An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President is a book on the history of Haiti by Randall Robinson in 2008.
According to Randall Robinson, this book describes a non-standard history of Haiti. The title suggests to the reader that emphasis is put on the "Kidnapping of a President". In fact, Robinson describes a series of related events from 1492 that led up to the alleged 2004 kidnapping of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Author Randall Robinson is the founder of TransAfrica Forum an organization that was created for the improvement of relations between the United States and the continent of Africa. He is also a personal friend of Jean-Bertrand Aristide and was directly involved in the aftermath of the events surrounding the kidnapping of Aristide in 2004.
Synopsis Robinson begins by mention of the date and time of February 29, 2004 4:30 a.m., stating, "The real events of the story are very unlike those described to the general public." He knows that the conventional accounting of Aristide's removal from office is quite different than the entire history he is about to tell.
The date of December 9, 1492, is described as the most fateful of days...An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 2. Then, there were an estimated 8 million native Taínos living on the island of Hispaniola. "Within 20 years, there were fewer than 28,000."An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 3. "Thirty years on, by 1542, only 200 Taínos remained." Many chapters are also entitled with a date.
November 17, 1803, is a good example. This date represents a date that Robinson describes as significant because, "It may have been the most stunning victory won for the black world in a thousand years. There has been nothing quite like it, before or since."An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 5. Here he is describing the defeat of slavery, in Haiti, by the Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint Louverture. The ramification of these dates in Haitian history is monumental, per Robinson.
"As a direct result of what the Haitian revolutionaries did to free themselves, France lost two thirds of its world trade income."An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 6. Furthermore, the Haitian revolutionaries had a global perspective on fighting slavery. They worked with Simón Bolívar in an effort to fight slavery in South America. And they also "rolled out an unconditional welcome mat to anyone who escaped European colonialism in Africa or fled bondage from a slave plantation anywhere in the Americas, North, South, or Central."An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 7.
Meanwhile, in the United States Thomas Jefferson said, "If this combustion can be introduced among us under any veil whatever, we have to fear it."An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 8. Jefferson was fearful that the Haitian revolt might spread to slaves in America. Robinson quotes Garry Wills..."From that moment, Jefferson and the Republicans showed nothing but hostility to the new nation of Haiti." Haiti had been "the most profitable slave colony in the world" An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 9. and "slaves were routinely worked to death, starved to death, or beaten to death.".An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 10. "Of the 465,000 black slaves living in Haiti when the revolt began, 150,000 would die during the 12 and a half years of fighting for their freedom."An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. p. 11.
Frederick Douglass is quoted as stating that the Haitian harbor of Môle-Saint-Nicolas is of such strategic importance that, "It commands the windward passage which is the shipping lane between Haiti and Cuba." "The nation that can get it and hold it will be the master of the land and sea in its neighborhood."An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 50.
So for the next two hundred years, Haiti would be faced with the active hostility from the world's most powerful community of nations."An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 18. The hostilities came in the form of "military invasions, economic embargoes, gunboat blockades, reparations demands, trade barriers, diplomatic quarantines, subsidized armed subversions." When the French departed from Haiti, they demanded reparations from Haiti of roughly $21 billion (in 2004 dollars).An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 20.
Robinson states that there were a number of important precedents in the Caribbean that shed light on the U.S. position towards Haiti. They included sending U.S. troops to the Dominican Republic in the early 20th century to force the Dominican Republic to give Washington the power to collect customs revenues for the U.S. at the Dominican Republic's main shipping ports. This led to the U.S. invading the Dominican Republic in 1915 and occupying the country until the end of 1924.An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 234.
In 1937, the Dominican Republic, under the U.S. sponsored dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, massacred 35,000 Haitians. The American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull stated that, "Trujillo is one of the greatest men in Central America and in most of South America."An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 36.
