27330: Esser (add) Re: 27324: Sprague (Response) 27304: Simidor (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From D. Esser


Concerning the ineffectual defenses of Batay Ouvriye by "Simidor" it
might be worth recalling some of the bones of his contentions. While
the discourse between Batay Ouvriye and Haïti Progrès, at times has
tragical and farcical undertones, it is enlightening to contrast Jeb
Sprague's writings with that of "Simidor" and his pet cause.


Monthly Review Magazine
<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/sprague211105.html>

November 21, 2005


Supporting a Leftist Opposition to Lavalas: The AFL-CIO's Solidarity
Center and Batay Ouvriye
by Jeb Sprague

For many activists, academics, and labor historians in the 1980s, the
AFL-CIO became the AFL-CIA.  Founded in 1961, the American Institute
for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) <http://tinyurl.com/9g8ll> was the
AFL-CIO's foreign organizing wing for Latin America and the
Caribbean. Along with its counterparts in Africa, Asia, and Europe,
AIFLD was used to undermine leftist trade movements, support
dictators such as the Duvaliers, and back military coups in Chile and
Brazil.

Throughout the Cold War, the CIA heavily infiltrated AIFLD, as
discussed in Philip Agee's <http://tinyurl.com/dmsby> 1984
whistleblower Inside the Company: CIA Diary.
<http://tinyurl.com/e3wo2> Agee fingered Serafino Romualdi
<http://tinyurl.com/8s223> as a known CIA asset being involved in
AIFLD throughout the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, heading up AIFLD at one
point.

In 1984, with "Baby Doc" Jean-Claude Duvalier's consent, the
Fédération des Ouvriers Syndiqués (FOS) was founded in Haiti as a
conservative pro-business union with the assistance of AIFLD.
Following the departure of "Baby Doc," the State Department feared
radical labor unrest in Haiti, so it increased funding for the FOS.
In June of 1986, the State Department, at a White House briefing for
the chief executive officers of major corporations, requested AIFLD's
involvement in Haiti because "of the presence of radical labor unions
and the high risk that other unions may become radicalized".1 Members
of Duvalier’s secret police and the Tonton Macoutes heavily
infiltrated the FOS.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) <http://tinyurl.com/bv64n>
and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
provided funding, often funneled through AIFLD, to Haitian unions
such as the Conféderation Autonome des Travailleurs Haïtiens (CATH)
and the FOS.  According to Thomas Carothers in his 1994 article, "The
Ned at 10," <http://tinyurl.com/c22xr> the National Endowment for
Democracy "believed that democracy promotion was a necessary means of
fighting communism and that, given sensitivities about U.S.
government intervention abroad, such work could best be done by an
organization that was not part of the government."

During the first seven months of the Aristide administration before
the Cédras coup, CATH under the sway of Auguste Mesyeux held a
campaign of demonstrations against the government known as the Vent
de Tempête (Wind of the Storm). This was the first attempt to put
pressure on the Aristide government, mounted by a U.S.-funded union.
In March of 1992, after a brief suspension of funding following the
first coup against Aristide, AIFLD reactivated its $900,000 program
supporting conservative unions in Haiti. Beth Sims, in her 1992
policy report "Populism, Conservatism, and Civil Society in Haiti,"
<http://tinyurl.com/9gv7c> writes that "CATH was once a militant,
anti-Duvalierist federation," but in 1990 a conservative wing took
over with backing from AIFLD.

Following increasing criticism over its international organizing
activities, the AFL-CIO disbanded AIFLD and its counterparts, and
created in their place the American Center for International Labor
Solidarity (ACILS) <http://www.solidaritycenter.org/>, more commonly
known as the Solidarity Center, in 1997, supposedly giving a new face
to its international organizing campaigns. The Solidarity Center, a
501(c)(3) non-profit organization, was launched with the goal of
"work[ing] with unions and community groups worldwide to achieve
equitable, sustainable, democratic development and to help men and
women everywhere stand up for their rights and improve their living
and working standards."2 Attempting to wipe away its dirty Cold War
history, the AFL-CIO had grouped together its former four regional
institutes, including AIFLD, under one roof.

