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Unresolved
Transgenerational Trauma in Haitian Society:
A
perspective on potential reconciliation and conflict resolution in Haiti
By
Kevin
Pina
December 12, 2010
Traumatic experience
plays a significant role in the development of patterns of violence. The link
between a traumatic past and violence has been found in individuals who have
been severely abused, as well as in groups that have suffered trauma
collectively, such as systematic abuse and humiliation over an extended period.
- Pumla
Gobodo-Madikizela (2010)
Each passing episode of political unrest and
uncertainty in Haiti, with its corresponding spasms of violent upheaval,
punctuates the barriers to lasting peace and reconciliation that persist in
Haitian society. This chapter contends that the UN and the international
community have contributed towards perpetuating cycles of violence in Haiti
through their failure to acknowledge the effects of massive trauma resulting
from violent oppression during the period of 2004-2006. It further contends
this represents one of the major roadblocks for creating a process of
much needed healing and reconciliation in Haiti.
Much of the
political division and the greatest potential for mass violence that exists in
Haitian society today centers on the circumstances and legitimacy of Aristide’s
ouster in 2004 and its aftermath. On one side is the view that his departure
was voluntary resulting from a popular revolt against his government and that
most of those killed during 2004-2006 were gangsters and bandits. The other
view is that Aristide and his government were the targets of a destabilization
campaign by foreign powers that cultivated and funded an opposition against
them and that the president’s departure was involuntary. Regardless, what is
clear is that most of the documented cases of human rights abuses committed
during this period were the result of an extreme campaign of political
repression targeting those who resisted the government takeover.
The response of the
international community, particularly the governments of the US, France, Canada
and Brazil, has been to deny any evidence of human rights abuses committed as a
result of Aristide’s ouster. Instead they have pursued a course of legitimizing
the transition, and by extension the dismemberment of organizations supporting
the Lavalas political movement and the Fanmi Lavalas political party, through a
series of elections. These elections have legitimized the political actors that
supported the coup of 2004 even as Haiti’s current Conseil Électoral
Provisoire (CEP), or Provisional Election Council, has banned the participation
of Lavalas in the electoral process on the basis of what are seemingly trivial
technicalities.
This policy has
served to drive a deeper wedge between the political forces that supported
Aristide’s ouster and the majority of Haiti’s underclass, and hence the
majority of the population, that supported Lavalas. This has led to further
polarization with supporters of Lavalas more openly perceiving the UN
peacekeeping mission in Haiti, known by its acronym MINUSTAH, as a biased
political actor and occupying military force imposing a political solution at
the behest of the international community.
Perceptions of the
role of the international community and MINUSTAH in Haiti are further
complicated by persistent accusations of their complicity in supporting the
Haitian National Police (PNH) between 2004-2006 as they were documented
committing human rights violations. These negative perceptions are further
compounded by equally persistent allegations of the UN committing massacres in
the community of Cite Soleil, long considered a bastion of support for Lavalas,
between 2005 and 2006 under pressure from Haiti’s economic elite.
The ouster of
Aristide and the Fanmi Lavalas party in Haiti on February 29, 2004 ushered in
two years of rule by an interim regime under the protection of United Nations
military and police forces. Lavalas means “flashflood” and its leaders, organizations
and communities loudly opposed Aristide’s ouster thus representing a threat to
the consolidation and stability of the Interim Government of Haiti (IGH). For
this reason Lavalas, widely recognized as the most popular political movement
in Haiti of the past decade, came under constant attack by the Haitian National
Police (PNH) and UN security forces. Between 2004-2006 thousands of supporters
of the Lavalas political movement and the Fanmi Lavalas political party were
killed, jailed and forced into exile in what has been described as a systematic
campaign of political extermination (Donais, 2005).
