Haiti: U.S. Puppets, Intrigues and Dreams of Sweatshops
Posted by Mike E on January 17, 2010
We need to talk about Aristide — the Haitian political leader associated with the poor and with radical change.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the tragedy of this earthquake was that Haiti had been doing so well. What she referred to was an imperialist campaign (spearheaded by her husband Bill Clinton) to consolidate a conservative Haitian government and prepare the workforce for sweatshop investments.
A key part of that “improvement” was the crude, U.S. supported exclusion of left-leaning forces from the Haitian electoral process. In one remarkable interview, the U.S. ambassador to Haiti defended the exclusion of the Lavalas party saying simply that their participation would have frightened U.S. investors and denied Haiti what might be its last chance at economic investment. Rarely have I seen the mood and desires of specific capitalists so openly given as the reason for suppressing electoral democracy in the Third World. It was a crude argument (by a sitting U.S. ambassador) that political forces should be coldly suppressed if they are not acceptable to U.S. sweatshop investors.
This political history is almost missing from the current coverage of Haiti (which rarely discussed the seemingly-invisible and seemingly ignored Haitian government). The U.S. has stepped in as a pretty crudely colonialist power — shoving its own puppet government aside in the most patronizing and dismissive way… rolling its troops up to Haiti’s shores, preparing to do whatever it needs to “contain” the people of Haiti, and especially prevent any wave of people fleeing Haiti for Miami.
Here on Kasama, we need to discuss Aristide, Lavalas, and the sharp political questions facing Haiti’s people — including the roads toward the kind of radical revolution and social change that Haiti (and the Caribbean) so clearly need.
The following article from the Jamaica Observor touches on a number of these issues, and can help kick off that discussion.
No, Mister! You Cannot Share My Pain!
By John Maxwell
If you shared my pain you would not continue to make me suffer, to torture me, to deny me my dignity and my rights, especially my rights to self-determination and self-expression.
Six years ago you sent your Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to perform an action illegal under the laws of your country, my country and of the international community of nations.
It was an act so outrageous, so bestially vile and wicked that your journalists and news agencies, your diplomats and politicians to this day cannot bring themselves to truthfully describe or own up to the crime that was committed when US Ambassador James Foley, a career diplomat, arrived at the house of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide with a bunch of CIA thugs and US Marines to kidnap the president of Haiti and his wife.
The Aristides were stowed aboard a CIA plane normally used for ‘renditions’ of suspected terrorists to the worldwide US gulag of dungeons and torture chambers.
The plane, on which the Aristides are listed as “cargo”, flew to Antigua – an hour away – and remained on the ground in Antigua while Colin Powell’s State Department and the CIA tried to blackmail and bribe various African countries to accept (“give asylum to”) the kidnapped president and his wife.
The Central African Republic – one of George W Bush’s ‘Dark Corners of the World’ – agreed for an undisclosed sum, to give the Aristides temporary asylum.
Before any credible plot can be designed and paid for – for the disappearance of the Aristides – they are rescued by friends, flown to temporary asylum in Jamaica where the Government cravenly yielded to the blackmail of Condoleezza Rice to deny them the permanent asylum to which they were entitled and which most Jamaicans had hoped for.
Meanwhile, in Haiti, the US Marines protected an undisciplined ragbag of rapists and murderers to allow them entry to the capital. The Marines chased the medical students out of the new Medical School established by Aristide with Cuban help and teachers. The Marines bivouac in the school, going out on nightly raids, trailed by fleets of ambulances with body bags, hunting down Fanmi Lavalas activists described as ‘chimeres’ – terrorists.
The real terrorists, led by two convicted murderers, Chamblain and Philippe, assisted the Marines in the eradication of ‘chimeres’ until the Marines were replaced by foreign troops, paid by the United Nations, who took up the hunt on behalf of the civilised world – France, Canada, the US and Brazil.
The terrorists and the remains of the Duvalier tontons and the CIA-bred FRAPF declared open season on the remnants of Aristide’s programmes to build democracy. They burnt down the new museum of Haitian culture, destroyed the children’s television station and generally laid waste to anything and everything which could remind Haitians of their glorious history.
Haitians don’t know that without their help Latin America might still be part of the Spanish Empire and Simon Bolivar a brief historical footnote.
