18237: Esser: Haiti: Crushed by U.S. power (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. E s s e r <torx@mail.joimail.com>


Socialist Worker
Why the U.S. is responsible for poverty and tyranny in Haiti
Haiti: Crushed by U.S. power

January 16, 2004 | Page 8

LAST MONTH, U.S. Ambassador to Haiti James Foley issued a public
statement decrying the ongoing political crisis in Haiti, which
produced more violent confrontations at the beginning of the year.
"On the eve of commemoration of the bicentennial of Haiti's
independence, an event which still resounds today as the symbol of
victory over oppression, it is regrettable to note the deplorable
state of human rights in Haiti," Foley said. What he didn't say is
that U.S. imperialism is now--and has always been--a major obstacle
to the Haitians' struggle for liberation. HELEN SCOTT tells this
history.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE HISTORY of Haiti includes both brutal oppression and heroic
resistance. The original Amerindian inhabitants were decimated by the
murder, forced labor and disease accompanying European conquest in
the 16th century.

By the end of the 17th century, the island--named Espanola by its
"discoverer" Christopher Columbus--had been carved into a French
colony in the West (Saint Domingue, now Haiti) and a Spanish one in
the East (Santo Domingo, now the Dominican Republic).

Saint Domingue became an immensely profitable part of the global
economic plantation system--in the words of socialist author CLR
James, "a regime of calculated brutality and terrorism" based on the
exploitation of African slave labor. As they did across the Americas,
slaves fought for their freedom. In 1790, escaped slaves (the
"maroons") and freed blacks (the "affranchis") organized a network of
rebel cells.

Against impossible odds, the revolutionaries, led by towering figures
such as Toussaint L'Ouverture (a figure brought to life in James'
brilliant The Black Jacobins), defeated the combined armies of
France, Spain and Britain. On January 4, 1804, Haiti became the
world's first independent Black nation.

The European empires--as well as the newly independent United
States--saw the new republic as a threat to their system and so
refused to recognize Haiti's sovereignty, doing everything in their
power to undermine it. U.S. President Thomas Jefferson imposed
sanctions that remained in place until 1862.

In 1825, France sent troops to demand 150 million francs as
compensation for their lost "property." Haiti had no choice but to
pay, and was saddled with a crippling debt. Haiti remained a besieged
nation, its territorial waters invaded by European powers repeatedly
throughout the 19th century.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

BY THE turn of the 20th century, the U.S. saw Haiti as a crucial part
of a regional and global strategy for power. Disastrously for
Haitians, their country would be subject for the next century to the
shifting needs of U.S. imperialism.

Using Haiti's constant political instability as an alibi, the U.S.
invaded in 1915 and maintained a brutal military occupation for 19
years. In terms eerily similar to those used today about the U.S.
military's control over Iraq, the occupation of Haiti was justified
as an exercise in nation building.

But then as now, the reality was of a racist military regime that
violated every democratic principle and was driven by American
economic and strategic interests. The occupying power installed a
puppet president and rewrote Haiti's constitution to ensure
foreigners the right to own property.

The only development was geared towards the needs of American
capitalism. Haitian peasants were rounded up, chained and forced to
build the roads that connected the sugar mills and ports.

Rebel "cacos" developed into a mass movement against the occupation,
and the U.S. was forced to withdraw in 1934. Haiti by now had a
highly centralized state and an extensive military trained by the
U.S. in suppressing domestic resistance. American corporations
dominated its economy, and the already immense gap between the
wealthy elite and the mass of impoverished peasants had grown even
wider.

These conditions paved the way for the brutal dictatorship of
Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. Duvalier came to power in 1957, using
populist black power rhetoric against the predominantly light-skinned
Haitian ruling class.

As president, he protected the interests of the very class he claimed
to oppose and extended a regime of terror to control the impoverished
population. He created the infamous "tonton macoutes," a
plain-clothed army of thugs that terrorized the nation with
indiscriminate violent attacks.

Duvalier proved himself a useful Cold War ally to U.S. imperialism,
championing corporations and serving as an "anti-communist"
counterweight to Fidel Castro's Cuba. Similarly, his son and
successor Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier carried out Corporate
America's agenda of "neoliberalism," opening up the economy and
offering up Haiti's poor as a cheap, heavily repressed labor force
for foreign corporations.