As pointed out in Harry Kelber's six-part series, "AFL-CIO's Dark
Past," <http://www.laboreducator.org/darkpast.htm>  the Solidarity
Center employed many past AIFLD members such as Harry Kamberis, a
former Department of State employee who had been involved in fighting
leftist unions in South Korea and the Philippines.3 The Solidarity
Center also funneled over $154,000
<http://www.laboreducator.org/darkpast6.htm > to the Confederation of
Venezuelan Workers (CTV), a right-wing union, which led a strike in
2002 attempting to overthrow the democratically elected government of
President Hugo Chavez. Between 1997 and 2001, the NED provided
$587,926 to the Solidarity Center. Kim Scipes
<http://faculty.pnc.edu/kscipes/>, an Assistant Professor of
Sociology at Purdue University and a leading critic of the Solidarity
Center, argues that there exists "considerable evidence that AFL-CIO
foreign operations have worked hand in hand with the CIA, or that
AFL-CIO foreign operations have benefited U.S. foreign policy as a
whole or supported initiatives by the White House or the State
Department." Moreover, the top officials of the AFL-CIO who have
guided foreign operations have refused to report on their operations
to rank-and-file members.4 The murky tradition of subverting
democratically elected governments during the Cold War would continue
under the Solidarity Center.

The Solidarity Center (ACILS) would approach labor organizing in
Haiti from a different angle than its predecessor, AIFLD. During much
of 2000 and 2001 the Solidarity Center refused to operate in Haiti.
Yonnas Kefle, the labor attaché at the U.S. embassy in
Port-au-Prince, from February 2000 to October 2001, explains: "I
tried to involve the Solidarity Center but they refused to work in
Haiti at this time." However, relying on USAID funding as its primary
income source for its projects in Haiti, the Solidarity Center, by
2004, had restarted operations in the country, cooperating with a
union that had strong leftist credentials -- Batay Ouvriye
<http://www.batayouvriye.org/>.

In 2003, the Solidarity Center conducted a NED-funded study of labor
conditions in Haiti, analyzing the history of the domestic labor
movement, women in the work force, rural labor codes, and the debate
over reforming the aging labor codes.5 The study, entitled "Unequal
Equation: The Labor Code and Worker Rights in Haiti,"
<http://www.solidaritycenter.org/files/UnequalEquation.pdf> put
forward many important points in regards to the antiquated labor
codes, but it relied heavily on interviews (date back to 1999) with
Batay Ouvriye, the formerly Duvalier-sponsored Fédération des
Ouvriers Syndiqués (FOS), and the formerly AIFLD-supported
Conféderation Autonome des Travailleurs Haïtiens (CATH). The study
failed to critically analyze the role of USAID and the U.S. in
supporting sanctions <http://tinyurl.com/cyrgj> against the Haitian
government in 2001, which was a prime factor for the shortfall of
payments to the public workforce and leverage used for the Free Trade
Zone Initiative.

Batay Ouvriye in Kreyòl translates roughly as "workers' struggle."
Since 1994, Batay Ouvriye has been known for organizing sweatshop
workers and others in Haiti, where some of the most exploitative and
low-wage garment industry jobs exist in the entire Western
Hemisphere.  Not a formal union, Batay Ouvriye calls itself a
"workers organization." Originally initiated as an office space in
Port-Au-Prince for organizing workers in 1994, the Batay Ouvriye
Federation was founded in May of 2002.

Organized upon anarcho-syndicalist principles, Batay Ouvriye has had
a clear ideological line of advocating for the control of industry
and government by federations of labor unions through the use of
direct action, such as sabotage and general strikes. Ideologically
opposed to working with or under any form of government, Batay
Ouvriye has focused its attention primarily on organizing workers in
the garment industry.  Syndicalism has long existed as a
revolutionary political strain in the Caribbean as discussed in Frank
Fernández's Cuban Anarchism <http://tinyurl.com/8v4xw>. Running
contrary to its own ideology, however, the Battay Ouvriye leadership
in 2004 began accepting monetary aid and oversight from a foreign
government, the United States, and its foreign labor operative, the
Solidarity Center.

