![[WWP web page]](../home.gif){kind=small}
![[News]](../news.gif){kind=small}
![[Subscribe]](../free.gif){kind=small}
![[Vote WWP]](../vote.gif){kind=small}
![[Join us!]](../join.gif){kind=small}
-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted
from the Oct. 3, 1996
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
The United States established a protectorate over Haiti in September. Not officially, of course. Protectorates were abolished after World War I. But official or not, it's real.
The U.S. Department of State dismissed a number of President Rene Preval's bodyguards and replaced them with its own security force. The guards responsible for protecting the president's house will be supplied by a U.S. security firm. The soldiers backing up the guards are Canadians from the United Nations force.
The State Department's lies justifying this move were repeated by the leading bourgeois papers in the United States. They sounded like they were scripted in Hollywood.
U.S. intelligence agencies said they had radio/telephone intercepts "proving" that the dismissed bodyguards were involved in the murders of two right-wing Haitian politicians last month and other recent shoot-outs, robberies and acts of political violence.
These same agencies claimed former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was psychotic for believing a coup was being planned against him and the United States was involved.
The U.S. Army, meanwhile, has made no move to return 160,000 pages of documents and thousands of videotapes it removed from Haiti. They detail the torture and murder of 5,000 or more Haitians during the military coup that Washington covertly supported. The documentation is believed to show who among the right-wing thugs were on the U.S. payroll.
But the people have not remained silent.
In Limbe, a town on the main road between Port-au-Prince and Cap Haitien, Haiti's second biggest city, progressive popular organizations set up a roadblock during the first week of September. Gasoline and medicine grew short in Cap-Haitien, blackouts occurred, and the whole economy of Haiti's northern section was shaken.
The demonstrators refused to let any vehicles cross their barricades until their demands were met. They want a local river cleared of debris, a better justice system, a working telephone system-theirs had been broken for over a month- and a new school. The barricades didn't come down until President Preval visited northern Haiti and made some promises.
Other barricades have gone up elsewhere around issues like justice and schools. Demonstrators have taken to the streets to demand as much as 12 months of back pay owed by the government.
One of the reasons the United States took direct control of Haiti was that its economic plan for the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere involves laying off at least 7,000 workers in state-run industries. Washington wants to be in charge on the ground and able to protect its "assets" when a social explosion comes.
- END -
(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@wwpublish.com. For subscription info send message to: ww-info@wwpublish.com. Web: http://www.workers.org)