Jean-Bertrand Aristide

President of Haiti (1991, 1994–96, 2001–4)

• Born: July 15, 1953
• Place of Birth: Port Salut, Haiti

After years of autocratic rule under the Duvaliers, the populist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide won the Haitian presidency by a democratic vote. A major goal as president was to aid the poor. His tenure in office included being overthrown in a coup in 1991. He returned in 1994 to resume office after US military intervention and won a second term in 2000 but was ousted in yet another coup in 2004.

Early Life

Orphaned as an infant, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was raised by the Salesian order of the Roman Catholic Church, whose mission was to minister to the general needs of the poor, especially orphaned children. He was educated in parochial schools and a seminary before attending the University of Haiti to earn a degree in psychology.

Aristide was four years old when Haiti came under the corrupt dictatorship of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, who repressed opposition through the Tonton Macoutes paramilitary force. Duvalier’s nineteen-year-old son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, continued the presidential dynasty after his father’s death in 1971. Under the Duvaliers, Haiti became the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, while a small number of leading families and the Duvaliers amassed great wealth. Demonstrations against Duvalier began in earnest in October 1985, and they did not stop until February 1986, when Duvalier fled to exile in Paris.

Aristide, as a program director at the Catholic radio station Radio Cacique and as a newspaper editorialist, established a reputation as a critic of Baby Doc’s government and an advocate of changes to benefit Haiti’s poor. His powerful oratory in sermons urged the poor to take responsibility for instituting needed changes. His words also earned Aristide death threats from the Tonton Macoutes. For Aristide, to continue to live in Haiti would mean not living at all.

From 1979 to 1985, Aristide studied theology abroad in Israel, Egypt, and Great Britain, ultimately earning a master of theology degree from the University of Montreal in Canada. During this period, he returned to Haiti only to receive his ordination as a priest of the Salesian order in 1982. In Haiti in 1985, he became the parish priest at St. Jean Bosco, one of the poorest parishes in the capital, Port-au-Prince. He used his polished oratory to help drive Baby Doc from power in 1986.

Life’s Work

Aristide’s continued emphasis that liberation theology priests work with the poor to correct continuing abuses and inequalities angered the military caretaker regimes of generals Prosper Avril and Henri Namphy, who succeeded Baby Doc. Aristide survived several assassination attempts, the worst being an attack in 1988 by about one hundred armed Tonton Macoutes on the congregation at St. Jean Bosco Church during Mass. Aristide barely escaped with his life, but thirteen of the congregation lay dead and seventy were badly wounded. The church itself was burned to the ground. To prevent further attacks, Aristide was expelled from the Salesian order and sent to Rome. Mass demonstrations at Port-au-Prince, however, blocked any means of sending Aristide abroad. He remained at Port-au-Prince ministering to the needs of street children and opening medical clinics and trade schools.

For the next four years, Haiti was ruled by a number of ineffective provisional governments, mostly as regimes by military “caretakers.” During this period, a constitution for a democratic parliamentary government was drafted. To prevent a recurrence of the Duvalier lifetime presidency, the Haitian constitution barred any president from serving two consecutive terms in office. That this provision was adopted in 1987 by referendum, abolished in 1988 following a military coup, and readopted in 1990 when civilian governance was restored underlined the precarious nature of the transition into a democratic government. Finally, in December 1990, following concerted pressure by the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the United States, Haiti’s first real democratic election was held under the watchful eyes of many international observers.

A few months before the elections, a mass popular movement taking the name of the Lavalas (which means “flood” in Haitian Creole) convinced Aristide to run for president against the frontrunner, a respected career diplomat named Marc Bazin, several other candidates supported by leading families, and the head of the Tonton Macoutes. Having Aristide on the presidential ticket would send a message about the needs of the poor. Indeed, Aristide’s six weeks of campaign oratory was permeated with this theme. Few understood that because the poor would be voting in this free and monitored election, all bets should have been on an Aristide victory. The hastily formed Lavalas Party did not realize, however, that Aristide’s popularity would not translate into a sweep of their party’s candidates for seats in the newly formed parliament. Aristide won more than two-thirds of the vote for president, promising major reforms to uplift the poor people of Haiti. Few could doubt his integrity and sincerity, but many could doubt his ability to survive for long.

