HAITI IN CRISIS

by Tousen J. Jacques and Alexis Mulman

April 5, 2024

It’s almost a bitter cliché by now to say that Haiti has descended into complete and utter chaos. Rival gangs, armed by rival factions of the local bourgeoisie and politicians and financed by ransoms and the drug trade, are raping, killing, kidnapping, burning and looting with impunity. They control 90% of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and in the last week have continually attacked several of the surrounding suburbs.

Since what happens throughout Haiti is determined by what happens in the capital, the whole country is at grave risk. In recent days, the US, Canada, France and other countries have been evacuating their citizens. And members of the Haitian elite are fleeing as well, which costs $500US for a helicopter to the Dominican Republic or a plane to the US, wherever they hold visas. Two small provincial airports in Haiti are functioning: Sunrise Airways currently charges $350 for a flight from Les Cayes in the South Department to Cap Haitian in the North, and $500US from le Cap to Miami. For now, it is the masses and the pauperized middle class who have nowhere to run and are suffering.

What is rarely reported about the current situation in Haiti is the gangs’ relationships to the powerful Latin American drug scene. But it is widely known locally that the drug cartels are very powerful in several countries on the subcontinent and trafficking is intense. Haiti is a strategic crossroads in drug traffic to the US.

Some Background

The US has had an interest in what happens in Haiti since the enslaved workers rebelled at the end of the 18th century, freeing themselves by overthrowing the French plantation owners and becoming the world’s first black republic. All the slave societies in the Western Hemisphere feared the influence of this successful slave revolt on their own enslaved populations. In 1915 the US sent in the Marines to ward off European influence in what the US considered its own backyard, while claiming they were preventing political instability. They sacked the Bank of Haiti (December 17, 1914) and sent the stolen gold bars to the National Bank of New York (now Citibank). The US then openly controlled Haiti—the politics, the economy, the police and the civil society—until 1934.

Since the Marines left, the US has continued to control events in Haiti, covertly or openly, approving all policies and presidents. Perhaps the only exception was Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was elected and ousted twice; since his return to Haiti, he has become one of the wealthiest people there—lesson learned! The US historically used Haiti as a source of cheap labor. For example, all baseballs for the US major leagues were produced in Haiti (until the fall of the Duvalier regime in 1986), as well as clothing for Sears and semiconductors. While Haitian workers have been migrating to look for work throughout the region and the US since the end of that first occupation, their numbers have drastically risen in recent years. Where once Haiti was the world’s largest producer and exporter of sugar, its primary export today is low-paid human labor.

Under the Clinton administration, when Aristide was president, the US-led World Bank/IMF used the classic neo-liberal attack on impoverished countries by coercing Haiti to take loans to repay its foreign debt. The loans were conditioned on Haiti not using any of the loan money to support its own productive capacity, such as agriculture. Part of the deal was that the US would begin exporting cheap rice into Haiti; while the US rice farmers were subsidized by their government to produce this rice, the Haitian rice farmers were forbidden such subsidies by the conditions of the loan. The cheap US rice essentially killed its local production, forcing rural farmers off their land and into the crowded cities in search of non-existent jobs. The film “Life and Debt” documents a similar arrangement with Jamaica, that destroyed that island’s dairy industry. The Prime Minister, Michael Manley (1972 – 1980), a self-styled socialist, admitted that he knew the conditions of the loan would be disastrous to the local economy, but not having the courage to face down the bankers demands, went ahead nonetheless. Aristide had Manley’s example to know that accepting the loans would put Haiti forever in debt to the banks and destroy the local economy.

The Current US Role

The US is complicit in the current campaign of terror: most of the guns (83%) are bought in the US and shipped directly from ports along the Miami River. The balance come across the border with the Dominican Republic, also with the knowledge of the US. The guns are offloaded either at the port of Port-au-Prince or St. Marc, coastal areas controlled by the “Village de Dieu” gang.

The other big powers playing a role, known as the Core Group, are Canada and France, who have gone along with the US’s racist plan for Haiti. Caricom, a confederation of Caribbean countries, is also part of the problem, doing the US’s bidding partly in fear of more Haitians migrating to their countries in search of security and work.

Haiti now suffers a complete absence of any functioning government, and civil society is at a standstill. The Haitian police, trained and armed by the US, are either ineffective, absent, or part of the gangs themselves. Government offices, including hospitals and schools, are shuttered. Businesses, big and small, are closed, but there is nothing on the shelves anyway because transportation in and out of Port-au-Prince has been completely shut down by gang activity and lack of gasoline. The main airport in Port-au-Prince has been ransacked and shut down by the gangs; marine transportation is also disrupted by gangs who allow only trade in arms and drugs. Since 90% of the food consumed in Haiti is imported, the situation is dire.

Daily conditions for the population are insupportable, both objectively and subjectively. The population is on the verge of starvation as food becomes more and more scarce, less and less money is in circulation, and medical care and medicines are hard to come by as gangs sack hospitals and pharmacies. The 15% with salaried jobs are not getting paid, and the vast majority who depend on the informal economy are barely able to leave their homes. The neighborhoods of Martissant, Carrefour-Feuilles, downtown Delmas, Route de Frère, Torcel, and others are completely controlled by gangs, who stop movement to other parts of Haiti. This puts the working class on the brink of starvation. The bourgeois term “food insecurity” is hardly even thrown around anymore in the mainstream media as it no longer fits the situation.

