Seven Oaks Magazine.

Recently, I had a telling exchange with a young man enraged at hearing local anti-war activists condemning the role of the Canadian armed forces in places like Afghanistan and Haiti. Responding to my point that our government had helped to overthrow a democratically elected president in Haiti last year, he retorted that the problems in Haiti were due to “all those Hutus and Tutus [sic].”

The widespread ignorance about Haiti – as captured so perfectly in this bungling conflation of the western hemisphere’s poorest nation with Rwanda – could indeed be funny, were its consequences not so tragic. Under the cover of a collective lack of awareness, the government of Canada, together with France and the United States, has trampled upon democracy and human rights in Haiti.

A few precious voices, though, have been working overtime to reveal the grisly reality of Haiti today, now under UN occupation in the wake of a February 29, 2004 coup d’état. Nicolas Rossier’s new documentary, Aristide and the Endless Revolution, which is featured at this year's Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF), marks an important contribution to the struggle to disseminate the truth about Haiti’s hard struggle for self-determination.

Despite its name, Aristide is not a hagiography. It does follow, chronologically, the life and times of the predominant figure in the short life of Haitian democracy. Jean-Bertrand Aristide was a young, charismatic Catholic priest who emerged as the leader of the poor masses with the long-overdue disintegration of the Duvalier dictatorships. In 1990, he won a landslide victory in unprecedented free elections. The spectre of popular democracy instituting social reforms, however, was too threatening to the country’s tiny, decadent and arrogant elite. Within seven months, in collaboration with the Bush Sr. regime in the United States, Aristide was ousted in a coup d’état. Reinstalled in 1994, and re-elected in 2000 after sitting out a term (Haiti’s constitution does not allow consecuive presidential terms), Aristide was again ousted by force in 2004.

Rossier’s film assembles an impressive cast of both Haitian and international commentators, with the aim of explaining the real motivations behind the 2004 coup, and revealing to the world the horrific conditions of day-to-day life under occupation today. Familiar faces of the U.S. Left, such as Noam Chomsky and Danny Glover, speak eloquently to the long continuity of efforts to crush the Haitian people, who made the first successful slave revolution in 1804. Aristide’s U.S. lawyer, Ira Kurzban, is featured, explaining a number of the causes of the Washington-Paris- Ottawa coup of 2004; among other displays of pique and independence, the Haitian president had begun a high profile campaign seeking $21 billion in reparations from France for unfair colonial debts – a dangerous precedent to say the least in a world still divided between imperial centres and indebted neo-colonies.

Aristide does give face time to some of the latest coup’s staunch defenders, and to former friends of Haiti’s president-in-exile. The despicable Roger Noriega is given his turn -- and just enough rope -- trying to blame Aristide for the disastrous human rights situation that has followed his overthrow. An extended segment of the film, too, deals with the controversy around the 2000 elections that have been used to discredit Aristide’s democratic mandate.

Perhaps the most powerful moments in the film are its footage of contemporary Haiti, and life in the poor neighbourhoods. The Haitian National Police (HNP) have been, according to numerous independent reports, committing massacres and abuses with impunity, often targeting militants and supporters of Aristide’s Lavalas Party. Canada’s RCMP, we should all take note, has played a leading role in training the HNP.

A memorable, haunting scene near the end of the documentary features an interview with an emaciated, destitute man in one of Port-au-Prince’s slums crawling with UN forces. Explaining that the poor were better off with Aristide in power, he vows to resist, and not to hide his political sympathies, no matter the cost, “I’d rather sleep in the morgue than here in the streets.”

With the Canadian government playing a central role in negating Haitian democracy, Aristide and the Endless Revolution is a film that should be seen and discussed. Many of the titles at this year’s VIFF can broaden our understanding of the world, and of others’ realities. Few, however, will match Aristide in calling forth urgent political action.