(From the book cover)
An unprecedented look into Haiti's harrowing past and uncertain present, Notes from the Last Testament, with a forward by acclaimed filmmaker Raoul Peck, is a riveting narrative account of the events leading up to and including the overthrow of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. A fearless correspondent and a meticulous researcher, Deibert traces the rupturing of the social-democratic coalition that originally brought Aristide to power and that had been the fruit of years of opposition to the dictatorships and military juntas. From chaotic scenes of frenzied mayhem on the streets of the bidonvilles of Port-au-Prince with their armed gangs and burning intersections to heated debates in the halls of power, these dramatic events throw into stark relief the obstacles facing the world's nascent democracies, the tradition of first world military intervention in third world affairs, and the dual legacies of slavery and colonialism.
In a remarkable and deeply humane synthesis of on-the-ground perspectives and exhaustive research, Deibert sets vivid personal testimonies alongside an analysis of the country's rich history that reaches back to Haiti's first days as a colony, to the time of the rebellion led by the former slave Toussaint Louverture, and extends to the present, ultimately exploring how Aristide, once a beacon of populism and democratic aspirations, came to embody brutality and misrule in the tradition of his predecessors. Along the way, Deibert introduces us to the real heroes of the Haitian people's struggle for a just and independent society free from violence and corruption: community leaders, human rights workers, peasants, journalists and many others who risked - and in many cases lost - their lives for the sake of their country.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Author gives insight into Haitian politics
Author gives insight into Haitian politics
February 19, 2006
Char Miller, Special to the San Antonio Express-News
Notes From the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti
By Michael Deibert. Foreword by Raoul Peck.
Seven Stories Press, $22.95
(Read the original review here)
Thomas Jefferson was aghast: In 1791, Haitian slaves revolted against France, establishing the Western Hemisphere's second republic. The principal author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence feared that this successful Caribbean revolution would foster "a great disposition to insurgency among American slaves," a war that would "never end but in the extermination of one or the other race." To forestall that dread possibility, he cut off all trade to the new state, and refused to extend it diplomatic recognition, expecting to bankrupt its future.
His strategy worked, and a century later Woodrow Wilson sealed Haiti's fate. In 1915, he sent in the Marines, an occupation that lasted until the mid-1930s; the occupiers wrote a new constitution that granted them unilateral power, built an island-wide road system with forced labor, and disrupted Haitian political maturation, reinforcing its crippling colonial legacy.
But Haiti also has been wracked with more than its share of internal torment, as journalist Michael Deibert demonstrates in his gripping first book. A Reuters' correspondent in the capital city of Port-au-Prince from 2001 to 2003, Deibert has a sharp eye for the complicating ironies of history. Not least of which is the way that past brutalities have shaped contemporary behavior. Jean-Jacques Dessaline's bloody reprisals against European slave-owners in the early 1800s found their parallel in the 1950s as Papa Doc Duvalier unleashed a terrifying cycle "of tin-pot despotism and pointless bloodletting." Even once-heralded reformers turned vicious: broad-based opposition to Jean-Bertrand Aristide was part of an enduring struggle "against the two-century tradition of electoral coup d'états."
The complex tale of Aristide's rise, fall and exile, his return and removal is the central focus of "Notes From the Last Testament." A compelling mix of reportage, memoir, social criticism, it offers a searching, if at times garrulous, account of contemporary Haitian political culture.
Aristide had been the people's priest, in the 1980s using his pulpit to defend the defenseless. Booted out of his religious order, he later wrote: "I did not invent class struggle any more than Karl Marx did. But who can avoid encountering class struggle in the heart of Port-au-Prince? It is not a subject of controversy, but a fact, a given." That insight, and the electoral clout that came with it, powered Aristide into the presidency in December 1990.
By the next September a military junta had forced him into exile, but three years later, courtesy of a Clinton-administration negotiation that was enforced with 25,000 U.S. and international troops, Aristide returned as president.
Deibert masterfully recounts what then ensued: wild swings in the republic's political compass as Aristide and his equally mean-spirited opponents jockeyed for position and power, using the streets and slums as stages on which to assault those arrayed against them. The drumbeat of violence, like machine-gun fire, echoes through his narrative, and as the casualties mount, the former priest bears the brunt of Deibert's angered scrutiny: "Seldom has a leader betrayed the legitimate hopes of so many so thoroughly. In all its essentials — the killing of civilians, restriction of personal and professional liberty, the subjugation of all state institutions to the whim of the executive branch — the Aristide government deserved to be overthrown as much as any in Haiti."
Pushed out by popular protest and international pressure, Aristide's second exile has not brought peace, a conundrum Deibert underscores in his conclusion: "Haiti is populated by some of the more resourceful, hard-working and decent people in the world, despite the face the political culture presents, but they cannot change the country on their own," a hopeful and harrowing prospect.
