"Bush II planners are dedicated to undermining democracy and independence, and despise Aristide

and the popular organizations that swept him into power." -Noam Chomsky

Haitian President Jean Bertrand-Aristide was taken involuntarily to the Central African Republic following a US coup d'etat on February 28th 2004.

To understand what is happening to Jean Bertrand-Aristide one needs only to look back at Haitian's troubled history. Haiti has for centuries served as a convenient doormat in the Caribbean archipelago, crushed again and again under the brutal colonial feet of first the Europeans and then America. The original Haitians, whose ethnicity has long been lost in the course of these tramplings, barely survived the early foreign incursions. Columbus, who arrived on the Island in 1492 noted in his log that natives of Hispanola were: "lovable, tractable, peaceable, gentle, decorous Indians." However, they were treated by the Spanish with brutal oppression and as a result, "sickened and died and their original number, estimated at 8 million, by 1510 numbered less than 50,000."

The French chronicler, Moreau de Saint-Mery would note that late in the 17th century " "there remained not a single Indian when the French came to wrest the island from the Spanish." As the Indians died off, from both brutal suppression plus diseases brought by the white man, manpower needs to work the developing Spanish plantations lead to the importing of Africans as slaves.

A mercantile triangle developed as European goods were traded in Africa for slaves , who were then shipped to the New World to be sold in Hispanola (as Haiti was then called) and the sugar and tobacco their labor produced, shipped to Europe. "By 1540 some 30,000 Africans has been brought to Hispanola."

Haiti was divided in 1697. The western half, ceded to France as "Sainte-Domingue," became the center of the slave trade. At the time of the American Revolution, Sainte-Dominique was generating more revenue that all thirteen American colonies."

The French Revolution, which weakened France's hold on Hispamola, set the stage in 1791, first, for a revolt by the wealthy mulattos, which was severely repressed. Then, in August of that year a massive rebellion by Haiti's slaves took place as "armed with picks, machetes, clubs and torches, they razed approximately 180 sugar plantations, and perhaps 900 plantations of coffee, cotton and indigo. At least a thousand white lives were lost; well over 10,000 slaves were killed outright, and up to 25,000 were thought to have taken to the hills." Though the nascent United States, protecting their investments in Hispanola, sent both troops and cash, the successful leader of the rebellion, ex-slave, Toussant Louverture, named himself "Lieutenant-Governor" of a Colonial State within the French Empire.

Napoleon, fresh from victories in Europe sent a force of 28,000, under his brother-in-law General Leclerc to restore French rule. Though Toussant was captured and died in prison, the ex-slaves under Jean Jacques Dessalines eventually whipped the French, who lost over 20,000 soldiers, from both war and yellow-fever before LeClerc himself succumbed to the fever.

On January 1st 1804 victorious Dessalines proclaimed: "I have given the French cannibals blood for blood. I have avenged America."

The slaves' victory was a Pyretic one for Haitians would never heal the wounds of colonialism, racism and inequality. Much of the plantation infrastructure was destroyed in the rebellion and plantation owners in neighboring Caribbean Islands, as well as the owners of slave in the United States, fearful their own slaves might also rebel, did their best to isolate this nascent republic.

Two years after his victory, Desalines was murdered. The US and European countries, coming to France's rescue, arranged diplomatic quarantines against Haiti, while merchants in North America developed Haitian trade to compete with the French and British.

Though trade picked up and the plantations reorganized, racial divisions remained between wealthy white or mulatto owners, traders, small manufacturers, and the peasant class... These feudal structures are present even today. Though no longer slaves, the Africans remain at the bottom of the economic ladder, as merchants and other middlemen divide the spoils, and previously self-sustaining black farmers are forced to grow exportable crops. Cotton as an export was joined by coffee, mahogany, and other woods, as well as indigo.

After Spain's empire collapsed in 1810, Haiti's then President, Jean-Pierre Boyer, united Haitian and Dominiique factions, but in 1844 the Dominican Republic again declared its independence from Haiti.

The American and European worlds had always feared racial unrest would threaten their commercial interests and as early as 1827, "France and Britain had taken to sending uninvited gunboats into Haitian waters, to produce in the minds of the natives a favorable impression towards the whites." The Geffrard government, facing unrest, appealed to the British ,who brought in three ships and bombarded the port fortifications. Such military threats were copied by foreign merchants who, proclaiming that debts owed them by Haitians, initiated the so-called "gunboat diplomacy."

In 1888 American Marines supported a revolt against the legitimate government., and in 1914 American, British and German forces entered Haiti "to protect their citizens." By 1902 over $2,500,000 had been extorted from Haiti by such "gunboat diplomacy."

Between 1849 and 1915 the US had sent warships into Haitian waters 26 times to protect its citizens. With an unpayable national debt of over $40,000,000 by 1904, and increasing political instability from multiple coups, the US intervened and on July 28th 1915 American marines landed near Port-au-Prince and not only took over Haiti but abolished Dessalines' most famous law: that forbidding foreign ownership of land. As a result some 266,000 acres of Haitian land were leased to North American firms by 1929 with the displacement of 50,000 peasants in the North alone.

