The Misterio Tremendum

I had originally thought about polishing this post up a bit more and sending it around to a bunch of different blogs to see if anyone would give it the time of day. Then I realized I am not much of a journalist. So, if anyone reading this post is a journalist, I am telling you that there is almost nothing written on Wyclef Jean’s shady politics when it comes to Haiti. Like NOTHING. I think many people would find the below information interesting. I link to just about all of my sources, so they can be checked against my word. I have at least a passing interest in Haiti and its political situation and always felt like Wyclef’s view on his home country was misinformed at best. Enjoy.

Whoa, this blog just got political. That’s OK though…

There has been much said about the global food crisis of late. Haiti is a country, the poorest in the Western hemisphere and just 2 hours of the coast of Florida, that imports most of its food. It has been hit particularly hard by the increase in the cost of food production, storage, and transportation. See this NYT video for a little background.

In February of 2004 the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide, was taken from power in a coup that was funded and orchestrated by a very small and wealthy segment of Haitian society and American non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These American NGOs (namely the International Republican Institute, or IRI) received millions of dollars in funding to bolster anti-Aristide opposition groups that in the end spearheaded the violent coup of Aristide in 2004. This NYT article does the issue a lot of justice and this video that went with it is also pretty revealing.

Why would the US be behind such skulduggery? Well, for one, Aristide, though democratically elected, was a self-professed liberation theologian. Lib who? Liberation Theology is a religious tradition that, in its most recent incarnation, was birthed out of Latin American Catholicism during the second half of the 20th century. It is a theology that sees Christ as a kind of liberator of the oppressed; that Christ came so save all, but especially the poor. This strain of thought also takes into account the idea of structural inequality, or ways that a particular society is stacked against an oppressed group living within it. For instance, signs like “[Insert ethnic group here] need not apply” in the storefronts of American businesses during the beginning of the 20th century is a blatent example of structural inequality against [insert same ethnic group here]. Or the US government turning a blind eye to illegal immigration when US-based companies are in need of some cheap farm labor, but not allowing those laborers to move up economically by restricting their possession of things like driver’s licenses that would facilitate better paying, less physically demanding work… Basically it tries to get to the underlying cause of why someone is impoverished; asking questions like what social forces are holding them back?

On a very base level, one can think of liberation theologians as Christians who use Marxist-inspired ways of looking at social inequality to inform their faith. Aristide saw the US (and other nations like Canada and France) and its trade policy toward Haiti as stacked toward Haitian and American business interests and against the Haitian poor. The US government saw the guy as a socialist and didn’t want a potential second Castro 2 hours off the coast of Florida. Its understandable that the US wouldn’t want this guy in power… BUT, he was democratically elected by a large majority of the Haitian population. When you are poor, you want a social spender in power. When you are rich, you don’t. Haiti is a country of poor people and they deserve the government that they elect, not the government that the superpower just to their northwest wants for them.

Which brings us to Wyclef Jean. I must say that, as a musician, I love Clef. I still listen to the Carnival all the time and it definitely falls in my top 15 hip-hop album list. In fact, the most fun I ever had at a concert was a Wyclef show at the Mann Music Center in Philly back in high school. It was one of these MTV2-sponsored $2 concerts that were being put on at the time. So basically for $2 we got to see the Beatnuts, Bleack Eyed Peas (pre-Fergie, I think), and, our main draw, Wyclef. The guy was dancing in the crowd, rapping in French, freestyling… The show was absolutely crazy. Ok, enough reminiscing. I like his music. No personal beef here.

What is strange about Clef is his politics. Musically he puts forward this kind of populist, 3rd world inspired, global pop star image in his music, but his take on Haiti just before the coup in late February of 2004 was decidedly conservative and bourgeoisie. As gun-toting militias, financed by Haitian elites and organized/emboldened by republican-backed American NGOs, were storming the presidential palace of the progressively-minded Aristide, Wyclef was right in line with the neo-conservative view that was held by some of the higher-ups in the Bush administration. As is show in this article from MTV.com, Wyclef states:

“The country’s in an uproar, it’s not safe. But for the safety of the country and to stop the violence, it has to be a situation where [Aristide] steps down”…. “If the president steps down, there will be some form of negotiation with the opposition force.”… “I don’t consider those people rebels,”… “It’s people standing up for their rights. It’s not like these people just appeared out of nowhere and said, ‘Let’s cause some trouble.’ I think it’s just built up frustration, anger, hunger, depression.”

