Freedom fighter

Jonathan Demme immortalizes a human rights activist in The Agronomist




BY MATT KELEMEN

There couldn't be a better year for The Agronomist to be released. Although surely overshadowed by the avalanche of attention surrounding Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, Jonathan Demme's documentary about Haitian radio commentator and political activist Jean Dominique is just as relevant. With the ousting of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in February, the U.S. is once again occupied with the political future of the impoverished Caribbean island nation. Americans, meanwhile, are bombarded with and confused by political propaganda and spin disguised as "fair and balanced" news about their own political process.

And our country is sadly lacking in prominent activist heroes. With a right-wing media machine ready to pounce on and slander any politician promoting progressive views, few prominent Americans are willing to step forward and say the things that need to be said.

In Haiti, speaking up can get you killed.

That's what happened to Dominique, a longtime provocateur who tirelessly and fearlessly championed human rights from the broadcast room of Radio Haiti Inter. In 2000, as an election approached that would lead to the re-election of and eventual downfall of Aristide, Dominique was assassinated as he stood outside the station. Although his wife Michèle Montas would continue his legacy, a powerful voice was silenced.

It was a voice that had come to the attention of Demme years earlier. Demme, who had taken an interest in Haiti's people and politics, began interviewing Dominique in 1991. Dominique was in exile in New York after a coup d'état against Aristide, during which he reported on the crisis and resulting carnage. Demme began the first in a series of interviews that turned into a 15-year project that might have been extended had Dominique not been killed.

As Dominique reveals to Demme, he did not consider himself a journalist. "I am an agronomist," he says. It's a literal and figurative self-classification, as Dominique studied agriculture and considered himself as a cultivator of truth, justice and human rights. He was 4-years-old when the American occupying force left Haiti. His father told him not to look at the Marines as they drove by, ingraining a sense of defiance in him. Dominique's ancestors fought in the battle that liberated Haiti from Napoleon's forces nearly two centuries earlier. His nationalist father made sure his son was aware that he was a Haitian, not a subject of an occupying power.

As an "agronomist," Dominique spent much time in agricultural areas and witnessed the plight of his people firsthand. Although he came from a relatively well-to-do family, Dominique was jailed early on for his anti-government stance. He became interested in film and eventually became a filmmaker himself. He created a cinema club that was eventually banned by the government of longtime dictator Papa Doc Duvalier, but it was in another medium in which he truly found his voice.

Dominique's approach to broadcasting was entertaining and enrapturing to the Haitian people, who only had state-run radio to listen to as an alternative. Demme includes a sampling at the onset of the film. "They try everything to gnaw at us," says Dominique, his voice accompanied by sound effects to match his words and punctuated by his indignant, haughty laughter. "To bury us. To electrocute us. To drown us. To drain us. It's been going on for more than 50 years Š and why should it stop?"

He invited Montas to add journalistic credibility to the station, and found a soulmate as well as a collaborator. But Dominique provided the panache. His voice was an extension of his fiery persona, and he spoke in the Creole language of the people. Physically, he was slight and wiry; a toothy, tobacco-stained grin often accompanied his tireless diatribes against the forces of oppression.

Demme does not seek justice. He has done something greater in making Dominique immortal. As Wyclef Jean's score floats in the background, Demme's film makes clear that there are millions of people still suffering under the thumb of political oppression. The world needs true freedom fighters and human rights activists now more than ever, especially when the problems of countries such as Haiti have been overshadowed by a war against "evildoers" who "hate our freedom."

The Agronomist opens June 18 at the Suncoast.