Book Reviews

HAITI: The Aftershocks of History, by Laurent Dubois; 434 pp. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company. $32.
Reviewed in the New York Times of Dec 29, 2011.

Haiti After The Earthquake, by Dr. Paul Farmer, Public Affairs books, July 2011
Read three reviews that appeared in Canadian dailies in July 2011, here:
http://canadahaitiaction.ca/content/reviews-three-canadian-dailies-paul-farmers-haiti-after-earthquake

Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment, by Peter Hallward; Verso (2007)
* Reviewed by Sue Montgomery in Montreal Gazette:
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=60da7461-3bba-449e-a51d-0fa2dd04623f
* Reviewed by Justin Podur in ZNet, http://www.zcommunications.org/bursting-the-dam-of-containment-by-justin-podur
* Reviewed by Paul Knox in Literary Review of Canada, http://reviewcanada.ca/reviews/2009/01/01/haiti-s-fallible-hero/
* Reply to Paul Knox by Peter Hallward, http://www.canadahaitiaction.ca/node/221
* Reviewed by Roger Annis (reprinted below) http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9078

Red & Black in Haiti: Radicalism, Conflict, and Political Change, 1934-1957 , by Dr. Matthew J. Smith, University of North Caoline Press, published May 2009. The first comprehensive history of the post-occupation era, arguing that “the period (from 1934 until the rise of dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier to the presidency in 1957) constituted modern Haiti’s greatest moment of political promise.” 
Read a short review of the book and interview with the author by Ansel Hertz:
http://www.mediahacker.org/2011/01/interview-before-duvalier-there-was-hope/

An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, by Randall Robinson; Civitas Books, 2007.
Reviewed by Roger Annis (reprinted below) http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2007/annis071007.html

* You Are All Free, The Haitian Revolution and the Abolition of Slavery, by Jeremy D. Popkin; Cambridge University Press, 2010. Review By Brendan Simms in Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703514904575602813929450820.html.

Collapse, by Jared Diamond; Viking Press, 2005. Read a critique by Tim Schwartz (March 2010) of Diamond's analysis of Haitian/Dominican Republic history and relations, here: http://open.salon.com/blog/timotuck/2010/03/08/an_open_critique_of_jared_diamonds_collapse_haiti_and_dr

Two New Books Examine the Struggle Against Slavery in the U.S. and the Impact of the Haitian Revolution
The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights; By Robin Blackburn, Verso Books, 2011
An Unfinished Revolution: Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln; By Robin Blackburn, Verso Books, 2011
Both reviewed by Greg Grandin, The Guardian, July 8, 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jul/08/american-crucible-robin-blackburn-review?INTCMP=SRCH
 

* For a comprehensive compilation of reviews of books on Haiti, many written by Bob Corbett, see here: http://www.webster.edu/~corbetre/haiti/bookreviews/bookreviews.htm.

Review: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President

October 24, 2007
Randall Robinson. An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President Basic Civitas. 280 pages.
Reviewed by Roger Annis

Randall Robinson has written the story of a great tragedy of recent times–the violent overthrow of Haiti’s elected president and government on February 29, 2004. An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President gives a blow by blow account of the events surrounding that tragedy.

The author brings impressive credentials to the task. He helped to found the Trans Africa Forum, one of the most established human rights and social justice advocacy organizations in the U.S., dedicated to improving the lot of people of African descent. The Forum has long fought for a fair and respectful U.S. economic and political relationship with Haiti. His work gave him an enduring respect for the ousted president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and his wife Mildred.

Robinson writes with an unapologetic passion for the Haitian people’s historic fight against slavery and colonialism. He situates the tragic events of 2004 on the broader canvas of the racism and imperial arrogance that has dominated the policies of the world’s big powers towards Haiti, particularly those of the U.S. and France.

Why is Haiti so poor, the uninformed observer will ask. Surely, after 200 years of nominal independence the country could do better?

“As punishment for creating the first free republic in the Americas (when thirteen percent of the people living in the United States were slaves),” Robinson replies, “The new Republic of Haiti was met with a global economic embargo imposed by the United States and Europe.”

“The Haitian economy has never recovered from the havoc France (and America) wreaked upon it, during and after slavery.”

Robinson is not trying to write a comprehensive history of Haiti. (Paul Farmer’s The Uses of Haiti fits that bill admirably.) He does, however, provide enough historical background to explain the present-day.

The author rushes the reader back and forth in time and place in an effort to recreate the drama and tragedy of February 2004. “It was Friday, February 27, 2004,” he opens one chapter, “the evening before the last day of Haitian democracy.”

