The Kidnapping Coup - A Topical Song on the US Overthrow

of Democracy in Haiti by the Bush-Cheney Admisitration in 2004

Today I've selected to post the words to The Kidnapping Coup. I've just started these political song posts in recent days. This time I think I'll include the chords just in case anyone out there wants to cover it and spread the word. The chords are easy to strum and they remain in the same pattern for the entire song. You can also hear the song at www.vivehaiti.com It should come on automatically and if you scroll down the opening page, you can follow along with the lyrics posted there as well. I started learning to play basic chords on the guitar in the early 70's by playing songs of Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston, Joan Baez and other lesser known but fine songwriters who were published in the pages of Broadside, the National Topical Song Magazine. by Sis Cunningham and Gordon Friesen published the song magazine out of their apartment in New York City from 1962 to sometime in the 1980's I would guess.  They would usually have a news story from the New York Times or some other paper on the page next to the song being published. I'll just cite some internet sources below for those interested in doing more in-depth follow-up study.

I will post that below the song lyrics for those who wish to understand the more complicated context and significance of the event. The FRAPH death squads mentioned in the song were set up by the Haitian elite and the military to murder the leaders of the mass movement for democracy in Haiti. The army had been abolished by Aristide's government due to its history of killing and coups against the people elected governments of Haiti. Aristide is referred to in the last verse of the song by the affectionate term used by his followers in Haiti: "Titid".

The Kidnapping Coup

         A                                                  D                               A

Well, first came the troops that were trained in Santo Domingo

                   D                                                          A

They were US equipped and organized to overthrow

        D                                                                               A

The FRAPH death squads and the outlawed Haitian army

             E                                                  D              A

Were unleashed like mad dogs on the civil society

From the seas came marines of the ever-menacing Yankees

They took Port-au-Prince and they broke Haiti down to her knees

The "Frappers" went killing the Parti Lavalas and the unions

It was all done in secret with French and American guns

Chorus:

It was a kidnapping coup by those who murder and plunder

They hide behind lies and they terrorize everyone under

They silence with violence the voices of conscience and just views

And their kidnapping coup gets covered up in the corporate news

It was February 29 in the year of 2004

Like thieves in the night they broke through the President's door

Put their guns to the head of the elected President of Haiti

They kidnapped the man and they stole the democracy!

Blindfolded his wife and they pointed their guns at her too

"Jean-Bertrand, "they said, "sign this paper or we'll shoot both of you"

Like Mildred he thought of their kids and his country as well

He looked in the eyes of the Yankees turning Haiti into hell  (chorus)

Aristide would not sign… So the Yankees blindfolded him too

Put them both on the jet with the US red, white, and blue

Flew them all the way to an African puppet dictator

While the Haitian news rags denounced Aristide as a traitor

Some members of Congress (US), chartered a jet and they flew there

Demanded the puppet release the ones that they held there

The General was told to let them fly into exile

So they flew to Jamaica, and they rested there for a while  (chorus)

Then Condi and Colin made threats on sovereign Jamaica

So Titid and Mildred moved their exile to South Africa

They kidnapped the man… Made a coup on the great Haitian nation

If you won't be a puppet, they'll invade you and bring occupation

It was February 29 in the year of 2004

Like thieves in the night they broke through the President's door

Put their guns to the head of the elected President of Haiti

They kidnapped the man and they stole the democracy!  (chorus)

Copyright September 21, 2005 Vic Sadot BMI Orbian Love Music

www.vicsadot.com

Hear also Vive Haiti! by Vic Sadot, a song relesed on the 19 song CD titled Broadsides & Retrospectives, at CD Baby & iTunes:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/vicsadot2

A Brief Historical Background on Haiti:

A History of US Coups & Interventions

By Vic Sadot

The United States was shocked by the first successful slave rebellion in history because the US still profited immensely from its legalized slavery of human beings up until the Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War on January 1, 1863. To have the first Black Republic in the world so nearby in 1804 was seen as a major threat by the US. According to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, it took the US 58 years to actually recognize the Republic of Haiti.

