Gerard pierre charles biography

Michael Norton, Associated Press

Prominent Haitian intellectual and politician Gerard Pierre-Charles has died of heart failure in Cuba, where he was receiving emergency treatment for a lung infection, friends and colleagues said Monday.

He was 68.

Pierre-Charles died Sunday at a hospital in Havana, said retired physician Guy Noel, a close friend. He said Pierre-Charles was flown to Cuba on Friday after coming down with the flu last week.

Noel called him “one of Haiti’s greatest minds.”

Involved in politics for half a century, Pierre-Charles was an economist who wrote at least 16 books and a longtime communist whose ideology shifted toward the center after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

He was a leading opponent of his former ally President Jean-Bertrand Aristide up until his ouster in February, accusing him of betraying the poor and drifting toward dictatorship.

“In the current crisis, the voice of Gerard was a