20944: Esser: Haiti on Our Minds (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Mumia Abu-Jamal's Radio Broadcasts
http://www.prisonradio.org/mumia.html

Haiti on Our Minds
by Mumia Abu Jamal

[Col. Recorded 3/7/04]

...[T]he little community of Haiti, anchored in the Caribbean Sea,
has had her mission in the world, and a mission which the world had
such need to learn. She has taught the world the danger of slavery
and the value of liberty. In this respect she has been the greatest
of all our modern teachers. — Frederick Douglass (1893)

The recent coup d'etat in Haiti, where the Americans spirited the
president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, out of power and out of his own
country, is just the latest event in 200 years of U.S. complicity and
support of repression in Haiti.

During the hard-fought Haitian Revolution, which occurred roughly a
decade after the U.S. Revolution, the government of George
Washington, which talked about 'liberty to all men', entered the
conflict, but not on the side of liberty. The Washington
Administration authorized the grant of $400,000 — a vast sum in the
1800s — not to support the forces of freedom, but to the white
planters. They sent money to the French for arms and food to support
their resistance to the uprising. America's secretary of state,
Thomas Jefferson, writer of the Constitution, did the actual
paperwork. When it came to slavery or freedom, the Americans,
slaveowners themselves, chose slavery to support.

By Jan. 1st, 1804, Haitian independence would be declared, and for
the first time in world history, a slave army bested imperial armies,
and freedom resulted.

How did the U.S. respond? Did they welcome them to the brotherhood of
free nations? The words of a U.S. congressman, said some 20 years
after Haitian independence, stated U.S. policy towards the Black
Republic: "Our policy with regards to Hayti is plain. *We never can
acknowledge her independence ...* The peace and safety of a large
part of our Union forbids us even to discuss [it]." So said South
Carolina Senator Robert Hayne in 1824. It wasn't until 1862, when the
Civil War was raging, that the
U.S. recognized its nearest free neighbor. They couldn't recognize it
for almost 60 years because they didn't want Blacks in the U.S. to
see a free Black people, as diplomats, and leaders of government,
functioning in the U.S. The official U.S. policy, was white supremacy.

 From 1915 to 1934, the U.S. occupied Haiti, fighting a bitter
guerrilla war that left thousands dead. They murdered guerrilla
leader Charlemagne Peralte, in 1919, and then paraded his nearly
naked, chained body, to try to stifle the Cacos Rebellion.

They installed and supported the Duvalier regimes,and since the fall
of that dictatorship, have actively and secretly supported
Duvalierist elements in the army and the government.

Indeed, they trained many of the people who were the most repressive
elements in the army, and backed the FRAPH, which was an
anti-democratic terrorist army in Haiti.

They have always opposed Pere Aristide, for his support of the
*Lavalas* (Creole for 'the Flood', or the masses) movement.

Think of it this way; in the last century, how many times have you
ever seen the U.S. support anything in Latin America? How many times
have they trained, backed, armed the right-wing militaries? Even
torturers, rapists, and mass murderers?

Why would Haiti be any different?

The recent soft expulsion of Aristide, opens the door to bring back
Duvalierist elements to the fore, to 'discipline' the riotous,
rebellious Haitian people, who've never forgotten their revolutionary
origins. They want Haiti 'stable' to perform as a docile labor force
for the bourgeoisie, both in Haiti, and the U.S.

The empire, based on dominance, control, and fear, cannot countenance
the Haitian example of people's power, of, yes, the barest fraction
of 'democracy.' Thus, they use various means to achieve the same
ends. Thus, the removal, at gunpoint, of Aristide, 'for the good of
the Haitian people.'

Let the Haitian people decide their own government:! It isn't for the
U.S. to decide for
them.

It's time to end this empire, for the good of the people of America,
and for the good of the people of the world.

We must demand it, and then work for it, to end this reign of madness.


Copyright 2004 Mumia Abu-Jamal
.