Customer Reviews

Notes From the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Written with clarity and style, this book is highly recommended for everyone interested in Haitian politics the last 20 years.
This is perhaps the most accurate account, so far, of the advent of the Lavalas movement to Power and how Aristide, elected democratically on a platform of change, managed to betray the trust and hopes of a large majority of the population.
I was present in Haiti for many of the events depicted in Deibert's powerful, vivid and compelling book and all I can say is that he nailed them.
I totally agree with Haitian filmmaker Raoul Peck, who writes in the introduction that the book manages "to show in the most intimate details how a democratic movement went wrong and how a heritage of valuable victories and painful sacrifice was slandered by a charismatic leader and his cronies." A must read for anyone wanting to learn more about Haiti's past, present and future!.

I ask this question because "Tom Saber" seems to be using the same elitist rational that Deibert uses. I read Deibert's book over Dec-Jan. I checked it out at a local library so I would not have to give any money to this publisher.

First of all, just want to point out a few errors of the below reviewer, this so called "Tom Saber". The Batay Ouvriye (which he claims are well meaning "Haitian labor activists") has in fact been targeted by two AFL-CIO grants from the NED and the U.S. State Department which total nearly half a million dollars. The Batay Ouvriye was one of the main "left" organizations calling for the elected government to "leave the country". Now they are claiming "we'd accept a million dollars". Much like Deibert's warped view, Saber's love for the U.S./ CIDA funded "left" organizations in Haiti show his colonialist mentality. The people who overwhelming elected the ARistide government and now Preval are the one's who don't speak english and french. They are the one's that don't have wealthy NGO's to back them up.


I don't understand how anyone can say this book is "balanced" or "even-handed".
Fifty-five footnotes, for a book of 454 pages!!!! I don't need a college degree to realize that has little basis in reality. If he could back up his claims and rumors with facts he would have footnotes to documented cases and examples. Taking the word of a "gang leader" is not a fact. Sorry, Deibert.

I also know that the human rights lawyer tom griffin confronted Deibert because of the negative things this book says about him in the prologue.
In the same paragraph that Deibert called Tom Griffin an Aristide employee or supporter, and his report "bogus" Deibert claims that Aristide "saved his own skin and . . . left his supporters in the slums to their fates for the second time . . . ." No matter what anyone thinks of Aristide., fleeing to save his own skin twice is a funny way of looking at the facts. Deibert admitted he never contacted Griffin or even tried to before making his claims against him.

Deibert totally ignored his interviewees admissions that they were on USAID/IFES payroll. Deibert takes rumors from group 184 supporters and US funded operatives and spins them as facts.


Hey, if this is the Haiti you want to think exists.. Then go ahead.. but for you all who believe this book , you are living in la-la-land of charles baker's fantasy.

Looking at the reviews for this book it is clear readers either love it or hate it. I for one do not claim to have such specific insights and information as some reviewers seem to have but I will throw in my two cents nonetheless!

I enjoyed reading this book because it was the first time I was able to read really anything on Haiti even marginally analytical of Aristide's time in office. I came at my reading on the country of Haiti as one trying to discern the facts as best I could and become acquainted with the background of Haiti's struggles in the 1990's. Everywhere I turned to look every author was repeating the same Aristide worship while decrying various enemies, the West etc. etc. I can clearly see that Aristide was immensely popular with a very large segment of the population but political popularity in Haiti (and I argue probably in the world in general) is more often than not based not on a lot of solid reasoning but on sound bites played over the radio, the politician's own rhetoric, his/her promises and personality. Also no matter how popular or how wonderful a leader Aristide may have or may not have been he is not a saint for the simple reason that no man is - certainly no politician! To absolve Aristide of ANY and ALL wrongdoing, any and all responsibility for the nation of Haiti's condition under his rule and directly following his rule is ludicris.

I have been living in Haiti for a little over a year now and when you talk to people about Haiti and about Arisitide it is more often than not with an air of disappointment as they express their feelings about what could have been what might have been. They along with so many others were really hopeful as Aristide came to power but were disappointed. I have heard more than once the saying "All smooth roads lead to Aristide's house." Aristide had a grand opportunity laid before him - he had the people of Haiti on his side. He had I firmly believe a vision for his nation and a desire to see the people lifted out of poverty. He unfortunately like so many others wasted that opportunity in favor of furthering his own interests. There are many others who of course can have a share of the blame laid at their feet. You can blame the Americans, the French, the Canadians, the upper class, the rebellious military-like factions in Haiti and maybe even rightfully so but to do so and give the actual leader of that nation a free pass is simply not good enough for me. History always has two sides. There is enough evidence of Aristides misdeeds and liberalities to convict him on many counts. This book lays out many of those charges against Aristide himself and many in his government.

