New Haven Independent

The event at the People’s Center on Howe Street, sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council, began with drumming by musician and peace worker Rasmo Moses, followed by Haitian performance poets Bidon and Kwalo. One poet recounted the joy two little boys found playing soccer with an empty juice bottle — “the wealth of what America calls poor” — while the other spoke of “Haitians ashamed to say they are Haitians” who try to pass as Dominicans or Jamaicans, despite the proud history of their homeland as the first black republic in the world.

Organizer Sherman Malone said, following enthusiastic applause, “Now you see why we need cultural work in order to do our political work. Now our hearts are open.” Malone travels to Haiti several times a year to work with Haitians in Port au Prince and in the countryside through her non-profit, Marycare.

Professor Alex Dupuy, a Haitian who teaches sociology at Wesleyan University and has written several books about his native country, was the featured speaker. He summed up more than 200 years of history by saying that the French revolution promised equality, but not for blacks; that the American revolution preached the self-determination of nations, but not for Haiti; that the Haitian revolution of 1804 was the first that preached equality for all human beings — not that it turned out that way in practice.

Dupuy (in photo) said that Fr. Jean Bertrand Aristide was a proponent of liberation theology — which promotes justice for the poor in this life — when he was first elected in 1990. “Aristide was speaking the language of redistribution, the language of equality, the language of rights,” Dupuy said, which was why he was overthrown by the military, in the service of Haiti’s elite, just seven months after taking office. Aristide fled to exile in the U.S.

During three years of terrible violence that followed, up to 6,000 Haitians were killed and thousands more fled in un-seaworthy boats, seeking U.S. asylum, but were instead either incarcerated or repatriated directly, in violation of international law. Under intense pressure from the Congressional Black Caucus and human rights groups, in 1994 President Bill Clinton restored Aristide to power to finish what was left of his term of office. The price Aristide paid for his restoration, Dupuy said, was acceptance of strict economic policies put in place by U.S. and international financial institutions — policies that squeezed his base, the poor, even more. Yet he retained much of his support among the poor, Dupuy added, because they considered Aristide better than any of the alternatives.

“By the time he came back, Aristide’s authoritarian side had emerged,” Dupuy said, adding that when he ran for president again in 2000, Aristide sought to monopolize power and eliminate any opposition in hopes of avoiding a second coup. To that end, he supported armed gangs, called “chimeres,” as a counterweight to his armed opponents.

Despite that effort, Aristide was removed again on Feb. 29, 2004, by a coalition of interests that included some of the worst human rights abusers from the early 1990s and members of the Haitian elite, with support from the U.S., Canada and France.

Now, despite the absence of polling places in Cité Soleil, the huge Port au Prince slum where support for Aristide is still high, Dupuy predicts that Aristide ally and former president René Préval will win the election, unless it is stolen.

“While there will be elections on Tuesday,” he said, “they’re not going to resolve the fundamental problems of Haitian society. For that to happen, there would have to be a massive reshuffling of the way resources are allocated, and that’s not going to be allowed to happen no matter how democratic the elections are.”

Along the walls of the People’s Center, New Haven photojournalist Daniel Smith displayed images shot last month of the faces of beautiful Haitian children alongside those of dying victims of the escalating violence in Port au Prince. Following Dupuy’s talk, Haitian activist priest, Fr. Joe Dorcin, who is currently on assignment with the Hartford Archdiocese, sang “Haiti Chéri,” a love song to his native land, and put the reality of Haiti in personal perspective when he described his struggle, as a poor peasant boy, to get an education. “I went to school hungry, without even a glass of water.”