After finally reading The Prophet and Power: Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the International Community, and Haiti by Wesleyan professor Alex Dupuy, I have a better understanding of what has transpired in recent memory in Haiti. The narrative is quite 'fresh' to me, given my background on Aristide from my mom's pro-Aristide relatives in the 1990s and the US leftist interpretation on the two coups against Aristide (each one supported by Washington) that I received from Democracy Now and other sources. Naturally, things are far more complex than the Bush administration simply forcing Aristide out of power, a process more fully detailed by Dupuy's coverage of the 'hybrid' character of Aristide's presidencies (authoritarian and democratic, condoning violence and corruption, but cloaked in a rhetoric of social democracy, poorly planned verbal attacks on the bourgeoisie and wealthy elite behind the opposition, and Aristide's early messianic stature among the dispossessed masses).
Dupuy, like say, Noam Chomsky or Democracy Now's coverage of recent Haitian history, places the quest for democratization in a broader context of US, French, and Canadian imperialism, but unlike them (and in a fashion, reminding me of a Chilean professor of mine who emphasized domestic factors in the coup that ended Salvador Allende's presidency), emphasizes local Haitian contradictions within Aristide's administrations and the tradition of the Haitian prebendary state (Dupuy's term for what another scholar refers to as the 'predatory' Haitian state, or what Trouillot likened to the Haitian state against the nation) that led to the downfall of Aristide on two occasions, in his first term in the early 1990s and again in 2004.
So, yes, of course US imperialism and Western-controlled flow of economic aid forced Aristide into negotiations with the opposition (which proved itself only interested in forcing Aristide out of office both times), but Aristide's poorly organized Lavalas party (lack of a party structure or coherent political plan that alienated the bourgeoisie sectors he needed on his side to retain power, and the prevalence of gangs in the urban slums that would claim to act under Lavalas and therefore be used against him by the US, CD (Democratic Convergence), and other observers during his second term) ended his terms prematurely with no substantive progress to bring about what Dupuy refers to as a 'maximalist democracy.'
In short, the symbol of change and progress for the Haitian underclass, the majority of the population who live in abject poverty, Aristide, succumbed to foreign meddling, internal flaws of his 'hybrid' political organization, rhetorical strategies that further alienated the very sectors of the population within the growing opposition movement, and a burgeoning crisis of human rights violations as gangs roamed the slums, journalists were killed (former Aristide supporter Jean Dominique was among those killed by someone working for Aristide's government, or so it is believed), the opposition's former military leaders crossed the border from the Dominican Republic, and Aristide even lost his legitimacy with much of the underclass and middle-class (violence against university students certainly didn't help his case, nor did the general lawlessness, corruption scandals, and inevitable coup, which, unlike the first one, sparked no major protest in Haiti comparable to that of the former), sealing his fate to be forcibly removed from office and choosing to flee with his life intact.
In addition, Dupuy's book offers a more complex view of Aristide's fall than other studies which exaggerate the extent to which Aristide's marriage to a light-skinned Haitian-American led to his loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the urban poor and peasantry. The 'color' question likely influenced a change in the perception of Aristide, but I am sure the poor of Haiti are not so 'color-struck' as to automatically question the legitimacy of a leader for marrying a light-skinned woman. Indeed, reading some of Aristide's speeches, he made it quite clear who he considered the enemies of the poor to be, the bourgeoisie, elite, and the 'cold neighbor to the north' who kept the Haitian masses poor for the last two hundred years. No doubt, he believed that to some extent himself, despite being forced into negotiations that crippled his presidency.
One last thing, I am still not entirely convinced by Dupuy that the fall of Aristide is due just as much to his own internal flaws and the scandals, human rights violations, and chaos that preceded the second coup. It seemed inevitable, something Dupuy recognizes, that the opposition despised Aristide for what he symbolized, and would've removed him from power regardless of how organized he was or if he had an organized political party and did not allow his government to be blamed for human rights violations (something the military juntas and interim government would even more guilty of for the greater number of deaths), or he if cut back on inflammatory speeches against the bourgeoisie, or had he not disbanded the Army (which I don't see how he could have avoided). All these errors and questionable decisions on his part certainly didn't help in the long run, but in the case of Haiti (unlike Allende's Chile), dependence on foreign aid and neoliberal institutions such as the World Bank and IMF with their structural adjustment plans, the longer history of US imperialism in Haiti, and the legacy of the prebendary or predatory state, Aristide would've likely been removed from power regardless of how effective a politician or how many negotiations or deals he made with opposition forces, the Clinton or Bush administration, and the Haitian moneyed classes he did win over.
Anyway, this is a very useful text to examining the current crisis in Haiti and the lingering effects of Duvalierism without Duvalier as Haitian 'democracy' continues to be a sham, corruption remains rampant, the 'elected' president is a pawn of foreign corporate interests and Haitian elites, promotes sweatshop labor, tourism, and a 'minimalist' democracy where right-wing forces, domestic and abroad, continue to profit off the marginalization of the 'poorest country in the western hemisphere.' How Haiti's 'lawlessness' in the aftermath of the 2004 coup led to MINUSTAH and the growth of the NGOs after the 2010 earthquake are all connected with the exile of Aristide, the legacy of Duvalierism, Western imperialism (Wikileaks just revealed how, like previous administrations, Obama pushed against raising the minimum wage in Haiti), and the persistence of extreme social inequality and divisions within Haitian society where only violence seems to be the main key to controlling the state (the recent violent protests against Martelly, for instance, or the frequent police and MINUSTAH targeting of civilians, talk of restoring the Army, and 'selling out' to the capitalist world system through luxury tourism projects, no real protection of the environment, and a non-response to the crisis faced by Dominicans of Haitian descent are all examples of the plethora of internal problems within the Haitian social structure and its peripheral place).
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