Char Miller is director of Urban Studies at Trinity University, and editor of "50 Years of the Texas Observer."
February 19, 2006
Char Miller, Special to the San Antonio Express-News
Notes From the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti
By Michael Deibert. Foreword by Raoul Peck.
Seven Stories Press, $22.95
(Read the original review here)
Thomas Jefferson was aghast: In 1791, Haitian slaves revolted against France, establishing the Western Hemisphere's second republic. The principal author of the U.S. Declaration of Independence feared that this successful Caribbean revolution would foster "a great disposition to insurgency among American slaves," a war that would "never end but in the extermination of one or the other race." To forestall that dread possibility, he cut off all trade to the new state, and refused to extend it diplomatic recognition, expecting to bankrupt its future.
His strategy worked, and a century later Woodrow Wilson sealed Haiti's fate. In 1915, he sent in the Marines, an occupation that lasted until the mid-1930s; the occupiers wrote a new constitution that granted them unilateral power, built an island-wide road system with forced labor, and disrupted Haitian political maturation, reinforcing its crippling colonial legacy.
But Haiti also has been wracked with more than its share of internal torment, as journalist Michael Deibert demonstrates in his gripping first book. A Reuters' correspondent in the capital city of Port-au-Prince from 2001 to 2003, Deibert has a sharp eye for the complicating ironies of history. Not least of which is the way that past brutalities have shaped contemporary behavior. Jean-Jacques Dessaline's bloody reprisals against European slave-owners in the early 1800s found their parallel in the 1950s as Papa Doc Duvalier unleashed a terrifying cycle "of tin-pot despotism and pointless bloodletting." Even once-heralded reformers turned vicious: broad-based opposition to Jean-Bertrand Aristide was part of an enduring struggle "against the two-century tradition of electoral coup d'états."
The complex tale of Aristide's rise, fall and exile, his return and removal is the central focus of "Notes From the Last Testament." A compelling mix of reportage, memoir, social criticism, it offers a searching, if at times garrulous, account of contemporary Haitian political culture.
Aristide had been the people's priest, in the 1980s using his pulpit to defend the defenseless. Booted out of his religious order, he later wrote: "I did not invent class struggle any more than Karl Marx did. But who can avoid encountering class struggle in the heart of Port-au-Prince? It is not a subject of controversy, but a fact, a given." That insight, and the electoral clout that came with it, powered Aristide into the presidency in December 1990.
By the next September a military junta had forced him into exile, but three years later, courtesy of a Clinton-administration negotiation that was enforced with 25,000 U.S. and international troops, Aristide returned as president.
Deibert masterfully recounts what then ensued: wild swings in the republic's political compass as Aristide and his equally mean-spirited opponents jockeyed for position and power, using the streets and slums as stages on which to assault those arrayed against them. The drumbeat of violence, like machine-gun fire, echoes through his narrative, and as the casualties mount, the former priest bears the brunt of Deibert's angered scrutiny: "Seldom has a leader betrayed the legitimate hopes of so many so thoroughly. In all its essentials — the killing of civilians, restriction of personal and professional liberty, the subjugation of all state institutions to the whim of the executive branch — the Aristide government deserved to be overthrown as much as any in Haiti."
Pushed out by popular protest and international pressure, Aristide's second exile has not brought peace, a conundrum Deibert underscores in his conclusion: "Haiti is populated by some of the more resourceful, hard-working and decent people in the world, despite the face the political culture presents, but they cannot change the country on their own," a hopeful and harrowing prospect.
Char Miller is director of Urban Studies at Trinity University, and editor of "50 Years of the Texas Observer."
The rise and fall of Haiti's "savior"
Posted on Sun, Nov. 20, 2005
NONFICTION
The rise and fall of Haiti's "savior"
The author deftly chronicles Aristide's transformation from a perceived messiah to a master manipulator.
BY DON BOHNING
NOTES FROM THE LAST TESTAMENT: The Struggle for Haiti.
Michael Deibert. Introduction by Raoul Peck. Seven Stories. 448 pages. $22.95 in paper.
Notes from the Last Testament should convince all but those few remaining foreign believers in former President Jean Bertrand Aristide -- many of whom were on his payroll -- that he was just one more would-be tyrant in a long line of self-serving and corrupt Haitian leaders.
The book has problems, particularly an overload of Haitian history and culture that distracts from what essentially is a memoir. But this is a minor flaw in Deibert's powerfully documented exposé of what amounts to Aristide's criminal rule of Haiti.
Deibert was the Reuters news service correspondent in Haiti as well as a contributor to several foreign newspapers. He got to know leaders of Aristide-financed slum gangs, called chimeres, who were, as Deibert documents, on call for word from the National Palace to disrupt an opposition demonstration or carry out other nefarious tasks on Aristide's behalf.
