Connoisseur of Haitian history, former Prime Minister Gérard Latortue dead at 88

Gérard Latortue, the one-time United Nations negotiator and connoisseur of Haitian history who was plucked from retirement to lead his troubled nation as prime minister after another disruption in its democracy, has died.

Latortue, who lived in Boca Raton both before and after he was tapped to lead a transition government in Haiti during 27 months in the early 2000s, was 88 years old. He died early Monday morning, his cause of death unknown, according to relatives.

The death was confirmed Monday on Twitter by current Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry, a one-time confidante and a member of the Council of Sages that chose Latortue in March 2004 from a group of other aspiring applicants after then-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted from power in a violent coup.

Henry said the death of Latortue, who left office in June 2006 after staging free and fair elections that resulted in the election of the late President René Préval for a second time, “is a huge loss for the nation.”

“He is a reformer, a convinced patriot, an eminent technocrat, a voice of change, of development, a supporter of democracy,” Henry said of Latortue.

Ralph Latortue, a cousin and former Miami consul general for Haiti, said the elder statesman was “a very friendly and family-oriented person and always wanted the best for his country of Haiti.”

Never one to shy away from the media, even as prime minister, Latortue was a television personality in South Florida’s Haitian media landscape when Aristide fled into exile on Feb. 29, 2004, amid a bloody revolt. Prior to the ouster, the 15-member Caribbean Community known as CARICOM was trying to negotiate a deal between those who supported Aristide and those who wanted him out over allegations of election fraud and poor governance. Caribbean leaders’ unsuccessful efforts were among several failed interventions by the international community.

Following Aristide’s departure, the United States adopted a proposal by CARICOM. The head of Haiti’s Supreme Court at the time, Boniface Alexandre, was tapped to serve as provisional president and a seven-member Council of Sages was then established to choose the prime minister to run the transition government. Several Haitians applied for the job. Latortue emerged as the winning candidate, beating out his good friend, the late Lt. General Herard Abraham, who died last August.

Among Latortue’s proudest moments: when one of his daughters, Alexia Latortue, was nominated in 2021 by President Joe Biden as assistant secretary for International Markets in the Treasury Department.

“I regret the passing of Gérard Latortue, a kind man who did his best to serve his beloved Haiti in time of need after a distinguished career with the United Nations,” said James Foley, a former U.S. ambassador to Haiti. “As interim prime minister without a popular mandate or political base, he had a virtually impossible job but deserves historical credit for steering the transition to successful elections and restoration of democratic governance in Haiti.”

Latortue’s arrival in Haiti in March of 2004 was met with applause — and mixed reactions, as some Haitians questioned whether someone who had spent much of his career outside the country could repair the divisions in the highly polarized nation. He immediately made an appeal for Haitians to lay down their arms and promised to revamp the embattled Haiti National Police force and put the fragile nation back on the path to democracy.

With the help of U.S., Canadian and French military forces on the ground, followed by a U.N. peacekeeping mission, he was able to provide some measure of security.

He started the rebuilding of the police and succeeded in staging elections. However, throughout his two-year tenure, Latortue faced protests, crises and more than one diplomatic tussle with the U.S., an ally. One such incident involved the U.S. decision to resume deportations to Haiti a month after the country’s 2006 presidential elections. The deportations had been temporarily halted amid concerns that deportees were behind a wave of kidnappings and violence. However, instead of finding a supportive ally in Latortue, the U.S. found resistance, according to confidential cables obtained by WikiLeaks and shared with McClatchy newspapers at the time.

Both Latortue and his interior minister, Paul Magloire, were threatened with U.S. visa revocations.

The tone of the cables between Port-au-Prince and Washington during Latortue’s interim government’s showed how deeply the U.S. government was involved in Haiti’s internal affairs. They also illustrated how Latortue relied on the U.S.’s top envoys in Port-au-Prince for counsel and support, even as his government broke promises and commitments, such as on-time presidential and legislative elections, the release of Aristide’s former Prime Minister Yvon Neptune from prison and the rapid resumption of deportations.

Artistide supporters, upset by his Feb. 29 ouster, also never stopped protesting Latortue’s appointment amid demands for the return of their leader. When CARICOM also asked for Aristide’s return, Latortue suspended Haiti’s participation in the 15-member regional bloc and put relations on hold.

He continued to face criticism for the jailing of Neptune and other Aristide supporters, including the late Haitian rights activist and Roman Catholic priest Gérard Jean-Juste and Aristide’s Interior Minister Jocelerme Privert, who 12 years later went on to lead Haiti as provisional president during another transition.

“He always said to me in both public and in private that Haitians, when they negotiate, “it’s all or nothing’” said Jean-Junior Joseph, a close friend who served as Latortue’s communication director and remained in constant contact to the end. “He believed that he did his best to unite Haitians, opposition or not. He wanted to always be in the middle so that everyone could listen to each other.”

As prime minister, Latortue faced the same challenges Haiti finds itself in today, though not as dire. The Haiti National Police had been gutted by drug trafficking and politics during Aristide’s tenure, the economy was struggling and the country was polarized. He also faced pressure from the United States — which had deployed 1,600 U.S. Marines to the country after Aristide’s ouster — not to integrate former army soldiers into the police force and to hold rebels involved in the uprising accountable.

After ending his tenure in Haiti with mixed reviews and a 9,000-member U.N. peacekeeping stabilization force, Latortue told the Miami Herald: “We saved the country from a civil war, and a big social explosion, and introduced more civility in political life. It’s far away from being a failure, but I cannot expect to call it a complete success. It’s definitely better.”

Born in Gonaives, the city where Haiti’s independence was first declared, Latortue studied at the Institute of Political Studies and the Institute of Economic and Social Development in Paris before returning to Haiti in 1960. He founded the Institute of Economics and Business Study, but soon fled the dictatorship of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier in 1963.

He went on to work for the U.N. Industrial Development Organization in Vienna as a chief negotiator. In 1988, Latortue returned to Haiti and worked as foreign minister in the government of Leslie Francois Manigat. When a military coup ousted Manigat later that year on June 19, Latortue’s birthday, he was once more forced to flee Haiti. Latortue also worked for the U.N. Development Program in West Africa and later as international business consultant in Miami.

In South Florida, his home was a treasure trove of rare books, among them a 19th century memoir of a lieutenant general describing the first days of the Haitian Revolution and an 1850 theater playbill about revolutionary leader Toussaint L’Ouverture.

Latortue is survived by his wife, Marlene, three daughters, Gaelle, Alexia and Stephanie and his brother Paul Latortue.