Aristide, Jean-Bertrand 1953–

Jean-Bertrand Aristide 1953–

Haitian priest and politician

At a Glance…

President by a Landslide

Political Turmoil Brewed

Ousted from Office

An Uncertain Future

Selected writings

Sources

Jean-Bertrand Aristide has been a force in Haitian politics since the early 1980s. The populist priest, known for his impassioned speeches and his activist role against Haiti’s repressive government, was elected president of the island nation in 1990, thereby becoming the first official elected by democratic process in Haiti in almost 200 years. Only seven months later Aristide was ousted from Haiti in a bloody coup d’etat led by disgruntled military leaders. As of late 1993 he remained in exile despite severe economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations and the threat of military intervention on his behalf by the United States. Although supported by the majority of Haiti’s impoverished populace, Aristide is opposed by an army of gun-toting desperadoes who murder at will in a frenzied attempt to keep the elected president and his followers at bay.

Aristide’s popularity with the Haitian masses is unquestioned, but detractors in his homeland and elsewhere have sought to discredit his presidency. Some political observers have suggested that he is so transfixed by his role as leader of the oppressed that he ignores political reality—the need to involve the legislature, the mercantile elite, and other constituencies in his crusade to redirect his embattled country. Others have questioned his commitment to human rights in the wake of Haiti’s unprecedented violence, and still others have intimated that he may suffer from mental illness. Time magazine reporter Edward Barnes noted, however, that while “nagging doubts remain” about Aristide’s “character and ability,” nevertheless, “Haiti’s overall human-rights record improved during his brief presidency.”

The first child of a farming family living on Haiti’s southern coast, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was born July 15, 1953. Aristide might have been just another disenfranchised, illiterate commoner were it not for his mother, a devout Roman Catholic who saw education as the means by which her children could rise above poverty. After her husband died when Jean-Bertrand was just three months old, she decided to live as a single woman. “She never accepted another husband, despite the offers of marriage she had, because she wanted to guarantee our education,” Aristide told Interview magazine. “She feared our having a stepfather who did not share her vision for her children.” At six Aristide was sent to a primary school run by the Society of St. Francis de Sales, or the Salesian order, one of whose central tenets was serving the poor. He proved to be a good student who eventually obtained a degree in psychology from a Haitian university and studied biblical theology in Israel.

At a Glance…

Born July 15, 1953, in Port-Salut, Haiti. Education: Universite d’Etat, Haiti, B.A., 1979; studied in Israel, Egypt, Canada, Italy, and Great Britain. Religion: Roman Catholic.

Ordained priest in the Salesian Order, 1982; led popular uprising against Haitian leader Jean-Claude Duvalier, 1986; expelled from order, 1988; elected Haitian president in first free and fair elections, 1990; deposed in coup d’etat, 1991; in exile, 1991—.

Addresses: c/o Haitian Embassy, 2311 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20008.

While in Jerusalem, Aristide began to focus on the plight of his less fortunate Haitian brethren and the injustices heaped upon them. In articles for Haiti’s Catholic newspaper, Aristide placed the blame for social conditions largely on the shoulders of the ruling Duvalier family, who since 1957 had used predatory economic policies to enrich themselves and the elite class, and who had used death squads—the notorious Tontons Macoutes —to silence any voices raised in dissent. Aristide bemoaned the unfulfilled promise of this former French slave colony, which had gained its independence at the turn of the nineteenth century. He returned to Haiti for his ordination as a Catholic priest in 1982 and was assigned to a small church serving many of the capital city’s slum dwellers.

The pulpit became a platform for the young would-be reformer. In impassioned, incisive sermons, Aristide urged the people to rise up against Jean-Claude Duvalier, son of the dynastic patriarch François, and to demand a Haiti in which political fair play replaced corruption and democracy replaced dictatorship. The death squads, he said, should not enjoy their free reign of intimidation. As Anthony P. Maingot put it in Current History, “Advocating the right of the common people to defend themselves, Aristide would quote from the Gospel of St. Luke, where Christ is cited as saying, ‘And he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.”’

The Haitian government was clearly threatened by this rabble-rousing priest but feared the backlash if he were to be silenced by the traditional means: murder. Instead, pressure was put on the Haitian hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church, many of whose members had been appointed by the Duvaliers, to send Aristide into exile. In 1982 he was dispatched to Montreal, Canada, where he studied biblical theology for three years. Aristide’s reformist zeal could not be suppressed, however, and when he returned to Haiti he played an important role in mobilizing the people to rise up against Duvalier. The dictator was forced to flee in 1986, but the celebration of his regime’s collapse was short-lived. A new government, a military junta headed by Lt. General Henri Namphy—Duvalier’s hand-picked successor—continued with the same brutal tactics that had become a staple of Haitian politics. In those dark days, Aristide’s emerged as one of the strongest voices against what was called “Duvalierism without Duvalier.”