If we place current
manifestations of large-scale violence in Haiti in this historical context,
most recently over electoral fraud and the growing cholera epidemic reportedly
brought into the country by UN troops, a cyclical pattern emerges that can be
said to be symptomatic of larger unresolved factors in Haitian society. These
factors include what renowned psychiatrist and trauma specialist Dr. Vamik Volkan
(2006) has identified as transgenerational trauma resulting from periods of
intense violence and oppression resembling what occurred in Haiti between
1991-1994 and again during 2004-2006. Volkan’s description of the specific form
and context of societal conflict from which transgenerational trauma emerges is
applicable to these two relatively recent periods in Haitian history. Volkan (2006) describes this form and context
as,
When a massive
trauma results from wars, war-like conditions or from existing devastating
political systems, there is an identifiable enemy or oppressing group that has
deliberately inflicted suffering and helplessness on its victims.
Conditions in Haiti
during 1991-1994 and 2004-2006 closely resemble Volkan’s description of the context
of massive trauma where there exists an
“identifiable enemy or oppressing group that has deliberately inflicted
suffering and helplessness.” The effects
of this massive trauma on a specific group, as in the example of Lavalas in
Haiti, results in what Volkan (2006) identifies as transgenerational trauma,
Such trauma affects the victimized
society in ways that are different from those of natural or accidental
disasters or unexpected loss of a leader. Sharing shame, humiliation,
dehumanization and guilt, inability to be assertive, and identification with
the oppressor complicate large-group mourning and this complication in turn
becomes the main reason for the transgenerational transmission of trauma.
According to Staub, E. et al (2005), ending the cycle of violence that results from such conditions is
dependent upon a process of healing and reconciliation,
For reconciliation to take place, perpetrators and members of
the perpetrator group who may not have engaged in violence also need to heal.
Often perpetrators have endured victimization or other traumatic experiences as
part of the cycle of violence. Their unhealed wounds contribute to their
actions. Sometimes past trauma has been fixed and maintained in collective
memory (Bar–Tal, 2002; Staub&Bar–Tal, 2003); it has become a chosen trauma
that continuously shapes group psychology and behavior. (Volkan, 1997, 1998)
From the
countryside to the largest cities of Cap Haitien, Les Caye, and the capital of
Port au Prince, the political violence of 2004-2006 inflicted lasting
individual and collective trauma. For survivors in Haiti old enough to remember
back then, it was reminiscent of the political persecution and violence
directed against them by a brutal military regime from 1991-1994. During the
military regime of Cedras and Francois, poor communities sympathetic to Lavalas
and within the physical province of the capital such as Cite Soleil, Bel Air,
Solino, and Martissant, bore the brunt of the repression. The Haitian National
Police (PNH) largely repeated this pattern of attack during 2004-2006 even as
the force was being supervised, armed and trained through the UN and funded by
the international community.
Due to this key
role played by the UN military and police in Haiti between 2004-2006, the approach
of the UN Security Council and the international community has largely been to
deny and avoid any discussion of victimization and transgenerational trauma
that may have resulted. Taken as a whole, their approach can be viewed as a
policy of expediency and avoidance in Haiti that places more emphasis on moving
forward than a serious program to address past injustice and the underlying
causes of cyclical political violence in Haitian society.
The most visible
symbol of the unresolved and yet unhealed wounds from the period of 2004-2006
remains the exiled leader of the Fanmi Lavalas party, former president
Jean-Bertrand Aristide. A nationalist leader and former liberation theology
priest whose popularity in Haiti is still feared by the international community,
Aristide is currently forced to live in exile in the Republic of South
Africa. In the collective memory of the
Lavalas movement, Aristide’s exile is a tangible and constant reminder of their
victimization between 2004-2006 and the lack of reconciliation achieved by the
United Nations and the international community since they took control of Haiti
in 2004.
To fully grasp the impact and
scope of the violent oppression faced by Aristide supporters and the mass
trauma it generated in Haiti between 2004-2006, it’s important to understand
the historical context of the Lavalas movement.1
The Haitian people have experienced the joy and
pain of two cycles of election victories by Haiti’s popular movement that were
followed in both instances by sustained periods of massive human rights abuses
and violence. The first of these cycles began when the popular movement of the
poor effectively defeated the forces of the status quo by electing Aristide
president on December 16, 1990. This was in turn answered with a brutal
military coup launched on Sept. 30, 1991 and a repressive regime that clung to
power through violence until the US was forced to intervene in 1994.
