As violence continues to rage across Haiti and instability grows, US imperialism fears the situation could spiral out of control. Gangs, armed by the ruling class, are extending their control and criminal abuse outside the capital while engaging in bloody wars in an escalation of violence. At the same time the US fears growing resistance from the working class against the intensifying social crisis, the corrupt and incompetent government and foreign intervention. It is therefore manoeuvring to attempt to build a broad and obedient government – backed with an armed proxy force – to protect its interests.
On 2 October 2023, the UN Security Council voted 13-0 to send a Kenyan-led international security force into Haiti to re-establish state control, under the pretext of combating violent criminal gangs (China and Russia abstained). The US has offered logistical support and $100m to finance the operation. Canada has already provided $42m to the Haiti security forces this year, including military equipment and training. The US, the UN and Haiti’s unelected prime minister, Ariel Henry, have been calling for international armed intervention for over a year but had been stalled by a lack of willingness from countries to put their boots on the ground. Even the Kenyan offer has at least temporarily been delayed by a legal challenge by opposition groups in Kenya, claiming it is unconstitutional to send Kenyan police on operations abroad.
Imperialist domination, aided by a kleptocratic bourgeoisie, has made Haiti the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, with appalling inequality. The richest ten per cent control 61.7% of the wealth, almost half of that controlled by the richest one per cent. Meanwhile, two-thirds of the population only have informal employment/unemployment, and around 60% live on less than $2 a day, with 5.2 million (nearly half the population) needing humanitarian assistance to be able to eat. Only 11% of rural people have electricity, fewer than 50% in urban areas have access to decent sanitation, and only 50% of children attend school. Life expectancy is 64 years, with infant mortality at 48 deaths per 1,000 live births (more than ten times the rate of neighbouring socialist Cuba). GDP per capita is $2,130, compared to $45,850 for Britain and $76,398 for the US. Haitian garment workers earn between a quarter to a half the wages of their counterparts in Asia.
With this level of poverty, workers are forced to fight for better conditions. Mass protests have broken out in the recent period: against the imperialist IMF-enforced cuts to the subsidies of fuel (raising petrol prices by 128%); food inflation amongst the highest in the world at 48%; their unelected government and foreign intervention. Fearing the oppressed becoming an organised movement, government and business elites created many gangs to protect their own interests, armed with massive amounts of illegally imported weapons from the US. Some 200 gangs, often working in collusion with the police, have terrorised whole neighbourhoods, with over 2,728 killed this year, along with thousands of incidents of sexual violence and kidnappings; 130,000 people have been displaced. Those that can have fled the island hoping for asylum in the US, only to be blocked by a racist US immigration regime. The Biden government is still carrying on with deportation flights to Haiti, having already deported 27,000 Haitians during his presidency, more than the total for the previous three presidents.
Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Chérizier, the leader of the Revolutionary Forces of the G9 Family and Allies, has become a powerful actor in large areas of the capital and the port, after merging several gangs together. Chérizier, a former policeman, was fired for his alleged role in a massacre in 2017, but still retained some ties to the police and the administration of assassinated former President Jovenel Moïse. Whilst his gang blockaded one of Haiti’s largest fuel distribution centres, he demanded the resignation of prime minister Ariel Henry. When Henry responded by seeking foreign intervention, Chérizier demanded an amnesty and the removal of arrest warrants against himself and his allies. On 19 September Chérizier called for an armed uprising to overthrow the country’s unpopular prime minister. ‘Our fight will be with weapons’, the gang leader told Reuters. He has previously called for the nation’s wealth to be shared by all its citizens. Whether he genuinely intends to build any kind of independent working class organisation, and with whom, remains to be seen. What is certain is that the pressure from the popular movement is demanding an increasingly revolutionary response from Chérizier, who is seen as a definite threat by the imperialists.
Haiti’s history has been one of continuous imperialist oppression and resistance against it, including:
- The first successful slave rebellion, expelling French colonialism in 1804.
- Under threat of invasion in 1825, Haiti agreed to compensate France for loss of land, equipment and human ‘property’ the sum of 150 million French Francs, six times its national income, and needing huge loans to pay it off. In 1911, 84% of national income from coffee went to pay French banks.
- US Marines seized Haiti’s gold deposits in 1914, handing them over to New York’s National City Bank (Citibank).
- 1915-1934 US occupation, disbanding the Haitian army, introduced forced unpaid labour, and repressed the peasant-based rebel insurgency. National City Bank took over the ‘debt’ owed to France, which took until 1947 to pay off with interest.
- 1957-1986 US supported dictatorship under first ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier and then his son ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier, who used their Ton Ton Macoutes militia to terrorise the population, killing an estimated 30,000 people. They were overthrown in February 1986 by mass popular uprising.
- First democratic election in 1990 saw progressive ex-priest, Jean Bertrand Aristide win with 67% of the vote. Aristide calculated the amount Haiti was forced to pay to France was equivalent to $21 billion at the time and demanded repayment. Aristide was removed by a US-backed coup in 1991. The US restored Aristide to power for the last 16 months of his term under the condition he implemented IMF dictates. Re-elected in 2000, Aristide was faced with using 90% of foreign reserves to pay back debts to the US and a US aided opposition leading to destabilisation. He was removed in a coup for the second time in 2004.
- Following the coup, a UN-backed multinational military force was stationed in Haiti from 2004 to 2017. It presided over massacres of protesters, sexual abuse, indefinite detentions, electoral fraud, chronic insecurity, and inequality. After the disastrous 2010 earthquake, a contingent of UN ‘peacekeepers’ reintroduced cholera to Haiti for the first time in a century: it added a death toll of tens of thousands to the 200,000+ killed by the earthquake. The introduction of thousands of foreign NGOs added to the sexual abuse and corruption, while little of the $13bn raised in aid ever reached the mass of displaced people.
Imperialist profits in Haiti have been secured by the poverty and oppression of its people. But the country’s history of resistance means the United States faces the constant fear that the organised working class will follow Cuba’s example and kick the imperialists out.
Imperialist hands off Haiti!
David Hetfield