Imagine, N*ggers Speaking French!
About 90 years ago when Professor Woodrow Wilson was president of the USA, his secretary of state was a fundamentalist lawyer named William Jennings Bryan who had three times run unsuccessfully for president.
The Americans had decided to invade Haiti to collect debts owed by Haiti to Citibank.
General Smedley Butler, the only American soldier to have twice won the Congressional Medal of Honour, described his role in the US Army:
“I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half-a-dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long.”
General Butler said:
“I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. … My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical in the military service.”
Butler compared himself unfavourably to Al Capone. He said his official racketeering made Capone look like an amateur.
Secretary Bryan was dumbfounded by the Haitians. “Imagine,” he said, “N*ggers speaking French!”
Smedley Butler and Bryan were involved in Haiti because of something that happened nearly a hundred years before. The French slave-masters, expelled from Haiti and defeated again when they tried to re-enslave the Haitians, connived with the Americans to starve them into submission by a trade embargo. With no sale for Haitian sugar, the country was weak and run-down when a French fleet arrived bearing a demand for reparations. Having bought their freedom in blood, the Haitians were to purchase it again in gold.
The French demanded, essentially, that the Haitians pay France an amount equivalent to 90 per cent of the entire Haitian budget for the foreseeable future. When this commitment proved too arduous to honour, the City Bank offered the Haitians a ‘debt exchange”, paying off the French in exchange for a lower-interest, longer-term debt. The terms may have seemed better but were just as usurious and it was not paid off until 1947.
Because of the debt the Americans invaded Haiti, seized the Treasury, exiled the president, their Jim Crow policies were used to divide the society, to harass the poor and finally provoked a second struggle for freedom which was one of the most brutal episodes in colonial history.
Long before Franco bombed Guernica, exciting the horror and revulsion of civilised people, the Americans perfected their dive-bombing techniques against unarmed Haitian peasants, many of whom had never seen aircraft before.
The Americans set up a Haitian Army in the image of their Jim Crow Marines, and it was these people, the alien and alienated Élite who, with some conscripted blacks like the Duvaliers, have ruled Haiti for most of the last century.
When I flew over Haiti for the first time in 1959 en route from New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico, I saw for the first time the border between the green Dominican Republic and brown Haiti.
First-world journalists interpret the absence of trees on the Haitian side to the predations of the poor, disregarding the fact that Western religion and American capitalism were mainly responsible.
Why is it that nowhere else in the Caribbean is there similar deforestation?
Haiti’s Dessalines constitution offered sanctuary to every escaped slave of any colour. All such people of whatever colour were deemed ‘black’ and entitled to citizenship. Only officially certified ‘blacks’ could own land in Haiti.
The American occupation, anticipating Hayek, Freedman and Greenspan, decided that such a rule was a hindrance to development. The assistant secretary of the US Navy, one Franklin D Roosevelt, was given the job of writing a new, modern constitution for Haiti.
This constitution meant foreigners could own land. Within a very short time the lumberjacks were busy, felling old growth Mahogany and Caribbean Pine for carved doors for the rich and mahogany speedboats, boardroom tables seating 40, etc. The devastated land was put to produce rubber, sisal for ropes and all sorts of pie in the sky plantations.
When President Paul Magloire came to Jamaica 50 years ago Haitians were still speaking of an Artibonite dam for electricity and irrigation. But the ravages of the recent past were too much to recover.
As Marguerite Laurent (EziliDanto) writes: Don’t expect to learn how a people with a Vodun culture that reveres nature and especially the Mapou (oak-like or ceiba pendantra/bombax) trees, and other such big trees as the abode of living entities and therefore as sacred things, were forced to watch the Catholic Church, during Rejete – the violent anti-Vodun crusade – gather whole communities at gunpoint into public squares, and forced them to watch their agents burn Haitian trees in order to teach Haitians their Vodun Gods were not in nature, that the trees were the “houses of Satan”.
In partnership with the US, the mulatto President Elie Lescot (1941-45) summarily expelled peasants from more than 100,000 hectares of land, razing their homes and destroying more than a million fruit trees in the vain effort to cultivate rubber on a large plantation scale. Also, under the pretext of the Rejete campaign, thousands of acres of peasant lands were cleared of sacred trees so that the US could take their lands for agribusiness.
