OK, So what the hell is going on in Haiti?

Larry Birns at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs put out a press release, "Powell Returns to Haiti Today to Witness Some of the Damage that His Policies Have Wrought," today noting that Colin Powell is visiting the island-bound nation:

Today, Secretary of State Colin Powell makes a one day visit to Haiti, a suffering country in which he has been intimately involved in several key moments of its history, usually to Haiti’s great loss. On arriving in Haiti, Powell was greeted by Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, an invention of Powell’s own creation and the result of a misuse of Haiti’s constitutional process. Since then, Latortue and his infamous Justice Minister, Bernard Gousse, have been carrying on a relentless and vindictive campaign against former President Jean Bertrand Aristide, now in exile in South Africa, as well as the deposed president’s Lavalas Party. High ranking members of the former Aristide government like Yvone Neptune, have been arrested and consigned to prison, on, at best, flimsy charges and with no evidence being presented. The country’s most revered priest, Father Jean Juste, grotesquely enough, had also been imprisoned but just yesterday was released. Meanwhile, Justice Minister Gousse, perhaps’ the country’s most unsavory figure and its local Torquemada, carries out a personal vendetta against anyone related to the former Aristide government.

Who is Powell encountering today in Haiti? He is being hosted by Prime Minister Latortue, a thoroughly counterfeit, if jocose, figure who has no roots in the country and who has turned in a hapless performance in every aspect of governance, whether it be the everyday running of the country or his total failure to deal with the aftermath of tropical storm Jeanne which caused several thousand deaths, and devastated the country, Latortue, together with Justice Minister Gousse, has caricatured the rule of law by a disrespect for basic civility. Powell’s strategy has been an abject failure. The interim government has near zero popularity, and if a fair election takes place on schedule next year, there is little doubt that, if permitted to participate, Aristide’s Lavalas would win by a landslide.

It's not pretty. When one remembers that this was the scenario that Washington had attempted in Venezuela in 2002 and various times since - the kidnapping and forced exile of a democratically-elected leader and the imposition of an authoritarian regime, and all the attention that got regarding an oil-rich country - the lack of attention to Haiti by news organizations with resources is inexcusable.

So, what about Lula and Brazil's role in Haiti?

The story is one of realpolitik and conflicting goals. Three little-considered truths...

1. The Cuba Factor. Lula would not be placing Brazilian troops in the lead in the Haiti occupation without the expressed consent of Fidel Castro. What's that about? Cuba, obviously, is concerned that the geographic proximity of Haiti to Cuba could make it a launching pad for foreign invasion by that mentally-infirm trigger-happy little man in the White House. Many of Lula's top cabinet members and party officials - including Ze Dirceu, perhaps the most important of them all - would not be alive today had Cuba not offered them sanctuary years ago when a brutal military dictatorship controlled Brazil. Castro believes that Brazil taking the lead on the UN occupation of Haiti mitigates strongly against the country being used as a military launching pad against Cuba.

2. The Brazilian Military Factor. Like it or not, the military in Brazil remains a gigantic, oversized, really, institution. It has a brutal history of men like that General Heleno mentioned in the Counterpunch article, with ugly, indeed fascist, attitudes. By sending them somewhere else, Lula keeps them from sitting idly in Brazil where, as elsewhere, idle hands are the devil's garden. Lula does a lot of such pandering to the military brass... Buying them sleek new weapons while the country has no conflicts with any other... Keeping alive their dreams of Brazil becoming a nuclear power... Recently giving them the permission to shoot down drug-suspected flights... and sending them off to Haiti satisfies part of that agenda as well. Like it or not, indeed, the Lula people feel that the Armed Forces is a beast that must be fed lest it start dreaming nostalgically again of reasserting the old military dictatorship.

3. South American Union and Unity. Note that Kirchner's Argentina sent troops to Haiti, too. It's not just Lula on the left (and Kirchner, likewise, wouldn't do it without the blessing of Castro). The increased role of Latin American troops on the island sets other precedents, not all bad, from the longterm goals of South American unity. It will, in the future, make it more difficult for the UN to occupy any Latin American country without lead participation by troops from the countries down here.

There are, in my respectful opinion, a lot of presumptions and examples of "half-thinking" in the Counterpunch article.

The first question not asked is: If Brazil refused to send troops to Haiti (one gets the sense that it's what the author would like to see, although he doesn't say so overtly), would that change anything for Haiti's people?

In other words, would there then be no occupation?

No, of course there would still be an occupation. But it would be US, French and Canadian troops continuing to take the lead, behaving just as brutally (if not more so), continuing the precedent of outsider intervention in Latin America, and posing a greater military threat to nearby Cuba.

We have yet to see it play out. Brazil (and Argentina) taking the lead in the Haiti occupation may be part of a longer term strategy to hasten the return of Aristide and/or Lavalas.

Remember one other factor: the CARICOM nations in the Caribbean Community continue to stand tall refusing the recognize the Latortue regime in Haiti.

Things are moving under the water in the Caribbean. Lula and Brazil might or might not be part of a real game plan to extricate UN troops from Haiti faster. Nobody should be surprised that a military officer from Brazil behaves like a goon: a lot of them did for decades, the institutional culture does not end with the first presidential administration trying to grapple with it.

