Abstract
This comprehensive study on paramilitarism throughout Haiti’s history focuses particularly on the most recent wave of paramilitaries in the twenty-first century, concerning which it provides a fascinatingly detailed case study. Such groups of armed individuals, serving as irregular forces, in league with brutal militaries or as security militias have had no legitimate or legal status in Haiti – but have had, from the outset, enormous influence in shaping its history. As Sprague shows, throughout Latin America, both local elites and foreign governments have used such groups against the people to advance their own interests. But in Haiti, dictatorial regimes such as the Duvalierist dynasty took this to a new extreme. It is a legacy the country has suffered from ever since.
Sprague’s book took some seven years to put together, involving the careful analysis of more than 11,000 documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, as well as the diplomatic cables on Haiti unveiled by Wikileaks. And he carried out extensive field research and interviews in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and in North America – sometimes at considerable personal danger. Here is the proof to hand, showing how business elites and sectors of foreign governments have used paramilitary groups to conspire against the Haitian people, a project given additional impetus in the early 2000s.
As Sprague demonstrates, the problem of paramilitarism has plagued Haiti since independence; its foundations were laid when President Boyer enacted his rural code in 1826, strengthening an emergent economic and military elite that was to govern the country until 1913 and leading eventually to the establishment of the communal section chiefs in the rural areas, who were well known for not being afraid to abuse their powers. During the US occupation of Haiti, the communal section chiefs were reorganised and tasked with squashing popular resistance against the occupation. Against such a background and continuing history did the government of François Duvalier establish the infamous Tontons macoute. The cold-war era paramilitary groups, institutionalised around the country in every city, town and rural community, instigated a regime of terror responsible for the deaths, disappearances, exile of thousands of Haitians, even as Duvalier declared himself the people’s defender. Sprague shows how the communal section chiefs and the macoutes worked hand in hand to terrorise the population; nor was Duvalier opposed by a (self-interested) international community or Haiti’s economic and military elite. Duvalier’s son, Jean Claude Duvalier, continued the politics of repression when he inherited power; he formed another paramilitary group, the brutal ‘leopards’; again, as Sprague shows, closely sponsored by the US establishment. With anti-regime sentiments always ‘bubbling under the surface’, people ultimately rose up against ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier in the mid-1980s. By the end of the 1980s, Haiti was reeling from one coup to another, with military and elite cliques fighting it out, and the offshoot of the tontons macoute, a new paramilitary group called the ‘attaches’ working alongside the country’s military, committing, between them, massacres such as those at Jean Rabel, Saint Jean Bosco, Fort-Dimanche and Ruelle Vaillant.
By 1990, the popular movement had become strong in its protests and organising, and a catholic priest, Jean Bertrand Aristide, who sought to vindicate the rights of the poor, became the first democratically elected president of Haiti. Overthrown only seven months later by the Haitian Army, he was sent into exile, and a new paramilitary group, FRAPH, came into existence to terrorise political activists in the popular neighbourhoods. Closely backed by the CIA and involved in narcotics trafficking, it had a good rapport with the Haitian army. And, again, activists were persecuted and ‘disappeared’.
After enormous popular protest and pressure on the international community, democracy was finally reinstated in Haiti. President Aristide returned to finish his term, demobilising the Haitian army – a key moment in the country’s history. Haitian life slowly began to improve. But when Aristide was re-elected for a second term, taking office in early 2001, the plotters were, as Sprague documents, already active. Even before his inauguration, ex-military, Duvalierists and businessmen were already planning in the Dominican Republic to overthrow the new government. Sprague goes into great detail about how this network functioned, its linkages and its social background. Under the watch and with the facilitation of the Dominican government, the paramilitaries attempted to overthrow the government on two occasions; in July 2001 they attacked the police academy and, in December 2001, the national palace. When these attacks failed, they employed a new strategy; cross-border attacks on the cities, one by one. Sprague documents the Haitian opposition’s secretive connections with the paramilitaries, as well as a ‘fifth column’ within the Haitian government; and the shocking, controversial connections between US, French, and Dominican intelligence agencies and the paramilitaries. On 29 February 2004, democracy was stopped once again in Haiti, when the US Bush administration used the paramilitary forays into the country to justify the forced removal of President Aristide. A de facto government was established, and, as the author shows, under US and UN supervision at least 400 criminal ex-army paramilitaries were integrated into Haiti’s national police.
Sprague takes his history close to the present, beyond the massive earthquake of 2010, visiting a paramilitary encampment on the outskirts of the capital in 2011, and interviewing the erstwhile chief of security for Jean-Claude Duvalier who had returned to the country that year. For Haiti to gain its true sovereignty, and enforce an end to the impunity of paramilitary forces, the country’s movement from below and a coalition of the Left with its friends abroad must, the author argues, work together. In revealing the sheer extent and magnitude of the task ahead, Sprague has done that goal a sterling service.