Aristide: The People's Candidate -- 1990 interview
October 24-30, 1990
-- Operation Lavalas Barricades Road Against Macoutes
Haïti-Progrès Staff
Translated by Greg DunkelEven while arousing an immense enthusiasm among the people, Aristide's candidacy has raised certain questions among militants in popular organizations. In an interview with us October 22, 1990, Fr. Aristide once again clarified the reasons for his decision to run and at the same time to unleash "Operation Lavalas."
(This interview was translated from Creole by Haïti-Progrès.)
Haïti-Progrès -- October 18 you announced you were a people's candidate and said you had entered this battle to advance the struggle. That is why you had decided to be a candidate. Could you clear up what this means for you?
Fr. Aristide -- For me, who never had the foolish desire to be a candidate and who is now the people's candidate, this means:
1. To accept putting the people's will over mine because if mine determined what was happening, I would not be the people's candidate today. So I recognize that I have been given a lesson in democracy.
2. For someone like me who has the Christian faith and who in particular usually celebrated mass at St. Jean Bosco, who had lived the spirit of the sacrifice into which Jesus entered for the deliverance of mankind, today I confront a sacrifice not only of my faith but of my entire body. It is not me who will deliver the country, it is the entire country which will deliver itself. But just as we have arrived at a historic rendezvous, where this sacrifice is necessary, I have consented to make it.
Besides, I've already been dead since Freycineau, since September 111; since then, life has only given me a reprieve, a gift. Thus, why shouldn't I give the rest of my life?
3. I accept the reasoning of those who refuse to participate in elections; it is reasoning which is correct in essence because elections are still an arm used by the ruling classes to maintain the same class relations, consequently the same system of exploitation. This type of elections is fixed, the great majority of people are excluded from them and if the impression of change is given, it is only cosmetic change, makeup, without the essence being changed.
So, this candidacy is in a context where I say to myself: Asking for Lafontant's2 arrest, for security, demanding the rope of justice be placed around the criminals' necks so we can participate in the elections didn't start today. But it is for this very reason that the enemy put Lafontant in play and let him hold his arrogant convention at Vertaillis3 so that we would be still angrier and we would not participate in the elections. They want the world to believe that we, the Haitian people, participated in elections in order to have the Macoutes return. Before such unparalleled impertinence, the Haitian people must be aware that they must play their ace of trump, since the Macoutes have played theirs. Avril4 was their previous ace and now Lafontant has replaced him.
So our strategy is not to promote their elections but to convert the elections into a flood, an "Operation Lavalas" to barricade the road against the Macoutes. Leaving from there, organization is indispensable, it is necessary that the revolutionary energy released by this social phenomenon be converted into organizational energy so that we can keep the reins of the movement in hand. So what we want -- a country where people will be truly human -- can emerge.
Haïti-Progrès -- Some popular organizations, which are still your allies, feel that you have betrayed them by announcing your participation in the elections. Have you changed strategies or have your tactics been modified to arrive at your initial aim: a thoroughly complete change in Haiti?
Fr. Aristide -- It is my tactics that have changed. If I had changed my line or camp, if I had abandoned the camp of the people, I would merit a good "Père Lebrun".5 I said it in Brooklyn and I say it again: The day I betray the people, give me a "Père Lebrun." If I had set up as a candidate and played the same game as those competing for the conquest of power, that would have been extremely grave. However, if beyond such an emotional reaction, we make a calm analysis, we will realize that the best way to achieve the goal we set ourselves is to employ this tactic.
This reaction is normal and besides I should say that it is not easy to take such a decision. It is only after many reflections and much analysis, after many prayers and much listening that I opted for such a tactic. I do not think that it is in contradiction with the objective I pursue.
The popular organizations have the right to criticize it, and severe and rigorous critiques are needed in the struggle. In addition, militants going in the same direction are not obliged to see things in the same way. Revolutionary tolerance must be practiced. Even when the tactic is seen as not contrary to the aim sought, we can still disapprove of certain ways of acting but no one can pretend to own the truth. In the struggle we also discover that the masses often are not necessarily at the same level of analysis. If we go too quickly, we leave them behind. Even if our analysis is correct in connection with reality, it possibly might not be the lever for mobilization that we need. We think that this tactic constitutes a lever for mobilization that makes the flood grow. Now our task is to enrich it, to complete it in a fashion so that the enemy does not benefit from it but we can harvest the fruits of our work.
Haïti-Progrès -- Fr. Aristide, in the course of the press conference that you held, you said that this "flood" could be realized through elections or outside of them. Can you make what you mean by that clear to us?
Fr. Aristide -- We are responsible people, we do not see a way to take power in elections while forgetting about all the rest. If we increase our resources and our capacity to augment the flood, we will be stronger in quantity and quality. And if we see at a certain time the enemy wants to create a blood bath at any price, the same authority which permits us to orient the Lavalas will permit us to remain outside the elections and to reject them entirely. Pitou nou rejete l nèt si nou pa kapab pran l nèt [we prefer to reject them completely if we cannot win them completely].
But if we can decisively carry the elections, then we will do it. We thus need to simply follow the evolution of things while re-enforcing our organization at the same time to be in control of the situation. It is a battle; we can't foresee exactly when we will have to stand up -- a minute and a second after noon or 3 am. That depends on the way we control things on the ground.
Haïti-Progrès -- You have said you are the candidate of the people. What do you mean by this since we know that it is the FNCD, the MOP and the PPNH which have chosen Fr. Aristide as their candidate?6
Fr. Aristide -- By claiming their choice, these parties reflect other calls which come to me from nearly everywhere; they are conscious that what is the most important aspect of these calls is not a candidate running for their profit but a symbolic candidate which permits them to arrive at a united strategy in order to let loose the "flood," so that each candidate does not drag a small group behind him, so that they do not drink the soup of elections with a fork of division. Because in that case, the Macoutes will mark "twenty points" on us [that is, will win, trans.]
