1989, June – fall: (The $60 Million Aid Package Tied to Conditions Avril Cannot Meet, Delegate Fauntroy Shepherds the Legislation, Haiti Descends into the Ab…

1989, June – fall: (The $60 Million Aid Package Tied to Conditions Avril Cannot Meet, Delegate Fauntroy Shepherds the Legislation, Haiti Descends into the Abyss, Bush Declines the $10 Million Food Program, Ambassador Bourik Chaje Arrives Speaking Creole Proverbs, Avril Kept Waiting for Weeks Before Presenting Credentials, the October March on the Palace, Evans Paul and Others Beaten and Displayed on Television in Bloodied Shirts, Déjoie Goes into Hiding and Declares Duvalier III, and One Economist’s Verdict — In Most Countries the Rich Subsidize the Poor but Here It’s the Other Way Around): The Avril government took little solace from the passage of an additional sixty million dollars in U.S. aid in June. Shepherded through Congress by Delegate Walter Fauntroy, the legislation tied aid to specific steps such as full restoration of the 1987 constitution and effective reform of the army — one observer remarked that if General Avril wanted the money, he was going to have to put up with Uncle Sam looking over his shoulder. Even had he wanted to, Avril at this point did not have the maneuvering room to pull off such reforms. As the fall progressed, Haiti descended ever deeper into the abyss of anarchy. In Washington, President Bush declined to extend the ten-million-dollar food program that Avril had complained about in March. Washington also dispatched an energetic new Creole-speaking ambassador, Alvin Adams. Ambassador Adams, whose command of Creole included a way with proverbs, drew General Avril’s ire even before his credentials were presented — upon his arrival, he commented to the press that the need for democracy in Haiti was very urgent because Bourik chaje pa kanpe, a heavily-laden donkey cannot wait. Port-au-Prince promptly nicknamed him bourik chaje, and the ambassador was kept waiting for some weeks before being allowed to present his credentials. In October, looking ahead to the second anniversary of the 1987 election massacre, Louis Déjoie, Evans Paul, and two other opposition leaders called for civil disobedience and a mass march on the palace. Paul and the two others were severely beaten and then, in bloodied shirts and bandages, displayed on national television. Déjoie and a number of other opposition leaders promptly went into hiding — this, said Déjoie, is the beginning of Duvalier III. Observing the almost complete collapse of the Haitian economy, one economist commented that in most countries the rich subsidize the poor, but here it was the other way around. The economist’s verdict — an inversion of the social contract so complete that the poorest nation in the hemisphere was structured to transfer wealth upward — described not merely a Duvalierist aberration but the enduring logic of the Haitian state since its foundation: a polity in which sovereignty had never been exercised on behalf of the sovereign people, where every institution from the customs house to the army to the church existed to extract from the many for the benefit of the few, and where the periodic revolutions that punctuated Haitian history changed the personnel of extraction without ever altering its direction.