The stage for the overthrow of February 29, 2004 was set in the national election in the year 2000. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president for a second time. The U.S., France and Canada, the three contemporary overseers of Haiti, threw up their hands in exasperation over the electorate’s choice of a man and a political movement dedicated to lifting the burden of their crushing poverty.

Aristide promised improvements to the lot of the desperately poor Haitian majority, and he was a man of his word. The big powers would have none of it. They began an embargo of aid funds to the government, directing funds instead to parallel services operated by “non-governmental” or charitable organizations. Soon they would also block the government’s requests to international financial institutions for loans to finance ambitious education and health care projects

More ominously, money and arms flowed to paramilitary forces sponsored by the venal Haitian elite and drawn from the disbanded Haitian army or purged Haitian National Police. The paramilitaries were safely lodged in the neighbouring Dominican Republic. Robinson captures the gravity and drama of the periodic assaults they launched against the institutions of the Haitian government following the 2000 election.

When the paramilitaries launched what became a final incursion in early 2004, they were a small force, no more than 200. They were feared and hated by the majority of the Haitian people. By virtue of an overwhelming superiority of arms, they were able to wreck government rule in cities in the north of the country. But they didn’t have a chance of taking the capital city. That task fell to their international sponsors, and this was done on February 28-29. The U.S., France, Canada and Chile landed troops at strategic locations in the country.

The Aristides were taken by U.S military forces to one of the most isolated countries in the world, the Central African Republic. An Unbroken Agony kicks into high gear as the author tells the story of the delegation he led on a harrowing flight to the Central African Republic on March 14 to rescue them from a quasi-imprisonment. The delegation included U.S. congresswoman Maxine Walters. It had no idea of the reception it would receive from the country’s ruler, François Bozize, a client of French imperialism. After many tense hours, Bozize gave permission to the delegation to leave, its mission accomplished. The Aristides were granted political exile in South Africa, where they remain to this day.

One of the myths perpetrated by supporters of the foreign intervention in Haiti is that Jean-Bertrand Aristide was prepared to leave the presidency and the country in the face of the mounting political pressure against him. The Aristides accepted a U.S. offer to whisk them out of the country, so the story goes. Robinson presents extensive documentation to dispel the myth.

An Unbroken Agony prompted many questions in the mind of this reader. How did the paramilitaries achieve such a devastating impact? The Haitians who overthrew Haitian democracy in February 2004 were a tiny force—their principal leader, Guy Philippe, received less than two percent of the vote in the 2006 presidential election. Were there more decisive steps that the Aristide government could have taken to defend the country and minimize the havoc they caused following the 200 election?

And what has become of Latin American solidarity? Robinson describes the selfless measures of the early 19th century Haitian revolutionaries to aid the independence struggle of the South American peoples led by Simón Bolivar. Today, the majority of the 7,100 foot soldiers of the post-2004 UN-sponsored occupation force in Haiti are drawn from the countries of Latin America, with Brazil — whose president is the leader of the governing “Workers Party” — in the lead. The UN force is responsible for innumerable killings and jailings of pro-democracy fighters following February 2004. Thankfully, substantial aid and solidarity to Haiti from Venezuela and Cuba keeps the banner of Simón Bolivar flying high in Haiti.

Haiti is living an unprecedented economic and social calamity as a consequence of the coup d’etat of 2004. The violent overthrow of its government received little attention or concern from democratic opinion in the world. A shameful silence still reigns.

Roger Annis travelled to Haiti from August 5 to 20 as a participant in a human rights investigative delegation. He can be reached at rogerannis@hotmail.com. You can read his reports from Haiti at www.thac.ca/blog/9.

Haiti and the Politics of Containment

May 26, 2008
Peter Hallward. Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment Verso Press. 2008
Reviewed by Roger Annis

In April, mass protests against hunger and rising food prices erupted in Haiti and led to the fall of the government. On April 18, Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis resigned following a vote of non-confidence in Haiti’s senate. The vote was orchestrated by some of Haiti’s wealthy elite, seeking to bring the government of President René Préval more directly under their control.

The story of hunger in Haiti goes far beyond recent hikes in world food prices. The country’s crushing poverty — it is the poorest country in the Americas — is the result of decades of exploitation and interference by the world’s big powers, principally the United States, with Canada and France increasingly joining in.

This important new book tells that story.

In 1986, a popular uprising overthrew the Duvalier family dynasty, one of the most ruthless tyrannies in modern history. Four times since then, in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2006, the Haitian people have elected governments that promised socially-progressive policies. The first three in fact encouraged and supported Haiti’s peasant farmers so that the country could become food self sufficient.

Two of those governments were overthrown, in 1991 and 2004, by Haiti’s elite and its foreign backers. Both times, the ousted president was Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Catholic priest and advocate of liberation theology, now living in exile in South Africa. The U.S., Canada and France directly backed Aristide’s overthrow in 2004 by sending thousands of soldiers and police to finish an assault begun by Haitian paramilitaries. The foreign intervention was sanctioned by the UN Security Council.