Once again the government sought to still Aristide by prevailing upon the Salesian order to silence him. The church again obliged, reassigning the radical priest to a small parish at Croix-des-Missions, a wealthy community whose residents included Namphy and a number of Tontons Macoutes. But when several youths in Aristide’s old parish heard of the impending transfer, they began a hunger strike, a nonviolent protest that was new to Haiti’s political landscape. Paul Farmer wrote in America: “As days went by, more and more people came to pray over the fasting young men and women, who called upon the bishops to state unambiguously their support for the poor. Aristide’s transfer, said the strikers, was out of the question.” The church leaders, thinking it would be unseemly to call for police support to quell a nonviolent protest, were forced to concede. In attempting to suppress Aristide, the church gave “the Prophet,” as he was widely known, more power and prominence than he had had before.

Similarly empowering, though more tragic, was the massacre of September 11, 1988. As Aristide was beginning his morning mass that day, a band of 100 Tontons Macoutes, armed with sticks, knives, guns, and machetes, stormed the church, killing 13 parishioners, wounding 70, and burning the building to the ground. The army and police, standing outside, took no action. Aristide, having escaped this and other brushes with death, became known as “Mister Miracles,” a title that further enhanced his Messianic image. This assassination attempt, more than any other, sent shock waves through the community. Less than a week later a group of young, noncommissioned officers overthrew Namphy. In his place came Lt. General Prosper Avril, who had been a loyal servant of the Duvaliers but was now hailed by the United States government—which a year earlier had denounced Aristide as a communist—as the best chance for delivering democratic reform. Meanwhile, in a repetition of the past, the Salesians ordered Aristide to leave the country. On the scheduled day of his departure, tens of thousands of supporters rallied in the streets and blocked access to the airport, making the priest’s exit physically impossible. Although Aristide was successfully kept in Haiti by his worshippers, the Salesians—citing his encouragement of violence and exaltation of the class struggle—formally expelled him from the order.

While sullen over his expulsion, Aristide continued working with the poor and disaffected, seeing more clearly than ever that the entire country was his parish. He founded a school that offered classes in language, linguistics, psychology, and economics, and established workshops that trained young people in crafts that could help them make a living. Political conditions in Haiti also made it difficult for Aristide to slip into obscurity. The Avril government, facing a collapse of military discipline, a rising crime rate, labor strikes, and roving gangs, was toppled in March of 1990. The new leader, Supreme Court justice Ertha Pascal-Trouillot, recognized that the state machinery was in an advanced state of decay. The government was unable to collect taxes and pay its employees, and petty corruption was widespread. Pascal-Trouillot announced that elections would take place in December, 1990. When Roger Lafontant, Minister of the Interior under Duvalier and leader of the Tontons Macoutes, announced his candidacy for president, many Haitians feared that dark days would return. Aristide was seen as the only figure who could prevent this relapse.

President by a Landslide

Aristide, who had said as early as May, 1990, that he was not interested in seeking political office, was skeptical of the upcoming elections. He was quoted in America as having written: “The election drums are sounding, but for what kind of elections? Without judgment, many of the criminals will return to the polling place, even more demonic, to drink the people’s blood, to kill people, to burn, to empty guns into radio stations, to fire on rectories, to hunt down priests, to hunt down lay people, to persecute the organizations of the people.” But the chorus calling for an Aristide candidacy drowned out his cynical pronouncements, and he entered the field.

In the first free and fair election in Haiti’s 187-year history, 85 percent of the electorate went to the polls. Aristide garnered an astonishing 67 percent of the popular vote. None of the other 11 candidates received more than 14 percent. Aristide’s inauguration in February of 1991 validated in many ways the hopes that his supporters had pinned on him. He took the oath of office not in French, the language of Haiti’s elite, but in Creole, the tongue of the masses. He received the official presidential sash from a peasant woman who, with the help of four homeless boys, placed it over his shoulder. In his inaugural address, Aristide ordered six of the country’s seven highest-ranking generals—men associated with the violence of the old guard—to retire.

At first it appeared that Aristide, though the 40th president of Haiti, was the first president of a new type of country. The United States restored and doubled its previously suspended direct aid to the Haitian government, and Aristide secured a $422 million loan from a World Bank-led consortium. The new president also jailed army officers, judges, and police who had been involved in corruption and violence, and he initiated a national literacy program and ambitious agrarian reform. Business in the capital city of Port-au-Prince was booming, and Aristide began concerted attempts to weed patronage out of government. Leading opposition figures pledged to resolve their policy differences with Aristide in the Parliament, rather than in the street.

