The author delivered the following talk at a Feb. 9 Party for Socialism and Liberation branch meeting in Los Angeles.
Almost two years ago, on Feb. 29, 2004, U.S. Marines escorted Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide from his home in Tabarre outside Port-au-Prince and flew him to the Central African Republic. While they claimed Aristide resigned, Aristide himself charged that he was kidnapped and forced from power. Since then, tens of thousands in Haiti and around the world have called for his return to power.
The situation that led to the coup d’état and the current state of affairs in Haiti is a stark lesson in the hypocritical
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Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the world and the poorest in the Western Hemisphere. But this is not because of lack of human or natural resources. It is rather a situation that has been engineered by colonialism and imperialism after centuries of resistance and struggle by the Haitian people.
Slave revolution
Haiti was born out of the struggle of slaves who rose up against the French empire in 1791, and subsequently had to fight against the interest of the Spanish and British empires for its freedom.
At the time, Haiti was the “crown jewel” of the French empire. It was its most prosperous colony and supplied half of Europe with sugar, coffee and cotton. And two-thirds of France’s foreign trade was centered on the island. All of this was produced by slave labor—men, women and children who were constantly being forcibly brought from Africa. From 1787 on, 40,000 slaves were brought to Santo Domingo each year.
Eventually, after much maneuvering by the colonialists, Haiti won not only the emancipation of its slave population but the independence of the country in 1804 when General Jean-Jacques Dessalines and thousands of Haitian liberation fighters defeated the French. It was a revolution carried out by slaves and former slaves against one of the most powerful military forces in the world.
In his inaugural address to the new Republic of Haiti, Dessalines declared, “Never again shall colonist or European set foot on this soil as master or landowner.” Dessalines’ legacy still rings down through history today. He is looked upon as the a guiding light for what the Haitian sovereignty should mean.
The Haitian people would still have to pay a great a great price for their freedom. Dessalines was eventually assassinated and the Haitian masses were betrayed by the newly emerging bourgeoisie.
In 1825, France recognized the independence of Haiti on the condition that the Haitian government pay France 150 million gold francs. The Haitian government finished repaying the debt over 100 years later, in 1946.
The United States was also hostile and disruptive to Haiti’s early development. Slavery was not abolished until six decades after Haiti. It also looked at any country in the Caribbean as part of its own backyard.
Imperialist interference
The recent events in Haiti are a reflection of hundreds of years of capitalist hostility to Haitian independence.
During the “Cold War,” the U.S. government backed the repressive regimes of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, largely because of their anti-communist credentials and their willingness to liquidate the left. The transition from Papa Doc to Baby Doc is very important to note because it laid the basis for the introduction of neo-liberal policies that have made Haiti one of the poorest and most indebted nations in the world.
In the late 1980s and early 90s, the United States tried to provide cover for its most repressive client states by promoting so-called democracy—really, veiled attempts at trying to preserve the old power structures, but with a veneer of human rights.
The Duvalier regime was so repressive, however, that such attempts did not work. Even Haiti’s bourgeoisie began to look for another way out.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide entered the political scene in the 1980s. He was elected by a huge margin to the office of president.
At first, Aristide was accepted by the ruling class because they thought he could be controlled by them. While Aristide himself is not a revolutionary and has social democratic politics, even the small reforms he wanted to institute for the working and poor people of Haiti were not acceptable to the ruling class in Haiti or the United States.
In 1991, Aristide was kicked out in a CIA-engineered coup. However, the regime that took Aristide’s place in Haiti was so chaotic that the U.S. government had to bring Aristide back in order to restore order.
Once again, the U.S. government and the Haitian capitalists thought they could control Aristide. But when he started implementing “wild” and “outlandish” policies like outlawing child slavery, setting a minimum wage and improving education for the masses, the imperialists and their lackeys thought it was too much.
Aristide did implement some rather radical reforms that sought to improve the lives of peasants and workers. He also disbanded the army, which everybody saw as the tool of the U.S. imperialists in the country. Most importantly, Aristide objected to the neo-liberal dictates of Washington. He did not want them to ravage completely the Haitian economy.
The coup and after
The U.S.-engineered coup in 2004 that ousted Aristide was almost a textbook CIA operation. So-called rebels situated across the border from Haiti in the Dominican Republic launched repeated raids against Aristide’s government. Meanwhile, the bourgeois media tried to make it seem as if there was a popular uprising.
The coup was, in fact, a carefully planned action directed by the U.S. government. Its foot soldiers were Haitian paramilitary elements from the repressive former dictatorships. Eventually, they successfully ousted the democratically elected leader Aristide by kidnapping him. The United States began another occupation of Haiti.
Since then, the Haitian people have not let up in their resistance to colonial occupation. They have demanded, along with all progressive people around the world, an end to foreign domination and the return of their democratically elected leaders.
The United Nations quickly took over what was a U.S. occupation and provided international cover for war crimes and mass killings. Major world powers like France and Canada have supported the U.N. occupation.
Brazil commands the U.N. occupying force. Its ruling class and political elites are trying their hardest to impress the United States by showing how useful their country can be as a proxy force for imperialism in Haiti.
Massacres and repression
The most recent round of severe repression took place against the Haitian people in December 2006.
According to residents of Cité-Soleil, U.N. forces attacked their neighborhood in the early morning hours of Dec. 22,
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Samuel Leconte, an eyewitness to the U.N. massacre, said that although the U.N. troops shot and killed many people, “They will never stop our demands for the return of President Aristide. We will keep demonstrating and will never stop until the land of Dessalines is truly free and independent!” Mr. Leconte was arrested soon after witnessing the massacre. He is currently being held in prison by Brazilian troops from the U.N. mission.
