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03/14/2006:

"Opening Space for Popular Movements: A Conversation with Samba Boukman and Samba Mackandal"

...SJC: We wanted to ask a few questions about the elections that just happened. A number of officials and the top electoral monitors [from the Canadian government] have described this election as being the best that Haiti has ever had. What is your response to that?

SB: As the popular movement of poor disenfranchised people known as Lavalas, we have always had only one weapon: the Democratic Weapon, which is one man, one vote.

After 200 years of independence, on Dec 16th,1990, Haiti held the first democratic election in its entire history. That is when we, the people from poor neighbourhoods, got to elect Jean Bertrand Aristide, the poor priest, as a president who could represent us. So in 1991 there was a clear threat to democracy when some countries like France, United States and Canada joined to a minority of people - who now have organized themselves as the Group 184 – who organized a coup against Aristide and all of the people of Haiti. But because of the support and help of real friends of Haiti, what we call Bon Blans, the people had a chance to get through it [when Aristide was returned to power in 1994]. So with the solidarity from the Black Caucus, the Clinton administration, and the mobilization of people here in Haiti, the people finally got the return of the president they had elected.

So the return of democracy helped relieve a lot of problems in poor neighbourhoods because it gave us access to food, health care, potable water, and different other basic needs. But that didn’t stop the international community and also a minority of the wealthy people in Haiti, from again organizing a coup [in 2004] against the needs of Haiti, causing suffering in the poor neighbourhoods, and bloodshed all over again.

As a people descended from African slaves, we believe in the democratic way. We believe that there is one way to take power, and this is by voting someone that we trust in. So after the coup of Feb 29 we have been mobilizing for a very long time, protesting in the streets peacefully, in order to call for the respect of our vote.

But we have been mobilizing also against exclusion, the social exclusion that people in poor neighbourhoods are victims of. Because when we talk about social exclusion, it’s because the wealthy people in Haiti – joined with some of the wealthy countries – they wanted to have elections but without the people of the poor neighbourhoods.

So when we say that the wealthy countries and the wealthy people in Haiti tried to stop the people in poor neighbourhoods from voting, that’s clear because we have a lot of evidence of it. They committed killings very often in the poor neighbourhoods, so that the people would move away. They didn’t have polling centers in the poor neighbourhoods so people would be discouraged from voting. They called our neighbourhoods no-man’s-lands so that people would not visit and find out about our suffering and our struggles. Many people here do not have food to eat and potable water to drink but they do have the idea that their votes should be respected. They remember September 16th 1990 and they wanted this to occur again through the new elections that just happened.

For us, the vote of February 7th 2006 has a real meaning: it is a clear answer to the coup of 2004. We wanted to show to the wealthy people, who organized themselves as the Group 184, that we will not let them exclude us from the political decision making process and that they cannot take everything for themselves. We wanted to show that we are still part of the country. It was a slap in the face of the defacto Gerard Latortue/Boniface Alexander government to have so many poor people vote.

But compare this slap in the face to the repression that we have been subjected to. We have been imprisoned just because of our political affiliation. We have been victims of different massacres, but we still decided to organize against all of this oppression.

Some people seem to think that the people who live here are all illiterate and that we don’t deserve to have the same vote as everyone else. So that is why we gave them this response – to show that we know what we need and we know how to get it. So while people may say that we are illiterate and that we don’t know anything about democracy, our vote was a clear response to tell them that we know politics better then they do. It was quite a lesson for them because it was above their understanding, what the people accomplished on Feb 7th. Even part of the international community shares the opinion of the elite here – thinking that people in poor neighbourhoods are just dumb and crazy and don’t know what to do.

So our vote on February 7th was a clear response to them too. Our vote was a vote for the release of all political prisoners. We voted for a real national reconciliation through a dialogue of the people which will allow us to move towards peace in Haiti. The vote was not the only step. We will be voting again for the senate so that Preval will be in a strong position to help the people. We will also be mobilizing for a general amnesty which will help the country get the reconciliation that it needs so that we can move against the social exclusion that is going on right now in Haiti.
haiti.nspirg.org