Aristide in Jamaica, U.S. general in Haiti as
Imperialist coup become an occupation
By G. Dunkel
March 16--Yesterday, one week after a delegation of
solidarity activists from the U.S. managed to win access to
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was being held in Africa under
virtual house arrest under orders of the United States and
France, Haiti's president flew back to the Caribbean as the
guest of Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson. The president
and his wife had been abducted from Haiti against their will by
U.S. troops and diplomats on Feb. 29 and flown to Bangui,
Central African Republic, even as Wash ing ton was telling the
world that Aristide had "resigned" his post.
In Haiti itself, people on the street told reporters they
want their president, who had been twice elected with
overwhelming popular support, to come back. But in Wash ington,
White House spokesperson Scott McClellan said that Aristide's
arrival in Jamaica was "certainly not helpful to advancing
democracy and stability in Haiti."
Behind this mild statement is the threat of U.S. military
might. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairperson of the U.S. Joint
Chiefs of Staff, stopped in Haiti on March 13 after a five-day
swing through Latin America and held a press conference with
U.S. Ambassador James Foley.
Myers warned neighboring Jamaica that it was "taking a
certain risk and a certain responsibility" by having Aristide
there. Foley said Aristide's presence "will destabilize a very
fragile and suffering country." An unnamed but high Bush
administration figure made it ominously "clear" that Jamaica
had better limit Aristide's stay.
In the name of restoring order in Haiti and bringing
democracy, some 1,600 U.S. Marines, 510 French troops, 300
Chileans and 100 or so Canadians are patrolling Port-au-Prince,
with brief forays outside the Haitian capital. As of March 14,
the Mar ines had killed six Haitians and exchanged gunfire with
Aristide supporters.
While the Aristides are formally in Jamaica to be reunited
with their two young daughters, who have been staying with
relatives in New York, Aristide said of his visit, "For the
time being, I'm listening to my people."
"That would be the roar of distress," commented the Canadian
Broadcasting Corp., "expressed most eloquently by
Port-au-Prince slum dwellers threatening new protests to demand
his return as Haiti's democratically elected president; they
see the multinational force as a foreign occupation army."
On March 11, a large crowd of Aristide supporters had
attempted to march on the Presidential Palace in
Port-au-Prince. They were driven off by cops firing tear gas
and retreated to the Belair neighborhood, a poor district of
firm Aristide supporters. In the fighting that followed, two
people were killed and six severely injured.
Bob Moliere, one of the leaders of the demonstration, told
the Los Angeles Times, "We already voted, and we have only one
president in Haiti: Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He was the victim
of a plot. It was a kidnapping by Bush and Chirac."
Five days later, the CBC reported that "U.S. Marines and
Haitian police conducted overnight patrols in the tense Belair
neighborhood, an Aristide stronghold where Marines shot and
killed two residents on Friday and where a Marine was shot in
the arm late Sunday ... ."
French troops, including soldiers from Guadeloupe and
Martinique who speak a language close to Haitian Creole, have
been assigned to patrol the poor La Saline neighborhood, where
U.S. Marines killed two Haitians on March 14. The last time
French troops occupied Haiti was in 1803, when they waged a
genocidal war that only ended when the Haitian army of rebel
slaves crushed the French at the battle of Vertière.
The U.S. is pretending hard that Haiti has a constitutional
government. Gerard Latortue was installed as interim prime
minister on March 12 under heavy U.S. guard, after being
selected by a "Council of Seven Wise Men" set up by the U.S.
Latortue is a southern Florida television personality and
business consultant who was born in Gonaïves, Haiti, and
has lived in Haiti for only four months since 1963.
Latortue is attempting to put together a cabinet and is
working hard--so far unsuccessfully--to entice some members of
Aristide's government so what is widely perceived as a U.S.
puppet regime can be called a government of "national,
nonpolitical unity." He has promised elections in a couple of
years, but is most concerned with disarming the population.
One of his first acts was to suspend diplomatic relations
with Jamaica and pull Haiti out of Caricom, the 15-member
Caribbean economic bloc that has criticized the U.S. coup.
The right-wing militaries are still operating in Haiti, but
are keeping a lower profile. In Port-au-Prince, despite U.S.
claims that life is returning to normal, dead bodies line the
roadside in poor neighborhoods. A local missionary, Fr. Rick
Burchette, spends a good part of his day going around and
putting them in body bags. (Miami Herald, March 12)
The Haitian bourgeoisie has reopened closed markets and
factories in the capital, but elsewhere schools are still
closed and bodies lie by the roadside until local residents
burn them for fear of disease. The few social services
available before Aristide was forced to leave have
vanished.
Cuban doctors stay at their posts
In the midst of all this, and with over 200 people dead in
Port-au-Prince alone, the 535 Cuban doctors working in Haiti
have stayed and kept their clinics open, even when all others
had closed.
Juan Carlos Chavez, who heads the Cuban medical mission,
described how the Cuban doctors worked. "There were 22 gunshot
victims on Feb. 29 and March 1 alone. And as the week
progressed, Cuban doctors treated more than 100 people," said
Chavez.
Wrote Tracey Eaton in the Dallas Morning News, "Looters
rushed the hospital grounds at one point and stole six cars and
trucks, but they left the Cuban doctors alone. 'The people have
always protected us,' Chavez said. 'We're here to take care of
peoplehealth.'" (March 12)
Cuban Ambassador Orlando Requeijo Gual, speaking at the
United Nations Feb. 26, pointed out that Cuban doctors have
saved 86,000 lives in the five years they have worked in Haiti.
He ended his talk by pointing out, "If all of the above is a
proof of what a small and blockaded country is able to do for
Haiti, other states with huge economic and financial resources
will be able to do even more."
Venezuela is another country willing to defy the U.S. and
help the people of Haiti. "We don't recognize the new
government of Haiti," said President Hugo Chavez in a speech in
eastern Venezuela. "The president of Haiti is called
Jean-Bertrand Aristide. ... Venezuela's doors are open to
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide." He said Aristide had been
kidnapped by "the troops of the country that preaches democracy
to the world."
The visit of U.S. Chief-of-staff Gen. Richard B. Myers to
Haiti, and the fact that the U.S. was able to line up a deal
with France, another imperialist power with long-standing
interests in the Caribbean, signal that Haiti is being used a
laboratory for further imperialist penetration in Latin
America.
In particular, Venezuela, Colombia and Cuba are obviously
the current targets.
Haiti does not have great mineral wealth or a huge
agricultural potential. It does not have a pool of highly
skilled workers or a strategic position in the Caribbean. What
it does have is a unique history. It is the only country ever
to grow out of a successful slave revolt, and in the 200 years
since then it has met imperialist neocolonial interventions
with a stubborn, popular resistance. For example, it twice
elected Aristide, a populist hated by the powerful and racist
U.S. senator, Jesse Helms, who called him "a mean-spirited
revolutionary and an anti-American demagogue." Helms's protege,
Roger Noriega, is now in charge of Western Hemisphere policy
for the State Department.
If the ruling class of the United States, militarily the
most powerful country in the world, cannot dismantle popular
resistance to its wishes in Haiti, one of the poorest countries
in the world and by far the poorest country in the Western Hemi
sphere, it is going to have great difficulties imposing itself
on the rest of the Caribbean and Latin America. n
Reprinted from the March 25, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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