So what would the Solidarity Center want with a radical syndicalist
union in Haiti?  How could the Solidarity Center justify to its State
Department and USAID oversight the funding of such an organization?
The Solidarity Center's support for Batay Ouvriye seemed a far cry
from its predecessor AIFLD's approach in working with conservative
unions such as the CATH and the FOS.

Batay Ouvriye had numerous victories in organizing against
multinationals, which were exploiting Haiti's cheap labor. In the
weeks before the February 2004 coup, the Solidarity Center and Batay
Ouvriye's sub-grantee Sokowa were deeply involved in a campaign
against Grupo M <http://tinyurl.com/8tt8y>, a company that sold to
U.S.-based companies Levi Strauss and Sara Lee. In December 2004, 300
workers at the Codevi Free Trade Zone in northeastern Haiti had been
out of work for six months as a result of their attempts to form a
union.  As Batay stated in an October 1, 2005 statement
<http://tinyurl.com/djjlb>, "amongst others, Solidarity Center funds
[US $3,500] were channeled to the Sokowa free trade zone worker’s
union through Batay Ouvriye," to help the fired workers.

Throughout 2004, the Sokowa Union waged a labor struggle in the Grupo
M factories in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. While Sokowa sought
much-needed wage increases for its workers, Groupo M threatened to
close down its CODEVI Free Trade Zone.  Work stoppages were held in
response, and a campaign was organized to pressure Grupo M into
negotiation, to which the Workers Rights Consortium
<http://www.workersrights.org/ > and the Solidarity Center were
contributors.  On February 5, 2005, Sokowa and Grupo M negotiated a
contract. In a March 2005 report, Charles Arthur of the Haiti Support
Group <http://haitisupport.gn.apc.org/>, a key Batay Ouvriye backer
in Europe, stated, "The US Solidarity Center is co-coordinating some
low-key pressure on Michael Kobori, Levi's Global Code of Conduct
director, to let him know of concerns relating to Levi's non-action
on increasing orders."6

But for all its good work in organizing in the garment industry, one
important theme separated Batay Ouvriye from the majority of popular
organizations in Haiti. Batay Ouvriye was adamantly and ideologically
opposed to any cooperation with the Aristide government, or for that
matter any leftist or populist government that was democratically
elected. With its backing for Batay Ouvriye, the Solidarity Center
was able to kill two birds with one stone. (1) The Solidarity Center
was able to claim the credentials of supporting a legitimate labor
struggle to organize workers in Haiti's miserable garment industry,
(2) while simultaneously supporting a group that adamantly opposed
and organized against the largest and most popular party of the poor
in Haiti, Fanmi Lavalas, a pariah for Haiti overseers at the U.S.
Department of State.

The U.S. Department of State has oversight on all "democratic
enhancement" funding, which is funneled through USAID's Office of
Transition Initiatives into groups such as the Solidarity Center.
Gerry Bart, head of the Haiti desk at USAID's main office in
Washington, D.C., explains that "it's kind of a negotiation between
USAID and the State Department. . . . The democratic assistance money
comes from the State Department."

Following the 2000 elections and 2001 inauguration of President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the Convergence Démocratique
<http://tinyurl.com/bqvcr> (an internationally financed and trained
coalition of opposition political parties) pressured the Organization
of American States (OAS) and the international donor community into
engaging in sanctions against the elected government of Haiti.  While
the Aristide administration continually complied with OAS requests,
the sanctions held, having a harsh and long-lasting effect upon the
national and local economies. The capability of the government to pay
the wages of its public workforce and come through on many of its
goals evaporated.

By April, 2002, doctors from the main Port-au-Prince hospital went on
strike, and by May, teachers also went on a one-day strike, for more
than 13 months' back pay. These 13 months of unpaid wages was a
direct consequence of the cutoff of international aid to the
government in 2001. The Bush Administration, using its veto power on
the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) board of directors, blocked
the release of already-approved loans for health care, education, and
water <http://tinyurl.com/cyrgj>. $500 million in development
assistance and $146 million in loans for water, health, and education
were cut off. Even World Bank officials have explained that the
government's inability to pay was compounded by the withdrawal of
international aid to the government.