Throughout the Duvaliers' reign, the U.S. government refused to
recognize Haitians fleeing state violence as political refugees and
maintained a policy of forced repatriation--which meant certain
torture and death.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

YET DESPITE poverty and repression, Haiti's peasants and workers
again rose up to fight for justice and liberty. In the 1980s, a mass
movement known as "Lavalas"--meaning a cleansing wave or flood in
Haitian Creole--toppled the hated Duvalier regime and embarked on a
process of "dechoukaj" (uprooting) of the entrenched power structure.

In 1986, Baby Doc was forced to flee the country. In a telling
departure from its usual policy towards genuine refugees, the U.S.
government sent a military plane to collect their favorite dictator
and take him--along with the money he stole from Haitians--to a safe
refuge in France.

In a democratic election in 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide--a priest
influenced by liberation theology--was elected president by a massive
majority on promises of social reform. But just months later, a
military coup--funded by the nation's richest families and sponsored
by the CIA--took down the democratically elected government and
signaled a new reign of terror.

Mass arrests, assassinations, torture, beatings, rape and other
atrocities became the reality for Haitians for the next three years.
In 1991, 38,000 Haitians sought refuge in the U.S. But U.S.
policy--under both George Bush Sr. and then Bill Clinton, who
reversed his campaign promise on this as so much else--still refused
to recognize Haitians as political refugees.

Less than 5 percent received asylum. The rest were repatriated, with
hundreds being incarcerated at the detention center at Guantánamo
Bay, which now houses victims of the U.S.-led "war on terror." U.S.
officials even gave names and addresses of returned refugees to the
coup authorities, guaranteeing arrest, torture and execution for
unknown numbers.

In 1994, U.S. troops again invaded Haiti in "Operation Restore
Democracy." This was sold as a great "humanitarian" intervention to
remove a tyrannical coup regime and return a democratically elected
president to power. Yet the U.S. had always been hostile to Aristide,
and even while Clinton was publicly denouncing the coup leaders, the
CIA was supporting the paramilitary organization FRAPH that
terrorized the population during the coup years.

Many of the coup leaders received funding and support from the U.S.,
through the National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. Agency of
International Development, as well as the CIA. During the occupation,
the U.S. cracked down on peasant and workers' political
organizations, while rehabilitating the thugs of the Duvalier and
coup regimes.

The U.S. returned Aristide to power, but on the condition that he
abandon his planned reforms, give coup leaders a role in the new
regime and accept World Bank and IMF conditions. Aristide's
acceptance of these terms signified his degeneration from a champion
of the people to a manager of the same old corrupt and unequal system.

Today, Aristide travels with his own armed thugs and champions export
processing zones in the Dominican Republic, where Haitians will be
low wage, non-union workers. In the years after the invasion, the
U.S. government turned on Aristide, eventually putting an embargo on
aid to Haiti when Washington's handpicked successors were defeated by
Lavalas.

Aristide responded by renewing his populist criticisms of U.S.
neoliberal policies. Nevertheless, Aristide represents something very
different than he once did.

As human rights lawyer Peter Dailey wrote last year, "The adult
literacy campaigns, rural clinics, public works and land reform that
for years Aristide had promised remain slogans rather than
programs...[As early as 1999], it seemed to many Haitians that
Aristide, who once personified Haitian aspirations for democracy, now
represented Haitian democracy's biggest obstacle."

Organized opposition to Aristide's Family Lavalas comes from the
Democratic Convergence, an unstable alliance of right- and left-wing
forces, and the right-wing Group of 184. Independent left formations
such as Ben Dupuy's National Popular Party are few and small, partly
as a result of the coup regime's decimation of the left.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

BLEAK THOUGH this situation is, the history of Haiti's 200-year
struggle for independence has many lessons for us. One is that U.S.
imperialism always claims to be for democracy and freedom--while
violating sovereignty and seeking to install compliant regimes, no
matter how brutal, which serve its interests.

Another is that democratic change comes not from foreign powers, but
from a nation's oppressed, which can and do rise up against
intolerable conditions. Lastly, in order to assist those struggling
in poor nations, we in the U.S. must do everything in our power to
challenge the economic and military might exerted internationally by
our own government.

http://www.socialistworker.org/2004-1/482/482_08_Haiti.shtml