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From the Film distibutor, First Run Features: "An hour south of Miami is the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation, Haiti. In 1991 its citizens elected a former Roman Catholic priest and exponent of liberation theology, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, as president. Popular among Haiti's poor and disenfranchised, Aristide become a target of Haiti's business interests (and the political parties that served those interests) because of his daring policies which tried to raise the standard of living for the huge majority of Haitians. During his second term in office, his government came under increasing pressure from many sides and by 2004 political violence had escalated sharply. On February 29, 2004, Aristide and his family left Haiti on a US-dispatched airplane -- according to Aristide, against his will; the US claims with his full cooperation.

Nicolas Rossier's powerful and informative documentary focuses on Aristide's later years as president, as he struggled to fulfill his promises of reform in the face of mounting domestic opposition (driven in large part by business and military interests) and, simultaneously, an increasingly hostile relationship with the United States.

Featuring an exclusive interview with Aristide from his exile in South Africa as well as the views of a wide range of supporters and critics including US Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, Colin Powell, and Noam Chomsky, and intermixed with searing glimpes inside strife-torn Haiti, Aristide and the Endless Revolution offers a moving testimony to the Haitian peoples' struggle against oppression and exposes the tangled web of hope, deceit, and political violence that brought the world's first black republic to its knees."

Watching this documentary, we thought of a recent BuzzFlash Interview in which we asked our guest how Bush could claim to support democracy when he overthrew democratically-elected governments when they were not compliant with U.S. economic and foreign policy? (The fact is that this has been a long historical feature of U.S. foreign policy. Just look back at Chile, Iran in 1953, just about any Central American country with the exception of Costa Rica, and so on.)

The answer was that Bush views democracy not in the electoral sense we do, but rather as governments that are economically structured like the United States to benefit the elite. Populist democracries, such as in Venezuela, are considered enemies of the Busheviks. In short, democracy, as an electoral process of the candidate with the majority of votes winning, is antithetical to the Bush regime in poor nations.

Such was the case in Haiti, when the Bush regime deposed (and this film, while attempting to be balanced, leaves little doubt) Aristide because he was not sufficiently "compliant" with the ruling moneyed elite of the country.

We are reminded of a conversation we had when we were waiting in an airport customs line in Caracas some time ago. A pleasant and conversational Venezuelan standing in front of us was angrily denouncing Chavez. We asked him what had changed in Venezuela since Chavez took over. He said not much, but that was not the issue. We asked what was. He responded that Chavez was "igniting" the poor people. We asked him about what. He was quite clear in his response: Chavez was inciting the poor people to be upset about being poor.

That is the same reason that the Bush administration sent down the U.S. military on a plane and basically kidnapped Aristide in a coup.

One of the most pathetic ironies is that the Busheviks argued that Aristide should be removed from office because of election irregularities involving some senators for the Haitian legislature. The Busheviks accusing someone of election irregularities (and this didn't even involve Aristide's own undisputed landslide elections) is a bit like a whore accusing a nun of promiscuity.

Aristide was not a perfect ruler and had his flaws, but he was governing Haiti and bringing hope to the exploited masses who elected him.

That is until the U.S. started to help orchestrate and ensure his removal from office, even though he was democratically elected by overwhelming margins.



BUZZFLASH REVIEWS