Upon taking office, Aristide pledged that he would cleanse the civil service of corrupt officials and Duvalier loyalists, fight against drug trafficking, and demolish all remaining vestiges of the Tonton Macoutes. His dedication was underscored when he pledged to give his entire presidential salary to charity. Clearly, such a person could not be trusted by the former power structure. On September 30, 1991, with Aristide in New York attending a meeting of the United Nations (UN), a military coup led by General Raoul Cédras took control of the country. Hundreds of Aristide’s supporters were killed in the streets while protesting the military’s actions, and several thousand more were killed in the subsequent two years of military rule. More than forty thousand Haitians became the new “boat people,” refugees fleeing oppression in their native land to seek asylum. Most would be returned by the United States to an uncertain fate in Haiti. Aristide, meanwhile, fled to Venezuela.

Despite embargoes on Haitian exports and on key imports such as oil, the military regime remained in power. As repression accelerated, the UN Security Council passed a resolution to restore the constitutionally elected government. Talks between Cédras and Aristide, brokered by the United Nations and the administration of US president Bill Clinton, failed to produce results, however. Under UN mandate in mid-September 1994, more than twenty thousand US troops prepared to launch Operation Restore Democracy. At the same time, former US president Jimmy Carter was dispatched to Haiti with a small group of negotiators to offer the military junta a last-minute deal. With US troops airborne, the Cédras military regime agreed to step down and permit Aristide to serve the remaining twenty-seven months of his presidential term.

Aristide returned to Haiti on October 15, 1994, to finish his term, which ended in February 1996. One of his first acts was to dismantle the troublesome Haitian military and replace it with a civilian police force. As promised during his exile, nine state-owned enterprises were privatized and controls over customs duties and interest rates were lifted, all to ease concerns of affluent Haitians. To please his mass support base, the minimum wage was doubled. When parliamentary elections were held in June 1995, Aristide’s Lavalas Party won a sweeping victory. When presidential elections were held on December 17, 1995, Aristide’s vice president, René Préval, won 88 percent of the vote. Thus, Haiti’s first democratic transition took place.

On November 26, 2000, with his Fanmi Lavalas, or Lavalas Family Party (formed in 1996 after Aristide broke his relationship with then vice president Préval) firmly in control of parliament, Aristide registered as a candidate for Haiti’s next presidential election. However, claiming major irregularities in the unmonitored parliamentary elections, opposition parties boycotted the presidential elections. Although receiving more than 90 percent of the vote, voter turnout was low. For the next four years, both the parliament and the president were viewed by a significant number of Haitians as illegitimate.

Although a coup against Aristide failed in July 2001, opposition to his rule mounted and violence once again became a daily part of Haitian political life. Aristide’s own supporters used violence against opponents, including students at the state university. During his second term, police brutality, silencing of dissenters and journalists, and drug trafficking intensified.

In 2003, on the two hundredth anniversary of the death of Haitian independence leader Toussaint Louverture, Aristide called for over $21.68 billion in reparations from France, Haiti's former colonizer. French diplomats distrusted Aristide, whom they considered corrupt, and feared reparations for Haiti would set a dangerous financial precedent for their country. Soon thereafter—according to former French ambassador to Haiti, Thierry Burkard—the governments of France and the US engineered Aristide's ouster. By early 2004, with a large rebel force moving toward Port-au-Prince, Aristide was forced to resign.

Aristide and his wife, Mildred (whom he had married in 1996), left Haiti for the Central African Republic in an American plane escorted by US military and diplomatic personnel. They later spent time in Jamaica and settled in South Africa. There, Aristide completed a doctoral degree at the University of South Africa in comparative languages.

Devastation from the 2010 earthquake in Haiti inspired the Aristides' homecoming in March 2011, came on the heels of the return of Baby Doc Duvalier and just before the 2011 presidential election was held. Despite concerns that this would destabilize the country, Aristide's return passed without incident, and apart from criticizing what he saw as profit-motivated reconstruction efforts, he spent the next couple of years in near-total seclusion. In May 2013, he reemerged to testify before a Port-au-Prince court regarding the 2000 shooting death of a journalist and to tour the capital's shantytowns. His outing attracted throngs of thousands of supporters who demonstrated against the government. He spoke out briefly thereafter about the ongoing hunger in the country, criticized the education policies under President Michel Martelly, and expressed hope that his Lavalas Party would return to power in future parliamentary elections; Martelly had been a staunch opponent of his since the early 1990s.

