- Paperback: 332 pages
- Publisher: University Press of Mississippi (March 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1604735333
- ISBN-13: 978-1604735338
- Product Dimensions: 15.2 x 22.9 x 1.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 476 g
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Product Details |
Product Description
Product Description
Plunging into Haiti: Clinton, Aristide, and the Defeat of Diplomacy by Ralph Pezzullo For much of the early 1990s, Haiti held the world's attention. A fiery populist priest, Jean Bertrand Aristide, was elected president and deposed a year later in a military coup. Soon thousands of desperately poor Haitians started to arrive in makeshift boats on the shores of Florida. In early 1993, the newly elected Clinton administration pledged to make the restoration of President Aristide one of the cornerstones of its foreign policy. But that fall the U. S. let supporters of Haiti's ruling military junta intimidate America into ordering the USS Harlan County and its cargo of UN peacekeeping troops to scotch plans and return to port. Less than a year later, for the first time in U. S. history, a deposed president of another country prevailed on the United States to use its military might to return him to office. These extraordinary events provide the backdrop for Plunging into Haiti: Clinton, Aristide, and the Defeat of Diplomacy-Ralph Pezzullo's detailed account of the international diplomatic effort to resolve the political crisis. Through his father, Lawrence Pezzullo, who served as the U. S. special envoy to Haiti, Ralph Pezzullo gained access to important players on all sides. He tells the story of talented, committed men and women from the United States, France, Argentina, and Haiti who dedicated themselves to creating an outcome that would benefit Haiti and the rest of the world. With the energy of a political thriller, Plunging into Haiti fleshes out the central political struggle with threads of Haitian history. Using his unique perspective and access, Ralph Pezzullo covers the aftermath of the Clinton administration's diplomatic maneuvers to show an island still in turmoil. Ralph Pezzullo is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, novelist, poet, and journalist.
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Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews)
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Plunging into the Pezzullos, July 29 2007
By A Miami Reader - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Plunging Into Haiti: Clinton, Aristide, and the Defeat of Diplomacy (Hardcover)
The name Pezzullo, for those concerned with Haiti, is infinitely divisive. Ralph Pezzullo is the son of Lawrence Pezzullo, one of the State Department's special diplomats whom the Clinton Administration contracted to force both the Cedras regime and the exiled Aristide administration to settle their dispute and come to some compromise where Aristide would return to power after his ouster in the early 1990s. Lawrence Pezzullo was likened to a devil by advocates of Aristide and far-left-leaning protesters in the United States for forcing Aristide to compromise with the Haitian military which they accused of being mass-killers."Plunging into Haiti" is essentially about the operations of the Clinton Administration that eventually led to the 1994 US Intervation and restoration of Aristide. I thoroughly enjoyed Ralph Pezzullo's book because it tells the same old story from the fresh, different point of view of Lawrence Pezzullo. Before reading this book the maddening indecisiveness and awkward behavior of the Clinton Administration made little sense to me. I was surprised how frustrated Pezzullo was with his fellow State Department officials, and by the discord and chaos within the US Administration itself. Perhaps this book should have been named "Plunging into the US State Department."
Needless to say, this book is blatantly one-sided and biased in favor of Lawrence Pezzullo. So: this book is only valuable if you read it with others that tell the story from different points of view. I suggest reading Paul Farmer's "Uses of Haiti" together with this book for a mind-expanding debate. Farmer slams the Clinton Administration for forcing Aristide to compromise with Cedras; while, Pezzullo feels that Aristide as a president in exile had no right to complain about US tactics to restore him to power.
Also, I really disliked how each chapter is interrupted by condensed introductory summaries of the history of Haiti. Ralph Pezzullo intended this book to serve training diplomats--BAD IDEA; because this topic is too complex, too divisive--this book is only one side of the story. This book should NOT be your introduction to Haiti. But it should definately be on your list if you are familiar with Haiti's history and have already considered different points of view.
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating story of the making of foreign policy, July 8 2006
By JTB - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Plunging Into Haiti: Clinton, Aristide, and the Defeat of Diplomacy (Hardcover)
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Haiti, U.S. foreign policy making, diplomacy and multinational negotiations.
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