take-home: primarily, the book is a thoroughly convincing chronicle of the savage, imperial war waged by haiti's comprador elites (and their foreign backers in the US, France, Canada, and the UN) against the haitian people. much of the narrative centers on the person of jean-bertrand aristide--but as aristide himself insists in the interview first published in the LRB and reproduced in the back of the book, this framing of the destabilization campaign(s)--the marketing of the interventions as "humanitarian" and "popular" and directed surgically against only his person--serve to deflect attention from the real issues at-hand: namely, the indisputable fact that this campaign sought to protect, primarily, the thoroughly corrupt morphology of haitian society. it was an expression of the tragic power wielded by the landed elite and their bourgeois comrades-in-arms, arrayed as it was against the simple popularity and resounding base of lavalas ("the flood").
naturally, for a narrative as unfamiliar to the mainstream as this one, much of what hallward writes is deconstructive--his primary task is to expose the well-worn narratives of the coup-makers, according to which aristide embodies exactly what he and his movement have spent their political lives fighting (illegitimate authority, unjustifiable violence, and so on). here, i suppose, it is appropriate to note the critical reviews of hallward's book, which argue he has been too kind to aristide. but his critic (i speak here of the deibert review), let's be honest, has missed the point: hallward's book is not a "defense" of the aristide regime, insofar as defense requires deification (as deibert seems to believe--hence his logic that the several crimes committed by pro-aristide groups put aristide beyond redemption) . rather, it is an attempt to understand the ways in which this indisputably popular movement (was) collapsed. this is where hallward is triumphant, in my estimation.
his argument, approximately, is that we cannot make sense of the scandalous history told here unless we appreciate these few facts: (a) aristide and lavalas were overhwelmingly popular, as proved by the results of the 1990, 1996, 2000 (2x), and 2006 elections; (b) aristide and lavalas were constrained by the political and economic exigencies of the age (haiti's dependence on foreign aid for its budget, the 1994 compromise with clinton, the "impossibility" of fighting the elite on their own terms (i.e., violently and with weapons); (c) aristide, though linked to the violence in slums (which hallward rightly, against deibert's myopia, insists on contextualizing and politicizing), was far, far, far less repressive/violent than the regimes that preceded or succeeded him, or the "opposition" that "resisted" him; (d) aristide, qua radical theologian of liberation and leader of lavalas, was an uncompromising threat to the privileges of the haitian and international elite.
all of this, it needs repeating, is backed by copious statistics, research, and analysis. it is somewhat ironic that deibert's review targets precisely this element of hallward's book, given that deibert's central rebuttal, weak as it is (in the review, at least; i have not read the book), is backed first and foremost by information gleaned from interviews he himself conducted. in general, deibert's principal charge that a voyeuristic and naive hallward interviewed only aristide partisans is patently false. they inform the narrative of the book, of course, but this only complements the research. after all, hallward's insistence on remaining political is critical, i would say; it is precisely his insistence on understanding aristide as an activist--with the critical sympathy borne of solidarity--that makes this book. deibert, it seems, instead takes refuge under the (surreptitiously political) umbrella of a-politics: at best, "they're all bad, everyone's violent, it's all a mess." at its worst, of course, this conscience is activated inconsistently (or, rather, when the Empire comes calling), thereby never becoming more than a hackneyed cover for reactionary politics.
in other words, hallward's insistence on foregrounding structural violence, the changing contours of this violence owing to the elite and imperial insistence on neo-liberal compromises and state under-funding, the political history of haiti's repressive arms--all this informs the discussion of aristide's relationship to the "chimeres", as it must. without it, one will invariably lose themselves in deibert's journalistic moralizing.
that is the crux, and it is highly invigorating reading. a few points of interest, beyond this, though:
(1) exculpation--as already alluded to, hallward tries to balance, in his book, the rightly political nature of his work (qua defense of aristide against Empire and Reaction) with the equally appropriate (and tactical) character of his disagreements with some of aristide's individual decisions. the fact that these criticisms are generally articulated through his interviews with lavalas' activists adds a commendable layer of authenticity and honesty to his critique (though, against deibert, we have to insist that this is not, nor should it be, necessary). in particular, i think, aristide's 1994 decision to grant bill clinton his post-somalia "foreign policy victory" and return to haiti in a neoliberal straightjacket must be scrutinized--not, again, as a decision made by a power-hungry despot deserves to be decried, but rather as the tortured calculus of a comrade might be criticized. (in some sense, in the difference between these two attitudes, i think, lies everything worth fighting for--as soon as we abandon all attempts at making this distinction, it is over.) at some point in the book hallward mentions, through a FL activist, that it may have been better to prolong the democratic struggle than to return with clinton. this is important--though, again, simultaneously a decision that ought not to be pretentiously made by us, as readers, external to the struggle (again: hallward balances these twin necessities--of critique and of hostility to pretense--very, very well in the book).
