Camille Chalmers is one of those intellectuelles populaires that are more common in la francophonie than amongst anglo pragmatists. Chalmers is a veteran activist of Haiti's impressive popular movement. He combines this with a broad analysis of the country's political and social problems. A trained economist, he was also the Director of President Jean Bertrand Aristide's staff from 1993 to 1994.He smiles wryly as he disentangles the contradictions between the goals of the popular democratic movement that swept Aristide to power back in 1990 with the more recent 'democratization' that has occurred under the watchful eye of the US army and international peacekeepers.The military coup that overthrew Aristide and 'beheaded' the popular movement forced Haitian democrats, says Chalmers, to 'gamble on US military intervention opening up the political space necessary to re-establish the networks of popular organization. Unfortunately this hasn't happened. 'Chambers believes that Haiti's popular democracy and its egalitarian values have been 'expropriated by US imperialism which projects itself as the defender of Haitian democracy and brought carbon-copies of US institutions into Haiti'. He points to the refusal of US authorities to release captured secret-police files to the Haitian justice system, or to extradite a prominent leader of the FRAP death squad, as examples of their lukewarm commitment to the new Haiti.
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