The Aristide administration, inheriting a poverty-stricken country
burdened with international debt <http://tinyurl.com/akgwt>, was
forced to take the blame for the effects of the austerity measures
that it had been pressured to implement, the measures that some would
argue had been imposed upon it. Emerging economies, such as
Argentina's, suffered tremendously from the institution of
neo-liberal economic reforms backed by the international financial
community. While the Lavalas government was able to resist many of
the "reforms" which were being forced on it, this became increasingly
difficult in 2001 with the discontinuance of foreign aid to the
government, which had long depended on aid for much of its budget.

While the capability of the Haitian government to function properly
declined because of these aid cuts, social unrest increased and
international groups such as the Solidarity Center and others began
to criticize the Haitian government on a number of issues. Many of
the accusations that Solidarity Center made against the Haitian
government, however, were problems that stemmed from the actions of
their own funding source, USAID and the United States government.
Through collecting on odious debts to past dictators, pressuring the
Haitian government towards low wages, privatization, and the firing
of half of Haiti's civil servants, and then pushing for the cutoff of
nearly all international aid to the Haitian government, the United
States and institutions such as the World Bank subjugated the poorest
country in the Western Hemisphere in the name of "financial
responsibility."

While it was not uncommon for leftists to criticize Aristide, Preval,
or Lavalas for cooperating with neo-liberal reforms, Batay was
different from others in that they refused to coalesce behind the
elected government even when it faced an openly coordinated campaign
of political destabilization led by the U.S. government and other
international donors. The international donor community, along with
the United States, heavily financed the opposition to Aristide's
government, most notably organizations within the Convergence
Démocratique and Group 184 <http://tinyurl.com/8ksh2>.

At "training sessions," funded and organized by the International
Republican Institute (IRI) in the Dominican Republic throughout 2002,
2003, and early 2004, an opposition to Aristide's government was
coordinated, and plans were formulated to organize, protest, and
campaign against the government. Meanwhile a small group of rebels,
with connections to the Group 184, CIA, and the death-squad Front
pour l’Avancement et le Progrés Haïtien (FRAPH), came out of the
Dominican Republic to invade Haiti in January of 2004. With the
sovereignty of Haiti under attack, soon after the 2004 coup, Batay
Ouvriye was itself on the U.S. bank roll.

In September 2005, Mario Pierre, a representative of Batay Ouvriye in
New York City, explained that he knew nothing about U.S. funding for
his organization.  He stated: "The Batay Ouvriye does not receive any
funding from the U.S. government." When asked if Batay Ouvriye might
have a leadership or a group of organizers that made these decisions
and could be questioned about them, he stated: "The Batay Ouvriye has
nothing like that. We have no leaders."

Batay Ouvriye has presented itself as a utopian workers' alternative
to Famni Lavalas, the majority political party of the poor in Haiti.
Using the example of the Free Trade Zone constructed along Haiti's
border with the Dominican Republic, Batay Ouvriye argues, as have
others, that the Aristide administration sold out, betraying the
popular movements that had voted it into power.  As Haïti-Progrès
stated in July 2003 <http://tinyurl.com/8h756>, the first of
seventeen free trade zones was being constructed "near Haiti's
northeastern border town of Ouanaminthe, development of what was once
the most precious farmland in this barren, hungry corner of the
country."

Few observers realized the immense constraints that the international
community had placed on Haiti in the Debt-for-Development Initiative
<http://tinyurl.com/8ogsv> that was being pushed hard by the U.S.
Department of State <http://tinyurl.com/bb7b3>. The only alternative
to the Debt-for-Development that the government of Haiti had was to
continue on, with an unadjusted skyrocketing debt. While the
"international community" ripped apart Haiti like a wild pack of
cheetahs, the Aristide government came under increasing domestic
criticism.

A tension exists between Batay's claim to be a democratic
organization, representing "small workshops, shantytowns, and
peasants," and its practice. The role of its leadership has been a
mystery. While its members claim to have no leadership or central
structure, from numerous communiqués and interviews, it is obvious
that a central leadership does exist within Batay Ouvriye, although
an unelected and arguably unaccountable leadership.