(2) foreign conniving (USAID, UN, NGOs)--hallward, too, is tireless in his attempt to expose today's civilizing mission ("democracy promotion"). we are obligated, as everyone but the fools these days understands, to reject a priori the Empire and its military tentacles--to remain forever opposed to "hard power." but the theoretically-sophisticated and empirically-rich rebuttal of "soft power", here, is very valuable for reasons sometimes (though not very often, i guess) forgotten. it was, in haiti, this that stands out: (a) the all-too-obvious ways in which the ambitions and agenda of "soft power" are always constituted by "hard power"--it was the agenda and priorities of the US government that USAID and these NGOs towed; (b) the theoretical bankruptcy of "soft power," itself, when counterposed to the overwhelmingly popular force being deemed anti-democratic (here, again, we have the people--in whose name this treachery is being conducted--stripped of their subjectivity in order to be cast as objects fit for intervention and re-education).
as a critique reproduced by hallward emphasized, the bourgeois civil society "trained" and "constituted" by this bevy of NGOs is aristocratic, in form and inspiration. this comprador elite mobilize to tame politics precisely when their world is called into question. they then discover "democracy" and "human rights" and "student movements." "democracy promotion," as hallward argues, therefore represents the calling card of those who can afford to have discovered politics only once they're challenged by the consequences of its genuine flourishing. and the democracy promoters they enlist, of course, are precisely those who live off of politics, without living in it.
(3) reparations--the stunningly bankrupt story behind aristide's failed call for reparations needs to be made more widely known. in 1825, in order to lift the crippling blockade imposed on the newly free colony, haiti paid france 150 million francs (equivalent to france's annual revenue at the time; later the indemnity was reduced, generously, to 90 million ) as punishment for having freed itself. aristide, once it was clear that the international community was intent on suffocating his government by denying him aid, made this the rallying point of the bicentennial celebrations in 2004. haiti calculated that it was owed $21 billion dollars, give or take (at 5% interest). regis debray(!) headed the "commission on reflection" that recommended, to chirac, that they were NOT obligated to pay haiti back. hasta la victoria siempre, regis? (credit where credit is due: paul farmer delivered a brilliant speech to this committee, urging them to fork it out)
(4) populism, popularity, and the Party--hallward's correct insistence on the unremitting popularity of aristide does raise the spectre of populism. but perhaps it's sufficient to defer to his parallel observations about the strength of the people's self-organization, which is perhaps what defines the distinction between genuine and false popularity. after all, as laclau probably suggested in that book i never read, invoking the label of populism is as good (or rather, as bad) as calling the people stupid--and invariably tells us more about the sectarian doing the labeling, than the people. (the next step, of course, is to run off and become a hitchens or horowitz.)
more importantly, i'd argue, aristide raises some critical points about the party and "discipline," in the concluding interview. it is striking, in particular, to note the way in which he insists on the spontaneous, decentralized origins without presenting them as antithetical to the goal of "internal discipline" that he later introduces. it was refreshing to hear this--namely, that someone with years of experience with a genuinely popular politics understands, still, that we need not counterpose self-emancipation to discipline. in this fine balance, i think, lies our salvation.
(5) hope--only a direct quote will do:
[ARISTIDE:] No, I'm not discouraged. You teach philosophy, so let me couch my answer in philosophical terms. You know that we can think the category of being either in terms of potential or act, en puissance or en acte. This is a familiar Aristotelian distinction: being can be potential or actual. So long as it remains potential, you cannot touch it or confirm it. But it is, nonetheless, it exists. The collective consciousness of the Haitian people, their mobilization for democracy, these things may not have been fully actualized but they exist, they are real. This is what sustains me. I am sustained by this collective potential, the power of this collective potential being. This power has not yet been actualized, it has not yet been enacted in the building of enough schools, of more hospitals, more opportunities, but these things will come. The power is real and it is what animates the way forward.
for future reference, an abridged timeline (see page 155 for statistics on violence):
1915-1934: US invasion and occupation of Haiti; moulding of the army to serve imperial and elite interests.
1957-1971: Papa Doc / 1971-1986: Baby Doc (--> together, an estimated 50,000 Haitians were killed by the Duvaliers.)
1986-1990: Baby Doc deposed, Haiti ruled by the ruthless General Henry Namphy and then Prosper Avril. Elections postponed, but finally happen in 1990. (an estimated 700 to 1,000 were killed dead under Namphy/Avril).
December 1990-September 1991: Aristide elected with 67% of the vote. Rules till coup.
September 1991-September/October 1994: Brutal rule of Cedras and soon the infamous FRAPH (4,000 killed under Cedras).
October 1994-February 1996: Aristide finishes term. In December 1995, Rene Preval is elected with 88% of the vote (with Aristide's blessing).
February 1996-May/November 2000: Preval in power; Aristide, meanwhile, has formed Fanmi Lavalas, which wins landslide victories in the legislative/local elections in May (disputed, but Hallward exposes this propaganda) and then the presidential elections in November (92%).
February 2001-February 2004: Aristide rules in the face of mounting opposition from elite opposition groups (G184 and Convergence Democratique) and an "insurgency" of ex-army officers (begins in February 2004 in Gonaives). Destablization hurts, but doesn't do the trick. In sweep the US and French usurpers. (at most, Hallward says, human rights organizatons have pinned 30 political killings on the PNH and/or pro-Lavalas groups; he writes in great detail, also, about the individual massacres they have (mis)reported. as always, the devil is in the context).
March 2004-February 2006: Gerard Latortue appointed prime minister (in absurd move demonstrating the "democracy" being promoted, US ambassador stands in for the non-existent legislative branch and approves his appointment.) Thoroughly brutal rule, complemented by roving, vengeful paramilitaries (in the form of police and ex-army) and an unforgiving, corrupted occupation by the UN. (at least 3,000 killed under Latortue and the UN mission)
February 2006-: The people will not be vanquished. Preval wins an overwhelming majority, reduced to 51% by widespread, acknowledged voter fraud. But Aristide still in exile.
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