Stronger Than the Gun

MONTHS AFTER THE COUP D'ETAT of September 30 in Haiti, we are still seeking the solution to our crisis. This is both a cruel joke and a tragedy.

It is a tragedy because more than 2,000 people have been killed, while about 20,000 more have gone into exile, fleeing the repression. Thousands of others are in hiding. There exists no freedom of the press nor other civic freedoms.

This is also a tragedy because the people of Haiti want democracy. They have already had seven months of democracy, and they do not want to go back to dictatorship. For the past six months, they have been fighting for the restoration of democracy, but have been unable to attain it.

Herein is the cruel joke. The resolution of the crisis--re-establishment of democracy--is obvious, in spite of the contradictions of the negotiations process. This is because the visible, operable power right now is based on weapons, and those weapons are in the hands of Gen. Raoul Cedras, the ringleader of the coup, and his gang of thugs. Behind the de facto government (which the military placed in power after overthrowing my administration) is this real power: the gun. Through their military equipment, Cedras and his gang of soldiers are imposing their will.

Those who are not very familiar with Haiti may think that the de facto, illegitimate government represents the current dominant power. This misperception has been fostered by those who want to support Cedras and his gang, and who have hidden behind the de facto government to do so. The Haitian Parliament is also being used as a smoke screen for what is really going on, as is a delegation from Parliament that has participated in the Organization of American States-sponsored negotiations. Some members of the international community, of course, understand quite well who the invisible actors are.

We who are fighting for democracy have another power: theological power. We have resistance, which is rooted in theology. This is based in Haitians' belief in justice, which for us is God. Our faith in the light provided by liberation theology makes our own reality clear to us.

We are not looking for a God living off in the distance. God, in our minds, has taken the close and immediate form of justice; Jesus was the king of justice. For the Haitian people, fighting for justice means following the direction of our faith. And they are consistent in the way they understand God and the way they are seeking to attain God/justice.

From this foundation of faith, the people have clearly stated no to numerous situations that were not fostering justice. For instance, on December 16, 1990, the citizens of Haiti expressed their will through the ballot. Justice asks that they be granted the results of what they demanded and earned on that day. But this has not been the case. Since the coup d'etat of September 30, 1991, the people continue to try to attain the results of that vote, and to attain a just life.

This faith and determination of the Haitian people represents a theological power. In spite of the army's weapons, Haitians continue to build, and by so doing demonstrate that they are not afraid of the paralysis of the gun. That allows the Haitian people to transcend to a movement where spiritual power is stronger than the power of the gun. The faith and communion involved are obvious to those who can see beyond the naked eye.

Another strength of theological power lies in its basis in community, which goes far beyond individuals or a single people. We see in the Bible the community's ability to share life and thereby make life better; and we see the same reality in Haiti, where the community is trying to improve life, to change the current situation, so as to give a direction to history.

Jesus did that in his life. Common people met with Jesus in the practice of community. This was not just a community in theory, but in practice; people were actively living that which was in their blood, in their minds, in their hearts.

Though there are 2,000 years separating us, the Haitian community today follows the same movement, the same communion, as Jesus' community. We saw death in Jesus' time, too. Then, they killed people who thirsted for justice. They do the same in Haiti today. "They" refers to those who control the political keys without knowing how strong the theological keys are.

The power of love

Let us compare political power with theological power. On the one hand, we see those in control using the traditional tools of politics: weapons, money, dictatorships, coups d'etat, repression. On the other hand, we see tools that were used 2,000 years ago: solidarity, resistance, courage, determination, and the fight for dignity and might, respect and power. We see transcendence. We see faith in God, who is justice.

The question we ask now is this: Which is stronger, political power or theological power? I am confident that the latter is stronger. I am also confident that the two forces can converge, and that that will make the critical difference.

That convergence is predicated on the power of love. This is the capacity to realize that each of us is part of the other. If we can deeply empathize with the way another feels, we become stronger. This capacity empowers us to defy patterned responses and automatic reflexes.

Suppose that we come to possess military weaponry, the same weaponry our predecessors had. Tradition tells us to shoot the way they shot, to kill the way they killed. What stops us is this capacity to feel how bad we ourselves would feel--indeed, have felt--under the rifle barrel. Our identification and empathy provide us the power not to obey the traditional voice to hurt others.

We call that love. If we do not love others, it is almost impossible to ascribe another's feelings to ourselves. This love is neither an intellectual concept nor a sentimental feeling. It is a force that one gains because one is open to it, because one has the seeds in one's blood--which may have been implanted through education or culture. The more the seeds develop inside one, the more one will be able to feel the way another feels.

This inevitably brings us far from the field of traditional politics, which is narrow and oppressive. One need only look at the world, with its structures of repression and corruption, to realize that. In contrast, the power of love is freeing, allowing us not to simply replicate tradition. We are not machines, and we have the vision and options available to us to rise above and beyond in the power of love. The challenge and the key is to be in connection with others, not just ourselves, in which way we become free.

