A Typical American Coup

[Robb]

A Typical American Coup

When it comes to removing heads of state by indirect means, the US still has what it takes to get the job done

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The problems Haiti is now going through all started with an election in 1990 which turned out the wrong way. The US was certain that their candidate would win, but out of the woodwork came a populist priest who won because he focused on things in the country that no one else was paying attention to.

Aristide's landslide victory in December 1990 took the US and most western countries completely by surprise. He was swept into power by a network of popular grassroots organizations which outside observers weren't even aware of. This did not fit the top-down democracy model the US wanted, so financial support was subsequently withdrawn. Yet with a solid two-thirds of the vote which demolished America's favourite, a former World Bank official named Marc Bazin (who received just 14%), the US was in a predicament: how were they going to get rid of Aristide who has popular support?

This problem became more acute when in the first seven months of Aristide's term he introduced progressive reforms. He was able to reduce corruption extensively, and to trim a highly bloated state bureaucracy. He won a lot of international praise for this, even from the World Bank and IMF, which were offering him loans and preferential terms because they liked what he was doing. Furthermore, he cut back on drug trafficking. The flow of refugees to the US virtually stopped as atrocities were reduced to way below what they had been.

It goes without saying that all this made Aristide even more unacceptable in the eyes of the US. Finally, on September 30, 1991 a coup was staged to oust Aristide from power. In its aftermath, the first Bush administration focused attention on Aristide's alleged atrocities and undemocratic activities, downplaying the major atrocities which followed the coup. Naturally, the media went along with this; while people were getting slaughtered in the streets of Port-au-Prince, the media concentrated on alleged human rights abuses under the Aristide government.

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1. This is an interesting article with a lot of information on recent history

I don't know anything about this site, apparently German, or the author.

Quote from the article:

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The pig fiasco


In effect, Aristide was to accept a neo-liberalist program which would open Haiti up to what is known as "market forces". For example, Haitian rice producers would have to compete with US agribusiness, which happens to be very highly subsidized. As a result, Haiti, a starving island, ended up exporting 35 times more food to the US under Clinton than it did under the first Bush.

Many Haitians are well aware of the effects of globalisation on their country. Haiti's first traumatic experience of globalization was with the extermination of their Creole pigs. The experience left such an impression that whenever peasants are told that "economic reform" and privatisation will benefit them, they shake their heads and remember the pig fiasco.

Haiti's small, black, Creole pigs were at the heart of the peasant economy. An extremely hearty breed, well adapted to Haiti's climate and conditions, they ate readily available waste products, and could survive for three days without food. Eighty to 85 percent of rural households raised pigs; they played a key role in maintaining the fertility of the soil. Traditionally, a pig was sold to pay for emergencies and special occasions (funerals, marriages, illnesses), and, critically, to pay school fees and buy books for when school opened each year in October.

In 1982 international agencies assured Haiti's peasants that their pigs were sick and had to be killed so that the illness would not spread elsewhere. Promises were made that better pigs would replace the sick pigs. Within 13 months, all of Haiti's Creole pigs were killed.

Two years later, the new, "better" pigs came from Iowa. Yet they required clean drinking water (unavailable to 80 percent of the population), imported feed ($90 a year when per capita income was about $130), and special roofed pigpens. Haitian peasants quickly dubbed them four-footed princes. Adding insult to injury, most found that the meat didn't taste so good.

Needless to say, the program was a complete failure. One observer of the process estimated that in monetary terms, Haitian peasants lost $600 million. There was a 30 percent drop in enrollment in rural schools, a dramatic decline in protein consumption in rural Haiti, a devastating decapitalisation of the peasant economy, and an incalculable negative impact on Haiti's soil and agricultural productivity. Aristide contends that Haiti's peasantry hasn't recovered from the pig fiasco to this day.

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