Email from Peter Dailey

November 26, 2010

Dear Erin,

A word of caution. The events in Haiti from 1994 to the present were enormously polarizing and continue to be so. You should treat anything you are told with the proper degree of skepticism & that includes whatever I have to say. I'm a lawyer and writer, was an early supporter of the democracy movement, and in 2003 wrote a series of articles for the New York Review of Books that were highly critical of Aristide and Lavalas, and caused me a whole lot of shite, including accusations that I was working for the CIA, death threats, etc.  When the accounts of the Haitian government were opened in 2004 following Aristide's departure I was amused to see that Ricot had been receiving a monthly stipend of $15K to "get the message out." The two principal books on the period - Deibert and Hallward - agree on almost nothing, including the most basic facts. Although he is a great man, Paul Farmer is thoroughly unreliable on politics, and was as blind to Aristide's defects as he is to those of Paul Kagame in Rwanda, where Paul & Partners in Health spend a lot of time these days. I don't mean to mystify things unnecessarily , or suggest that the truth is unknowable, but I wouldn't place a lot of credence in anyone, particularly Americans,  who claims to speak for, or know, the wishes and desires of Haitian peasants - 75% of Haiti's population. Amen!

Good luck!
Peter Dailey