Aristide could see independence, but couldn’t deliver

“Haiti is like an accordion,” said the great Haitian
painter, Andre Pierre. “Sometimes it is stretched very big,
and sometimes it is squeezed very small.”

For the last several months Haiti has been in its big phase,
generating daily headlines to the tune of: “A once popular
regime collapses,” “”˜Rebels’ take over
provincial towns,” “protesters shot,” “boat
people turned back by the U.S. Coast Guard” ““ and, as
of Sunday, “President Jean-Bertrand Aristide forced into what
may be a not-so-voluntary exile in Central Africa” (the truth
of that story remains to be revealed).

But now the Marines are back for the third U.S. invasion of
Haiti in a century.

These are not the events Haitians had planned for 2004. This is
the year of their nation’s bicentennial, as New Year’s
Day was the 200th anniversary of Haitian independence. It was to
have been a celebration of one of the greatest revolutions in world
history, the only country in the Americas ever born out of a slave
rebellion.

Napoleon’s best armies were defeated by self-liberated
Africans, under the leadership of a brilliant African-born general,
Toussaint L’Ouverture. The world’s first black republic
was proclaimed by General Jean-Jacques Dessalines on Jan. 1,
1804.

Haiti has never recovered from that victory. After independence,
the new United States and the old Europe clamped a diplomatic and
economic blockade on Haiti, forcing it to pay enormous reparations
for the crime of having freed itself from slavery.

The United States invaded Haiti twice in the 20th century.
During first occupation, from 1915 to 1934, the United States cited
the need to secure law and order, but it was actually about the
safety of the Panama Canal.

The second invasion, in 1994, was ostensibly about restoring
Jean-Bertrand Aristide ““ Haiti’s first democratically
elected president ““ to office. Actually, it was about ending
the politically dangerous flood of boat people fleeing to Florida
following the 1991 coup. Ironically, the coup was engineered by
officers of the same army created by the United States during its
first occupation.

And now the Marines are back, in the wake of Aristide’s
second departure from office, this exit helped along by the Bush
administration, which Sen. John Kerry described as having “a
theological and an identifilogical hatred” for Aristide.

What scared the U.S. administration is what scares the Haitian
bourgeoisie ““ the populist rhetoric of “Titid,”
as he is affectionally known by his Kreyol diminutive. But then,
words are his profession.

Titid was a Catholic priest who became famous for his fiery
sermons in defense of the poor (most of Haiti’s population.)
He was “la voix des sans voix” (the voice of the
voiceless) with a simple message: “Haitians do not have a
destiny to suffer,” he said. “We can move from misery
to poverty with dignity.” For the first time, these words
came in Kreyol, the language of the street.

Some of us remember when Titid spoke at UCLA in 1992, during the
years of his exile. A slight, very black man of great charm, he
recommended his university audience consult the “Book of
Love.”

Alas, these were not the words of a politician. They were the
words of a prophet.

And I would guess that is how he will be appreciated by history,
like a prophet who understood that the Haitian Revolution was not
finished, who could see that it would not be complete until the
justice, participation and transparency he called for in his
sermons was realized in a new political system.

Haiti has indeed achieved its cultural independence, perhaps the
only Caribbean nation to do so. Its common religion of Vodou (which
Titid’s government recognized as “the national
patrimony”) has inspired singular achievements in philosophy,
art, music and dance, which reverberate throughout the black
Atlantic world. But Haiti has not achieved its political or
economic independence.

In the end, and for a variety of reasons, including the
intransigence of Haiti’s class system, the enmity of the
United States and Aristide’s own temperament and lack of
political skills, he could not deliver that second independence.
And so the vast majority of Haitians remain locked in economic and
social misery.

Like many others, Aristide could see the way out, but could not
bring his people there. The Revolution of 1804 remains
incomplete.

Cosentino is a UCLA professor of world arts and cultures who
has done extensive fieldwork on African and diasporic cultures in
Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Haiti.