Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment (2007/2010) Author: Peter Hallward

Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment (2007/2010) Author: Peter Hallward Published: 2007 (Verso, London/New York); expanded paperback edition with new afterword 2010 Language: English Pages: ~400 (main text) + notes, bibliography, index Overview Damming the Flood is the most comprehensive political account of the rise, destruction, and aftermath of the Lavalas movement in Haiti from 1986 to 2007 (with the 2010 afterword extending coverage through the January 2010 earthquake). Hallward — a philosopher and political theorist at the University of Sussex — spent years interviewing participants in Haiti, the Haitian diaspora, and international organizations, and the book synthesizes documentary evidence, primary interviews, and secondary scholarship into a sustained argument about what happened to Haiti's democratic project and why. The book's central contention is stated without ambiguity: the Lavalas movement, which represented the first sustained mass-democratic mobilization in Haitian history and achieved overwhelming popular mandates in every free election from 1990 through 2006, was deliberately and systematically destroyed by a coalition of Haiti's tiny ruling class, the United States government (especially under Clinton and Bush), the French government, the Canadian government, and international financial institutions.