Damming the Flood: Haiti and the Politics of Containment

Long before a devastating earthquake hit in January 2010, Haiti was one of the most impoverished and oppressed countries in the world. However, in the late 1980s a remarkable popular mobilization known as Lavalas ("the flood") sought to liberate the island from decades of US-backed dictatorial rule. Damming the Flood analyzes how and why the Lavalas governments led by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide were overthrown, in 1991 and again in 2004, by the enemies of democracy in Haiti and abroad.

The elaborate campaign to suppress Lavalas was perhaps the most successful act of imperial sabotage since the end of the Cold War. It has left the people of Haiti at the mercy of some of the most rapacious political and economic forces on the planet.

Updated with a substantial new afterword that addresses the international response to the earthquake, Damming the Flood is both an invaluable account of recent Haitian history and an illuminating analysis of twenty-first-century imperialism.

Author: Peter Hallward
Publisher: Verso
Published: 12/27/2010
Pages: 514
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.40w x 1.50d
ISBN13: 9781844674664
ISBN10: 1844674665
BISAC Categories:
- History | Caribbean & West Indies | General
- History | Military | Revolutions & Wars of Independence (See Also Unit
- History | Modern | 21st Century

About the Author
Peter Hallward teaches at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University, London. He is the author of several books including Absolutely Postcolonial, Badiou: A Subject to Truth, Out of This World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation, and Damming the Flood.