This gives us the theological key. Because God is love, and living things possess a form of power, we are already living in God's power. No matter what name one gives to God, if one believes God is love and attempts to act from God's power, one has discovered God. This is why theology is critical to the crisis in which the people of Haiti are living. The roots of the world come from God's words.

God is love and justice. You cannot know love and stray far from justice. And you cannot move to justice and go far from love. The two words express the same reality. Not everyone can understand this because some people have rejected the idea of God from the start.

Political power

Our current political situation is a result of a long course of traditional politics, based on the goal of winning. The rules are rigid: The more power an individual or institution amasses from money or weapons, the greater the chance of winning; strength comes from an ability to impose one's will on others; dishonesty is immaterial relative to the goal; killing human beings is immaterial; dictatorship is immaterial; victory is paramount. This is the way we usually understand politics (even though those with the weaponry and capital sometimes say that politics is promoting the welfare of the community).

Those in Haiti who perpetrated the coup d'etat felt they had won at first, because they were able to impose their will and break the trajectory of the democratic process. Finally they have been forced to realize that the community's own goals have held steadfast, and that they have not attained victory.

While ethics is not a strong component of the army and those supporting the coup, we still realize the difference between their ethics and ours. Their ethics is based on winning the game through the free reign of weapons and money. As for us, we say, "Regardless of the strength of your economic might or your military hardware, you will never be the victor."

We do not count up the ante or check the board to determine if we are winning or losing. For here is our ethic: We feel we are the victors when there are no losers. We feel that way because we share each other's reality. If we were to use weapons or money to impose our point of view, those who have set themselves out as our opponents would become the loser. Because we share their reality, we, too, would be defeated. And since that is not our goal, neither do we want them to lose.

Our stance pushes us in a direction where there are neither winners nor losers. We seek a reality where together we can triumph. We call this the ethic of love, because love is doing for others what you want people to do for you. This ethic allows us to explore a new world, to build a new society. The rules of this society are not the same as the old world, which requires tools of domination for victory. The new world works to transform a generation of losers into a generation of winners, in which people will realize the beauty of working together.

This is the kind of politics we want in Haiti. It is not the realpolitik that dictates the affairs of most of the world. This one will provide a much more positive result. For instance, in realpolitik people have been talking about justice, freedom, and democracy for thousands of years. But what, in fact, has developed in the world?

In Haiti, for instance, we still have an illiteracy rate of 85 percent. We still have about 4,000 families--that is, about 1 percent of the population--who control more than 45 percent of the nation's wealth and resources. Those who today control the political and economic structures in Haiti are still talking about justice, democracy, and freedom. The question we ask those who have placed our country in its current state is, "When you talk about these concepts, are you loving people? Do you empathize with--or even care about--their suffering? And if you have no sense of the way they feel, how can you change the structures of exploitation to make people's lives more fulfilled?"

The power to change

Traditional politics always concerns a competition of forces, in which the stronger force is the winner. And these forces are protected by wealth, arms, and certain institutions. How can we prevail over the strong and their instruments of domination?

I believe only the force of love can push people to stop using weaponry and economic power to maintain the current reality of grinding poverty, vastly unequal distribution of resources, repression, and violent rule. Once people start to realize that they love others, they will start to change the way they use their means of power in politics. Once those who have the structures of weapons and money in their hands become motivated by love, they will yield to the necessity of changing oppressive structures.

If, on the other hand, those who control economic and military power feel that those who are victims of their structures--that is, the poor--hate them, they will have no interest in changing the conditions of life for the poor, or in collaborating with them. If those who have the tools of domination in their hands can intellectually understand the reactions of the poor--that anger is a normal psychological reaction to oppression--we can transcend a war between people. We can perceive the existent structures as nothing more than a mechanism of traditional society, and decide to go forward from there to create a new paradigm of politics.

We cannot wait for change, because change will never come on its own. Instead, acting from liberation theology, from love, and from our spirit of resistance, we must ask and fight for change. We do not need to succumb to hatred or revenge in so doing; the issue at hand is simply one of justice. We must use politics as a strategy to reject the current reality of misery and exploitation.

At the same time, we say yes to those who control weapons and money, because we want them to be part of our process of change. We know how hard the necessary changes may be for them, but we are leaving the door open to speak to them face to face, and to share our point of view with them. We are seeking to build a new bridge, leading to a new kind of politics. If the rich are afraid to come to this bridge and listen to the poor, then the poor will continue to go to that bridge.

We have confidence that this transformation of politics, through a new definition and application of power, can occur. We have seen the beginnings in Haiti. Though the process was truncated by those unwilling to accept the vision of convergence of theological and political power, those who are living in God/justice refuse to give up. Because traditional political paradigms fail too miserably, we must continue our experiment of living in the power of love.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president of Haiti on December 16, 1990, with 67 percent of the vote. He was deposed by a coup d'etat seven months later. This article was written with Beverly Bell, coordinator of the Haiti Communications Project, 11 Inman St., Cambridge, MA 02139; (617) 868-2900.