Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the Lavalas Movement in Haiti Dimmy Herard Florida International University, [email protected]

Florida International University FIU Digital Commons FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations University Graduate School 11-9-2016 The olitP ics of Democratization: Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the Lavalas Movement in Haiti Dimmy Herard Florida International University, [email protected] DOI: 10.25148/etd.FIDC001196 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd Part of the Comparative Politics Commons Recommended Citation Herard, Dimmy, "The oP litics of Democratization: Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the Lavalas Movement in Haiti" (2016). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3037. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3037 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the University Graduate School at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Miami, Florida THE POLITICS OF DEMOCRATIZATION: JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE AND THE LAVALAS MOVEMENT IN HAITI A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in POLITICAL SCIENCE by Dimmy Herard 2016 To: Dean John F. Stack, Jr. Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs This dissertation, written by Dimmy Herard, and entitled The Politics of Democratization: Jean-Bertrand Aristide and the Lavalas Movement in Haiti, having been approved in respect to style and intellectual content, is referred to you for judgment. We have read this thesis and recommend that it be approved. _______________________________________ John F. Stack, Jr. _______________________________________ Chantalle F. Verna _______________________________________ Clement Fatovic _______________________________________ Ronald W. Cox, Major Professor Date of Defense: November 9, 2016 The dissertation of Dimmy Herard is approved. _______________________________________ Dean John F. Stack, Jr. Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs ______________________________________ Andrés G. Gil Vice President for Research and Economic Development and Dean of the University Graduate School Florida International University, 2016 ii © Copyright 2016 by Dimmy Herard All rights reserved. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to, first and foremost, dedicate this dissertation to my mother, Caridad Superville Pierre, whose life story of strength and resolve in the face of hardship has taught me the value of hard work and persistence, without which I would not be the person I am today. I also wish to express all my love and gratitude to my partner in life, Hadassah St. Hubert, who has been a source of much hope during a rather turbulent time. It is her words of consistent encouragement and support that have inspired me to keep pressing forward with confidence and conviction. Sincerest thanks to the members of my dissertation committee: Dr. Ronald W. Cox, Dr. John F. Stack, Dr. Chantalle F. Verna, and Dr. Clement Fatovic, whose guidance and mentorship have been invaluable to my development as a student, as scholar, and as an educator. I could never thank them enough for their collective support throughout this entire process. I particularly owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my dissertation advisor, Dr. Cox, whose belief in me from the very beginning, to the very end, is a testament to his undying dedication to the students under his tutelage. Similarly, his advocacy for poor and working class people against the abuses of the powerful has been a central inspiration for this work. And lastly, I am grateful to the numerous individuals and institutions that over the course of many years have spurred me along this path. I want to thank Florida International University's Department of Politics and International Relations for granting me the Graduate Teaching Assistantship. My experience as a student in this department has been invaluable to my personal and professional growth, and will not be forgotten. I also offer a special note of appreciation to the department's staff, past and present, iv without whose help I would not have been able to find my way. I would like to thank the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and the Morris and Anita Broad family for supporting my archival research at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research. I am eternally grateful for the many opportunities to grow academically and professionally that were offered to me over the years working with the Extreme Events Institute's Disaster Risk Reduction Program. I offer a warm thanks to Dr. Richard S. Olson, Dr. Juan Pablo Sarmiento, Dr. Garbiela Hoberman, and Meenakshi Jerath, whose mentorship and professional guidance will not be forgotten. I wish to thank the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center, Dr. Frank Mora, Liesl Picard, and staff. I am appreciative of the numerous opportunities I have had to work with the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), the Green Family Foundation (GFF), FIU Libraries, Mireille Louis Charles, Brooke Wooldridge, Rose Nicholson, and Adam Silvia. I would also like to thank all of my graduate student peers who have shared in both times of great difficulty, but also times of great progress. Lastly, an affectionate thank you to all of my family and friends, too numerous to name, who provided me with a core of emotional support that has carried me here to this point. This dissertation is very much a product of all the people who have supported me over the years. v ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION THE POLITICS OF DEMOCRATIZATION: JEAN-BERTRAND ARISTIDE AND THE LAVALAS MOVEMENT IN HAITI by Dimmy Herard Florida International University, 2016 Miami, Florida Professor Ronald W. Cox, Major Professor As the 29-year Duvalier dictatorship ended in 1986, the emergence of Mouvement Lavalas out of the grassroots organizations of Haiti's poor majority, and election of charismatic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1990, challenged efforts by Haitian political parties and the U.S. foreign policy establishment to contain the parameters of Haiti's democratic transition. This dissertation examines the politics of Lavalas to determine whether it held a particular conception of democracy that explains the movement's antagonistic relationship with the political parties and U.S. democracy promoters. Using the qualitative methodology of process-tracing outlined in the works of Paul F. Steinberg (2004) and Tulia G. Falleti (2006), this study analyzes primary and secondary sources associated with Aristide and the grassroots organizations across the period of contested democratization from 1986 to 1991, with emphasis on four critical junctures: 1) the rule of the Conseil National du Gouvernement; 2) the government of Leslie Manigat; 3) the military regimes of Henri Namphy and Prosper Avril; and 4) Aristide's 8 months in power before being overthrown on September 29, 1991. vi This study concludes that there were systematic differences in how Lavalas pursued democracy in Haiti, as contrasted to the political parties and U.S. foreign policy- makers. Evidence indicates that while Lavalas placed emphasis on popular mobilization to challenge Haiti's legacy of authoritarianism, the political parties and U.S. democracy promoters emphasized processes of negotiation and compromise with Haiti's anti- democratic forces. Lavalas was rooted in the long historic struggle of the country's poor masses to, not simply establish procedural democracy, what noted political scientist Robert Dahl calls polyarchy, but to expand the parameters of politics to guarantee the right of all Haitians to participate directly in the process of governing, in order to share more equitably in the distribution of national resources, in what critical scholar William I. Robinson calls "popular democracy." vii TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I ............................................................................................................................................1 INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 DEMOCRAT OR DEMAGOGUE......................................................................................4 POLYARCHY OR POPULAR DEMOCRACY...............................................................15 ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTIONS OF DEMOCRACY ..................................................27 CENTRAL PROPOSITION ..............................................................................................32 METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................................34 OVERVIEW OF CHAPTERS...........................................................................................37 II.........................................................................................................................................40 DISCIPLINING HAITI’S LABORING MASSES ...........................................................40 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................40 PRESERVING THE PLANTOCRACY ...........................................................................41 THE REVOLUTION OF 1843..........................................................................................50 GRANDONS, MILATS, AND OCCUPATION...............................................................61 THE REVOLUTIONS OF '46 AND '56............................................................................72

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