ABSTRACT
The scheduling of elections for December 1990 demonstrated the resolve of the opposition movement and the prodemocratic forces to put an end to dictatorship and build a modern and democratic Haiti. Jean-Bertrand Aristide emerged stronger than ever from his confrontations with the church and the military, and he earned a reputation as the nemesis of the macoutes and Duvalierism. In Aristide's view, the Duvalierists intended to maintain power at any cost, and to that end, they deployed systematic violence and repression against the population. Aristide's option for the poor led to the "unfolding of the connecting thread of a theological view which surely brings one back to the one God, that of the excluded, manipulated by the more privileged to maintain an ancestral domination over the poor". Aristide not only adopted the populist and agnostic version of liberation theology but also tended to emphasize its prophetic side in his writings and sermons.