Political Turmoil Brewed

Although the international community embraced Aristide, the political rebirth of Haiti was troubled. Most damaging to the president’s image—and most worrisome to the army—was the fact that Aristide seemed to encourage street justice and mob violence as a means of avenging past actions of the military and recurring waves of dissent. In August, 1991, when Aristide faced a no-confidence vote in the legislature, his partisans gathered in the thousands outside the Parliament building with stacks of old tires and matches—the increasingly popular tools of murder known as “necklaces” when placed around a victim’s neck and set on fire. The legislature backed down from voting. The New Yorker quoted Aristide as saying that the burning tire is a “beautiful device,” which “smells good and everywhere you go you want to breathe it.” Such rhetoric would return to haunt Aristide in 1993 when he sought help from the United States to restore his presidency.

The no-confidence vote in 1991 was called largely because Aristide, in the eyes of some of his critics, had forgotten that the presidential sash brought a different set of responsibilities than the priest’s collar. He could no longer act unilaterally, but needed to involve the legislature and the small mercantile elite in his grand schemes for a new Haiti. Instead he alienated the Parliament, the army, and especially the elite, who drew his scorn. Some feared that the populist leader had been so conditioned by the murderousness of his past enemies that he was unprepared to listen to those who genuinely—and peacefully—disagreed with him.

Ousted from Office

In September of 1991, just a few days after he had delivered a triumphant address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, Aristide was swept from office in a military coup. The deposed leader took refuge in the United States, meeting with President George Bush and later Bill Clinton in search of an alliance that would return him to the presidential palace. In the meantime, the new illegitimate government of Haiti—headed by armed forces chief Lt. General Raoul Cedras—consolidated its power with new waves of violence and repression. Haiti’s problems spilled over onto American shores with the arrival of thousands of refugees demanding political asylum in the United States.

Aristide took his case to the American people, to the United States government, and to the United Nations, imploring other powerful nations to use economic sanctions against an increasingly isolated Haiti. By 1993 the international community responded with an oil and gasoline embargo and other sanctions against the country. The economic pressures brought Cedras to the negotiating table in the spring of 1993, and a provisional agreement was brokered that would return Aristide to power on October 30, 1993. As that deadline approached, however, the illegitimate rulers of Haiti sought ways—by diplomacy and force—to scuttle the plans. The week before the deadline, armed civilians prevented a United States warship from docking at Port-au-Prince to facilitate Aristide’s return. Elsewhere in the city, foreigners were attacked by mobs. Aristide remained in exile, and expanded economic sanctions against Haiti produced widespread shortages and privation there.

An Uncertain Future

Some observers began to speculate that only an intervention by American armed forces would restore Aristide to power in Haiti. President Clinton was reluctant to pursue that option, and some United States senators—informed of Aristide’s possible mental instability and alleged human rights abuses—openly opposed the possibility. In the autumn of 1993, the U.S. Congress passed a referendum that would require the American president to seek congressional consent for any invasion of Haiti. Meanwhile, diplomatic avenues—explored primarily by Aristide supporter and Haitian prime minister Robert Malval—have not produced a resolution to the crisis as of late 1993.

Aristide has continued his crusade for the restoration of his presidency in full confidence that he will some day return to Port-au-Prince. The president-in-exile told Time: “The U.S. Is the superpower of the world. You have people in Haiti who are defying the world by defying the U.S., and it’s important not to give a green light to people like this.” Aristide stated that he would honor the wishes of his countrymen, even if it meant danger to his life. “It’s not a question of if I go back, but of when,” he concluded in Time. “I assume my responsibility. If the Haitian people want me to be there, it is my responsibility to say yes.”

Selected writings

Aristide: An Autobiography (translated from the French by Linda Maloney), Orbis, 1992.

Sources

Books

Abbott, Elizabeth, Haiti (revised and updated edition), Simon & Schuster, 1991.

Anthony, Suzanne, Haiti (from the Places & Peoples of the World Series), Chelsea House, 1989.

Chambers, Frances, Haiti (World Biography Series No. 39), ABC-Clio, 1983.

Morse, Richard M., editor, Haiti’s Future: Views of Twelve Haitian Leaders (from the Wilson Center Perspectives Series), Wilson Center Press, 1988.

Periodicals

America, March 9, 1991, p. 260.

Current History, February 1992, p. 65.

Emerge, June 1993, p. 22.

Interview, October 1991, p. 89.

New Republic, October 28, 1991, p. 17.

Newsweek, March 8, 1993, p. 6; August 30, 1993, p. 43; October 25, 1993, p. 25; November 1, 1993, p. 34; December 6, 1993, p. 33.

New Yorker, October 21, 1991, p. 29.

New York Review of Books, March 26, 1992, p. 62.

New York Times, March 16, 1993, p. A13.

Time, April 26, 1993, p. 10; November 1, 1993, p. 27.

—Isaac Rosen and Anne Janette Johnson