Dominican strongman Rafael Trujillo after the US Marines left his Dominican Republic butchered between 18,000 and 35,000 Haitian peasants who had settled on his border. Under US pressure Trujillo paid Haiti's government an indemnity of $522,000, or $29.00/head.

After W.W.II amateur anthropologist, Francois Duvalier was elected president by an army-organized vote and with his own police, ruled with a vicious hand, murdering his opponents at will while collecting millions from an uncaring Washington, which, in the 1960s even sent a US Marine contingent to keep "Papa Doc" in power. Employing the "communist scare" as a tool , Duvalier even managed the Holy See, expelling uncooperative Catholic orders from the country and appointing his own Archbishop. Before he passed away in 1971, Duvalier, in negotiations with Nelson Rockefeller, the Nixon Administration arranged for his son, "Baby Doc" to succeed him. Baby Doc, though he hired a public-relations firm to soften his image, was as vicious as Papa and with Washington's assistance set up an offshore assemblyline or re-exportation industries more worker-repressive than Mexico's "maquiladoras."

With such incentives as no customs taxes, a minimun wage kept very low, the suppression of labor unions, and the right of American companies to repatriate their products the economic and humane life blood of Haiti was so drained that from 1973 to 1980 Haiti's external debt rose from $53 to $366 million.

Increasing public unrest from this impoverishment was viciously controlled by gangs of thugs (Macoutes) and as the army and FRAPH, (our CIA's paramilitary), imprisoned, tortured and murdered, thousands sought refuge in the United States, overwhelming the INS, especially in Florida. The Reagan Administration in1983 withdrew support from "Baby Doc" and escorted him out of Haiti in a US Air Force jet.

It was into this cesspool of poverty in the "poorest country in the world" that in 1982, Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, returning from his studies in Israel, was assigned by the Archbishop to an impoverished parish in Port-au-Prince where he encouraged Haiti's younger generation to use their political muscle. In Haiti's first free elections in 1990 Aristide came to power with 67% of the vote, preaching economic and political views at odds with Haiti's elite and Washington:

"Haiti workers earn the lowest wages in the hemisphere. We are encouraged to exploit and maintain this so-called advantage... to attract foreign companies. Because our economy is weak we depend on loans and aid from foreign countries. This makes us extremely vulnerable to international institutions that control the money."

In 1991, after less than a year in office, Aristide was overthrown in a military coup, taking refuge in the United States. In the following three years the financial debacle and killing in Haiti threatened its international industries, while thousands of refugees overwhelmed Florida's welfare system. President Clinton , criticized by the Black Caucus for failure to support democracy, faced with anger from Florida's electorate, and to draw public attention from his debacle in Somalia, in 1994 , sent a US Marine contingent, returning Aristide to his presidency, but not until , as this courageous priest made public in 2000: "In order to restore democracy we were asked to agree to an economic plan which could once again mortgage the future of the country."

Previous military coup leaders, had gone underground or fled with their weaponry to join anti-Aristide forces in the Dominican Republic and neither the US nor Aristide indicted these murderers. The CIA's criminal agent, Emmanuel Constant, was given safe haven in Florida, and though Aristide disbanded the corrupt army, these restless, and now indigent fighters, were never disarmed.

This courageous priest's social programs angered Haiti's elite as well as international business. His demands for a minimal wage and medical care, plus his unwillingness to sell Haiti out to the IMF and World Bank upset the Bush II regime. Aristide angered France's Chirac by demanding reimbursement with interest of reparations France extracted in the 18th century for damage to Napoleon's army and loss of French plantations.

In the 2000 Elections, an Anti-Aristide group "The Democratic Platform" marched through the streets of Port-au-Prince, creating violent response, boycotting the elections which the Priest's Lavalas Family Party easily won. After Aristide's victory, the US placed a near total embargo on the country and even blocked loans from the Inter-American Development Bank, damaging Aristide's efforts to improve roads, health care and education.

But the handwriting was on the wall. The second coup against Aistide began in the hinterlands as guerrilla attacks on peripheral towns and as early as 2001 a commando-style assault on the presidential palace was driven off. Not trusting his dangerously-underequipped police to protect him, Aristide hired a professional security firm (Steele Foundation) headquartered in San Francisco as his bodyguard .

By 2004 the Democratic Platform launched successful work strikes, while groups lead by previously-loyal officers from the Haitian Army moved as guerrillas from one Haitian city to another, burning police stations and finally capturing Haiti's second largest city: Cap-Haitian.

The Bush II government presented a Caribbean Community (Caricom) proposal which Aristide accepted but the Democratic Platform rejected outright. After the Platform's refusal the Bush administration tacitly approved the opposition's plan of fostering a coup which would remove Aristide from power by placing the blame for the turmoil squarely on Aristide's shoulders. Releasing a statement on February 28th, the White House argued, "This long-simmering crisis is largely of Aristide's making. His own actions have called into question his fitness to continue to govern Haiti."

On February 28th, 2004 Hatian president Jean Bertrand-Aristide was taken involuntarily to the Central African Republic following a US coup d'etat.

Note: Material for April's column was gleaned from Doctor Paul Farmer's book and conversation with two Haitian friends, Pierre LaBossiere and Max Blanchet.