Haiti’s Story Starts To Go Viral, but Remember This — Aristide Is No Hero

“Secret History of Haiti Cries Out for Redemption of the Debts It Is Owed.” That was the headline The New York Sun put over my column of 10 months ago — a cri de coeur for my country after two centuries of impoverishment by, among others, France and America following the first slave revolt in history to establish a proper republic.Now Haiti’s story is going viral on the internet, following the New York Times’s heavily reported and brilliantly illustrated reprise of the history in a special section issued not only in English but also in Haiti’s two official languages, French and Creole. It’s not a pretty picture for France or the United States.While benefiting from billions of dollars extracted from Haiti, France and America, as well as a few others, caused the impoverishment of the land and set the stage for the failure of the state that the world is witnessing in the third decade of the 21st century. Haiti’s economy, as I put it in the Sun, was “mortgaged from the beginning of its existence as a nation.”There is no doubt in my mind that this is the cause of Haiti’s tragedy. France and other European countries, as well as some in America, were determined to make an example of Haiti, especially at least in the early years, so as to deter copy-cat revolts by those who were enslaved in this hemisphere. “They succeeded,” I wrote, “making Haiti the pariah state it is today.”Let me say that I am thrilled to see the dispatch in the Times and also that it’s going viral. It will be important, though, to pay attention to details, some of which, in the Times’s telling, strike me as off. It portrays the former president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, as a hero for having asked, in 2003, that France pay Haiti reparations in the amount of $21 billion for what was extorted from the country between 1825 and 1947.I supported that claim. “Reparations to Haiti by France for the billions it forced Haiti to pay during 122 years would go a long way in lifting the curse and stopping the plunge into a failed state,” I wrote. That was in response to Le Monde, which, two days after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse in July of last year, editorialized that “Haiti appears to be cursed” and called it “a failed state.” Would the reappearance of Mr. Aristide, at this point, as an aggrieved hero be an attempt to push him into the forefront at a time when there’s jockeying for an interim government? Recently, he pulled his representatives from the Montana Accord that’s touted as a broadly representative group that could assume Haiti’s leadership on an interim basis. Meanwhile, Mr. Aristide considers his Lavalas (Flood) organization as being more representative. In any event, the de facto prime minister, Ariel Henry, is in deep trouble for failing to rout the gangs that now control great swaths of the land, even isolating the capital of Port-au-Prince from the rest of the country. In power since last July 20, Dr. Henry, a neurosurgeon, has failed to dislodge the gangs that, since last June 1, have controlled the main highway leading south to four of Haiti’s 10 departments. As of April 24, the gangs now control other highways north and east, making for a dysfunctional democracy. It’s unfortunate for the Times that it resurfaced Mr. Aristide as a hero only days after the arrest of alleged crypto fraudster Eddy Alexandre in New York. That happened May 12. Mr. Alexandre is now awaiting trial for a Ponzi-like game that allegedly siphoned off $59 million, mainly from the New York Haitian community.Mr. Aristide is not connected to Mr. Alexandre. The allegations against the latter, though, remind people of the 1990s “Cooperatives” movement of Mr. Aristide, who dubbed it the “poor man’s capitalism.” Millions of dollars were lost by those who rushed to invest. The “Cooperatives” went bust, leaving many in the lurch.The poor priest described by Amy Willentz in her book “In the Parish of the Poor” is a Haitian multimillionaire, who has built his own university. Yet he has never explained where, on an annual presidential salary of $100,000, he got his millions. Nor has he denied listings on the Web that place him among Haiti’s multimillionaires. One could argue that reparations are due Haitians not only by the French, but also by Mr. Aristide.My point here is not to discredit the Times story. It is encouraging to see this history begin to take off. It is an important development at a time when an effort is under way, in Washington and Haiti and among institutions of civil society, to craft an interim authority for a country that has no head of state. If Haiti is ever to find redemption from the crimes committed against it over the centuries, this is the essential first step.

Haiti’s Story Starts To Go Viral, but Remember This — Aristide Is No Hero

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