In this sense, I am conscious that it is the FNCD on a legal level which has made me a candidate, assumed the responsibility of choosing me and supplied very significant cooperation so that it wasn't just other organizations as well as parties that were in agreement. In that case, I would have had their consent but that would not have given me legal status. From then on, it was a konbit tèt ansanm, a united work cooperative that is in the process of forming the better to unleash the "flood." In that sense, I believe that is really a fine proof of openness, of understanding, of listening in the movement. We need to continue organizing ourselves in this fashion so gradually we recover the large united current which cut across Feb. 7.7 We must not let it disperse if we are to get a better future for Haiti.
Haïti-Progrès -- In the popular sector, some still say that the bourgeoisie collapsed Feb. 7, that they got us Namphy and Ertha Trouillot and that today, since you have been endorsed by the Convergence Démocratique and some other sectors, that now they have launched you.8 What do you think of such an opinion?
Fr. Aristide -- In the first place, I respect an opinion which is not mine. That does not mean that I share it, no more than I reject it a priori. On the basis of this respect, I adopt an attitude of dialog and I try to do it without pre-judgment, since I am perhaps not entirely correct. Each of us can have part of the truth and dialog can permit us to complete it. So I don't have a problem with people who talk like that. I would display an ideological arrogance if I were to accept rejecting an opinion without respecting those who are disposed to dialog with me. That would be the attitude of a dictator.
However, if your mother is sick and fading, before you ask yourself if you are going to give her some ginger or cinnamon, you look around to try to get her back. After that, you search for a doctor, then what medicine to give her. Things are done in stages and this is also true in the revolutionary struggle. We are currently in the first stage; Haiti, like a mother, is fading into the arms of Lafontant. This tactic has served to wake up her children to see how to deal with the question. This way of seeing things is in contradiction with certain militants for whom it is a form of demobilization. Perhaps they did not understand or hear what I said, or perhaps I did not sufficiently dialog with them, if indeed our divergences appear as total opposition. I believe that in a struggle, different approaches are necessary. From the moment when we have the same vision and are moving in the same sense, that must open into the capacity to respect certain differences which are not in essence contradictory.
At the same time, I believe in God and I cannot put my faith aside to make politics, replace politics by my faith or my faith by politics; one meets the other. When the prophet Isaiah preached in the city of Jerusalem on social corruption and he saw that the people were not paying attention to his words, he ripped off his pants, shorts and shirt, then totally nude, he marched through the city of Jerusalem. People then wondered what was happening and he said: Oh! You see me now, and he explained the causes of his act. I do not say this to neglect the political dimensions to the profit of the prophetic dimension. But I also believe that plain politics can benefit at a certain moment from prophecy, because reality is complex, dynamic, total. Reality is not just politics without other aspects. That is the dialectic of a struggle and the tactic chosen can raise diverse interpretations. I think that when each of us is conscious of only having a part of the truth but not the entire truth -- even if we were to have it entirely -- we would live in a very interesting country.
Haïti-Progrès -- If I understand it, it is a tactical alliance which is necessary to block the Macoutes who are surging with Roger Lafontant?
Fr. Aristide -- Exactly. In Nicaragua, at a certain moment, there was a tactical alliance. Before the final battle, Commandant "Zero" was in a similar position. After July '79, he found himself in another. What was the social origin of Commandant "Zero" and so many others? No matter, it is to recognize the moment when history gives us the conjuncture for a tactical alliance. Today, this alliance must be converted into an "Operation Lavalas" to block the return of Duvalierism, which would be negative for those who are very revolutionary, those who are a little less revolutionary and those who are not revolutionary but desire change. And so the tactical alliance is positive for all.
Haïti-Progrès, October 24-30, 1990Notes
1) At Freycineau, just south of St. Marc, Father Aristide barely escaped death in a roadway ambush by Macoutes in August 1987. On Sept. 11, 1988, Macoutes attacked his church, St. Jean Bosco, in the capital's La Saline slum while he was giving mass. Twelve were killed and 77 wounded. Held at gun point, Aristide barely escaped again.
2) Roger Lafontant, former head of the Tonton Macoutes and a minister during the Duvalier dictatorship, was a candidate in the 1990 presidential elections.
3) Duvalierists of all stripes, vowing to regain political power in Haiti, held a convention in October 1990 at the Vertaillis Night Club.
4) Gen. Prosper Avril, the eminence grise of the Duvalier regime, came to power in a military coup in September 1988 but popular uprisings forced him to flee Haiti in March 1990.
5) Père Lebrun was a colorful tire salesman in the capital, whose name become synonymous with "necklacing." After the Macoutes committed some terrible act, like the Sept. 11 St. Jean Bosco massacre, angry crowds counterattacked by killing one of the perpetrators and setting his body ablaze with flaming tires.
6) Front National pour le Changement et la Démocratie, Mouvement pour l'Organisation du Pays, Parti Populaire National Haitien were three bourgeois, populist parties.
7) Feb. 7, 1986, was the date Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier left for France on a U.S. Air Force plane.
8) Gen. Henri Namphy was head of the military government after Duvalier; Ertha Pascal-Trouillot was provisional president from March 1990 to February 1991. The Convergence Démocratique in 1990, which is not the same group as the Washington-backed opposition front with the same name founded in 2000, was a grouping of liberal bourgeois parties and groups.
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