In 1954 the U.S. overthrew the democratically elected government of Guatemala. This occurred, according to Robinson, because the elected president Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán raised the minimum wage to $1.08/day and he attempted moderate land reforms for the benefit of the Guatemalan people. In response to this, the U.S. accused the Guzman government of being under the influence of communism. Robinson states that the Guzmán government had no communists in their fairly elected government and that the real reason for the U.S. aggression in the area was to protect the interest of the American owned corporation, the United Fruit Company, (now called Chiquita Brands).An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 235.
Furthermore, Robinson says that the U.S. supported the Haitian dictators François Duvalier, and Jean-Claude Duvalier, Henri Namphy, Leslie Manigat, and Prosper Avril. François Duvalier killed an estimated 50,000 Haitians. He ruled from 1957 to 1971. Jean-Claude Duvalier took control after his father died in 1971 and continued the brutal dictatorship until February 1986.
Military rulers overthrew Aristide, not just once, but twice, once in 1991 and again in 2004. Both elections of Aristide were lawful democratic elections. "There were no charges of malfeasance, either adjudicated, or formally lodged against him." The elections also included the election of 7,500 other official government positions.An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 106.
Robinson describes Aristide as "a democratic president who'd been elected twice by the largest margins on record for free elections in the Americas."An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 246.
In 1991, shortly after Aristide was elected, he was overthrown by General Raoul Cédras, Colonel Roger Biambi, and Police Chief Michel François. In 1994 those dictators were forced from power and democracy was restored. Cédras had been trained by the U.S. at the School of the Americas. Later, Michel François was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department for shipping large quantities of cocaine.An Unbroken Agony, p. 207.
In 1991, the former U.S. Attorney General, Ramsey Clark formed the Investigative Commission on Haiti. The Commission reported, "200 soldiers of the U.S. Special Forces arrived in the Dominican Republic with the authorization of Dominican Republic President Hipólito Mejía, as part of the military operation to train anti-democracy Haitian rebels."An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 99. Robinson states, "Thus they were prepared to scuttle a democracy, a constitution, an elected parliament, a functioning national government, to drive one man, Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of office, out of Haiti, indeed out of the Western Hemisphere."An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 100.
He continues to say, "To this wholly illegal and anti-democratic purpose, several forces cleaved as one. The armed rebels, the United States of America, France, Canada, the Dominican Republic, and a new association of Haitian opposition splinter groups forged, funded, and counseled, by the International Republican Institute, and the Convergence Démocratique, all worked towards the overthrow of the populist Aristide. Convergence Démocratique would later morph into a subversive right wing organ known as the Group of 184 "An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 101. Haitian anti-democratic rebel leaders included Guy Philippe, Louis-Jodel Chamblain, Ernst Ravix, and Paul Arcelin.An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 102.
"U.S. military officials have confirmed that 20,000 M16 rifles were given to the Dominican Republic shortly after Aristide normalized diplomatic relations with Cuba on February 6, 1996."An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 126.
In November 2000, Aristide was re-elected for a second term with 90% of the vote.An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 145. Aristide increased the number of schools, and hospitals, and he worked for the treatment and prevention of Aids.An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, pp. 148–149. He raised Haiti's minimum wage in 2003 from $1/day to $2/day."An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p 47. He also established one standard birth certificate by eliminating the previous two-tiered race and class birth certificates."
In 2002 another anti-Aristide insurrection was led by Guy Philippe, a former police precinct captain who had been trained by the CIA ."An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 44. Bertrand had proclaimed that France owed Haiti $21 billion (valued in current dollars) for the money France extorted from Haiti following its successful slave rebellion,An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 57. and when Jean-Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped and removed from office in 2004, still 1% of the population owned 50% of the country's wealth."An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 28.
Robinson states, "Where the poor were concerned, the United States invariably opposed the efforts of the poor's own governments, whenever and wherever those governments tried in any serious or structured way to ameliorate the poverty of their own people. If there has ever been a circumstance in which the Americans did not take the side of the rich in efforts to quash even modest reforms to help the poor, I do not know of it."An Unbroken Agony, Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, p. 70.
In early February 2004, the anti-Aristide rebels launched their attack by "torching fire stations, and jails…and murdering rural police officers" Per Robinson, on February 29, 2004, Aristide was kidnapped and driven out of office.