The following year, Aristide was placed under house arrest while the government investigated him for potential corruption. His top associates were accused of having murdered a journalist on Aristide's behalf, although not on his orders.

Martelly's term ended in 2016, without a clear successor. Aristide emerged from his relative seclusion that year to campaign on behalf of Fanmi Lavalas candidate Maryse Narcisse; based on those stump speeches and other public statements, some believed Aristide intended to install Narcisse as a puppet, as the presidential term limit set by the Haitian constitution bars Aristide himself from holding that office again. However, Jovenel Moïse eventually defeated Narcisse, among twenty-odd other candidates, to become president.

In March 2017, Aristide was called to testify in a money-laundering investigation. Afterward, the motorcade in which he was traveling was shot upon, damaging the vehicle but injuring no one. His supporters and legal team characterized the incident as an assassination attempt involving uniformed officers, while police said they were attempting to disperse political demonstrators.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, in June 2021, Aristide contracted the virus and was granted a humanitarian visa to be treated in Cuba, allowing him to leave the country for the first time since 2011. The following month, on July 7, President Moïse was assassinated, leaving Prime Minister Ariel Henry in charge and sending Haiti into further political turmoil. The next year, hundreds of Aristide supporters demonstrated, beseeching him to step in and guide the transition of power, which he did not do. Aristide remained in the political background as Henry postponed elections until 2025 and then resigned under pressure from armed gangs in April 2024.

Impact

Democracy, stability, and sustained reform to alleviate poverty continue to be elusive in Haiti. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the lifelong populist, advocate for the poor, and crusading former priest, has shown that democratic elections in Haiti, on occasion, can take place. Many of the political parties and leading politicians of the 2010s and 2020s traced their ideological roots to Aristide and his Lavalas movement.

Aristide also had a lasting impact on the issue of slavery reparations, raising awareness of a little-discussed but enormously impactful history of injustice. In 2003, he called upon France to pay restitution for centuries of slavery, a practice that ended in all French colonies in 1803 after a successful revolt by enslaved people in Haiti. The French government dismissed his demand.

Bibliography

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Associated Press. “Aristide Takes Major Role in Haitian Presidential Campaign.” Voice of America, 27 Sept. 2016, www.voanews.com/a/aristide-takes-major-role-in-haitian-presidential-campaign/3527614.html. Accessed 6 June 2024.‌

Aristide, Jean-Bertrand. Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization. Edited by Laura Flynn, Common Courage, 2000.

Aristide, Jean-Bertrand. “On My Return to Haiti.” The Guardian, 4 Feb. 2011, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/04/haiti-earthquake-aristide-education. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Bunyan, Rachael. “25 Years after ‘Operation Uphold Democracy,’ Experts Say the Oft-Forgotten U.S. Military Intervention Still Shapes Life in Haiti.” Time, 20 Sept. 2019, time.com/5682135/haiti-military-anniversary. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Daniel, Trenton. “Ex-Haitian Leader Criticizes Gov’t over Poverty.” San Diego Tribune, 9 May 2013, www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-ex-haitian-leader-criticizes-govt-over-poverty-2013may09-story.html. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Dupuy, Alex. Prophet and Power: Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the International Community, and Haiti. Rowman, 2006.

Griffiths, Leslie. Aristide Factor. Oxford UP, 1997.

McFadden, David, and Evens Sanon. “Haiti Police Dispute There Was Attempt on Aristide’s Life.” AP News, 22 Mar. 2017, apnews.com/general-news-7096e55fef5b44e39f9f59a31d10537f. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Méheut, Constant, Catherine Porter, Selam Gebrekidan, and Matt Apuzzo. "Demanding Reparations, and Ending Up in Exile." The New York Times, 26 May 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/americas/haiti-aristide-reparations-france.html. Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Pezzullo, Ralph. Plunging into Haiti: Clinton, Aristide, and the Defeat of Diplomacy. UP of Mississippi, 2007.

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