It is fitting that the anniversary date of the kidnapping or forced departure of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Feb. 29, 2004, should not exist in this year’s calendar because the U.S.-orchestrated destruction of constitutional democracy and the daily, deadly violence since have been equally nonexistent as far as the American media and public have been concerned.

Instead, we hear President George W. Bush’s daily iterations that he stands for freedom and democracy everywhere, and no one entertains even a passing thought that Haiti gives that claim the lie.

It does not matter whether Aristide was kidnapped or merely coerced with threats to his life. Whichever, Washington, with the complicit tiny Haitian class and economic elite who are contemptuous of Haitian democracy and believe they are entitled to rule, engaged in low-intensity warfare on Haitian democracy designed to drive Aristide from power.

It began under President Clinton with blocked aid. With the chances of success dimming, the United States turned to direct means.

We trained and armed former military and convicted criminals to launch an insurrection. But with its success in the streets of Port au Prince in doubt, we dispatched Marines to take over the National Palace and Port-au-Prince airport in order to shunt Aristide out of office and the country, enforcing Vice President Cheney’s arrogant pronouncement that the elected Haitian president, who still maintained majority support, had “overstayed his welcome.”

The timing of the kidnapping or coerced departure was determined by reports that South African ammunition and tear gas were on the way for the police to use to control violent opposition protests and to oppose the insurrection and that Venezuela was readying a peacekeeping force under the Organization of American States’ charter.

Aristide had to go quickly.

Why? First, because Sen. Jesse Helms, who had long despised the fiery critic of U.S. exploitation of Third World economies, and others feared Aristide could become another Castro.

The primary reason, however, was because the U.S. government, whichever party is in power, will not allow any nation south of the border to put the interests of its own people before our right to exploit their resources, labor and markets.

We destroyed Haiti’s agricultural economy by dumping U.S. rice there; as a consequence, virtually all of its remaining trees have been used by the poor to make charcoal to sell to buy the rice they used to grow.

Once the Pearl of the Antilles, Haiti now has nothing save its poor to exploit. But that is it. Haitians are, as Twain used to say, preforeordained to sew Pocahontas pajamas for Disney for virtually nothing in wages. It’s called maintaining the high U.S. standard of living.

When Aristide raised the minimum wage in 1991, the CIA-agent led coup followed, and a CIA operative, Toto Constant, formed the paramilitary FRAPH, which killed thousands of Haitian democrats. Clinton would not return Aristide until he agreed to compromise his Haitians-first program.

The Bush administration immediately launched a low-intensity war. It delegitimized the government by exaggerating election irregularities, calling the situation a “crisis” that required that Aristide yield sufficient power to satisfy the elite. This was impossible since only his ouster would satisfy them. Denial of aid largely paralyzed government programs. U.S. millions went for destabilizing protests.

With Aristide gone, we dismissed his government and installed a puppet regime headed by an old Duvalier figure and staffed by opponents of constitutional government. Lavalas, the only party with substantial electorate support, was excluded. Its leadership was thrown in jail without charges. Anyone recognized on the street as an Aristide supporter or identified as poor – the poor are assumed to support Aristide – has become a target for summary execution. An estimated 7,000 are dead, twice the victims of the Cedras coup in a third the time.

A January University of Miami School of Law human rights report identifies the blood bath as a scheme fostered by the elite to divide and silence the voice of the poor.

Truckloads of the bodies of those killed by masked HNP or ex-military thugs are carted to the morgue or directly to the dump almost daily. Clueless United Nations peacekeepers, who speak neither French nor Creole, contribute to the violence. Ex-military insurgents now head all HNP units. The mass media’s silence forestalls international outrage.

U.S.-favored 1990 presidential candidate Marc Bazin has declared the exclusion of the majority party from Haitian politics unacceptable. The prospect becomes more likely that the French-Canadian-U.S.-approved coup will lead to establishment of a foreign protectorate to forestall elections that would, if legitimate, surely return democrats to power.

Coup leaders safeguard Petionville, where the elite live. Almost everyone else in Haiti is hungry, without medical care, living in fear. Meanwhile, new sweatshops are opening.

Our children have to have cheap pajamas.

William H. Slavick initiated the Sacred Heart/St. Dominic parish twinning project in Haiti and is a founder of Maine Haiti Solidarity. He is coordinator of Pax Christi Maine, which presented Aristide with its Oscar Romero Award in 1993.