In a March 2004 meeting held in Port-au-Prince between Batay Ouvriye
and a group of journalists and NGO representatives, a de facto
leadership of Batay emerged. Speaking primarily was Didier Dominique,
alias Paul Philomé <http://tinyurl.com/9hvg2>, a prominent
spokesperson, and Yvonne Castera, alias Yannick Etienne
<http://tinyurl.com/8njpw>, a frequent traveler to the United
States.  A third unnamed spokesperson from Batay Ouvriye stated that
he was "close with Evans Paul." Evans Paul
<http://tinyurl.com/8utgo>, a leading figure of the Convergence
Démocratique and a founder of the Konvansyon Inite Demokratik (KID),
was a prime backer of the ouster of the Aristide government in
February 2004.  Batay Ouvriye's "workers" who sat in on the meeting,
according to a member of the Quixote Centre <http://www.quixote.org/>
Delegation, "were not permitted to speak to us one-on-one nor voice
their opinions independently of Batay's supervision or prompting
during the meeting." Overseeing the meeting was a representative of
the Solidarity Center, a U.S. citizen, Jeff Hermanson.

Much like the Convergence, Batay Ouvriye, instead of waiting for
elections, chose to call for the resignation and downfall of the
Lavalas government. While the Aristide administration won the vote
overwhelmingly in the 2000 election, Batay Ouvriye claimed that the
Lavalas administration was an "occupation" government and that the
"elections were one step backward." In explaining their opposition to
the Lavalas government, Philomé stated in the March 2004 meeting that
"we had worked to denounce all of the plans that the Fanmi Lavalas
government had, we denounced them and fought to make sure those plans
were not successful, and we also took positions so the government can
leave the country because we felt that the Aristide government was a
government that accepted impunity for the factory owners, and they
also were accepting and signing all sorts of contracts even though it
was bad for the country."

Either by mistake or by design, Batay Ouvriye played a role in
destabilizing the elected government in Haiti and, following the
coup, helped to facilitate the creation of a fractured left. Many of
their low-level organizers, like Mario Pierre, were not aware until
September 2005 of the U.S. funding for their organization.

USAID is the primary funding source for the Solidarity Center's
activities in Haiti. As Sasha Kramer pointed out in her October 2005
article, "The Friendly Face of U.S. Imperialism: USAID and Haiti,"
<http://tinyurl.com/b2zft> supporting alternatives to Lavalas was an
important first step in reducing the popular movement's widespread
support. Through its sponsored camps, Kramer documents, USAID has
worked to "undermine existing community programs in an attempt to
de-legitimize the demands of the Lavalas movement in the eyes of the
international community. This strategy is exemplified by USAID's
description of their activities in Petit Place Cazeau."7

The assault upon Lavalas and the popular movements in Haiti,
movements rooted in the history and folk songs of the Haitian poor,
was a long-term encirclement. It holds significant similarities to
what happened prior to the first coup against Aristide. The
ubiquitous web of funding, grantees, and sub-grantees, while often
aimed at legitimate problems in Haiti, has played an obscured role in
reinstating the rule of the elite over the island nation. Aid funding
is ambiguous by nature, having multiple goals and outcomes. By
propping up and supporting small sectarian movements, the USAID’s
Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) <http://tinyurl.com/cvzjr> and
the U.S Department of State, which has oversight on all "democratic
enhancement" funding at USAID, aims to destabilize the larger popular
movement as a whole.

Following the February 2004 coup, while Batay Ouvriye inked a money
arrangement with the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center, unions that backed
the ousted government such as the FAENNE and workers from the bus
drivers union were forced into hiding, being murdered and
assassinated by the death squads of the newly U.S.-installed de facto
government of Gérard Latortue.

In a July 2005 statement, Batay Ouvriye attempted to justify its
working with the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center, while openly
acknowledging the AFL-CIO's murky past.  The authorless statement
from Batay Ouvriye explained that the AFL-CIO’s funding "apparatus is
controlled, in the final analysis, by the ruling classes in the
United States. . . . Since these 'solidarity' practices have reached
the point of developing relations with grassroots workers
organizations, we are faced with the obligation of managing them,
while they inevitably attempt to manipulate these relations variously
in order to recuperate them. So, it is up to us to correctly handle
these relations in the working class' interest and on a permanent
basis."8 Somehow Batay Ouvriye's leadership felt that only it could
best manage U.S. labor funding.

