An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President

by Randall Robinson

Overview

On February 29, 2004, the first democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was forced to leave his country. The president was kidnapped, along with his Haitian-American wife, by American soldiers and flown to the isolated Central African Republic. In An Unbroken Agony, best-selling author and social justice advocate Randall Robinson chronicles his own cross-Atlantic journey to rescue the Haitian president from captivity in Africa while also connecting the fate of Aristide’s presidency to the Haitian people’s century-long quest for self-determination.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465012893
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	05/06/2008
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	300
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Randall Robinson is the author of the bestsellers The Debt, The Reckoning, and Defending the Spirit. He is also founder and past president of TransAfrica, the African-American organization he established to promote enlightened, constructive U.S. policies toward Africa and the Caribbean. In 1984, Robinson established the Free South Africa Movement and in 1994, his public advocacy, including a 27-day hunger strike, led to the UN multinational operation that restored Haiti’s first democratically elected government to power. Mr. Robinson lives with his wife and daughter in St. Kitts.

Editorial Reviews

In his latest work, Robinson offers a passionate retelling of the history of Haiti and the circumstances surrounding the rise and fall of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Using history, eyewitness accounts and his own role as a monitor for parliamentary elections, Robinson has created a worthy account, in his trademark incensed style, of how American and European policies have harmed, rather than helped, Haiti.
—The Washington Post

Theola Labbe

A fiery, disorganized and somewhat repetitive expose of longstanding injustices toward Haiti perpetrated by a long list of colonial powers including France and, most recently, the United States. On Feb. 29, 2004, an American convoy escorted twice-elected Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of the National Palace in Port-au-Prince and removed him for good from his country. Did he resign, as the official U.S. version maintains, or was he rather deposed by an American-backed coup d'etat? Robinson (The Reckoning: What Blacks Owe Each Other, 2002, etc.) vehemently lays out evidence of a coup. Haiti has long been isolated and resented by the Caribbean's colonial powers. Thanks to the military genius of former slave Toussaint L'Ouverture, the French colony known as Saint-Domingue staged the only successful slave revolt in the Americas in 1803 and became an independent nation, expelling its brutal French masters and ending Napoleon's dreams of world empire. The United States, France and other powers (including the Vatican) punished Haiti with embargos and crushing reparations that had devastating consequences for decades to come. Dictators such as the Duvaliers were puppets of American business interests, while former priest Aristide, elected democratically in 1990, enacted social reforms that helped level discrepancies between rich and poor and destroy the status quo. Hence, Robinson asserts, American resentment against Haiti's intransigence is deeply rooted; Haitians are considered proud and "unmanipulable." The Bush administration helped destabilize the government by arming Duvalierist rebels led by Guy Philippe, a CIA-trained former police precinct captain, to threaten order andbring down Aristide. Robinson's Christ-like portrait of Aristide is a bit over-the-top, and his single-note argument is rather erratically presented. It is nonetheless deeply persuasive, as brisk chapters move urgently between past and present. Robinson eloquently urges the white world to accord the constitutions and laws of black countries the same sanctity it accords its own.

Kirkus Reviews

"A tour de force.... Heartfelt, impassioned."

"Engaging.... Robinson continues an important conversation.... His anecdotes support his attempts to reclaim African heritage and empower African Americans."

"In a manner strikingly reminiscent of James Baldwin, Robinson combines acute insight, attention to the obvious but overlooked, and unpretentious breadth of vision."

"Incisive...keenly observed, perceptively written.... Some of the most beautifully written anecdotes and carefully crafted prose ever seen in a book with such political purpose."

"Randall Robinson is the greatest Pro-Africa Freedom Fighter of his generation in America, his powerful poignant story of personal and political struggle is one of vision, courage, and sacrifice." -- Cornel West

From the Publisher