| July
8, 2005 Horror In Haiti by Matt Hunter, insurgent49 photos by Neil Gioiosia  After moving to a
new town in central Pennsylvania, I joined my local Catholic Church
and, as I became accepted, I was encouraged by our liberal Priest and
Sister to take on a larger role in the Parish. When I was asked to join
the Parish Twinning Program project through the Social Concerns
Committee, I reluctantly joined. One year later . . .. . . I was standing amid burning barricades in Gonaives, Haiti, watching paramilitary soldiers of the disbanded Haitian military storm a house hunting for Lavalas, the supporters of the democratically elected president. These gangsters, once known as the Cannibal Army, had renamed themselves the Artibonite Liberation Front, a rebranding undoubtedly concocted by the old Contra-war hands that set the stage for the slow motion strangulation of Lavalas and its leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The police were all dead, the station burning, the hospital shot up and the scene of chaos was surreal. Lavalas is the flood of people who had, in Aristide, a leader that was absolutely committed to the modest goal of "dignified poverty." By expressing a preferential option for the poor in governance, Aristide had offered all Haitians a voice in government for the first time in their history. Coup, restoration and peaceful transition followed, and Haiti slipped from the headlines as it made the transition to Democracy. Naturally, the ruling elites, the bourgeoisie, secure in their hilltop fortresses, did everything in their power to keep the dark skinned poor from taking from their place at the table. Naturally, our ruling elites, secure in their gated communities, shaped policy to support the nice, well-mannered, almost white business class in imposing nature's order on the dark rabble. Fundamentalist missionaries, who did much to undermine the Catholic-Voodoo flavored Lavalas, delighted when Bush, one of their own, suspended $500 million in aid to Haiti and pursued trading partners to do the same, claiming electoral irregularities in the overwhelming Lavalas victories.  This cruel,
manufactured crisis of scarcity forced the government, which had
abolished the corrupt military, to negotiate with local street gangs to
maintain what passes for order in Port-au-Prince. In light of the
horror over the past year, he was remarkably successful. In spite of
the aid embargo, we witnessed the material progress of Lavalas
everywhere, including a new teaching hospital (opened the day the coup
began), new roads in the capital, a new school and a Lavalas shrine of
sorts, featuring a clinic and a soccer pitch.The war against Lavalas is curious, because it is rooted in the very Gospel that the rightists claim to own, the Sermon on the Mount. Yet is an example of how Empire (global, transnational, and materialist) is capable of producing geographic knowledge and manipulating scale to create an inversion of reality for ready consumption by a geographically illiterate American public. It should be a call to all progressives to stand up and look around. This American public, victims of the same machine that lured them into theaters to enthusiastically witness the physical torture of Christ, is repeatedly beaten bloody in the slums of Port-au-Prince. This is a story of how a small group of mercenaries, working with the most powerful entities on earth, slowly and easily overthrew an authentic participatory democracy wreaked by unconscionable economic terrorism. This is a crucifixion - a slow, tortured and calculated extermination. Today, the death squads, opportunistic predators, police and the UN venture among the multitude to kill the dream of Lavalas. This is Empire unmasked. Consider that this is what they will do to those who want nothing more that dignified poverty. Think of what they could do to you. Matt Hunter is a freelance journalist who resides in an undisclosed location in the Lower 48. |
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2005
Insurgent Media. All Rights
Reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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