Batay Ouvriye has failed to respond to questions concerning its U.S.
funding source and relationship with the Solidarity Center.  In an
attempt to control the damage done by the uncovering of its
relationship with an organization funded by the Department of State
and USAID, David Wilson, an organizer for Batay Ouvriye's U.S. backer
"The Grassroots Haiti Solidarity Committee,"
<http://www.grassrootshaiti.org/> released an article
<http://tinyurl.com/88z9w> on November 11, 2005.9 Wilson's article
continues to ignore the refusal of the Solidarity Center and Batay
Ouvriye to account for all the funding that has been provided.  A
website and a November public forum in New York City have since been
organized by the Batay leadership and its supporters to continue the
cover-up of this funding relationship. Paul Philomé, a leader of
Batay, also recently signed up using his alias, Didier Dominique, to
speak at the 2006 World Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuela,
undoubtedly to keep up Batay's attempts at portraying itself as a
"revolutionary" force in Haiti.

When asked why the Solidarity Center did not work with pro-Lavalas
unions, a member of the Solidarity Center, who wished to go unnamed,
used the term "revolutionary ideologues" to describe the unions who
backed the democratically elected government of Jean-Bertrand
Aristide.

Ben Davis, head of the Solidarity Center's operations in the
Caribbean and Latin America during the February 2004 coup, refused to
comment.  Currently he is working as an "in country representative"
for the Solidarity Center in Mexico City <http://tinyurl.com/8thc9>.

The Senior Program Officer for the Americas at the Solidarity Center
is Samantha Tate, a National Security Education fellow and a
Fulbright fellow from 1999-2001, who researched Indonesian child
labor and media organizations following the fall of the Suharto
dictatorship. Refusing public accountability, Tate, along with the
Solidarity Center's grant management department, will not comment on
the amount of funding provided to Batay Ouvriye or when and how their
relationship began.

In September 2005, Tate, an employee of the AFL-CIO's Solidarity
Center, contacted my academic department chair at California State
University of Long Beach, attempting to isolate and discredit this
research.


NOTES:
1 Beth Sims, "Populism, Conservatism, and Civil Society in Haiti,"
April 1992 (reprinted March 2004)
<http://rightweb.irc-online.org/analysis/2004/0403ned-haiti.php>.

2 The Solidarity Center, "About Us."
<http://www.solidaritycenter.org/content.asp?contentid=409>

3 Harry Kelber, "AFL-CIO's Dark Past"
<http://www.laboreducator.org/darkpast.htm>

4 Kim Scipes, "Labor Imperialism Redux?: The AFL-CIO's Foreign Policy
Since 1995," Monthly Review, May 2005.
<http://www.monthlyreview.org/0505scipes.htm>

5 The Solidarity Center, "Unequal Equation: The Labor Code and Worker
Rights in Haiti," July 2003.
<http://www.solidaritycenter.org/files/UnequalEquation.pdf>

6 Charles Arthur, "Current Situation of the Sokowa Union at the FTZ
in Ouanaminthe, North-east Haiti," 21 March 2005.
<http://www.labournet.net/world/0503/haiti1.html>

7 Sasha Kramer, "USAID and Haiti: The Friendly Face of US
Imperialism," CounterPunch, October 14, 2005.
<http://counterpunch.org/kramer10142005.html>

8 "Sur l'AFL-CIO, Son Rôle Nationalement et Internationalement, la
Crise Actuelle par rapport aux Intérêts de la Classe Ouvrière."

9 David Wislon, "Haitian Labor Group Confronts US Lavalas Backers,"
11 November 2005.
<http://www.grassrootshaiti.org/News/HaitianLaborGroup.html>


Jeb Sprague is a freelance journalist and a graduate student in
History at California State University of Long Beach.  An expanded
and footnoted version of this article will appear in his thesis
covering the destabilization and overthrow of democracy in Haiti,
2000-2004. Contact him at <Jebsprague[nospam]@mac.com>.


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