Footage of the massacre, taken by videographers from the Haiti Information Project, shows unarmed civilians dying as a result of indiscriminate gunfire from U.N. forces.
Although the U.N. denied firing from helicopter gunships, an unidentified 28-year-old man is shown on camera stating that he was shot in the abdomen from a circling U.N. helicopter raining death upon those below.
This is not the first time that the United Nations has denied murdering unarmed civilians in Cité-Soleil.
For many, Dec. 22, 2006, was a repeat of another U.N. massacre on July 6, 2005. That day, more than 26 people were killed in a successful assassination attempt on Emmanuel “Dred” Wilmer and four of his closest followers.
Wilmer was openly hostile to the U.N. military occupation of his country and opposed the ouster of the Aristide. He led armed resistance and inspired others to do the same against the brutal Haitian police and the irreparably corrupt legal system.
The occupation force also denied killing unarmed civilians on July 6, 2005.
At the time, Eloufi Boulbars, a U.N. spokesperson stated, “We saw five people killed, that’s what we could count. Armed bandits who had tried to resist were either killed or wounded.”
But documentary evidence finally forced the United Nations to admit that unarmed civilians had been killed by “peacekeeping” forces, despite the body’s attempts to cover it up. Undeterred, the United Nations only admitted that it had used “disproportionate force” in the massacre.
The pretext for the most recent U.N. massacre in December 2006 was a “strike against kidnappers.” This, of course, turned out to be completely false.
One anonymous survivor of the massacre recounted how the U.N. troops entered the neighborhood with guns blazing. The witness saw a pregnant woman and a young man die in the shooting.
Another witness, former political prisoner Annette Auguste added, “We saw young men and women gunned down by U.N. forces in Cité-Soleil. Young people shot dead. Were they all kidnappers too?”
The real cause of the U.N. massacre seems to have been a massive demonstration of Aristide supporters that began in Cité-Soleil.
About 10,000 people had demonstrated a few days earlier to demand the return of Aristide. It was a clear condemnation of the foreign military occupation of their country.
Mass protests, resistance
Despite the wanton killing by U.N. forces, resistance to the occupation of Haiti continues to intensify.
On Feb. 7, the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, supported demonstrations to protest the recent repression of the Haitian people and call for an end to the occupation. These actions were echoed all around the world and especially in Haiti where many people demonstrated.
The Haiti Information Project reported that crowds estimated at well over 100,000 took to the streets of seven major cities throughout Haiti on Feb. 7. Demands included an end to the U.N. occupation, freedom for political prisoners and the return of exiled president Aristide.
Although the largest demonstrations took place in the capital of Port-au-Prince and Haiti’s second largest city, Cap-Haitien, thousands were reported to have joined similar actions in Port-de-Paix, Hinche, La Kay, St. Marc and Miragoane. Smaller actions were also reported in the towns of Jacmel, Leogane and Gonaives.
Today, just two days later, the Associated Press reported that hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers raided Cité-Soleil to arrest “gang members” (that is, anti-occupation forces) and seize a section of it. Like the Dec. 2006 massacre, the Feb. 9 U.N. action came after large anti-occupation protests.
More than 500 blue-helmeted troops in armored vehicles entered Cité-Soleil before dawn and tried to seize several
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Dos Santos, speaking from Cité-Soleil even as gunfire continued to echo through the streets, said “gang members” fired thousands of rounds at U.N. troops, wounding two.
AP journalists saw the blood-spattered body of a young man in a street. Witnesses said he was walking through the area when he was shot by U.N. troops. Residents moved the body inside a building.
Later, AP journalists saw people from the neighborhood use a wheelbarrow to carry out a motionless woman bleeding from her chest. Slum residents said she was struck by a stray bullet at home.
Afterward, about 100 people from Cité-Soleil protested outside the U.N. military base in the neighborhood, waving a white sheet and chanting, “We want peace!”
“We want this fighting to stop so innocent people of Cité-Soleil can stop being victims and live as human beings,” Damas Augustin, one of the protesters, said as U.N. troops put up barriers to keep them at bay.
Haiti and the anti-war movement
The U.S.-backed U.N. massacres also remind us why the call for ending colonial occupation in Haiti is such an important demand for the anti-war movement and why ANSWER has included it in all of our mobilizations since the ouster of Aristide.
Unlike some liberal organizations that seek to appease the Democratic Party, like United for Peace and Justice, we believe that we must oppose imperialism everywhere. Haiti, like Palestine, is a litmus test for the anti-war movement. The struggle of all people around the world fighting imperialism must be supported.
There cannot be self-determination under military occupation. The removal of all foreign troops from Haiti is a necessary precondition for the self-determination of the Haitian people.
I think the words of Ben Dupuy, general secretary of the National Popular Party in Haiti, point the right direction for our orientation to the struggle in Haiti.
Dupuy told Socialism and Liberation magazine in September 2004: “It is very important for U.S. progressive forces to understand the dynamics of the struggle in Haiti and to be aware of the force of the traditional media in shaping public opinion. Sometimes even progressive people fall victim even unconsciously to this form of propaganda. We think that the struggle in Haiti should not be looked at from a racialist standpoint but from a class struggle standpoint, and as a struggle for national liberation, which is the only basis that can create the conditions for a new socialist society.”
