{"id":7936,"date":"2022-10-28T09:41:38","date_gmt":"2022-10-28T13:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=7936"},"modified":"2022-11-06T11:14:33","modified_gmt":"2022-11-06T16:14:33","slug":"no-u-s-intervention-in-haiti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2022\/10\/no-u-s-intervention-in-haiti\/","title":{"rendered":"No U.S. intervention in Haiti!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcap\">O<\/span>nce again, the U.S. and other imperialist powers are threatening military intervention to impose \u201corder\u201d on Haiti\u2019s spiraling economic, social, and political crises. They claim they are responding to the call for international forces from Haiti\u2019s de facto prime minister and president, Ariel Henry, to repress gangs blocking access to gas and water terminals in Port-au-Prince.<\/p>\n<p>But Henry does not represent the Haitian people. He was not elected, but selected to be president by the U.S. Henry only retains power based on Washington\u2019s support and is opposed by the vast majority of the country\u2019s population for very good reason. At the behest of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), he has pushed through neoliberal economic \u201creforms,\u201d including the end of fuel subsidies that have further impoverished the country\u2019s working class and peasantry.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pullquote\">[The] U.S., other great powers, and their proxies offer no solution to the crisis in the country. Indeed, as their history of interventions as well as present policies attest, they are at the root of Haiti\u2019s problems.<\/aside>\n<p>Henry has called for U.S. intervention to defend such policies and repress popular resistance and gangs that have emerged out of the crisis within Haitian society. Already, Washington and its so-called Core Group, comprised of the U.S., Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, the European Union, the United Nations, and the Organization of American States, has secured the passage of one UN resolution, which imposes sanctions on one purported gang leader and former police officer Jimmy \u201cBarbecue\u201d Ch\u00e9rizier, paving the way for another resolution that would authorize the deployment of non-UN military forces to Haiti.<\/p>\n<p>While any interventions would be dressed up in humanitarian language, the U.S., other great powers, and their proxies offer no solution to the crisis in the country. Indeed, as their history of interventions as well as present policies attest, they are at the root of Haiti\u2019s problems. Asking them to solve those problems is like asking arsonists to put out a fire they set and continue to stoke.<\/p>\n<h4>Imperialists Against the Free Black Republic<\/h4>\n<p>The U.S. and other imperial powers have been Haiti\u2019s overlords and oppressors since the country\u2019s victorious revolution that overthrew France\u2019s colonial regime and its slave-holding ruling class, finally establishing itself as a free Black republic in 1804. France, Britain, and Spain all tried to retake the country with military invasions, which Haiti repelled, and France only recognized its independence on the condition that it repay the slaveholders for their lost \u201cproperty,\u201d trapping the country in debt ever since.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. did not even recognize Haiti\u2019s independence until the southern slavocracy was overthrown in the U.S. Civil War. After that, however, Washington\u2019s only concern with Haiti was imperial\u2014making sure that no other state infringed on its hemispheric hegemony and that it controlled the country\u2019s government and reaped the profits from its economy.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7939\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7939\" style=\"width: 620px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-7939 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Battle-of-Vertie\u0300res-in-1803-620x458-1.jpg\" alt=\"A painting shows a crowd of Black Haitian soldiers, with some dressed in white and others in military uniforms, brandishing guns with bayonets and battling white uniformed French soldiers, one of whom stands atop a wheeled cannon and some of whom lie dead on the ground with their helmets fallen beside them.\" width=\"620\" height=\"458\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Battle-of-Vertie\u0300res-in-1803-620x458-1.jpg 620w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Battle-of-Vertie\u0300res-in-1803-620x458-1-600x443.jpg 600w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Battle-of-Vertie\u0300res-in-1803-620x458-1-300x222.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7939\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Battle of Verti\u00e8res was the final battle of the Haitian Revolution that overthrew France\u2019s colonial slavocracy and established Haiti as a free Black republic. <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Battle-of-Verti%C3%A8res-in-1803-620x458.jpg\">Photo<\/a> credit: Cap-Haitien, Wikipedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In pursuit of those aims, the U.S. repeatedly intervened in the country, culminating its invasion and occupation of the country from 1915 through 1934, during which it installed handpicked leaders, created the Haitian Army, and repressed liberation fighters. During the Cold War, it backed the brutal father-son dictatorship of Fran\u00e7ois \u201cPapa Doc\u201d and Jean-Claude \u201cBaby Doc\u201d Duvalier as its counter-revolutionary ally against Cuba in the Caribbean.