The Beauty of the First Amendment

As some of you might know, I've been interning for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs for a short while now. The Council (or simply COHA) aims to provide its readership with a sense of what is going on in the Western Hemisphere--from Canada to Chile--politically, economically, and socially. So far, it's been an incredible experience; I've learned an incredible deal about what goes into producing internationally reputable work on a subject I'm interested in, and I recently published my first piece for COHA, something which I was very excited about.

It's titled "Préval of Haiti--A Provisional Report Card: Grade B+" and goes into a fair amount of detail analyzing the current state of the Haitian government and the status of democracy and democratic institutions there. In doing so, I aimed to provide a bit of context to set the stage for the Préval government. I hoped to show the bleak landscape that awaited Préval after his election a year ago. Both heads of state (President Aristide, who was ousted in a coup, and Prime Minister Lartortue, who ran an interim government following that coup) failed miserably at their jobs. Neither garnered the respect of the international community, and both are considered miserable failures.

A week after the piece went up, a quick Google search led me to an article in the radical Narco News--this one a direct rebuttal to my own article. In it, the writer, Joe Emersberger, ignores the main point of my article (that Préval has done an infinitely better job of leading a government that is much more democratic in practice than did either of the past two leaders). Instead, he focuses on how I characterize the Aristide and Latortue regimes: "Citing no evidence, Glenwick equates Aristide to Latortue by writing that Aristide’s time in office was an 'equally rocky period.'" First and foremost, I’d hope that citing Haiti’s rigged elections in 2000 that led the United States, Europe, and the International Community in general to withdraw aid would be enough evidence. Second, the folks at Narco seemed to be under the impression that I came down easy on Latortue; in describing his term, I wrote of the “hundreds—if not thousands—of opposition party members [who] were murdered.” I don’t know what Emersberger thinks, but that’s not exactly high praise in my book.

Neither Aristide nor Latortue were quality leaders. In fact, they were far from it. Both had dictator-like moments, and neither reflected the democracy that is a fundamental part of the Haitian constitution. It was not my goal to determine which ruler was worse than the other; they both were extremely flawed, governed poorly, and did not gain the respect of many people outside of their own party. All I intended to convey was the fact that Préval had a lot of work to do. How that is interpreted is up to the reader, but I believe I did my job. Lastly, my piece was about Préval, not Aristide or Latortue. For the people at Narco to not even mention the focus of my article is a disservice to their own credibility and, more importantly, their readership.

Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing. It’s what has separated our country from so many others for so long and is one of the biggest reasons why I am so proud to be an American. Do I support Narco News’s right to criticize my article? Absolutely. Do I agree with Emersberger’s criticism? No, and I believe that his criticism is severely flawed, misconstruing my minor points and ignoring my main ones.

P.S. My newest piece, on microcredit in Latin America, is now up on http://www.coha.org/. Let the criticism (and maybe even some praise?) begin!