The conscious and collective power of millions
of Haitians in the popular movement, later evolving into Lavalas, began after
the fall of the corrupt and brutal regime of the Duvalier family in 1986
(Smarth, 1997). The departure of the regime unleashed the fury and anger of a
brutalized and impoverished majority of Haitians that took the form of what was
called the dechoukaj, or uprooting (Constable,
1992).
This phenomenon was manifested throughout Haiti as a spontaneous violent
rebellion where the impoverished population attacked anyone associated with the
Duvalier dictatorship and its dreaded paramilitary attaches known as the Ton
Ton Macoutes.
In the wake of the dechoukaj, Aristide and the
Christian based communities called Ti Legliz or the Little Church, would rise
to prominence and their political strength would ultimately capture the highest
office in the land on behalf of the poor majority. That majority elected
Aristide president on December 16, 1990 with 67% of the vote altering Haiti’s
political landscape once and forever. This sense of collective power on behalf
of the poor majority represented the first major step in the formation of the
large-group identity of the Lavalas movement (Aristide, 1987).
Lavalas or the Flashflood represented a literal
and symbolic flood of the poor meant to wash the country clean of Duvalierist
corruption and the sway of a complicit and predatory wealthy elite. In many
ways and for a great many Haitians it became a non-violent and reasonable
alternative, through elections, to the spontaneous violence of dechoukaj. As
Aristide himself once said to me in July 1991, “The poor of Lavalas are the
subjects of our social revolution. On December 16, 1990, it was they who took
power in Haiti.”
An elderly Haitian man I interviewed in front of
Haiti’s presidential palace in July 1991 best illustrates the mass
psychological change this represented. He summed it up best, “When I was a
young man we didn’t even dare to look at the place for fear something bad would
happen to us.” He stooped over turning his head towards the street and away
from the building. “We would walk by like this,” he continued miming fear while
forming blinders with his hands to cover his eyes. Suddenly the old man snapped
his body upright and raised his hands towards the sky while focusing his gaze
back on the building, “We are not afraid anymore. This place belongs to all of
us now.” The importance of this psychological transformation from fear to
empowerment in solidifying the large-group identity of the poor in Haiti cannot
be overemphasized. Bayard de Volo (2006) describes what she calls the
non-material benefits of such transformation,
First, the benefits are accrued in-process, as actors officially
participate for some larger social goal. Second, they involve more sustained
transformations in mental and emotional condition than is suggested by
consumptive benefits. Third, they are relational, requiring that other actors
recognize and help sustain such benefits. Finally, they can be central to
actors' own understanding of why they continue to participate within a social
movement organization.
The popular recollection of this period within
the Lavalas movement is that for the first time Haiti’s poor felt they had a
government in office that belonged to them even as the wealthy few began to
plot with certain elements of the army, the police and the parliament to destroy
it.
The military coup
of 1991 and the aftermath of the controversial ouster of president
Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004 have yielded the same results; prolonged periods
of massive political violence in Haiti.
In the first case the Haitian military, with the backing of Haiti’s
wealthy elite, waged a stubborn campaign to violently eliminate resistance to
their regime following the coup of 1991. The same can be said of the regime of
Gerard Latortue following Aristide’s ouster in 2004 despite it having not only
the backing of the wealthy elite but the added support of the international
community and the United Nations. In both instances, thousands were killed,
jailed and forced into exile. In describing the first coup, renowned physician
and current UN Deputy Envoy to Haiti Paul Farmer (2004) wrote,
Declassified records now make it clear that the
CIA and other US groups helped to create and fund a paramilitary group called
FRAPH, which rose to prominence after a military coup that ousted Aristide in
September 1991. Thousands of civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands
fled overseas or across the border into the Dominican Republic.
The Haitian masses and the Lavalas movement
would struggle for many years to overcome the losses of the 1991 coup and would
finally regain their collective power by re-electing Aristide president again
on Nov. 26, 2000. The forces of
opposition would strike a second time by ousting Aristide in yet another coup
four years later on Feb. 29, 2004. Although the context and circumstances of
these two cycles of elections and corresponding coups in Haiti are markedly
different, the brutal nature of the end result makes them all too similar.
