Comment
Readers are invited to address letters to the editor to NACLA, 151 W. 19th St., 9th floor, New York, N.Y. 10011. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Macoutes Not a People's Army I was...
...Macoutes Not a People's Army I was pleased to read your remark- able "Haiti: Plus Ca Change" (May/ June 1987), but also astonished to read Greg Chamberlain's statement that: "Despite its rapid degeneration into brutality and murder, the Duvalier's militia-which their ideologues des- cribed as a "people-Army duality"-- was a genuine elevation of the poor black majority for the first time in Haiti's tortured history...
...Faustin Soulouque, who reigned from 1847-1859, also had his private Zenglen...
...In this way, he not only helped usher in the concept of "Low- Intensity Conflict," but began tailor- ing major Army units to that mission...
...In addition to his work in developing light infantry and high tech light forces, Meyer was also key in fielding the Special Operations Division (SOD) and other unconventional war- fare units...
...Finally, the "sociological shift" engineered by "Papa Doc" Duvalier was only designed to create a black "bureaucratic aristocracy" alongside the traditional mulatto oligarchy...
...Andr6 Charlier Jamaica, NY Greg Chamberlain responds: Perhaps I exaggerated...
...Neither the Zenglen nor the Macoutes could be compared to a people's army such as Nicaragua's popular militia or Haiti's Cacos dur- ing the U.S...
...The mulatto aristoc- racy has only marginally suffered, and some early Macoute commanders (Lucien Chauvet, Jean and Harry Tassy, Jean Magloire, Gen...
...Shy" Meyer was never the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff...
...Some Macoutes born among the people were indeed elevated: Elois Maitre, Edner Day, Roger Lafontant...
...Low-Intensity Pioneer I just wanted to point out a minor error in your otherwise excellent issue "Alfonsin's Argentina" (July/August 1987...
...We need more than an "on the one hand, on the other hand" report...
...Dechoukaj exploded the Noiriste myth that the revolution consists of moving a black president into Port-au-Prince's white fortress...
...Gen...
...If Ponce de Le6n had cited these cases- thus substantiating the opinion of a foreign human rights group-she would have put greater pressure on the Barco government to keep its pledge to punish the guilty...
...Leopoldo Galtieri's) first visit, he was guest of Gen...
...Ed- ward C. Meyer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff...
...Like the Zenglen, the Macoutes were formed not to protect a popular regime, but to perpetuate a hated dic- tatorship...
...Clara Ponce de Le6n cites Amnesty and others who accuse the military, but there is much more that can be said even without undertaking new re- search...
...Thousands of the poor thereby ob- tained jobs and a dubious respect for the first time...
...The systematic slaying in the last two years of 500 un- armed members of one leftist political party is evidence enough that a mur- derous conspiracy exists...
...Meyer was most responsible for arresting the Army's post-Vietnam slide to an increasingly heavy armored and mechanized force tailored to con- ventional warfare in Europe...
...From June 1979 to June 1983, however, he was the chief of staff of the Army...
...Pierre Merceron) were indeed full-fledged mulatto aristocrats...
...The situation in Colombia is enor- mously complex...
...July/August 1987) was quite unneeded...
...This could hardly be con- strued as the "elevation of the black majority...
...As peasant leader Jean- Jacques Acaau used to say in the 1840s, Neg rich se milat, milat pdv se neg (a rich black is a mulatto, a poor mulatto is a black...
...But just be- cause Colombia's dirty war doesn't fit previous models, that doesn't mean it defies analysis...
...Joseph R. Bongiovi Dirty War Does Not Defy Analysis Congratulations for calling attention to the on-going political slaughter in Colombia, however the question mark in your headline "Colombia: Another "Dirty War...
...But without accepting the Duvalierist propaganda and while acknowleging their repres- sive functions, the organization and existence of the Macoutes was a great- er than usual recognition by the "Re- public of Port-au-Prince" of the im- portance of Haiti's overwhelmingly rural population...
...Meyer felt that future conflicts would in- creasingly be fought in the Third World...
...That this "change" has not "elevated" the black masses can be inferred from the hatred that the masses have displayed against all Macoutes during last year's Operasyon Dechoukaj...
...occupation...
...The Colombian press has re- ported in detail several killings linked directly to the security forces...
...They exist to repress the "poor black majority," which has furnished the bulk of their 30,000- 50,000 victims...
...An overlay of crimi- nal violence obscures the political na- ture of many killings, and dirty war is not government policy in Colombia, as it was in Argentina...
...Papa Doc was not the first Haitian dictator to create a personal militia...
...Their existence also contributed to one positive effect of 30 years of Duvalierism, which was to make it no longer possible for white and brown to practice quite the same racism as before...
...While there has been some question about the legality of Meyer's role, he is probably too important to touch...
...But they were at most several thousand...
...The ques- tion is not "if" but "who...
...In "Sharing Know-How with the Contras," you claim that "On (Gen...
...As the Army unit which most di- rectly supported contra operations, SOD was implicated in illegal activity and its commander court martialed...
Vol. 22 • January 1988 • No. 1
