Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Jean-Bertrand Aristide (born 15 July 1953) is a Haitian former Salesian priest and politician who became Haiti's first democratically elected president.

As a priest, he taught liberation theology and, as a president, he attempted to normalize Afro-Creole culture, including Vodou religion, in Haiti.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide was born into poverty in Port-Salut, Sud on 15 July 1953.

His father died three months after Aristide was born, and he later moved to Port-au-Prince with his mother.

At age five, Aristide started school with priests of the Salesian order.

Between 1957 and 1986, Haiti was ruled by the family dictatorships of François "Papa Doc" and Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

The misery endured by Haiti's poor made a deep impression on Aristide himself, and he became an outspoken critic of Duvalierism.

Nor did he spare the hierarchy of the country's church, since a 1966 Vatican Concordat granted Duvalier one-time power to appoint Haiti's bishops.

An exponent of liberation theology, Aristide denounced Duvalier's regime in one of his earliest sermons.

This did not go unnoticed by the regime's top echelons.

Under pressure, the provincial delegate of the Salesian Order sent Aristide into three years of exile in Montreal.

He was educated at the Collège Notre-Dame in Cap-Haïtien, graduating with honors in 1974.

He then took a course of novitiate studies in La Vega, Dominican Republic, before returning to Haiti to study philosophy at the Grand Séminaire Notre Dame and psychology at the State University of Haiti.

After completing his post-graduate studies in 1979, Aristide travelled in Europe, studying in Italy, Greece, and at the Cremisan Monastery in the town of Beit Jala.

Aristide was appointed to a parish in Port-au-Prince in 1982 after completing his studies to become a priest.

He became a focal point for the pro-democracy movement first under Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier and then under the military transition regime which followed.

He returned to Haiti in 1982 for his ordination as a Salesian priest, and was appointed curate of a small parish in Port-au-Prince.

By 1985, as popular opposition to Duvalier's regime grew, Aristide was back preaching in Haiti.

His Easter Week sermon, "A call to holiness", delivered at the cathedral of Port-au-Prince and later broadcast throughout Haiti, proclaimed: "The path of those Haitians who reject the regime is the path of righteousness and love."

Aristide became a leading figure in the Ti Legliz movement, whose name means "little church" in Kreyòl.

In September 1985, he was appointed to St. Jean Bosco church, in a poor neighborhood in Port-au-Prince.

Struck by the absence of young people in the church, Aristide began to organize youth, sponsoring weekly youth Masses.

He founded an orphanage for urban street children in 1986 called Lafanmi Selavi [Family is Life].

The program sought to be a model of participatory democracy for the children it served.

As Aristide became a leading voice for the aspirations of Haiti's dispossessed, he inevitably became a target for attack.

He survived at least four assassination attempts.

The most widely publicized attempt, the St. Jean Bosco massacre, occurred on 11 September 1988, During the attempt over one hundred armed Tontons Macoute wearing red armbands forced their way into St. Jean Bosco as Aristide began Sunday Mass.

As army troops and police stood by, the men fired machine guns at the congregation and attacked fleeing parishioners with machetes.

Aristide's church was burned to the ground.

Thirteen people are reported to have been killed, and 77 wounded.

Aristide survived and went into hiding.

Subsequently, Salesian officials ordered Aristide to leave Haiti, but tens of thousands of Haitians protested, blocking his access to the airport.

He won the 1990–91 Haitian general election, with 67% of the vote.

Aristide was briefly president of Haiti, until a September 1991 military coup.

The coup regime collapsed in 1994 under U.S. pressure and threat of force (Operation Uphold Democracy), and Aristide was president again from 1994 to 1996 and from 2001 to 2004.

He was ousted in the 2004 coup d'état after right-wing ex-army paramilitary units invaded the country from across the Dominican border.

Aristide and many others have alleged that the United States had a role in orchestrating the coup against him.

In 2022, numerous Haitian and French officials told The New York Times that France and the United States had effectively overthrown Aristide by pressuring him to step down, though this was denied by James Brendan Foley, U.S. Ambassador to Haiti at the time of the coup.

Aristide went into exile in the Central African Republic and South Africa.

He returned to Haiti in 2011 after seven years in exile.