Dominican
Republic—Haiti’s more populous neighbor—had spent only
$1.18 million.

As a congressman, Ron Dellums fought for the rights of
Haitians. When he left his seat, the former head of the
Congressional Black Caucus turned professional
lobbyist, collecting $571,326 from Aristide between
2001 and 2002. Meanwhile, a company headed by Hazel
Ross-Robinson, wife of Randall Robinson, received
$367,967. There was nothing illegal about either deal,
but the money changing hands did lead to questions
about how free those black leaders were to criticize
Aristide.

Fraught relations between black leadership stateside
and abroad is nothing new. Carol Moseley Braun was
ousted from the Senate over her questionable
relationship with Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha. In
1996, Louis Farrakhan, fresh off the triumphant Million
Man March, went on a world tour in which he endorsed
several African dictators—including Abacha and Sudan’s
Hassan al-Turabi.

Aristide, whatever his crimes, doesn’t sink to the
level of those rulers. And despite valid criticism of
his time in office, the fact remains that the elected
president of Haiti was illegally ousted. "We had our
own criticism and differences with Aristide," says
Fletcher. "But we support democracy in Haiti. And as
such, we believe that the duly elected representative
of Haiti should serve."

Village Voice
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0420/coates.php