Diluted, twisted and hopelessly obscured by the corporate media machine, Aristide's ouster from Haiti has undoubtedly been a public relations success for those who stand to gain from it.

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HAITI: A Coup by Any Other Name

Diluted, twisted and hopelessly obscured by the corporate media machine, Aristide's ouster from Haiti has undoubtedly been a public relations success for those who stand to gain from it.

Given its timing (an annual weekend of foaming-at-the-mouth `Oscar' frenzy in the media), and the general level of ignorance regarding Haiti in the West (whether due to poor education, past propaganda, or latent racism), this well-planned operation will likely fade from the news quickly without serious public scrutiny.

The media will, as usual, narrowly focus on the immediate circumstances for a couple of weeks, and then return to the usual "blackout" treatment of daily life in Haiti -- but what happened there these past few weeks can only be considered against the tragic backdrop of a centuries-old history of foreign intervention and colonialist cynicism.

For instance, we are now being treated to images of US Marines in the streets of Port-au-Prince, but it is rarely mentioned that Marines have been a fairly frequent fixture on those streets over the course of the last century.

Indeed, the whole region has been treated as an imperial playground by the US since at least the "Spanish-American" War at the turn of the twentieth century, with armed interventions in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic. Haiti itself was brutally occupied for two decades starting in 1915, and then left in the firm grip of "a military force, a national guard, which essentially took over and ran it under one or another dictatorship since" (in the words of Noam Chomsky).

US intervention in Haiti is indeed so natural, apparently, that no one is suprised when it is announced that the Marines landed in Haiti minutes before the U.N. Security Council authorisation for deployment of an international military force ...

The object of these machinations, in Haiti as elsewhere, has always been Western access to cheap labour and resource wealth. Although rarely mentioned, this is clearly still the case: in Haiti, brand-name multinational corporations benefit from wages as low as a dime an hour and, in practice, no labour regulations.

The "threat of good example" is a secondary factor -- imperial power is easily angered by any deviation from the rules of the game.

Little wonder, then, that the republic's first democratically elected president, a populist leader who vowed to establish a minimum wage and fight the crushing poverty, has been the object of so much hate in Washington and elsewhere over the years. The link between Western profit-making and Haitian politics, however, remains conveniently obscured no matter how outragously obvious the evidence is -- the fact that one of the "opposition leaders" involved in Aristide's ouster, André Apaid, is quite simply a businessman living in the States who owns fifteen factories in Haiti and stands to profit handsomely off the backs of exploited Haitian workers is, hence, just about unmentionable.

As with their coverage of the failed coup in Venezuela (April 2002), our corporate media have played an important role in legitimising the anti-government players -- a tiny minority of the population by all accounts -- through the use of such lofty banners as "democratic opposition" or "civil society."

They have also successfully suppressed coverage of real pro-Artistide support within the population, including, most recently, a massive demonstration which took place in early February.

However, an honest look at the other "rebel leaders" and the source of their power reveals a different picture: they are, for the most part, little more than petty thugs using every means possible to destabilise what is, for all its faults, a democratically-elected government. Some of them have seedy links to the drug trade; many are quite obviously under the control of powerful outside players, and as has been amply documented, have been used to foment the previous anti-Aristide insurgency a decade ago.

There is little dispute, for instance, regarding the fact that many of the "rebels" are directly supported by the US, including Louis Jodel Chamblain (who has had ties to CIA and DIA operations in the past through his association with Emmanuel "Toto" Constant and the Pentagon-protected FRAPH death squads) and Guy Philippe, who has received US Special Forces training in the past.

Others, such as the "Group of 184", are simply the attack dogs of the Western-fostered local business elite, which has always opposed Aristide's populist rule. This kind of local 'fifth column', invariably pro-US and "pro-business", has also exerted a powerful influence on the private Haitian media, spreading anti-Aristide disinformation in cooperation with the Western press. As in Venezuela, the private media were used to float outrageous anti-government accusations, and then announce 'vindication' when these were repeated and amplified by Western news organizations, such as the Associated Press -- a sort of disinfo feedback cycle which has been very helpful in creating widespread confusion about the situation on the ground.

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As the corporate media loop closes with the arrival of Western reporters in Port-au-Prince, ready to pen stories about "crowds cheering" for the victorious "opposition", it appears that we will have to keep digging if we are to get an idea of what is really happening to Haiti and its people.

In that spirit, and in addition to the links in the text above, here are a few other interesting sources:

• Democracy Now! - "HAITI UNDER SIEGE" - Special Coverage
  Democracy Now! has devoted much of its airtime recently to bring the situation in Haiti into focus. The link above is an extensive listing of recent items on the subject.
• ZNet Haiti articles
  The online wing of Z Magazine has several interesting pieces on the coup in Haiti: look here, here, here, and an earlier article here.
• Indymedia (Global): US Forces Regime Change in Haiti, Kidnaps Aristide
  (front page feature on the global Indy site)
• AlterNet: US-Sponsored Regime Change in Haiti
  (another piece about US involvement in the events)
• Miami Herald: US Allegedly Blocked Extra Bodyguards
  (a brief article detailing one of the many ways Aristide was hindered prior to the whole operation)