Many critics of this book pick out this little detail or that little detail and want to argue it (which is their right) but how about the big picture? Is Aristide totally innocent? Is there any truth to some of these claims? I believe the answers are obvious. I do not think it is a difficult thing to come to a place of balance and honesty when describing the Aristide years in Haiti and I believe this book attempts to do just that.

God only knows how many students and young people will be fooled by this propaganda. Deibert does a masterful job in taking half a dozen interviews with elite sectors and spinning their opinion. Today we have vote manipulation in Haiti, with the elite sectors once again trying to stop the poor from having a democracy. I'm sure Deibert would think up some excuse, or atleast he could ask Andre Apaid and then try to spin that. I'm thinking we should urge a boycott of this publisher for printing such outright lies without hardly any footnotes. I will be telling everyone about this book and it's lies.

I purchased Michael Deibert's book "Notes from the Last Testament" as soon as it was published. Having lived and worked in rural Haiti from March 2002 until January 2006, I am always interested to read what people are writing about the country I have come to know so well and love despite all the compromises inherent to living in such a complicated place.
Too many authors write about Haiti with an air of authority when, in fact, their knowledge is based on minimal personal exposure to the country and maximum dependence upon hearsay, propaganda presented as fact by one side or another from the cesspool of Haitian politics or the taint of personal ideology.
Having read the book in its entirety (something that many reviewers in the mainstream media have failed to do prior to forming and promoting their own opinions), I can say that it is an accurate account of what I had seen and experienced in Haiti during my nearly 4 years there. I do not say this because of what I "feel" or "think" but rather because of what I "know". By happenstance, I witnessed many of the events detailed in the book. It was usually a case of my being in the wrong place at the right time. For many other events described by Mr. Deibert, I knew the principals involved and had received firsthand reports of those incidents at the time they occurred. I have countless other personal examples that provide anecdotal support to the contentions made in this book about the Lavalas government and former President Jean Bertrand Aristide. Though my work required that I maintain an apolitical public posture, facts accumulated over time such that it was impossible to maintain this posture in private. It became abundantly clear that the Aristide government had become a criminal enterprise bent on power, wealth and the manipulation of the Haitian poor to maintain both.
I would recommend that anyone who is truly interested in Haiti read this book. It is an excellent primer in understanding how Haiti has become what it is today: a broken country. Of greater importance, it will help the reader understand the underlying strength and nobility of the Haitian people who continue to survive despite the worst intentions of their own leaders and the vagaries of the patronage business that has become international development.
Please do not let the negative reviews deter you from reading this book. There seems to be a clear pattern of disinformation or even outright attempts to rewrite history in much of what has been presented as feedback. Contrary to the ideologues who offer attack pieces knowing that very few people can fact check their assertions, Mr. Deibert writes in a clear, though not completely detached voice, of a journalist who took the time to learn about his subect matter. He lets the facts speak for themselves and is comfortable to let the reader draw his or her own conclusions. The one "taint" that comes out of his writing is his clear affection and respect for Haitians including the chimere of Cite Soleil and the other urban slums of Port-au-Prince. He reminds us that one can find humanity even in the most violent of street hoodlums. This is not a message that many Haitians would embrace willingly. Perhaps Haiti must learn this type of reconciliation before it can turn the corner and make tangible progress toward rebuilding society.
If nothing else lends credibiity to this book, it is Michael Deibert's passion for Haiti. He does not write with any agenda other than wanting the disinterested masses to comprehend the human dimension of Haiti, both its failures and its promise.

Notes from the Last Testament is an essential book for anyone seeking to understand Haiti in general and its upheavals of the last ten years in particular. Deibert doesn't pull punches: he names names, documents his sources, and levels scathing judgment on those he charges have betrayed Haiti's hopes for a decent future, from Aristide to corrupt police officers to thug-politicians across the ideological spectrum. If the writing and narrative seem somewhat tentative at first, keep reading; Deibert hits stride several chapters in, and the last half of the book is a truly riveting account of the Aristide regime's bloody downward spiral and eventual fall. Especially powerful are the author's accounts of his time among the Cité Soleil and Gonaives gangs, the young men and women born, as Deibert puts it, "in the worst place in the world."

It's all here--the chaos, waste and heartbreak of the past ten years, as well as the startling hits of beauty and mercy that Haiti continues to serve up in the midst of so much hell.

