The Little Nation That Tests Our Loyalty to Democracy : Haiti: America’s vision of the country is too heavily reliant on a Haitian military we trained. What about the rising Haitian middle class?

How has Haiti, a Maryland-sized nation of 6 million mostly poor black people suddenly become the focus of so much U.S. attention and the prize in a struggle to define U.S. power in the post-Cold War era? The simple answer is that Haiti is our punishment for not paying enough attention to the Third World and for not thinking harder about the ways we will use U.S. power in a world where our enemies are not so clearly defined.

A more complete answer is that American ignorance about Haiti has gotten us where we are. Haiti was the first Third World country, the first independent black nation at a time when every major country held blacks as slaves. The way the United States deals with Haiti tends to reflect our prevailing attitudes toward poorer, weaker and darker countries.

Haitian volunteers fought at the side of American revolutionaries against the British, but the United States refused to recognize Haiti until the Civil War. The American occupation of Haiti, from 1919-34, brought infrastructure, but also a racism that prevented real understanding. “Dear me,” said U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, “think of it, niggers speaking French.”

Today, the conventional interpretation of events in Haiti suggests a continuation of a 200-year struggle between the military and the moneyed mulatto elite, on one side, and the impoverished black masses, represented by Jean-Bertrand Aristide, on the other. Invariably, reporters do their stand-ups from the most wretched sections of the Port-au-Prince markets, implying a hopelessness and intractability that make Haiti barely worthy of American attention, and absolutely no place to risk American lives.

The media’s ignorance is only exceeded by that of government officials. The quote that sticks in my mind comes from an unnamed U.S. diplomat, conceding that the deal to return Aristide to power had fallen apart. He said negotiators had hoped the Haitians’ “awe of foreigners” would see the agreement through.

Haitians may be accused of a great deal, but awe of foreigners is not one of them. Haiti earned its independence from France in the 18th Century by slaughtering thousands of white colonists, then fighting off the best troops of France, England and Spain. It is the only Caribbean nation once occupied by the United States that refuses to play baseball.

There is more to Haiti than poverty and oppression. Yes, Haiti is the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. But it is also a country of vibrant culture, language and music. Haitian art is world-renown. Haitian music sways dancers and influences musicians from Paris to New York to Kinshasa. Haitian poetry sings of romance, palm trees and moonlight.

Haiti is also a country that undergoes constant change. Long ago, Haiti’s elite stopped being defined simply by color. Many dark-skinned Haitians belong to the wealthy classes that reporters glibly define as “mulatto.” And all the elite are not uniformly opposed to Aristide. Leading Haiti businessmen attended an economic summit with Aristide in Miami last summer and many concluded they could work with his government.

An important change absent from most news reports and the foreign-policy debates is the emergence of a new Haitian middle class. These are the people who benefited from the Duvalier dictatorship, first in civil-service jobs, then from opportunities to send their children to universities at home and in the United States, and from employment in the hundreds of factories that blossomed in the industrial parks around Port-au-Prince in the 1970s. Another new factor is the pressure applied by half a million Haitian-Americans, who have lobbied members of the Congressional Black Caucus to press for the restoration of democracy in Haiti.

Aristide’s election represented a revolutionary change not just because he was democratically elected, but in the involvement of millions who braved bullets and intimidation to vote. Many of them were from this new salaried class, people who saw some of their hard-earned income siphoned off in taxes by corrupt governments and wondered out loud what was being done with their money.

But Aristide’s victory frightened the elite and the army because it signaled the end of the traditional arrangement that reserved politics for the black elite and the army, and business for the merchant class. Aristide is the son of peasant farmers and is a priest, groups traditionally expected to stay out of politics. His capacity to mobilize millions indicated the emergence of a new power bloc that Haiti’s traditional institutions were not prepared to handle.

U.S. policy toward Haiti has traditionally been led by the Pentagon, not the State Department. Promising Haitian officers were invited to Panama or Fort Benning for training. When a crisis erupted, Washington’s best links were with these military leaders. U.S. negotiators tugged on the old links to bring a reluctant Gen. Raoul Cedras to the negotiations brokered by the United Nations. Even when the settlement was breaking down, U.S. military leaders insisted all was on track, because of assurances from “their” boys. Ultimately, money won out over old-school ties.

Since the overthrow of Aristide, those military leaders have formed a lucrative cartel to divide up legal and illegal businesses. They are not eager to surrender their new power for some vague principle of democracy. But U.S. officials seem unwilling to confront the corruption of their old allies and to find potential new players in the Haitian equation. Their vision of Haiti is out-of-date, and the solutions they propose fail to reflect the new reality.

If the embargo is rigorously enforced, the coup leaders may feel enough pressure from the hard-pressed populace to reach a settlement and allow Aristide’s return. But if the soldiers are protected from prosecution by an amnesty, who will break their stranglehold on the economy?

The United States must decide whether active support for democracy will be a key element of U.S. power in the post-Soviet era. If so, how far will it go to support the restoration of elected government, not just in Haiti, but in other small countries struggling to emerge from oppression? Can America stand for anything if the first sad pictures of grieving parents cause us to pull our troops from the slightest danger?

It’s not surprising that Haiti has forced us to confront these questions. In fact, considering the long, tangled relationship of our two countries, we might almost have expected it. There’s a certain poetic justice in seeing Sen. Jesse Helms, never known as an advocate of democracy in the Third World, worry about the “psychopathic” mind of Aristide.