After the Flood
Norman Manley used to say “River Come Down” when his party seemed likely to prevail. The Kreyol word Lavalas conveys the same meaning.
Since the Haitian people’s decisive rejection of the Duvalier dictatorships in the early 90s, their spark and leader has been Jean-Bertrand Aristide whose bona fides may be assessed from the fact that the CIA and conservative Americans have been trying to discredit him almost from the word go.
As he put it in one of his books, his intention has been to build a paradise on the garbage heap bequeathed to Haiti by the US and the Elite.
The bill of particulars is too long to go into here, but the destruction of the new museum of Culture, the breaking up of the medical school, the destruction of the children’s television station gives you the flavour. But the essence is captured in the brutal attempt to obliterate the spirit of Haitian community; the attempt to destroy Lavalas by murdering its men and raping its women, the American-directed subversion of a real police force, the attacks on education and the obliteration of the community self-help systems which meant that when Hurricane Jeanne and all the other weather systems since have struck Haiti, many more have died than in any other country similarly stricken. In an earthquake, totally unpredictable, every bad factor is multiplied.
The American blocking of international aid means that there is no modern water supply anywhere, no town planning, no safe roads, none of the ordinary infrastructure of any other Caribbean state. There are no building standards, no emergency shelters, no parks.
So, when I write about mothers unwittingly walking on dead babies in the mud, when I write about people so poor they must eat patties made of clay and shortening, when I write about people with their faces ‘chopped off’ or about any of eight million horror stories from the crime scene that is Haiti, please don’t tell me you share their pain or mine.
Tell me, where is Lovinsky Pierre Antoine and ten thousand like him?
If you share my pain and their pain, why don’t you stop causing it? Why don’t you stop the torture?
If you want to understand me, look at the woman in the picture (above), and the children half-buried with her. You cannot hear their screams because they know there is no point in screaming. It will do no more good than voting.
What is she thinking: perhaps it is something like this – No, mister! You cannot share my pain!
Some time, perhaps after the camera is gone, people will return to dig us out with their bare hands. But not you.
Copyright©2010 John Maxwell
Radical-Eyes said
This is a powerful piece, one jam-packed with critical information.
As I recall, General Smedley Butler later summed up his function as head of US military interventions throughout Latin America: “I was a gangster for capitalism,” I think was how he put it.
One small historical quibble: In explaining the lack of Haitian foreign trade during the years of the French embargo, isn’t it also the case that most Haitians themselves, having thrown off the bonds of chattel slavery, rejected the idea of continuing to work on sugar plantations, prefering instead to turn to subsistence agriculture. Touissant himself, of course, struggled with how to deal with this contradiction between the spontaneous tendencies of the masses (for whom freedom meant above all the freedom from oppressive labor conditions on sugar plantations) and the demands of (capitalist) “development” (which dictated that Haiti continue to strategically position itself as an exporter of commodity crops in the world market).
It is important not to overlook such internal contradictions, while we give full attention to the external forces that have conditioned–and indeed, often choked off– Haiti’s relationship to the rest of the world. The latter should of course be our primary concern, as we–most of us anyway–live in the belly of the imperialist superpower most responsible for these external chains.
boris said
Compare this with David Brooks’ op-ed on Haiti in the NYT (blaming Haitian culture) and Nicholas Kristof’s post on the NYT blog (calling for more manufacturing-for-export in Haiti). There’s been outrage regarding comments from Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh, but the political analysis put out by Brooks and Kristof on the situation are just as outrageous and sinister.
