Haiti, a sovereign Latin American country, located on the island of Hispaniola in the Greater Antilles archipelago of the Caribbean Sea, to the east of Cuba, is once again in a political crisis. Its President Juvenal Moïse was assassinated in last July and the event plunged the already impoverished, violence-stricken nation deeper into chaos. Needless to say that the political instability and economic distress of this country are attributed to the cruel imperialist machination of the US imperialists and their associates. Back in 2004, the US imperialists in one more demonstration of their brazen overlordism and brigandage, forced a change of regime in sovereign Haiti through direct military intervention preceded by worst political trickery and economic strangulation. On the night of 28 February 2004, US marines landed at the capital of Haiti, stormed into the official residence of the then democratically elected president Bertrand Aristide, abducted him and took him to an unknown destination. Aristide spent seven years in exile in South Africa before returning in2011.
Haiti became first independent state of the colonial era in Latin America and the Caribbeans and the first Black-led republic when it threw off French rule in the 19th century. But it suffered from cycles of violence, invasion and repression for most of its subsequent history, including the US-backed dynastic Duvalier dictatorship. In 1990, Bertrand Aristide registered a thunderous victory in Presidential election following a mass movement that swept all the debris left over from decades of foreign interference and US-backed terror. The US imperialist rulers tried to rig the election and have one of their stooges in power. But they failed. Despite a 1991 military coup orchestrated by the US to oust him that cost over 5000 lives and all sorts of CIA skulduggery, popular support for Aristide remained strong which was also testified in his winning the 2000 elections as well. But Aristide had been under constant pressure of being ousted from presidency as he declined to resign and hand over power to a US sponsored opposition leader who represented the monied class, transnational banks and multinational corporations thereby subverting Haitian democracy and getting his country reduced to the role of a bootlicker of US imperialism.
Failing to bully Aristide to submission, the US government imposed economic sanction on Haiti. A loan of 500 million US dollars was frozen in 1994. But Haiti government had to pay interest on that till to date. An aid embargo was imposed in 2001, humanitarian aids were cut off, basic humanitarian services related to water, housing and medicare were undermined. The people of Haiti, were kept in wrenching poverty. They are now semi-starved, made to sleep in shifts and walk several miles to fetch drinking water. Former US Attorney General Ashcroft made a statement in 2004 that Haitian refugees in US pose a ‘‘national threat’’ to US. Yet the Haitian people refused to budge. So, the Pentagon rulers with the backing of European Union particularly the French imperialists, started financing and patronizing all reactionary forces to engineer an uprising against the popularly elected constitutionally formed government. Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell, even threatened the Latin American countries of dire consequences unless they endorsed the US policy on Haiti. Since then, over the past three decades, US imperialists have been fostering political instability in Haiti and have engaged despots and autocrats to keep a lid on anti-US demonstrations. Previously, the US had put assassinated President Moïse’s mentor, Michel Martelly and his Haiti Tèt Kale Party into the presidency.
Series of protests seething against corruption and poverty and triggered by food shortages, a cholera outbreak and then rigged elections to install US-backed Martelly regimes, gave birth to frequent anti-government protests which surged forth. A 65-year-old construction worker in Port-au-Prince is reported to have remarked, ‘‘The country is in the hands of a small group of people. A small clique lives well while the rest lives in misery.’’ Protestors demanded resignation of Martelly. Then, Jovenel Moise, a banana exporter turned politician, was declared winner of the 2016 presidential election. Then US President Trump and later his successor Biden made it clear, they firmly supported Moïse. With U.S. support, Moïse had hollowed out the Haitian government by refusing to hold elections. As a result, Moïse ruled by decree while almost every other Haitian officials- except for 10 senators – lost their mandate to govern. Both Claude Joseph, appointed prime minister by Moïse in April, and Ariel Henry, slated by Moïse to replace him, are reported to have close ties with the US rulers. Joseph has been acting as interim president since the assassination of Moïse. Amidst this turmoil, former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide returned to Haiti in mid-July last after a nearly a month in Cuba, thrilling hundreds of supporters who gathered at the airport at a time of tensions over the recent assassination of Moïse. The main political question facing Haiti now is how new elections are going to be organized and who would run the country until elections take place.
It is thus clear from Haiti experience how the US imperialists work. In absence of a worldwide well-coordinated anti-imperialist movement which alone, in the unipolar world following dismantling of the mighty socialist camp, the US imperialists are unbriddled in pursuit of their agenda of overlordism and brigandage not only in the Middle East and other parts of the world but long since in Latin America. Here they are trying to subvert the sovereignty of various countries, engineering coup d’état and nakedly intervening in the internal affairs of other lands to establish their client regimes there.
Haiti besides its geopolitical location suitable for US surveillance on socialist Cuba is also having rich natural resources loke wood, and mineral deposits like bauxite, copper, gold, and lignite which the US multi-nationals and other giant corporations want to plunder recklessly. Only these have made this small land a centre of aggression, subversion, intrigue, oppression and conspiracy. While appealing to the toiling people of the world to stand by struggling Haitian citizens and support their stubborn anti-imperialist role, we call upon the courageous Haitian people to strive for establishing a genuine revolutionary leadership on their movements to take those to their logical conclusion and thereby enable the Haitians end their long-continued ordeal.
Political crisis worsening in Haiti
