Cool USA Facts!

In 1990 in Haiti, competing against 10 comparatively wealthy white candidates, leftist priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide captures 68 percent of the vote. A few months later, the CIA-backed military deposes him in a coup. More military dictators brutalize the country, as thousands of Haitian refugees escape the turmoil in barely seaworthy boats. The CIA "paid key members of the coup regime forces, identified as drug traffickers, for information from the mid-1980s at least until the coup."1 Coup leaders Cédras and François had received military training in the United States. As popular opinion called for Aristide’s return, the CIA began a disinformation campaign painting the courageous priest as mentally unstable.2 In 1994, Aristide was allowed to return back to Haiti after being 3 years in forced exile. The US demanded Aristide to drop his leftist programs for social reform, and adopt harsh neoliberal economic reforms instead. The US used "most brutal anti-Aristide elements" to pressure Aristide to abandon his ambitious programs.3,4,5,6,7 In 2004 Aristide was again overthrown by a military coup led by the US.8