The Cannibal Army in Haiti

So, I havent really been following what has been going in Haiti in the past year or so. But it appears lots. The socalled Cannibal Army has taken Gounaives in protest against killings made by supporters of Aristide the democratically elected president.

I wont comment on this, as I need to read up a bit more on it. However John Maxwell of the Jamaica Observer an normally fairly level headed paper has written a column about whats going on: The Cannibal Army

I have to say that I was very disappointed. The article is filled with the kind of historical revisionism that has caused much of the problems in Haiti and to certain lesser respects Jamaica as well.

The article is filled with cheap stabs blaming the problems of Haiti on everyone else but Aristide.

Another of my correspondents eloquently described Haiti as an ‘international crime scene’, a nation hijacked and sequestered from its freedom by forces outside of its control.

Sorry, the forces that are at play are entirely Haitian. If anyone has got international support it is Aristide.

As in many other so called 3rd world nations, Haiti’s elite whether intellectuals, merchants or land owners have been good at playing international support for their own purposes. Just look at Noriega, Trujillo, Castro and Haiti’s own duo of Duvaliers to see that this is what happens all the time.

Mr. Maxwell goes on writing about how US congress woman Maxine Wallters is trying to get the US to get tough with the opposition as they are trying to stage a coup de etat. See above. Black democratic congress men have a history of being manipulated by dictators of “black countries” in Africa and the Caribbean. I suspect this is exactly what is happening here. As you generally just have to play the race card to get their support. As did the bloddy dictators of Liberia and Sierra Leone for years.

The leader of this Opposition, André Apaid, is a millionaire businessman of Middle Eastern extraction whose family has been in Haiti for decades. He is the leader of the elites, the unreconstructed class of light-skinned and white Haitians who have never forgiven the blacks for defeating France, Spain and Britain on their way to independence. They were extreme racists 200 years ago, and some of them still are today, although one imagines that like the elites in Jamaica, many would have accommodated themselves to reality.

Now I dont expect someone with out a knowledge of Caribbbean history to know this. But the Lebanese christians (locally known as Syrians) came to the Caribbean no longer than 100 years ago. They spread out and created a new merchant class joined later by Jews and the earlier Indian and Chinese immigrants. Traditionally these were the merchants, not the old French families who basically got killed. So for him to say that they were extreme racists 200 years ago maybe true, but more likely the target of their hate were their own Ottoman Turk opressors in Lebanon and not the black populace of Haiti.

This is not to say that they arent racists today. But anyone who has more connection to the Caribbean than a one week stay at Sandal’s will know that the Caribbean society is very prejudiced and racist in it self. In Maxwell’s Jamaica the most racist people are the poorer class of black inhabitants themselves. This tends to be skimmed over by the Intelectual classes, who like to invent non existant external institutionalized racism as a way to keep control.

I have heard it said that in Haiti, if you have money you are white. If you havent your black. Irrespective of actual pigmentation or genetic background.

Seaga the leader of the Jamaican Labor Party in the 1970’s to recently (still??) is from this same Syrian merchant class. Maxwell mentions parallels between them and the current Cannibal Army. He was undoubtably just another opportunistic cleptocrat who was bad for Jamaica, but you can hardly say that he was any better than Manley’s PNP during the same period, who was attempting to turn Jamaica into a Cuban style republic through democratic slight of hand.

The interesting thing is that Maxwell contradicts himself:

According to the National Labour Committee “.Apaid is a notorious Duvalierist. When asked at a business conference in Miami soon after the coup in 1991 what he would do if President Aristide returned to Haiti, Apaid replied vehemently, ‘I’d strangle him!’ At the time, Apaid was heading up USAID’s PROMINEX business promotion project, a $12.7 million programme to encourage US and Canadian firms to move their businesses to Haiti.” Apaid reportedly has US citizenship, having been born in the US.

First of all if Apaid is anti black as Maxwell first says, how could he be a Duvalierist? The Duvaliers used Hitler like methods to clean out most of the mulato light skinned classes. Perhaps Apaid was there ready to pick up the businesses that Duvalier’s enemies left when the were killed or escaped? I dont know. That is a distinct possibility. It is interesting that the US Citizenship card gets pulled as well. A favorite of jingoistic liberals everywhere.

I am not saying that Apaid is any good. I know nothing about him and from lessons of history I would guess that if he was to be president he would be just another homicidal cleptocrat like Aristide is today and the Duvaliers were before him.

Maxwell goes on describing the sorry state of Haiti today. Yes it is in a very sorry state. It will stay so without fundamental changes. Which essentially means to get the various oppresive dictatorships of which Aristide’s is only one in a long line to stop messing with peoples business. Peru’s Institue of Liberty and Democracy have done studies showing how the basic oppresive burocracy of Haitian goverment has directly caused most of Haitians problems.

Final mention in the article are the sweat shops, the terrible evil factories that bring (gasp) jobs to the very poor jobless souls of Haiti. Above mentioned Seaga brought these to Jamaica in the 80’s and Manley in the 90’s pushed them out by raising employment costs to ridiculous unsustainable levels. Causing many lost jobs and much anger amongst the formerly “opressed” employees, who were then left to perform the more plaudible acts of the 3rld world poor. Farming in the mountains (deforestation), Prostitution (Good for the tourist economy) and becoming drug mules .

I have no conclusion except that Aristide and possibly a future president Apaid, really can not offer any lasting solution to Haiti’s problems. The representative democracy really just supports this long Haitian tradition of cleptocracy. Put a good restrictive constitution in place, remove the power of the presidency and the burocracy and then maybe the Haitians will have a chance.