23688: (reply) Simidor re 23666: Esser on Aristide and Dessalines (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Daniel Simidor <karioka9@mail.arczip.com>

 In a country where workers earn a dollar for a day’s work, what do you
 call a man who owns a million-dollar estate, sits on the board of several
 banks, and controls several radios and TV stations?  Aristide was to
 Haiti what Rupert Murdoch is to England and the US: a media mogul and an
 oligarch.  But no one is more deaf and blind than the man who doesn’t
 want to listen!

 The following is a recent translation from an editorial in the Creole
 newsletter “Konba” (April 2004).

 "Lavalas ... used drugs, corruption, theft, and the practice of extortion
 against street merchants, in order to confuse and demoralize the masses
 as a whole. While doing everything to crush the grassroots movement and
 individual initiatives in the informal economy, in order to deny the
 masses any control over the politics of the country, Lavalas and its
 leader were on a permanent honeymoon with organizations and members of
 the bourgeoisie. Aristide never really threatened the wheeling and
 dealings of the bourgeoisie in a serious way. Relations between Lavalas
 and the bourgeois sector were more of a kissing game, even if their teeth
 would clash sometimes. The most important thing to understand is that
 Aristide held the allegiance of the most retrograde wing of the
 bourgeoisie, due to his association with key players like the Coles,
 Edouard Baussan, Jean Marie Vorbes, Frantz Charlot and many others…."
 (Konba, No. 7, April 1-15, 2004)

 Other sources mention the Mevs family and Haiti's leading bank, the
 Unibank, launched just a decade ago. The point here is that Aristide had
 become one of the wealthiest bourgeois elements ripping off the country!

 Louis Joseph Janvier, a “noirist” ideologue and a sycophant to boot was
 the first, in his “Les Constitutions d’Haiti,” to extrapolate from
 Dessalines’ “Vérification des titres de propriétés” that the Emperor
 wanted or had begun to implement a “land to the tiller” policy.
 President Salomon had launched a modest land reform that granted three to
 five carreau allotments to 1,700 peasant families between 1883 and 1885.
 Dr. Janvier, the perfect sycophant and noirist, would not allow any
 antecedent, other than the Emperor himself, to the “Divine Salomon” and
 his “most perfect legislation.”  So he reshaped the past to his own
 purpose.

 It is a matter of record, however, that the plantation system was at the
 core of Dessalines’ economic policy, and that he took extreme measures to
 keep the former slaves from leaving the plantations.  You cannot have it
 both ways.  With the exception of Patrick Bellegarde-Smith who did not
 say what Esser is attributing to him, the “experts” on Esser’s list are
 people who claim more than they know.  Ben Dupuy is parroting Louis
 Joseph Janvier, and Ramsey Clark is parroting Ben Dupuy.  This episode
 brings to mind an essay question that would come back every other year in
 the baccalaureate exams under the Duvaliers: “Dr. Francois Duvalier has
 said that Dessalines was the first Haitian socialist.  Do you agree?”
 Some folks have apparently learned their lesson well.

 Lastly, the name Simidor is a name of honor, with a history behind it,
 that I bear with pride.  I have done some service ... to this community,
 look it up.  When I opted 20 years ago for a name of my choosing, it was
 mainly to shield a few vulnerable relatives at home from my activism
 abroad, not because of any “grands mangeurs” or dishonor in my family or
 in my own past.  There is nothing to “expose,” other than my critics’ own
 shallowness and bad faith.

 Stick to the issue at hand – that used to be one of the rules on this
 list.