[Marxism] Power Shift In Haiti Puts Rights at Risk (Class War)

[Chris Brady <cdbrady@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Power Shift In Haiti Puts Rights at Risk

By Scott Wilson, Washington Post, Sunday, March 7, 2004; Page A01

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, March 6 -
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men determined to restore the army to its traditional place at the top
of Haitian politics.

"All of these people have just come back," Gilles said.
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 a group of former military officers, traditionally the enforcement arm
of Haiti's economic elite, who have reentered politics at the head of a
rebel army.
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armed civilians from the wealthy hilltop neighborhoods of the capital
patrol slums loyal to the president in luxury sport-utility vehicles.
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the Bureau of International Lawyers who had helped Aristide's government
prosecute groundbreaking human rights cases in recent years. "What has
happened is disastrous."
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National Literacy Program
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In a country where 65 percent of the population cannot read, the program
turned elementary schools into adult literacy classrooms each afternoon.
The Cuban government designed the reading lessons broadcast daily on
community radio stations.
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Neither the classes nor the radio lessons have started again
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Now, Destin, a jolly man with close-cropped gray hair and sloping
shoulders, can read street signs.

"They could kill Aristide right now and I wouldn't forget what he has
done for us," said Destin, who voted for Aristide in 2000. "We'd never
had anything like it before. Once it started we've tried to hold onto it
tight."
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Those gangs are now demanding a commitment to Aristide's populist agenda
from whatever new government emerges from a selection process overseen
by U.S. and other diplomats.

James Petit-Frere, 22, worked as a guide and translator for the U.S.
troops in 1994. Today he is a leader of an Aristide gang in Cite Soleil,
the sun-bleached seaside slum that is the capital's largest. He rides
through the maze of dirt alleys and open sewers, lined with cinder-block
shacks, behind the wheel of a Mitsubishi pickup in a trademark straw
hat. He keeps a .45-caliber pistol tucked in his baggy pants.

In recent days, Petit-Frere said, he has been meeting with other leaders
of pro-Aristide gangs, which served as the funnel for much of the
party's patronage in the slums. He said the gangs could count on 3,000
armed men to keep the police and their paramilitary collaborators out of
Cite Soleil, indefinitely if need be.

"Aristide is gone already," Petit-Frere said. "And we don't want to die
anymore. But if the United States makes this government, it must have
someone in it who represents the poor man. If I die and everyone else
here dies, there will still be more to keep this up."
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Two years ago, Aristide angered much of the business elite by raising
the daily minimum wage from 80 cents to $1.30, a move never enshrined in
law. The change pushed Saint-Remy to raise wages for the 1,000 people
who work in his factories.

"The new government will decide what to do about this, and I'm sure they
won't lower it, but they should make their decision based on what is
really best for business?"
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? at least three members of the military junta's high command convicted
in the killings were freed by the insurgency the day Aristide fled the
country.
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