Please look this over.

In December 2, 1823 the policy of Monroe Doctrine was introduced by the president of United States, James Monroe. Monroe Doctrine’s main function was to stop the colonization of Americas; Latin America. The doctrine stated that US will not interfere with European affairs as long as Americas is left alone. A slightly different was the Good Neighbor Policy, which was initiated in 1933. The intentions were to really go in and support the Latin America. Rather then stopping the colonization, this time the efforts were towards building better relationships with Latin America. The idea was that this will create more economic opportunities for America. Thirdly was the Alliance for progress announced by Kennedy in March 13, 1961 in a speech to the Latin American Diplomatic Corporation. This is also sometimes called the Obama Doctrine. For this one, again the intentions were to create better relationships with Latin America, get them up to speed in industrialization, and create more economic opportunities. But this time the actual fight was against the communism. Since US believed strongly in democracy, US wanted Latin America to follow US in their footsteps. This led to temporary reliefs but also long term involvement with Latin America. In my opinion all these policies have led to better relationships with Latin America. Just recently, Obama visited Brazil, this shows that efforts are being put forth to make Latin America more livable.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide was a priest who was elected to be a president of Haiti twice. In the year of 2004, Haiti was going through extremely difficult times. Weather the turmoil is Aristide’s own doing or if there was a bigger hand present, it is not known yet. Aristide became a president in 1994 and 2004 and, both times he was removed from office. President Clinton put him back in the office in 1994. The film, Aristide and the Endless Revolution looks at the events that lead up to the coup d’etat of Hait in 2004. It is necessary to define the term coup d’etat before going further into the discussion. Coup d’etat is an act of taking power forcibly. It is currently undecided as to what really happened in 2004. But the film does a good job of covering different points of views. The international community has not made a decision as to weather what happened with Aristide in 2004 was coup d’etat or not. When Aristide was threatened by the thugs, he asked for support from the international community, at this point he was surrounded by the US navy and air force. Aristide himself said that he was threatened to be killed and many others would be disposed as well if he did not comply. But president George Bush said Aristide gave his consent to be flown out of the country. At this time he was given asylum in France, but currently lives in Pretoria, South Africa.

Many people were interviewed in this documentary. Noam Chomsky and Jeffrey Sachs are couple of the interviewees who were discussed in the on-line lectures in the Prelude and People, Geography, History module. Few other interviewees I find interesting are, Danny Glover, Ira Kurzban and Aristide. Chomsky is a Institute Professors. He believes that US will support Latin America as long as Latin America is obedient. He is the author of many books and one of them is Getting Haiti Right This Time. Jeffrey Sachs is an economist. He’s taken a stance that the loan that Haiti requested, Haiti never got it but still they were charged interest. Danny, who is an actor and also a friend of Aristide is in full support of him as well. He does not believe that Aristide intentionally jeopardies Haiti, just like Kurzban. Ira is a head of the Alpha Industries and also a general counsel, Aristide’s administrator. He believes that US is not in support of popular democracy and that if Haiti was able to accomplish it then other countries would follow and US economy would be hurt. As for Aristide, he is a man of his people. Many people in the film said that he is the voice of voiceless. Twice he was elected to be a president with overwhelmingly popular vote. He won the general election of 1990 with 67% of the votes.

I am glad to have watched this film. I did not even have an idea of Haiti’s existence. All I knew was that I’m in America, NY, Albany and I got to Suny Albany. This documentary has shown me the existence of one a poorest country in the world. Throughout the film I had tears in my eyes. It was mentioned that it is normal for people to see a dead body being eaten by dog. This is extremely sad, there seems to be no value of human life. Moving on to the topic of my personal view on the events of 2004 in Haiti. I believe Aristide faced very difficult choices. I think he is a humble servant of his people, he only meant good for them. I think US was behind the 2004 coup d’etat. I just cannot fathom a reason as to why Aristide would want to abandon Haiti. I think he was really captured by the US and forced to stay in France.