Peter Hallward’s new book tells the tragic tale of 2004. Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment is a hard-hitting and thoroughly-researched exposé of the international conspiracy that led to the latest overthrow of Haitian democracy and sovereignty. The “flood” in the title refers to the political movement and party,created by Aristide and his colleagues, known as “Lavalas,” a word in Haiti’s Kreyol language that expresses the imagery of the Biblical flood sweeping away an unjust and immoral social order.

Canadian-born Hallward is a professor of philosophy at Middlesex University in London, UK. His book, acclaimed by Noam Chomsky and Dr. Paul Farmer, themselves authors on Haiti, systematically demolishes the lies and distortions that have been spread in the countries of the big-three conspirator governments — the U.S., Canada and France.

The conspiracy was presented as salvation for the Haitian people, as “liberation” from Aristide’s allegedly repressive government. Hallward sums up the conspiracy in these words:

“The effort to weaken, demoralize then overthrow Lavalas in the first years of the twenty-first century was perhaps the most successful exercise of neo-imperial sabotage since the toppling of Nicaragua’s Sandinistas in 1990… Not only did the coup of 2004 topple one of the most popular governments in Latin America, but it managed to topple it in a manner that wasn’t recognized as a coup at all.”

Damming the Flood describes the calamitous consequences of two years of foreign-imposed government following the 2004 overthrow, including widespread killings and jailings of Aristide supporters, economic ruin, and deepening misery for the majority of the Haitian population. The book’s narrative ends in 2007, but readers will find many keys to understanding the social calamity that continues to unfold, two and a half years after the election of René Préval in February 2006 and four and a half years after the U.S., Canada and France seized effective control of the country.

Préval has disappointed the Haitian masses who voted overwhelmingly for him. He has bowed to demands to surrender Haiti’s beleaguered economy to international capital, including privatizations of the few remaining public enterprises. He has done little to stand up to foreign police and military rampaging through the vast, poor neighbourhoods where people cling to the dream of a return of Aristide and the reform policies of his Fanmi Lavalas party.

Hallward describes the array of domestic and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and “left” parties whose material interests and blind hostility to the post-year 2000 government of President Aristide led them into an alliance with imperialism and the Haitian elite in the 2004 coup. They supported Aristide’s overthrow and then became complicit with the massive human rights violations that followed.

The scope of this betrayal will shock many readers. Among the partners in the reactionary alliance against Lavalas are the leaders of Haiti’s failed Stalinist parties; former allies of Aristide within the Fanmi Lavalas party; the Communist Party of France; a multitude of NGOs in the U.S., France and Canada, including the not-so-alternative Montreal-based left-media NGO Alternatives; the Quebec Federation of Labour; parties of the “Socialist” International, including Canada’s New Democratic Party and France’s Socialist Party; and the political/quasi-trade union Haitian grouping known as Batay ouvriye (Workers Struggle).

Hallward also documents the silence or complicity of such agencies as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in response to post-coup human rights violations.

Hallward’s book is an emotionally difficult read. It is hard to imagine that a people can survive all that has been thrown its way in Haiti — poverty, political violence, environmental degradation, loss of political sovereignty — only to have its fate largely ignored by “progressive” world opinion. Still, the author expresses cautious optimism for the future.

As demonstrated by the remarkable events surrounding the 2006 election, the popular movements in Haiti retain a strong and defiant capacity to mobilize. New, younger leaders are moving to the fore.

And important lessons have been drawn from the Aristide years. One of the strengths of Damming the Flood is its recounting of Haitian rethinking about the past 25 years. Could Aristide and his movement have taken more decisive measures to counter imperialist sabotage of their social and political project?

The foreign military and political presence in Haiti, a reading of the book suggests, is weaker than surface appearance might suggest.

Beginning in late May, Peter Hallward, author of Damming the Flood, will speak in four Canadian cities in a tour organized by the Canada Haiti Action Network. Public meetings will take place in Montreal on May 31, Ottawa on June 1, Toronto on June 2, and Vancouver on June 7. Appearing with Hallward in Montreal and Ottawa will be Paul Chery, Secretary General of the Haitian Workers Confederation (CTH). Chery is one of the international guests at the convention of the Canadian Labour Congress to take place in Toronto May 25 to 30. For details on this speaking tour, visit the website of the Canada Haiti Action Network.

Roger Annis is an aerospace worker in Vancouver and a coordinator of the Canada Haiti Action Network. He is the author of the new Socialist Voice pamphlet, Haiti and the Myth of Canadian Peacekeeping.