Actually, if we take a look at that aforementioned NY Times article, these “rebels” were opposition groups backed by Haitian elites and American NGOs that were financed by extremely conservative elements of the Bush administration. They were not simply “people standing up for their rights”, and they had nothing to do with some kind of democratic uprising against an unpopular leader. In fact, Aristide was incredibly popular among the poor majority of Haitians, a group that was, unfortunately for Haitian democracy, not nearly as financed or organized as the US-funded, anti-Aristide opposition groups.

But Wyclef’s comments and political messages didn’t just stop there. More recently he took part in a kind of pseudo-documentary on the lead up to the ouster of Aristide called “Ghosts of Citi Soleil“. Honestly, this “documentary” is the biggest hack job I have ever seen and makes Aristide out be be some kind of gangster that is in league with these bands of roving bandits that simply do drugs, shoot guns, and kidnap people. The craziest part of this film is the “impromptu” phone calls that one of these bandits (”Tupac”) makes to Wyclef. Somehow (again, mind you, during this DOCUMENTARY) these guys not only have Wyclef’s phone number, but Wyclef also picks up (waa?), AND there is a camera at Wyclef’s residence to film his end of this whole sequence! I didn’t know that documentaries worked like this… For a really good review of this right-wing political garbage take a look at Haiti Action’s review of the film. If James Frey had to disown his “biography”, A Million Little Pieces, over a handful of embellishments, I am hard pressed to understand how this film could be billed as a documentary.

So, what’s up with Clef? Why the anti-populist sentiment when it comes to his own country? And more importantly, cui bono? Who benefits?

Well, I am sure there is much to be unearthed on this topic, as there has been little hard research into the subject of Wyclef’s rightward leanings when it comes to Haitian politics. What is out there on the web (substantiated? unsubstantiated? I don’t know) is that Wyclef has this uncle, Raymond Joseph, who is a co-publisher of the Haiti Observateur, a right-wing newspaper that for years has railed against the popular politics of Aristide and his political party, Lavalas. After Aristide’s ouster in 2004, Raymond Joseph became “the highest-ranking official abroad representing the U.S.-installed government in Haiti.” So, Wyclef’s uncle was a huge beneficiary of the overthrow of the democratically elected Aristide. Like I said, I assume there is much more on this topic that has yet to be published, but after some cursory internet searches I haven’t seen too much that has been published online. Any aspiring journalists out there that want to make Wyclef angry with them?

To hear the other side the Wyclef/Pro-Bush-Administration stance I will point the reader (is anyone still reading?) to an article written by Dr. Paul Farmer just after the coup in Haiti entitled, Who Removed Aristide? I blogged about Farmer a few weeks ago, as he does some brilliant health-care work overseas. (He is a medical doctor who studied at Harvard, getting his MD and his PhD there, and spends much of his time running a hospital in the Haitian countryside.) The Farmer article goes a whole bunch more in depth than I could dream of, but lays out really well the history of nefarious US involvement in Haiti and why he believes that the US had a direct and indirect hand in the 2004 coup of Jean Bertrand Aristide, some of which is mirrored above.

So, honestly, what is the deal with Wyclef? Was this a genuine democratic movement that overthrew the government of the democratically elected Aristide, as Wyclef and the US government would have us believe, or, as the New York Times and Dr. Farmer propose, was this “rebellion” put together and supported by Haitian elites and US taxpayer dollars funneled through the US government to American NGOs operating in Haiti (like the International Republican Institute) to get rid of a progressive social reformer that they saw as a threat to their influence in the region?

Discuss!