Aristide’s Exile in Jamaica Marked by Silence -- Thus Far

Once again, he is in exile, surrounded by a handful of true believers: his wife, his young daughters, his brother-in-law, a bodyguard.

Less than a month ago, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was president of Haiti. Then he stepped on a plane, placing his fate in the hands of others, traveling to Africa and now back to the Caribbean. When allowed to speak, he first denounced the United States for staging a “coup d’etat,” then said the Americans had tricked him into leaving.

But since March 15, when he arrived in Jamaica, he has been, in effect, silenced. His government-appointed spokesman, Huntley Medley, says the 50-year-old is engaged in contemplative acts, such as writing.

“He is taking time to spend with his family,” Medley said.

Aristide is living near this central Jamaican town in a sprawling compound that once belonged to a mining magnate. His two-story, hilltop home -- known to locals as “the Big House” -- overlooks mountains and cow pastures. Haiti is 150 miles away. One might imagine the sea breeze swaying the palms in the frontyard is the same one kissing the shores near Port-au-Prince.

Depending on one’s point of view, the nearsighted man gazing from the windows of the Big House is either a villainous trickster or the only legitimate leader of Haiti.

People who have known Aristide since the days he was a slum priest fighting Haitian military rule say his talents as an orator, his unwillingness to compromise and an unshakable belief in his own messianic role in Haitian history -- qualities on display throughout his failed presidency -- are better suited to the role of “exiled statesman” than they are to being a ruler.

“In Creole they say, lap fe desod, which means ‘he makes trouble,’ ” said one longtime Haiti observer. “That’s what he’s gone to Jamaica to do. To stir things up. He is a man who shines in the opposition.”

Once upon a time, he urged his supporters to resist the violence of the Tontons Macoutes thugs of Haiti’s Duvalier family dictatorship with machetes and any other weapon at hand. He named his movement Lavalas, Creole for “flash flood,” an image meant to evoke the sweeping away of the old, corrupt regime.

Now, back in Haiti, the ranks of his followers are dwindling.

“He was a great leader of his country,” the Haiti observer said, “but he allowed his ambition to destroy him.”

Those who still believe that Aristide came to free Haiti’s poor are waiting to hear from the man who rose from deepest poverty to become the country’s first democratically elected leader.

But since stepping on the runway at Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston last week, Aristide’s only statements have been written declarations issued by the government information office.

“I want to assure the people of Jamaica that I would never use the kind hospitality provided by my brothers and sisters here in Jamaica to do anything that is political or that could hinder the process of peace in my beloved country of Haiti,” Aristide said in a statement released March 17 by the Jamaican government after he met privately with Prime Minister P.J. Patterson.

On the same day, interim Haitian Prime Minister Gerard Latortue was forming a mostly nonpartisan Cabinet that excluded members of Aristide’s Lavalas movement. But Aristide said nothing about that or any other recent development in Haiti. “Clearly, pressure is being applied,” said Clinton Hutton, a professor of government at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. “I don’t see any reason for him not to have a major press conference.”

Aristide’s statements before arriving in Jamaica succeeded in convincing many here, and elsewhere in the Caribbean, that his ouster was illegitimate and that the U.S. had played a dark, behind-the-scenes role.

“His departure [from Haiti] took place under a cloud of uncertainty,” Hutton said. “There was no indication he was willing to leave.”

In several interviews since he fled Haiti on Feb. 29, Aristide has said he did not know where a U.S. security detail was taking him on his last day in the country -- it turned out that they were headed for the airport. Once there, he found that he was surrounded by U.S. Marines and an aircraft was waiting. He said he felt he had no choice but to leave.

“I didn’t resign,” Aristide told Amy Goodman of the “Democracy Now” program on Pacifica Radio, which operates five U.S. stations, including KPFK-FM (90.7) in Los Angeles. “What some people call ‘resignation’ is a new coup d’etat.... They broke the constitutional order by using force to have me out of the country.”

Aristide said he was unaware his destination would be the Central African Republic until shortly before the plane landed there. In an interview with CNN, he accused that country of holding him hostage. Longtime Aristide detractors such as James Morrell of the Haiti Democracy Project were not impressed.

“Victimization comes to him as naturally as breathing,” said Morrell, who once worked alongside Aristide in his successful bid to return to office in 1994 after the military staged a coup three years earlier. “He no longer has any role to play in a democratic Haiti.”

Morrell and other former Aristide supporters founded the Haiti Democracy Project in an effort to rescue the democratic values they say were perverted under Aristide’s rule.

Although human rights violations during Aristide’s rule never rose to the bloodbath levels of the Duvalier era, he still intimidated opponents with armed gangs and isolated those who openly criticized him, Morrell and others said. Eventually, a new flash flood of opposition drove him from power.

Morrell called Aristide’s adventures since leaving Haiti “a circus and a sideshow.”

But to others in the Caribbean, they are the peregrinations of a leader who has been betrayed by the United States and other powers.

“Aristide was very clear that what happened in Haiti was a modern kidnapping,” said Goodman, who interviewed Aristide on the flight from Africa to Jamaica. “He was angry and determined, very straightforward and never parsed his words.”

Upon arrival in Kingston, the Jamaican capital, Goodman watched Aristide be “whisked off” by helicopter, without a word to the cluster of reporters gathered near the terminal.

In a sense, one former ally said, Aristide the exile finds himself in a position that would have been familiar to Aristide the president.

“Haitian politics is always about getting the foreigner to do what you want,” the former ally said. “Now he’s dependent on the Jamaicans and anyone else he can persuade to help him.”

In the days after Aristide left Haiti, Jamaica’s Patterson and other leaders of the 15-member Caribbean Community called his fall a “dangerous precedent for democratically elected governments everywhere” and called for an investigation. The U.S. ambassador to Jamaica, Sue M. Cobb, upset many here when she said Patterson’s position on Haiti was “unsophisticated.”

Many observers here noted that by allowing Aristide to return to the Caribbean, Patterson could be seen as standing up to the U.S. -- something that could help him locally as he struggles with the opposition over budget deficits and other issues.

At the same time, however, Patterson is under pressure from the United States and other countries to prevent Aristide from using Jamaica as a platform to return to power. On Monday, Patterson welcomed an offer from Nigeria to grant Aristide refuge. South Africa is another possible destination. Medley said Aristide was considering his options.

For the time being, however, Aristide remains in Jamaica -- very close to Haiti, but silent.

The only pictures of him to reach the outside world last week came via the Jamaican government: They show Aristide and his wife sitting on a couch with their two young daughters, who had been taken to New York to keep them safe as their father’s government fell.