As Deibert observes in recounting the infamous massacre of an opposition group in St. Marc a few weeks before Aristide's flight to exile on February 29, 2004: Haitians ``were forced to endure unimaginable agony so that one man -- with the aid of a small cadre of killers for hire, corrupt officials and cynical, avaricious foreign advocates -- could attempt to build his own personal empire on the ruins of what was once a country.''
Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest, came to power in a December 1990 presidential election generally regarded as the only free and democratic election in Haiti's 200 years of independence. He won by more than some two-thirds of the popular vote by an electorate that hailed him as a savior.
Deibert deftly chronicles Aristide's transformation from a perceived messiah to a master manipulator as he moved to consolidate his control over the hemisphere's poorest country. Even before he was overthrown by a military coup seven months after taking office on Feb. 7, 1991, there were clear signs he was not the savior that many had hoped. Among the early signals was his call to supporters for street violence to thwart an attempted coup by Roger LaFontant, an old-line backer of former dictator Francois ''Papa Doc'' Duvalier.
Those answering the call destroyed the historic cathedral in downtown Port-au-Prince and burned scores of people in old tires.
After his ouster in September 1991, Aristide went to Venezuela, where he soon wore out his welcome, spending the remainder of his three-year exile in Washington. The Clinton administration restored him to power in the fall of 1994, following an invasion by 20,000 troops. Bitter that the United States would not accept the extension of his term for the three years spent in exile, he increasingly took on the mantle of his authoritarian and corrupt predecessors.
He was elected president again in November 2000, a largely sham vote boycotted by the opposition, in which he ran against six unknown candidates. Anti-Aristide sentiment grew, though, and on Feb. 29, 2004, in a plane provided by the United States, he left for eventual exile in South Africa, where he remains. But after his departure, and as duplicitous as ever, Aristide claimed he had been ``kidnapped.''
Don Bohning is a former Herald Latin America editor and author of the recently published book: The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba 1959-1965.
NONFICTION
The rise and fall of Haiti's "savior"
The author deftly chronicles Aristide's transformation from a perceived messiah to a master manipulator.
BY DON BOHNING
NOTES FROM THE LAST TESTAMENT: The Struggle for Haiti.
Michael Deibert. Introduction by Raoul Peck. Seven Stories. 448 pages. $22.95 in paper.
Notes from the Last Testament should convince all but those few remaining foreign believers in former President Jean Bertrand Aristide -- many of whom were on his payroll -- that he was just one more would-be tyrant in a long line of self-serving and corrupt Haitian leaders.
The book has problems, particularly an overload of Haitian history and culture that distracts from what essentially is a memoir. But this is a minor flaw in Deibert's powerfully documented exposé of what amounts to Aristide's criminal rule of Haiti.
Deibert was the Reuters news service correspondent in Haiti as well as a contributor to several foreign newspapers. He got to know leaders of Aristide-financed slum gangs, called chimeres, who were, as Deibert documents, on call for word from the National Palace to disrupt an opposition demonstration or carry out other nefarious tasks on Aristide's behalf.
As Deibert observes in recounting the infamous massacre of an opposition group in St. Marc a few weeks before Aristide's flight to exile on February 29, 2004: Haitians ``were forced to endure unimaginable agony so that one man -- with the aid of a small cadre of killers for hire, corrupt officials and cynical, avaricious foreign advocates -- could attempt to build his own personal empire on the ruins of what was once a country.''
Aristide, a former Roman Catholic priest, came to power in a December 1990 presidential election generally regarded as the only free and democratic election in Haiti's 200 years of independence. He won by more than some two-thirds of the popular vote by an electorate that hailed him as a savior.
Deibert deftly chronicles Aristide's transformation from a perceived messiah to a master manipulator as he moved to consolidate his control over the hemisphere's poorest country. Even before he was overthrown by a military coup seven months after taking office on Feb. 7, 1991, there were clear signs he was not the savior that many had hoped. Among the early signals was his call to supporters for street violence to thwart an attempted coup by Roger LaFontant, an old-line backer of former dictator Francois ''Papa Doc'' Duvalier.
Those answering the call destroyed the historic cathedral in downtown Port-au-Prince and burned scores of people in old tires.
After his ouster in September 1991, Aristide went to Venezuela, where he soon wore out his welcome, spending the remainder of his three-year exile in Washington. The Clinton administration restored him to power in the fall of 1994, following an invasion by 20,000 troops. Bitter that the United States would not accept the extension of his term for the three years spent in exile, he increasingly took on the mantle of his authoritarian and corrupt predecessors.
He was elected president again in November 2000, a largely sham vote boycotted by the opposition, in which he ran against six unknown candidates. Anti-Aristide sentiment grew, though, and on Feb. 29, 2004, in a plane provided by the United States, he left for eventual exile in South Africa, where he remains. But after his departure, and as duplicitous as ever, Aristide claimed he had been ``kidnapped.''
Don Bohning is a former Herald Latin America editor and author of the recently published book: The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba 1959-1965.
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