In 1915 the US invaded and eventually installed the Papa Doc Duvalier dictatorship, which set up a cheap labor system for multi-national corporations to exploit through a sweat shop industries. Unions were outlawed and a tiny light skinned Black minority of less than 1% became the fantastically wealthy ruling class. They basically were "compradors", selling their own population back into subsistence servitude and crushing all democracy advocates with secret death squads called the "TonTon Macoutes". Roughly translated it means "Uncle Machete", which derives from the practice of dragging someone out of their hut at night, cutting off the outspoken person's head, and leaving it in the open for all to see what could happen to them if they tried to speak for their rights.

In the 1980's the Liberation Theology movement was sweeping through Latin America and Haiti was part of that process whereby low ranking priests came into conflict with political and religious authorities by becoming advocates and organizers of the poor. In Haiti it was called the Tite Eglize (Little Church) movement, which would eventually grow into the Lavalas (Flood/Mass movement) Party. In the late 1980's the mass movement rose up in Haiti and Dictator Baby Doc Duvalier was taken to safety on a US jet to France where he continued to live in luxury on money secured from the national treasury. When elections were finally held in 1990, a priest named Father Aristide was elected President by a landslide that any US President would be jealous to have. The Pope forced him to quit the priesthood, which he did. After surviving 4 assassination attempts, Aristide was overthrown in 1991 by the Haitian military who plotted with President George Bush, Sr.'s administration and the Haitian elite. He actually went into exile in the US, but the US CIA tried to demonize him by putting out a "white paper" on his personality that said he'd been in a mental institiution in Canada at the very time when he was actually at a Catholic Church university in the Middle East. Meanwhile, some 4,000 Haitian democracy advocates were murdered by the military and it's new paramilitary terrorist organization called FRAPH, the Front for the Front for the Advancement and Progess of Haiti (in French frappe also means to hit)

By 1994 the Congressional Black Caucus had succeeded in

pressuring the Democratic Party administration of President Bill Clinton into invading and restoring President Aristide but with many strings attached in the deal. The US is for democracy if it is a puppet regime. There were demands for "structural adjustments" to privatize government programs that had been designed to uplift and employ the poor. Aristide did lead his government to abolish the Haitian military and numerous trials succeeded in putting some military and terrorists in prison.

The George Bush Junior administration shifted funds from assisting Haiti into subversion campaigns and into funding a military uprising that had secret training camps in the Dominican Republic. When they invaded in February 2004 they first attacked the prisons that held former army and FRAPH terrorists and armed them to join in the overthrow of democracy again.

The French were eager to make amends with the Bush-Cheney administration. after strained relations over French opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Although the French participated in the earlier invasion of Afghanistan as part of a retribution for the 9/11 attacks said to be directed by Bin Laden from a cave in that country, the French had their own reason to overthrow Aristide. He was calling for historical reparations from France for bleeding Haiti economically in the past as a slave colony. The people would likely have fought to defend Aristide and their elected government from the US orchestrated insurgency of their past Haitian oppressors. But the US moved quickly on the Presidential Palace to kidnap the President and his wife, blindfold them and take them out of the country on a US jet.

The pre-planned story was released to a parroting US media, and much like the story of 9/11, it was accepted without question or investigation. The US put a World Bank bureaucrat in as acting President of Haiti, and eventually got the UN to provide an occupation force and thereby to act in complicity with the overthrow of democracy. Many Haitians were arrested and imprisoned without charges for many months, such as folk singer Annette "So Anne" Auguste and Father Gerard Juste.

At the time California Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters stated, "Gerard Latortue is a mere puppet installed by the supporters of the coup d'etat that ousted the democratically-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide." She was part of a group of Haitian activists and Congressional Black Caucus members that charted a jet to retrieve Aristide and his wife from the Central Republic of Africa. They brought him to Jamaica, but Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell made threats against that country. So Aristide went into exile in the Republic of South Africa. Ironically, when elections were held in Haiti in 2006 Aristide's fellow Lavallas Party member won by a landslide in spite of millions spent by the US and Haitian elite to subvert the outcome.

Please visit www.vivehaiti.com to hear the song and to explore the links recommended for further research. Or go directly to the following web sites, which I recommend:

Please consider participating in the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti's "Half Hour for Haiti" activist program. Help the people in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere to establish real justice and democracy!

http://www.ijdh.org

A newspaper published in English, French and Creole that you can count on to tell it like it is: http://www.haiti-progres.com

Two sites for activists to get informed and work together:

http://www.haitiaction.org

http://www.haitisolidarity.net