While the coup of 1991 was marked by a violent and immediate show of force by
the Haitian military, the violence perpetrated against Lavalas and initiated by
Aristide’s second ouster in 2004, escalated gradually as deep-seeded resistance
to the takeover became more apparent.
On February 14,
2004 an armed paramilitary force invaded Haiti from the neighboring Dominican
Republic to force the ouster of the democratically elected president of
Jean-Bertrand Aristide from office. This invasion immediately followed the
dwindling of protests by the “opposition” in Haiti demanding Aristide’s
resignation.
Aristide’s ouster coincided
with the destruction and disintegration of the Haitian police as it was
constituted and organized under his government.
A UN authorized force called the Multinational Interim Force or MIF,
comprised of U.S. Marines, French Foreign Legion and Canadian Special Forces,
exercised military authority in Haiti following Aristide’s departure.
Simultaneously, the governments
of George W. Bush, Jacques Chirac and Paul Martin, respectively of the U.S.,
France and Canada, supported extra-constitutional procedures to install an
unelected Interim Government of Haiti (IGH) led by former World Bank official
and Florida television talk-show host, Gerard Latortue. The IGH was comprised
primarily of individuals and elements that exhibited the greatest antagonism
towards Aristide and the popular movement of the poor responsible for his
election.
The 15-nation Caribbean Community (Caricom) refused to recognize the
new government and demanded a UN inquiry into the events and circumstances of
Aristide’s ouster. They were soon joined by the 51 nations in the African Union that
fully supported both measures. On April 5, 2004 then Secretary of State Colin Powell
delivered the Bush administration’s immediate rejection stating at a press conference
in Haiti, “I don't think that any purpose would be served by such an inquiry."
The MIF collaborated closely
with the IGH to create a new Haitian police force comprised of members of the
former brutal military and Haitian death squads that had invaded from the
neighboring Dominican Republic to force Aristide from office. Despite control of Haiti’s streets by the MIF
and the new police force, thousands began taking to the streets to demonstrate
against what they described as yet another coup in Haiti and to call for the
return of Aristide. The demonstrations were met with violence on the part of
the police backed by the MIF that resulted in the killing of unarmed
demonstrators and brutal military assaults on entire communities. The extreme
was realized when members of the community of Bel Air in the capital of Port au
Prince accused the U.S. Marines of executing a campaign of wholesale slaughter
against their community in an early morning raid on March 12, 2004.
The four months following
Aristide’s ouster, especially October and November 2004, marked the first wave
of violent repression against Haitians that supported Aristide and the Lavalas
movement. A great many were killed, jailed or forced into exile while the lives
of thousands more were disrupted by an atmosphere of uncertainty and terror.
This was the human rights situation in Haiti when a United Nations peacekeeping
mission replaced the MIF in June 2004.
Known as the United Nations
Stabilization Mission in Haiti, or most commonly by its acronym MINUSTAH, the
new force was led by the armies of Brazil, Argentina and Chile. They would come to play a similar role as the
MIF in as much as they turned a blind eye to the extra-judicial slaughter met
upon the population by the new Haitian police force. In response community
members from the largest slums, that were the backbone of continuing massive
demonstrations against the coup demanding Aristide’s return, began to take up
arms and lead armed resistance against police incursions. They were immediately
and opportunistically labeled everything from gangsters to bandits and at one
point were said to be emulating Iraqi resistance that was waging war against
U.S. troops in Iraq. Most of theses unfounded accusations came from partisan
human rights organizations and Aristide opponents in the IGH and most were
repeated uncritically in the international press.
All of this culminates in two events
in which the United Nation’s forces, known by its acronym MINUSTAH, are accused
by community members and local human rights organizations of having committed
massacres of unarmed civilians. The first incident was July 6, 2005 where a
U.N. military incursion is said to have resulted in between 20-25 deaths with
scores more wounded in the seaside shantytown of Cite Soleil. The second occurred on December 22, 2006 under similar circumstance
and with equally deadly results.
