Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti

Sprague (a doctoral candidate in sociology at the U. of California at Santa Barbara) investigates the role of paramilitary violence as a tool for repressing the popular classes of Haiti (the workers, peasants, unemployed, etc. who were not part of Haiti's elite of large landholders and big business owners), first laying out the historical context of paramilitarism in Haiti in the last quarter of the 20th century and then exploring in detail the role of paramilitary violence, particularly that of the Front pour la Liberation et la Reconstruction Nationales (FLRN) in overthrowing the popular democratic administration of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 and suppressing his Fanmi Lavalas party. The blame for the paramilitarism that brought the forces of Aristide low is placed for the most part at the feet of Haitian elites and US and French governmental forces, although the counterproductive role of the United Nations is not ignored. This is a valuable contribution to the historiography of contemporary Haiti and to the understanding of an episode that was almost uniformly distorted in the US news media that is built on interviews conducted within Haiti and US government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)