Mike E said
Boris: Links to those pieces?
boris said
The Underlying Tragedy
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: January 14, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/opinion/15brooks.html
January 15, 2010, 11:13 am
How Generous Are We to Haiti? 92 Cents Per American Per Year
By NICHOLAS KRISTOF
http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/15/how-generous-are-we-to-haiti-two-bucks-a-person/
Terry Townsend said
Fidel’s eloquent analysis is at http://links.org.au/node/1464
Jeff Weinberger said
I long believed – in fact found it easy to believe – a narrative which raises Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the level of uncanonized member of the Sainthood. It is easy to believe this narrative, convinced as I am of the existence of the political, social and economic evils known as Imperialism and Neoliberalism, the latter being only the latest man-made terror, among countless terrors, wrought upon Haiti and her people; aware as I am of Aristide’s erstwhile and ongoing proclamations that he is a man of the people and of his early history as Haiti’s President in the 90′s when it seemed he was keeping that promise; aware as I am that he has been lauded by the wonderful Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! – whose show I deeply appreciate and support – and other esteemed Left-leaning luminaries, and that he has even been defended by perhaps the greatest icon of the Left, Noam Chomsky, himself, to the detriment of three presidential administrations (Obama would make four). And how simple it would be if Aristide fit into the stock role of democratically elected, populist leader besieged and ultimately undermined by the Imperialist US demon, a dynamic which Chomsky has justiably documented repeatedly in his encyclopedic oeuvre, defining as it does political history from the majority of Latin America to southeast Asia and beyond. Chomsky’s work is undeniably important. But I now question whether his analysis of Aristide fits the mold.
I raise this question not as a qualified expert on Haiti – I may know a bit more or less, may have read a little more or less than the average person on the far Left of the US political landscape – but because of an incredibly well-documented crititique I just read of Peter Hallward’s book, “Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment.” Hallward has written extensively about Haiti and about Aristide, in particular. He also has a good piece in the Guardian, published the day after the earthquake, which makes no mention of Aristide: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/13/our-role-in-haitis-plight
The book, published in 2007, has the imprimatur of Chomsky and a host of progressive minds. But the critique by Michael Deibert, a progressive thinker whose credentials as a Haiti scholar far exceed those of Hallward, truly throws into doubt the simplistic portrayal of Aristide as besieged, democratically inclined leader and describes a character much closer to his tyrannically inclined predecessors. Deibert’s is just one of a number of what could be called “revisionist” portrayals of Aristide from the Left, from which sources we should at least be impelled to ask some hard questions (as opposed to the the standard critiques from the Right, the motivations for which are generally all too clear).
Here’s a link to the Deibert critique or review, if you prefer. Wikipedia, for certain, and your own research on Hallward, might yield others. I’m not printing the review as it’s fairly long: http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article7074
Radical-Eyes said
Devastating footage from Port-au-Prince, from 60 Minutes
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6108550n&tag=api
jp said
“These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat …in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.”-mlk 4/4/67
Ka Frank said
Palestinians in Gaza donate to help Haiti
It might be one of the world’s poorest areas, besieged by its neighbour Israel, but Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip have been donating what little they have to help those struck by the earthquake in Haiti.
Among the donations collected by a Red Cross representative: toys, toiletries and sweets – small luxuries that Gazans know only too well can brighten spirits in the face of devastation. Some also gave money.
Dr Jamal Khudari, from the Palestinian Committee against the Siege said: “It’s a symbolic donation for the people of Haiti, for the children of Haiti, to tell them that we feel the suffering.”
There are ruins in the Gaza Strip reminiscent of the scenes in Haiti. These were not caused by a natural disaster, but by bombs and shells in Israel’s deadly assault on Gaza, which drew to a close a year ago. Israel blamed attacks by militants for sparking the offensive. The reason for the destruction might be different, but Palestinians say they understand Haiti’s pain.
http://www.euronews.net/2010/01/18/earthquake-in-haiti-palestinians-in-gaza-donate-to-haiti/
Alex said
Regarding the critism of Hallward by Deibert, see this footnote in China Mieville’s excellent article on the legal justification of the coup in Haiti (http://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/783/2/HaitiBirk.pdf)
“His (Hallward’s) book was savagely and lengthily criticized by Michael Deibert (the author of Notes on from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories: New York, 2005), a book supportive of Aristide’s overthrow),at
(visited
6 January 2009). The dignified tone of Hallward’s reply, available at
(visited 6
January 2009), is admirable, but almost disappointing in its restraint. By comparison, one can be
glad that Justin Podur overcame his stated reluctance to debate Deibert (whose response to Podur’s
2006 review of his book is available at (visited 6 January
2009): the original review is Justin Podur, ‘Kofi Annan’s Haiti’, 37 New Left Review (2006)).