Those who can try to leave the country—through the barely functioning Biden “humanitarian parole,” forced “illegal” migration through Central America and Mexico to the US, by sea, or across the border to the Dominican Republic, whose government has never been welcoming to Haitians. The US says it is going to reopen Guantanamo Bay for housing Haitian migrants—another open-air concentration camp. Current DR Pres. Luis Abinader, trained in the US, has always espoused anti-Haitian rhetoric. His party just won 27 out of 31 seats in the capital’s municipal elections, which puts him in a position to put his words into action. He is currently building a wall to prevent Haitians from seeking asylum.

The psychological trauma imposed by these conditions cannot be quantified. The most marginal people are in complete despair. We hear gut-wrenching stories from friends and relatives about neighbors coming to them on the brink of suicide because of the pressure of trying to support their families, asking for a bit of food or some money to try to buy anything they can find. Those organizations that people could previously go to for some help in periods of crisis are either shuttered or essentially non-functioning.

Thus there is no way for the US and the other regional powers to prevent massive attempts at emigration, which is on the upswing as workers are becoming increasingly desperate to flee to safety and support their families. There is also concern that gang violence will spread throughout the region, and it has already increased in Trinidad-Tobago, Jamaica, Guyana and elsewhere in the Caribbean.

The imperialists have raised, once again, their usual solution: an invasion of foreign troops to “bring order.” The US did it in 1915, again in 1994 after the ouster of Aristide, and in 2010 after the devastating 2011 earthquake—all to protect US interests in Haiti. From 2004 – 2017, the UN, at the behest of the US and France, deployed large numbers of troops (the biggest contingent from Brazil, under the so-called leftist regime of Lula) to Haiti to quell the anger of the masses of people over the second ouster of Aristide. He had been demanding repayment of the reparations paid by Haiti to France for the loss of its property—slaves—after the Haitian Revolution of 1804. These UN troops continued to wreak havoc through the period of the earthquake, where they raped and pillaged, and even brought a cholera epidemic to the devastated people.

Now, another military mission is being prepared by the US through its minions in the UN andwith  the support of other member countries of the Core Group (France, Canada, Brazil, European Union, and some Caribbean countries). In the summer of 2021, Haiti’s president Jovenel Moïse, embroiled in political intrigue, was assassinated by a mercenary group associated with members of the Haitian bourgeoisie. Ariel Henry, former government minister under the Martelly government, was named temporary Prime Minister (with the open approval of the Core Group and the tacit approval of the US Embassy). Henry was hated by the masses of the Haitian population, particularly because he was ineffective in reining in the gangs overwhelming the country and was among the first to call for foreign intervention. He was forced to resign when he was prevented from returning to Haiti in March after signing a contract with Kenya to send 1,000 police to Haiti. The US and other imperialists will foot the bill; so far the US has committed $10 million to purchase arms and equipment for the Kenyans. Kenya has since torn up the agreement because there is no prime minister currently in Haiti.

A presidential council of nine members has been chosen to name another temporary prime minister and organize elections, but that group is currently mired in disarray as its members fight for power. Juno 7, a Haitian publication, opines that if this presidential council does not put its house in order, then the US will put into effect its Plan B and intervene, imposing its own solution.

We look for the glimmers of hope from those willing and able to fight back. We have seen working class people in the several gang-controlled areas of Port-au-Prince unite to attack and kill gang members, who are known to the people in the neighborhoods they control. This movement, though short-lived, was called “Bwa Kale” (hard to translate, but in the spirit of the “dechoukaj”—uprooting—of the Tontons Macoute terrorists after another mass movement that caused the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship). As soon as the workers took matters into their own hands, the US urged the UN to announce that it would field another military intervention in Haiti with African soldiers, as if black police and soldiers would make invasion more appealing.

What You Can Do

Today, the Haitian masses need the solidarity—not charity—of other workers, students and professionals around the world. We call on you to raise the issue of what is going on in Haiti in your workplaces and schools, in your places of worship, in your neighborhood associations, among your family and friends. What happens in Haiti today and in the near future could happen anywhere else in the world, as the major powers fight to divide up and control the world.

Currently the most efficient way to help financially is to send money to groups on the ground who are organizing the mutual-aid efforts. We are working directly with two Haitian-run organizations which are identifying those most in need and getting aid to them. One is FEDADSE (Fédération des Associations pour le Développement du Sud-Est), made up of hometown associations of Haitians living in the US and Canada, along with people living in regional rural communities in Haiti. It is usually involved in reforestation projects in the South-East Department (www.fedadse.org, in French only). Another mutual-aid group is Moun Lib in the South Department, active in the town of Aquin. They organize an annual community meal to celebrate Haiti’s overthrow of slavery, and offered much assistance during Covid and after the 2021 earthquake. You can reach them at mounlib@yahoo.fr (in Créole, French, Spanish or English). Checks can be made out to FEDADSE (write GFM on memo line) and sent to FEDADSE, P.O. Box 180400, Brooklyn, NY 11218. FEDADSE will immediately transfer all funds received to those in need in the South and South-East department.

Tousen J. Jacques is a geography teacher at the École Normale Supérieure in Port-au-Prince and has been involved in mass struggles in Haiti for decades.

Alexis Mulman began traveling to Haiti in 1980; since the 2010 earthquake she has been involved in trade union and reforestation solidarity movements.