<\/p>\n<p>Under Baby Doc, the U.S. imposed a neoliberal structural adjustment plan that wrecked peasant agriculture and opened the country up to multinational corporations that super-exploited the country\u2019s urban working class. It backed the dictatorship\u2019s army, police, and infamous death squad, the \u201cTontons Macoutes,\u201d which together killed as many as 60,000 Haitians in enforcing an economy of sweatshop underdevelopment that reduced Haiti to becoming the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.<\/p>\n<p>In the face of such brutal repression and impoverishment, however, the Haitian masses rose up. They organized a mass insurrectionary movement called Lavalas and overthrew Baby Doc in a successful political revolution that eventually led to the first free and fair election in the country\u2019s history. The movement brought liberation theologist Jean Bertrand Aristide into office as the country\u2019s president.<\/p>\n<h4>Coups, Occupation, and Unnatural Disaster<\/h4>\n<p>Rather than support his plans for democracy, social reform, and development, the U.S. aided and abetted a coup in 1991 and tolerated its regime for three years. The U.S. only reversed its policy when resistance within the country mounted and the flight of refugees, who President Bill Clinton jailed in the thousands in Guantanamo and Florida\u2019s Krome Detention Center, threatened regional stability.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. invaded Haiti and imposed a UN occupation. They restored Aristide to power on the condition that he obey neoliberal edicts for economic \u201creform,\u201d surrender his lost years in office, and step down in 1996. But Aristide and his successor Rene Preval partially resisted, and when Aristide was elected again in 2001 his administration demanded reparations from France for the original debt it imposed on Haiti. In response, George Bush Jr., in collaboration with Canada and France, carried out a second coup, abducting and deporting the elected president into exile and eventually to South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Bush imposed order through the UN, which occupied the country in various guises from 2004 until 2019. The occupation became an international scandal, with UN forces repressing the democratic resistance, exploiting impoverished women in the sex trade, and introducing cholera\u2014a disease previously unknown in the country\u2014killing an estimated 10,000 people.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. and its Core Group backed a succession of increasingly illegitimate and unpopular governments that followed their neoliberal dictates. In the process, they incapacitated the Haitian state, privatizing its state industries and social services and turning the country into what activists call a \u201cRepublic of NGOs,\u201d whose patchwork charity could never replace the state in meeting people\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n<p>The only state institutions the U.S. has supported are the repressive ones. With the old Haitian Army long gone, having been abolished by Aristide, the U.S. and its collaborators have poured money into the Haitian police to repress desperate people.<\/p>\n<p>All of this has made the country vulnerable to a succession of \u201cnatural\u201d disasters, from the horrific earthquake in 2010, which killed hundreds of thousands of people, to a series of hurricanes that swept the country over the last decade, yet another earthquake in 2021, and then the COVID-19 pandemic. Without a functioning state, regulated infrastructure, social safety net, or a functioning healthcare system\u2014all the result of imperialist intervention\u2014the country has been thrust into an unending political, social, and economic crisis.<\/p>\n<p>All of this has reduced the Haitian working class, urban poor, and peasantry to destitution. Nearly 60 percent of the population live in poverty, 30 percent are food insecure, and 50 percent lack access to sanitary water. Washington, which rules over the richest country in human history, is directly responsible for these horrific conditions.<\/p>\n<h4>U.S. Policing their Crisis<\/h4>\n<p>The U.S. under the Obama, Trump, and now Biden administrations have backed a succession of corrupt right-wing governments from that of Michel Martelly to Jovenel Moise, who was assassinated in 2021. Since then, the U.S. has backed the selected but unelected Prime Minister and de facto acting president Ariel Henry.<\/p>\n<p>Without a legitimate elected government and with Haitian society wracked by social and economic crises, popular anger has exploded in waves of protest, calling for Henry to step down. At the same time, these conditions have driven waves of Haitians to flee the country as they have since the earthquake.<\/p>\n<p>While Biden has renewed Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to those that fled to the U.S. after the earthquake, he has enforced a brutal border regime against newly arriving Haitians as well as all other migrants, even going so far as to use Trump\u2019s Title 42 ban on admissions during the pandemic. Those policies produced the horrific scenes of desperate Haitians on the U.S.