Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1953 - )

Wed Jul 15, 1953

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Jean-Bertrand Aristide, born on this day in 1953, is a liberation theologian who became Haiti’s first democratically elected president in 1990, serving off and on as the country’s president until the 2004 coup d’état.

A proponent of liberation theology, Aristide was appointed to a Roman Catholic parish in Port-au-Prince in 1982 after completing his studies to become a priest of the Salesian order.

Before coming into political power, Aristide was a prominent political dissident who survived several assassination attempts, one of the most notable being the St. Jean Bosco Massacre, when pro-government forces stormed his church during mass and killed more than a dozen people.

After winning the 1990 Haitian elections, Aristide was president for eight months before being deposed in a military coup, committed by military and police figures who received military training in the U.S. and were associated with the CIA.

Aristide fled the country after the coup, but then became president again from 1994 to 1996 and from 2001 to 2004.

In 2003, Aristide requested that France pay Haiti over $21 billion in reparations for the 90 million gold francs Haiti was forced to pay France after winning its independence.

In 2004, Aristide was ousted in another coup after right-wing ex-army paramilitaries invaded the country from across the Dominican border, and fled to South Africa. Aristide was flown out of Haiti by U.S. forces under disputed circumstances - he claims he was kidnapped and did not resign, while the U.S. maintains he entered the plane and resigned willingly.

Aristide finally returned to Haiti in 2011, after seven years in exile.

“If we wish to maintain peace, then we cannot accept that impunity be provided to these international criminals and drug dealers.”

- Jean-Bertrand Aristide