Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment

Abstract

Once the most lucrative European colony in the Caribbean, Haiti has become one of the most divided and impoverished countries in the world. In the late 1980s, a remarkable popular mobilization known as Lavalas, or "the flood," sought to liberate the island from decades of US-backed dictatorial rule. After winning a landslide election victory, in 1991 the Lavalas government, led by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was overthrown by a bloody military coup. "Damming the Flood" analyzes how and why Aristide's enemies in Haiti, the US and France instigated a second coup in 2004 to remove Aristide and Lavalas for good.The elaborate international campaign to contain, discredit and then overthrow Lavalas at the start of the twenty-first century was perhaps the most successful act of imperial sabotage since the end of the Cold War. Its execution and its impact provide important lessons for those interested in today's political struggles in Latin America and the rest of the post-colonial world.

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