Reading some other readers' reviews of Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti, I am reminded of nothing so much as the organized "denunciations" that authoritarian movements so often mount against "incorrect thoughts," "insults to the revolution," and so on. The careful student of history easily recongnizes these slanders for what they are: the scrabbling attempt of second-rate thinkers to prop up flimsy belief systems that barely support their own weight, much less withstand competition. But then, the careful student of history does not generally get involved with such movements; those who do are not thinkers but seekers, believers, looking only for evidence that will support their neatly organized world view and cherrypicking flaws -- ideological and otherwise -- in anything that contradicts it.

I finished this book this fall and find that, yes, it is not perfect. (Shall we page through the Amazon site and see how many books for sale here are?) But while it may be possible to prove Michael wrong on a detail here and there (I cannot say, being no expert on Haiti, and so I must take other reviewers' word for it), I cannot understand the stance taken by some on this page that this book is not worth reading. How could it not be? If you are curious about Haiti, how in good conscience can you pass up the opportunity to read a firsthand account by someone who was there, who speaks the language, whose dispatches have always been conspicuous for their heavy use of quotes from "the people" (obtained at considerable personal risk) rather than merely from generals, ministers and others who can be comfortably interviewed in the hotel bar?

Some reviewers here accuse Michael of being an "imperialist," or otherwise try to place him in an ideological category. This won't work, and it is precisely his post-ideological outlook that makes his book such a valuable contribution. The vitriol aimed at him by some of these commenters seem, as another commenter points out, the fiercer for the fact that Michael claims a position in the political left and yet dares to criticize others who do the same. Why does Michael's criticism of Aristide have to be ideological? Isn't it possible that Aristide was a great and visionary man who at the same time was not ultimately able to transcend the considerable pressures and temptations that act on any ruler of a nation like Haiti? Why does "the left's man" get a free pass; why is it impossible that he turned out to have human flaws? One can be the victim of unscrupulous action by the U.S. government, as Aristide seems to have been, while at the same time being an unsavory sort. Or is this sort of world view too complicated, not explicit enough about how to think?

If you are curious about Haiti specifically and about the struggles of oppressed peoples generally, you will find much to reward you in Michael's book.

Disclosure: I have been personally acquainted with Michael for a number of years. On the other hand, I've never knowingly published a lie. And why would I do so here? According to Amazon stats, 80 percent of the people who view this page buy the book. Michael's work clearly speaks for itself.

I,too, have lived in Haiti and now live in the Dominican Republic. And, yes, have read - no- devoured this book.I was confused why none of the NGO's or Haitians that I have met here or in Haiti shared the standard line on the¨"coup against Aristide" but were really greatful that he was gone. After reading this fast paced and detailed account of the dismal failure of Aristide, I understand why. What I do not understand is how the "cult of Aristide" continues -- except from people on his payroll. And I wonder where that money comes from? Eh? IF you are interested in Haiti, read this book!!

Probably the best single account I have ever read of Haiti's last decade, and an important and powerful refutation of the Aristide p.r. machine. Deibert's account of how Haiti's poor suffered under Aristide matches up with my own experience in Haiti from 2001-2002, when almost a hundred people in the small village we were working in lost all of their money in a government-endorsed pyramid investment scheme and the son of a friend in southern Port-au-Prince was killed summarily by the police. Those of us who actually lived in Haiti know what transpired there, and Deibert reproduces that history masterfully. I have recommended it for the Caribbean studies department at our local university.

I am a Haitian, born and raised. I supported Jean-Bertrand Aristide. I fought for him. My family suffered. Some lost their lives. If I only knew then what Michael Deibert has now so clearly laid out in his book. Just the facts. Most of which I did not know, or perhaps chose to ignore, as did so many of my friends and countrymen. I wanted so badly to believe that the little priest from Cite Soleil was the prophet we had prayed so long for. We were all looking for a new Toussaint Louverture, who would free us once again, this time from our own self-imposed bondage. Through Deibert clear and dispassionate writing and his careful, on the spot research, I have now come to realize that Aristide (our Titid ) was just the last of a long series of corrupt tin-pot dictators whose sole objective seems to have been to retain power by any means, including through his murderous thugs, and to plunder from the poorest of the poor.
I find one jarring flaw in Deibert's book however. He should have written it years ago. Perhaps I would not have chosen to ignore the facts, perhaps the long agony of my people would have been shortened. We will know next time though, thanks to Mr. Deibert. No more thieves, no more murderers. My country has had enough of those!