But I think it is very extreme "catastrophizing," typical in too many activist circles, to presume that because Brazil has troops there that the situation is worse or different than it would be if Brazil did not have troops there. I think it is also an example of demanding "purity" from governments of the Left when governments, by my anarcho definitions, are imperfect and impure by nature. In many ways it reflects a double standard.

Do I defend the occupation? Hell no. I think the UN should get out of there. But do I understand realpolitik, and that there are factors like the three above at play that might pan out as a longer term successful strategy to accomplish that goal sooner? Yes, I understand them.

I don't know if that's the case. But if it is, do the activist demands for "purity" work against a positive undertow, so far unseen, in the Caribbean sea and the future Latin American Union?

Questions and question marks... That's where all concrete answers begin.

What we should be doing is pressuring Brazil to stop supporting police raids against Aristide supporters, both individual arrests and shooting sprees in the slums, and to take a stand against the paramilitaries.

The current governement of Haiti is unelected, illegal, and illegetimate, and I don't think it would last without U.N. support.  But a common Haitian opinion is that the U.N. does nothing.  Brazil itself was pleading for help, for other countries to send troops, NPR reported on October 16.

I feel guilty about not following up on my own overview of the coup, but here's actual original reporting from the J-School's most celebrated: Reed Lindsay's latest article on Haiti is in the November 30 Washington Times.  I don't know if it's been edited or in what ways, so forget about details of presentation.  Look what he does to lead readers of this extremely right-wing newspaper to an understanding of the situation in Haiti:

Violence has wracked the capital, Port-au-Prince, since Sept. 30, when several thousand Aristide supporters staged a demonstration that was broken up when police fired into the crowd.

...

"The government has done nothing in the areas of job creation, production, public works," said Jean-Claude Paulvin, president of the Haitian Association of Economists.

...

Prime Minister Gerard Latortue has criticized the international community for not supplying enough troops and money to quell unrest and to revive the economy.

About 4,500 soldiers and 1,200 police officers have joined the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Haiti, short of the promised 6,700 soldiers and 1,622 police. U.N. officials say these goals will be reached by the end of the year.

But promises of international aid have proved largely empty.

...

Mr. Latortue has accused Aristide supporters of trying to destabilize the government. Leaders from Mr. Aristide's Lavalas party say they are being persecuted to ensure they will not participate in elections slated for next year.

Some hard-liners are calling for an even tougher stance.

"Shoot them and ask questions later," said Jean Philippe Sassine, the Latortue-appointed assistant mayor of Port-au-Prince.

"Right now our country needs security. Unless you clean up the bad people, the gangs, there will be no progress. It will be a massacre, people will die. But let us do it, or it will be worse."

Former soldiers who control much of the countryside, and who have turned a Port-au-Prince apartment complex into a temporary military base, warn they will take matters into their own hands if the government does not allow them to wipe out the Aristide supporters. The ex-soldiers are calling for the restoration of Haiti's military, a force known for its corruption and brutality that Mr. Aristide disbanded in 1995.

"If the government doesn't take responsibility, we will take it," said ex-army Sgt. Remissainthe Ravix, a leader of the former soldiers.

...

"There is no solution to Haiti's problems without Aristide," said Mark Bazin, a former World Bank economist who was Haiti's prime minister from 1992 to 1993.

Read Lindsay's whole article.

Anyone who wants a relentless stream of articles about Haiti can e-mail Marguerite Laurent at
Erzilidanto (at symbol) aol.com.  You don't even have to say you want to be on her information clearinghouse list, and you'll be on it.  At least that's what happened to me.

A month ago the heads of state or foreign ministers of nineteen Latin American nations met in Rio de Janeiro for the 18th summit of the Rio Group (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, Mexico, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua).  The Jamaica Observer editorial from October 7:

The Latin American leaders, it has been reported, want a programme to pour development aid into Haiti, but at the same time would like to bolster the United Nations multinational force that is in the country in an effort to prevent the country from descending further into anarchy.

On the face of it, that is not substantially different from what has been proposed by the Western troika of the United States, France and the new Canadians, who are now the important brokers in Haiti after the February coup d'etat that ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

But the Latin American initiative has one important distinction, the countries of the Rio Group plan to send a diplomat to South Africa to meet with Mr Aristide about their plan to rebuild Haiti, ensure security and advance democracy.

Although it has been made clear that Mr Aristide will not be invited to participate directly in the process, this initiative recognises that he remains a powerful and important force in Haiti and the legitimacy of his political movement Lavalas, which Mr Latortue and his supporters have sought to sideline.

The 15-nation CARICOM leaders, as the Observer hoped, used the acknowledgement of Aristide's importance to sign onto the Rio Group plan.  U.S.-installed dictator Gerard Latortue then tried to undermine the initiative (or, rather, the key element of Aristide's at least minimal involvement) by calling for an international arrest warrent on Aristide.

P.S.  What people in the U.S. can do for Haiti: demand that the U.S. give refugee status to Haitians fleeing political, economic, or environmental disaster.  I'll write more on this later but I think it's important enough to put out right away.  

First of all, this saves people's lives.  Second, this makes a repressive government which people flee a problem for the United States-- I understand that the "Haitian refugee problem" was an important reason Clinton engineered Aristide's first return.