Caribbean women support Aristide
Following are excerpts from a letter being circulated on
the internet:
We, the undersigned women of the Caribbean and of Caribbean
descent, denounce the U.S.-backed coup, which culminated in
President Aristide's removal from Haitian soil by U.S.
forces.
While we recognize that there are likely to be legitimate
criticisms of the Aristide government, that is not the issue.
The issue is that there was a democratically elected government
which had not completed its term, and an opposition which
included armed gangs, purported drug dealers and mercenaries
led by former leaders of the FRAPH death squad and
Duvalierists.
The Haitian people achieved the first successful slave
revolution in history. ... But they have never been allowed the
conditions in which they could build their future without
premeditated outside interference. The imperial powers,
especially France and the U.S. ... have made the Haitian people
pay. Backed by the United States, France ordered Haiti to pay
150 million francs in gold as "reparations" to former
plantation and slave owners as well as for the costs of the
war, in return for international recognition. It has been
estimated that French bankers and big business alone owe Haiti
at least $21 billion in reparations for the forced debt that
took Haiti 120 years to pay off.
For 60 years following the revolution, the U.S. government
refused to recognize the Haitian Republic. The U.S. threatened
Haiti 26 times by anchoring warships in its harbors to protect
U.S. business interests. It invaded Haiti in 1915 and stayed
until 1934, nineteen years of occupation. U.S. Marines robbed
$500,000 from its National Bank in 1915 and deposited it in the
Nation al City Bank--now part of the Citibank octopus. In the
200 years since Haiti's independence, it endured 13 coups
before the coup of Feb. 29, 2004. The bloody Duvalier
dictatorships ... were backed by both the U.S. and France.
Cedras, appoint ed by Aristide during his first term to head
the army, later led a coup against Aristide, which was the
joint work of the Haitian business elite and the CIA.
Under the Bush administration the U.S. stepped up its
campaign to force "regime change" in Haiti. It pressured the
Inter-American Develop ment Bank and other agencies to cancel
hundreds of millions of dollars in development assistance to
Haiti, earmarked for safe drinking water, literacy programs and
health services. It instructed the IMF and the World Bank to
place Haiti under a financial embargo. This is the
administration which now asks us to believe that it is acting
in the interests of "peace" and "democracy" in Haiti, as in
Iraq.
All Caribbean people have a long experience of U.S.
economic, political and military domination and subversion in
this region. ... It was CLR James, a Caribbean man born and
bred in Trinidad and Tobago, who wrote in "Black Jacobins," the
great history of the Haitian revolution, "The transformation of
slaves, trembling in hundreds before a single white man, into a
people able to organize themselves and defeat the most powerful
European nations of their day, is one of the great epics of
revolutionary struggle and achieve ment." We have always felt
deeply that we must defend Haiti because Haiti is ours. Now we
must act.
The following are contacts for this Caribbean women's
statement:
In the Caribbean: Andaiye, andaiye@solutions2000.net;
Jacqueline Burgess, jacquie.cafra@wow.net.
In the United States: Margaret Prescod, margaretprescod@crossroadswomen.net.
Reprinted from the March 18, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
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