Podur’s 2006 rebuttal of Deibert’s claims, at , (visited 6
January 2009), also devastatingly lays bare his ad hominem, tendentious, imperially apologetic and,
according to at least one of his supposed informants (Patrick Elie), mendacious methodology.”
Alex said
Regarding the critism of Hallward by Deibert, see this footnote in China Mieville’s excellent article on the legal justification of the coup in Haiti (http://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/783/2/HaitiBirk.pdf)
His book was savagely and lengthily
criticized by Michael Deibert (the author of Notes on from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti
(Seven Stories: New York, 2005), a book supportive of Aristide’s overthrow), at
michaeldeibert.blogspot.com/2008/03/review-of-peter-hallwards-damming-flood.html (visited
6 January 2009). The dignified tone of Hallward’s reply, available at
mostlywater.org/peter_hallward_responds_michael_deibert’s_review_damming_flood (visited 6
January 2009), is admirable, but almost disappointing in its restraint. By comparison, one can be
glad that Justin Podur overcame his stated reluctance to debate Deibert (whose response to Podur’s
2006 review of his book is available at http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/4405 (visited 6 January
2009): the original review is Justin Podur, ‘Kofi Annan’s Haiti’, 37 New Left Review (2006)).
Podur’s 2006 rebuttal of Deibert’s claims, at http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/4398, (visited 6
January 2009), also devastatingly lays bare his ad hominem, tendentious, imperially apologetic and,
according to at least one of his supposed informants (Patrick Elie), mendacious methodology.
Jeff Weinberger said
I greatly appreciate what you wrote, Alex, and I’ll check it out. Deibert’s critique of Hallward’s book, after all, takes on much more than just Hallward and the book but includes attacks against many respected figures on the Left, as well. Not that one can’t be justified for attacking the Left press but I did notice, while taking in Deibert’s arguments, a certain ferocity in some of the attacks. What I appreciated about Deibert’s critique – and I’m about to start his book which you referenced – is that he seems to break through a kind of hero worship from the US Left for Aristide. I have no quarrel with the Left’s analysis – in fact I espouse it – of US and French imperialism and the 200 years of horrors imposed on Haiti from both without and within but, based on perspectives from some very Left Haitian groups (Haiti Support Group, Batay Ouvriye, and perhaps others I’ve not yet found), Aristide’s status as hero definitely seems open for debate.
As far as Deibert’s criticism of Hallward’s documentation re: the arming of Guy Philippe and Haitian rebels in the Dominican Republic, I agree it smacks more of denial than valid rebuttal; seen as one stroke in a broad argument it can only be misinterpreted but seen as one among many Deibert’s criticism here could be seen as a defense of US policy. In fact, another piece re-posted at Kasama last week but which is two years old takes up that argument with full force: http://kasamaproject.org/2010/01/19/haiti-thru-distorting-lens-how-to-turn-a-priest-into-a-cannibal/
Getting at the truth of this via second-hand sources is very hard. While you seek with your heart, you have to keep your eyes very wide open. But you have to seek or you might wind up The Quiet American, believing justifications for the worst horrors imaginable.
Jan Makandal said
The problem with Dielbert and Hallward is both of them shared a “journalistic” approach in analyzing a conjectural period in Haiti. Hallward approach is partisan and bias. Hallward approach is a” theory in search of an objective reality”. Dielbert is more objective in a sense not bias and partisan. Dielbert’s arguments factually, in many instances, are effectively debunking the myth around Aristide and his Lavalas’ Party. Nevertheless, [from what I have read] both approaches are very limited in the understanding of internal class struggle in Haiti. It is very limited to interpret an objective reality from the external contradictions, what we see; the best approach is to analyze an objective reality by understanding and by appropriating the internal contradictions. There are no history, no emotions in theory. The materialist approach is from a proletarian problematic.
In the final analysis, , by analyzing from the external elements, by drawing conclusion from an external understanding usually, if not most of the time, leads to a pragmatic understanding of that reality, these approaches dominantly benefit the dominant classes as a block.
For the Lavalas supporter such as: hunger striker, lawyers, graduate students, humans rights organizations, journalist, their support of Aristide, in most cases, were bias as paid lobbyist and propagandist of Aristide. Further evidence could be found in some of Dielbert postings and other sources of news report.