Psychologist Dan Bar-On (2005)
writes the concept of reconciliation is “used extensively when conflict transformation is
discussed” where,
Its
introduction is usually based on the assumption that after a political
settlement has been reached top-down, another bottom-up process should take
place in which any unresolved issues of the conflict will be handled as well.
It is assumed that without such a bottom-up complementary process, there is a
real danger that the top down conflict settlement will not last and a new
violent outbreak might follow.
The approach of the
United Nations, and therefore most of internationally funded non-governmental
organizations since 2004, has been to focus on community violence reduction
programs from the top-down rather than reconciliation strategies from the
bottom-up in Haiti. They justify avoiding open community dialogue of political
violence against the Lavalas movement citing a heavily polarized and partisan
political culture. The programs funded by the international community,
including those that use the term reconciliation in describing their
objectives, tend to focus on violence reduction through greater community
involvement in civic education campaigns tied to reform of the Haitian National
Police (PNH) and the courts. The problem is that these are the same
institutions and authority that were responsible for violent repression and the
jailing of Lavalas leaders and sympathizers between 2004-2006. When
international policy makers and NGO programs have addressed violence during
that period, they focus almost exclusively on the symptom of “gang related
violence” rather than a frank discourse of the causes of the massive political
violence remembered by communities throughout Haiti.
Violence
intervention and reduction programs, sponsored by the United Nations and the
international community, largely ignore the need for any public discourse of
the role of transgenerational trauma in Haitian society. They have thus far
been unwilling to acknowledge its impact because to address it would invite an
inconvenient dialogue with communities in Haiti about Lavalas, Aristide and
their role in Haitian sovereign affairs, particularly between 2004-2006. This
is understandable given that most NGOs when asked will say that 2004 was the
year Aristide had to flee the country because he became corrupt and lost the
support of the Haitian people. If you ask a poor Haitian about 2004 a great
many of them will tell you this was the year of the coup against Aristide and
Lavalas.
The Merriam-Webster
Dictionary (2010) defines a coup as, “a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics; especially: the violent overthrow or alteration
of an existing government by a small group.”
Aristide’s overthrow in 2004, regardless of the debate over it’s causes
and origins, had the net effect of forcing from office more that 7000 officials
that were elected in May 2000 (Maguire, 2002). That number does not include
thousands more political appointees in federal and municipal levels of
government who were also driven out of their positions under threat of violence
and forced into hiding after February 29, 2004. This marked the beginning of a
two-year period of intense demonization and criminalization of the Lavalas
movement that was used to justify state-sanctioned violence against them often
with the collaboration of UN military forces in Haiti.
As Kenyan novelist and
theorist Ngugi wa
Thiong'o (2009) eloquently pointed out in an article written for the UN
Chronicle,
It is well known that both a person who
perpetrates trauma and one who experiences it can often shut the trauma in a
psychic tomb, acting as if it never happened. The recipient does not mourn the
loss and the perpetrator does not acknowledge the crime, for you cannot mourn a
loss or acknowledge a crime you deny. This can occur at a community level,
where horror committed to a group is kept in a collective psychic tomb, its
reception and perpetration, passed on in silence, which of course means that
there is no real closure and the wound festers inside to haunt the future.
Until a mechanism
is created to address transgenerational trauma resulting from violent
oppression in Haiti, including acknowledgement of the role played by UN
military and police forces between 2004-2006, it is not of question of if but
when Haitians will once again erupt into violent political conflict.
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1 The documentation of violent repression from that period is
largely derived from my documentary video Haiti: We Must Kill the
Bandits and a large archive of unused raw footage of events and
incidents from 2004-2006. All of the
footage I shot served as source material for regular radio reports I filed from
Haiti on Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio heard on KPFA in Berkeley, CA. In turn,
I would use the same information to analyze and write about the situation in
Haiti for the cyberzine Black Commentator and articles for the Haiti
Information Project (HIP) published on HaitiAction.net.
