Thirty Years Ago, Jean-Bertrand Aristide Returned To Haiti
By Salim Lamrani
September 27, 2024
Thirty years ago, President Aristide, victim of a military putsch, returned to power following the intervention of the United Nations.
On December 16, 1990, at the end of an electoral campaign supervised by the UN but marked by violence, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, candidate of the National Front for Change and Democracy (FNCD), was elected President of Haiti with almost 67% of the vote and a turnout of over 75% of the electorate. The country, the poorest on the continent, was marked by chronic institutional instability. No fewer than five presidents had succeeded one another between 1986 and 1991, all of them overthrown by a military coup. On February 7, 1991, the young priest, a follower of liberation theology, took the helm of the country, despite an attempted putsch a month earlier, designed to prevent him from taking power.
His program, launched as soon as he was inaugurated, was resolutely progressive, with agrarian reform, an increase in the minimum wage and a fairer distribution of national wealth, which won him broad popular support as well as the resentment of local elites. Above all, he displayed a firm determination to overhaul the army, police and public administration, inherited from the bloody Duvalier family dynasty, which had ruled the country with an iron fist for over three decades, and riddled with corruption. A special commission was also set up in February 1991 to investigate past crimes and human rights violations, including the massacres at Dandi, Rabel and Labadie.
Aristide quickly became the target of a coalition of the wealthy: the bourgeoisie, the Church, the army and the press. On September 29, 1991, the latter orchestrated a military coup and overthrew the democratically elected president, barely seven months after his inauguration. The putsch caused little stir in Washington, which was wary of the new leader’s socialist tendencies and had in fact largely financed his conservative opponent, Marc Bazin, through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Indeed, unlike Aristide, Bazin was a former World Bank official, respectful of established interests and social hierarchies.
The commander-in-chief of the army, Raoul Cédras, who had been promoted by Aristide and had sworn loyalty to the Constitution, then took power and carried out a ferocious crackdown on the deposed president’s supporters, killing several hundred people in the first few days. Several hundred thousand people were forced to flee abroad, in particular to the neighboring Dominican Republic and the United States, and the boat people issue quickly became a domestic political problem for Washington. President Aristide, a refugee in the United States, continued to enjoy the support and recognition of the international community, which imposed economic sanctions against the military junta.
More:
https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/thirty-years-ago-jean-bertrand-aristide-returned-to-haiti/