-Mexico border being chased, arrested, and brutally beaten by the Border Patrol.<\/p>\n<p>It also produced far less publicized atrocities such as the U.S. Coast Guard intercepting Haitian migrants at sea before they could even get to shore. Conclusively demonstrating Biden\u2019s callous disregard for Haitian lives and human rights, his administration has deported and repatriated 20,000 migrants, including some who have not lived in the country for over a decade, into horrific conditions and without any support.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_7941\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7941\" style=\"width: 799px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-7941 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Haiti-deportation-protest.jpeg\" alt=\"A line of demonstrators stand in a line along a sidewalk holding Haitian flags and protest signs that read TRUTH DEMANDS ACCOUNTABILITY, NO MORE RACISM, JUSTICE IS TRUTH IN ACTION, and Halt Deportations of Haitian Asylum Seekers @ The Border.\" width=\"799\" height=\"442\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Haiti-deportation-protest.jpeg 799w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Haiti-deportation-protest-600x332.jpeg 600w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Haiti-deportation-protest-300x166.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/Haiti-deportation-protest-768x425.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 799px) 100vw, 799px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-7941\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Protesters in \u201cLittle Haiti,\u201d Philadelphia call on Biden to end deportations of Haitian asylum seekers. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/109799466@N06\/51533612928\/in\/photostream\/\">Photo<\/a> by Joe Piette via Flikr.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In Haiti, as the country descends into chaos entirely caused by the imperialist powers, the private and state leaders have turned to gangs to protect their political and economic rule. Other gangs have arisen within impoverished cities and the countryside, mainly in the form of mafioso-like \u201cprotection\u201d rackets, with some like Ch\u00e9rizier claiming to lead a revolutionary political project.<\/p>\n<p>Ch\u00e9rizier\u2019s forces have blockaded gas and water terminals at Port-au-Prince\u2019s main port, demanding that Henry step down. As a result, Haitians are facing skyrocketing gas prices and lack of access to potable water, triggering a new outbreak of cholera in the country.<\/p>\n<p>Other Haitian political and civil society organizations have come together in the Montana Accord, demanding that Henry step down and new elections be held to provide Haitians the ability to democratically choose their own government. Some on the Left worry that the U.S. may try to use this formation to manipulate Haitian politics to secure an outcome in its interests. As a result, Aristide\u2019s party Fanmi Lavalas has pulled out of the Accord.<\/p>\n<h4>For Reparations and Haitian Self-Determination!<\/h4>\n<p>For now, the Biden administration has seized on the crisis provoked by Ch\u00e9rizier\u2019s shutting down of the port to orchestrate yet another imperialist intervention in Haiti. While they justify their push with supposed concern about Haitian lives, security, and well-being, no one should take such claims at face value.<\/p>\n<p>In reality, the U.S. and its Core Group are motivated by imperialist aims\u2014shoring up the Haitian state and its police forces, orchestrating a political resolution on their terms, repressing popular resistance, arresting some though not all gangsters, and above all else stopping the flow of migrants into the U.S. Haitians know that. That\u2019s why they are protesting against intervention in the streets of Port-au-Prince.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. offers no solution for Haiti save repression. The international Left, unions, and Haiti solidarity activists must unite and oppose any political, economic, and military intervention orchestrated or subcontracted by Washington. Instead, we must demand that they and their proxies stay out of Haiti and allow its people to determine their own destiny.<\/p>\n<p>Most importantly, we must call for the imperial powers including the UN to pay at least $21 billion in reparations to Haiti for their imperialist crimes against the country. Freed from Washington\u2019s boot on their neck and with that money, Haitians would finally have the chance to rebuild their country in their interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tempest member <strong>Ashley Smith<\/strong> writes on why the Left must oppose the latest threat of U.S. military intervention in Haiti. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":7945,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,13],"tags":[169,24,241],"class_list":["post-7936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","category-editorial","tag-anti-war","tag-editorial","tag-haiti"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/haiti-edi.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}