20669: radtimes: Imperialist coup becomes an occupation in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: radtimes <resist@best.com>

Imperialist coup becomes an occupation in Haiti

-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the March 25, 2004
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------

ARISTIDE IN JAMAICA, U.S. GENERAL IN HAITI AS
IMPERIALIST COUP BECOMES AN OCCUPATION

By G. Dunkel

March 16--Yesterday, one week after a delegation of solidarity activists
from the U.S. managed to win access to Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was
being held in Africa under virtual house arrest under orders of the
United States and France, Haiti's president flew back to the Caribbean
as the guest of Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson. The president
and his wife had been abducted from Haiti against their will by U.S.
troops and diplomats on Feb. 29 and flown to Bangui, Central African
Republic, even as Wash ing ton was telling the world that Aristide had
"resigned" his post.

In Haiti itself, people on the street told reporters they want their
president, who had been twice elected with overwhelming popular support,
to come back. But in Wash ington, White House spokesperson Scott
McClellan said that Aristide's arrival in Jamaica was "certainly not
helpful to advancing democracy and stability in Haiti."

Behind this mild statement is the threat of U.S. military might. Gen.
Richard B. Myers, chairperson of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, stopped
in Haiti on March 13 after a five-day swing through Latin America and
held a press conference with U.S. Ambassador James Foley.

Myers warned neighboring Jamaica that it was "taking a certain risk and
a certain responsibility" by having Aristide there. Foley said
Aristide's presence "will destabilize a very fragile and suffering
country." An unnamed but high Bush administration figure made it
ominously "clear" that Jamaica had better limit Aristide's stay.

In the name of restoring order in Haiti and bringing democracy, some
1,600 U.S. Marines, 510 French troops, 300 Chileans and 100 or so
Canadians are patrolling Port-au-Prince, with brief forays outside the
Haitian capital. As of March 14, the Mar ines had killed six Haitians
and exchanged gunfire with Aristide supporters.

While the Aristides are formally in Jamaica to be reunited with their
two young daughters, who have been staying with relatives in New York,
Aristide said of his visit, "For the time being, I'm listening to my
people."

"That would be the roar of distress," commented the Canadian
Broadcasting Corp., "expressed most eloquently by Port-au-Prince slum
dwellers threatening new protests to demand his return as Haiti's
democratically elected president; they see the multinational force as a
foreign occupation army."

On March 11, a large crowd of Aristide supporters had attempted to march
on the Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince. They were driven off by
cops firing tear gas and retreated to the Belair neighborhood, a poor
district of firm Aristide supporters. In the fighting that followed, two
people were killed and six severely injured.

Bob Moliere, one of the leaders of the demonstration, told the Los
Angeles Times, "We already voted, and we have only one president in
Haiti: Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He was the victim of a plot. It was a
kidnapping by Bush and Chirac."

Five days later, the CBC reported that "U.S. Marines and Haitian police
conducted overnight patrols in the tense Belair neighborhood, an
Aristide stronghold where Marines shot and killed two residents on
Friday and where a Marine was shot in the arm late Sunday ... ."

French troops, including soldiers from Guadeloupe and Martinique who
speak a language close to Haitian Creole, have been assigned to patrol
the poor La Saline neighborhood, where U.S. Marines killed two Haitians
on March 14. The last time French troops occupied Haiti was in 1803,
when they waged a genocidal war that only ended when the Haitian army of
rebel slaves crushed the French at the battle of Vertière.

The U.S. is pretending hard that Haiti has a constitutional government.
Gerard Latortue was installed as interim prime minister on March 12
under heavy U.S. guard, after being selected by a "Council of Seven Wise
Men" set up by the U.S. Latortue is a southern Florida television
personality and business consultant who was born in Gonaïves, Haiti, and
has lived in Haiti for only four months since 1963.

Latortue is attempting to put together a cabinet and is working hard--so
far unsuccessfully--to entice some members of Aristide's government so
what is widely perceived as a U.S. puppet regime can be called a
government of "national, nonpolitical unity." He has promised elections
in a couple of years, but is most concerned with disarming the
population.

One of his first acts was to suspend diplomatic relations with Jamaica
and pull Haiti out of Caricom, the 15-member Caribbean economic bloc
that has criticized the U.S. coup.

The right-wing militaries are still operating in Haiti, but are keeping
a lower profile. In Port-au-Prince, despite U.S. claims that life is
returning to normal, dead bodies line the roadside in poor
neighborhoods. A local missionary, Fr. Rick Burchette, spends a good
part of his day going around and putting them in body bags. (Miami
Herald, March 12)

The Haitian bourgeoisie has reopened closed markets and factories in the
capital, but elsewhere schools are still closed and bodies lie by the
roadside until local residents burn them for fear of disease. The few
social services available before Aristide was forced to leave have
vanished.

CUBAN DOCTORS STAY AT THEIR POSTS

In the midst of all this, and with over 200 people dead in Port-au-
Prince alone, the 535 Cuban doctors working in Haiti have stayed and
kept their clinics open, even when all others had closed.

Juan Carlos Chavez, who heads the Cuban medical mission, described how
the Cuban doctors worked. "There were 22 gunshot victims on Feb. 29 and
March 1 alone. And as the week progressed, Cuban doctors treated more
than 100 people," said Chavez.

Wrote Tracey Eaton in the Dallas Morning News, "Looters rushed the
hospital grounds at one point and stole six cars and trucks, but they
left the Cuban doctors alone. 'The people have always protected us,'
Chavez said. 'We're here to take care of peoplehealth.'" (March 12)

Cuban Ambassador Orlando Requeijo Gual, speaking at the United Nations
Feb. 26, pointed out that Cuban doctors have saved 86,000 lives in the
five years they have worked in Haiti. He ended his talk by pointing out,
"If all of the above is a proof of what a small and blockaded country is
able to do for Haiti, other states with huge economic and financial
resources will be able to do even more."

Venezuela is another country willing to defy the U.S. and help the
people of Haiti. "We don't recognize the new government of Haiti," said
President Hugo Chavez in a speech in eastern Venezuela. "The president
of Haiti is called Jean-Bertrand Aristide. ... Venezuela's doors are
open to President Jean-Bertrand Aristide." He said Aristide had been
kidnapped by "the troops of the country that preaches democracy to the
world."

The visit of U.S. Chief-of-staff Gen. Richard B. Myers to Haiti, and the
fact that the U.S. was able to line up a deal with France, another
imperialist power with long-standing interests in the Caribbean, signal
that Haiti is being used a laboratory for further imperialist
penetration in Latin America.

In particular, Venezuela, Colombia and Cuba are obviously the current
targets.

Haiti does not have great mineral wealth or a huge agricultural
potential. It does not have a pool of highly skilled workers or a
strategic position in the Caribbean. What it does have is a unique
history. It is the only country ever to grow out of a successful slave
revolt, and in the 200 years since then it has met imperialist
neocolonial interventions with a stubborn, popular resistance. For
example, it twice elected Aristide, a populist hated by the powerful and
racist U.S. senator, Jesse Helms, who called him "a mean-spirited
revolutionary and an anti-American demagogue." Helms's protege, Roger
Noriega, is now in charge of Western Hemisphere policy for the State
Department.

If the ruling class of the United States, militarily the most powerful
country in the world, cannot dismantle popular resistance to its wishes
in Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world and by far the
poorest country in the Western Hemi sphere, it is going to have great
difficulties imposing itself on the rest of the Caribbean and Latin
America.

.