Another article from The New Left Review takes a look at what happened in Haiti earlier this year:
What began following the Lavalas election victory of 1990 was the deployment of a partially new strategy for disarming this revolution, at a moment when the Cold War no longer offered automatic justification for the repression of mass movements by the overwhelming use of force. Designed not simply to suppress the popular movement but to discredit and destroy it beyond repair, the key to this strategy was the implementation of economic measures intended to intensify already crippling levels of mass impoverishment, backed up by old-fashioned military repression and propaganda designed to portray resistance to elite interests as undemocratic and corrupt. The operation has been remarkably successful — so successful that in 2004, with the enthusiastic backing of the media, the UN and the wider ‘international community’, it resulted in the removal of a constitutionally elected government whose leadership had always enjoyed the support of a large majority of the population.