Haitian leader returns black love to sender
An Ocean Apart
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
May 18th, 2004 8:30 AM

When Haitian prime minister Gerard Latortue came to Manhattan last week, he had a curt message for his cousins up north—butt out. Since the overthrow of Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February, Latortue has been under fire from African American leaders who view him as an illegitimate steward of the first free black state in the Western Hemisphere. Just last month, 1,500 protestors gathered in Brooklyn to voice their opposition to Latortue and push for Aristide's return. "I think Latortue is a puppet for both Bush administration interests and the interests of the Haitian elite," says Bill Fletcher Jr., president of the Pan-Africanist lobby TransAfrica Forum.

But Latortue charged that his American critics were turning Haitian strife into "a racial issue that doesn't correspond with the aspirations of the Haitian population today," and that criticism of him is being "promoted more by Afro-Americans than by Haitians, in the name of black power." Latortue went on to argue that African American leaders were using Haiti's troubles in hopes of further blemishing President Bush’s questionable foreign policy record.

"I don't think much of [Latortue's] comments. This is not the first off-the-wall statement he's made," says California congresswoman and former Congressional Black Caucus chair Maxine Waters. "He is a person who's been put in place by multinational powers and I don't think he knows very much."