By: Jeb Sprague - North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)

Four years after the second ouster of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, three books exploring the 2004 coup have appeared, ranging widely in their interpretations of events. Aristide rose to power in 1991 with a popular movement called Lavalas (the Flood), formed after the collapse of Jean-Claude Duvalier’s dictatorship in the late 1980s. As president, Aristide worked closely with Lavalas, instituting programs to promote literacy, improve health care, and include the country’s poor in national politics. But after eight months in office, Haiti’s military overthrew him. A military junta ruled until 1994, when the Clinton administration intervened. Unable to ignore Aristide’s legitimacy, globalizing elites—from the United States and elsewhere— worked to manage a political transitiontransition from a military to a civilian government, a transition in line with the neoliberal doctrines of the day.

Once returned to office, Aristide was able to serve out only his short remaining time. Although he was forced to drop the state tariffs that offered some protection for Haitian agriculture, he was able to disband Haiti’s military and refuse the privatization program pressed upon his administration by international financial institutions. Soon out of office, Aristide returned to office in 2000 after a successful presidential campaign, this time with a more militant and grassroots movement called Fanmi Lavalas (Lavalas Family). The movement, which promoted the political mobilization of Haiti’s urban and rural poor, became the bane of much of the country’s elite and middle class. Many of the professionals and elites who had once seen Aristide and the original Lavalas movement as a vehicle for their own political longevity now saw in its new incarnation a class threat to be opposed at all costs. In Aristide’s second term, his Fanmi Lavalas government clashed with both national and transnational elites seeking to regain power over the Haitian state. He was finally overthrown again, in February 2004, but in a much more complex and covert manner.

This book review was published in the November-December 2008 issue of NACLA. Read the entire PDF.