Mark Schuller is Professor of anthropology and not-for-profit studies and NGOs at the University of Northern Illinois and an associate at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, l’Université d’État d’Haïti. He is the author or co-editor of eight books – including Last Stand by Humanity: Confronting Global Catastrophe – and co-director / co-producer of the documentary Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy. A recipient of the Margaret Mead Award, Schuller is President of the Haitian Studies Association and active in several solidarity efforts.
This article originally appeared in the NACLA Report on the Americas, February 6, 2021. It is reprinted with the kind permission of Mark Schuller, who took part in a virtual launch last Saturday of the NACLA Report on “The End of the Empire? Racial Capitalism, Forced Migration, and State Violence in Haiti ”he co-edited with Mamyrah Dougé-Prosper (you can read their introductory essay online at: https://nacla.org/news/2021/02/19/end – empire-haiti)
As usual, news about Haiti in the United States remains limited, except during times of “crisis.” As if on cue, the US media began reporting on Haiti’s “constitutional crisis” this week.
Sunday, Feb. 7 is the end of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse’s term, according to the constitution. He refuses to step down. This week, the opposition called for a two-day general strike, uniting around a transition period with the head of Haiti’s Supreme Court stepping in.
Most reports failed to identify the international role, and especially the role of the United States, in creating this “crisis.” And almost all were focused on only one part of the opposition: Haiti’s political party leaders.
As expected, foreign media led their stories with violence. Indeed, the security situation is deteriorating: Nou Pap Dòmi denied 944 killings in the first eight months of 2020. But leaving the debate on “gang violence” whitewashed his political dimensions: on January 22, leaders called in “G9” (held the group of 9), a federation of gangs led by former policeman Jimmy Chérisier, alias “BBQ,” a parade to protect the Haitian president. The National Human Rights Protection Network (RNDDH) reported in August 2020 that the government had federalized the gangs in the first place.
On January 13, 2020 – a day after 10 years since the devastating Haiti earthquake – the terms of parliament expired, leaving President Moïse to rule by decree. One such decree came in November as the wave of kidnapping escalated: the president banned some forms of protest, calling it “terrorism.”
Readers in the United States should not need to be reminded of the violent attack of white supremacists on Congress and the US Constitution on January 6 that killed at least six people, on the heels of coup attempts in Michigan and other vigilante attacks. In the United States, police killed 226 Black people last year. The irony of US officials opting for violence, democracy, or rule of law seems to be invisible to some readers.
In addition to the similarities of state violence against Black people in the United States and Haiti, the loss of most stories provides context for the specific roles that the previous US administrations played – by both sides – in fomenting and escalating that violence.
Haiti’s ruling party, Tèt Kale, began in 2011, when bawdy carnival singer Michel Martelly was shadowed into the second round of the election by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Special Ambassador and co-chair of the Reconstruction Commission Bill Haiti Acting (IHRC) Clinton.
This support from the Clintons, the United States, and the so-called Core Group (including France, Canada, Brazil, the European Union, and the American Provincial Institute), never wavered, despite the slide increasingly clear towards authorship. In 2012, Martelly installed allied mayors in all but a handful of towns. Then the terms of parliament expired in 2015, the five-year anniversary of the earthquake, with promises of holding elections never to happen. The vote that eventually led to the election of Martelly’s successor, Jovenel Moïse, was a fraudulent one. Yet the United States and the Core Group continued to play forward – and offer financial support – until finally the electoral commission formally called for its annulment. Due to international pressure, the final round took place weeks after Hurricane Matthew ravaged large parts of the country. This was the lowest turnout in the country’s history.
Why would the so-called “democratic” countries continue to support the Kale Girl state? What was in it for Empire?
Having to thank his friends in high places, Martelly’s reconstruction effort focused on providing opportunities for foreign capitalist interests to invest in tourism, agribusiness, sweatshops and mining. Unsurprisingly, donors to the Clinton Global Initiative have done as (legal) bandits. Ironically, $ 4 billion was available to help finance this catastrophic capitalism from Venezuela’s PetroCaribe program, which offered low-cost and low-interest oil loans. With the Haitian province safely under the watch of the Clintons, the transformative potential of this alternative to neoliberal globalization and an example of South-South unity was squeezed. Cue the focus of foreign mainstream media only on the “corruption” of this complex movement demanding # KòtKòbPetwoKaribe? Where are the PetroCaribe funds?
This popular movement was an extension of the rebellion against austerity forced by the International Monetary Fund. On July 6, 2018, during the World Cup, the Haitian government announced a price hike for petroleum products. Right after Brazil lost the fight, people took to the streets across the country and closed it. In Kreyòl, this was the first peyi lòk – lockout or general strike.
This was the first time in my 20 years working in Haiti to bring together people of all socio-economic status, reaching two million people across the country at one time (out of a population of 11 million). In the face of this popular disagreement swell, the government increasingly turned to violence, including massacre in Lasalin, a low-income neighborhood near the port and a stronghold of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s party.
Thinking back to my time in Haiti during the 2003-2004 coup against Aristide and comparing the people on the streets then and now, it seemed likely that Moïse would be forced out by November 2018 Surely, it would have gone by February 7, 2019 — two years ago.
So why is he still in office?
Like his predecessor “Sweet Micky,” Martelly’s stage name, the “Banana Man” as Moïse was known during the campaign, had friends in high places. President Donald Trump met Moïse and other right-wing hemispheric heads of state at his Mar-a-Lago resort in March 2019. Haiti was crucial in the US-led effort in the OAS not to recognize Nicolás Maduro as the legitimate president. from Venezuela. Despite the billions in aid Haiti received from Venezuela through PetroCaribe, and bilateral cooperation that began in 1815 when Haitian president Alexandre Pétion provided Simón Bolívar with vital arms and support, President Moïse sided with Trump. In 1962, Haitian president “Papa Doc” Duvalier – who judged the movements of history and solidarity as a dictator – did the same to Cuba, and generously rewarded the United States.
Given the new White House resident, and the campaign’s pledges to the key battlefield province of Florida, one might think that President Joe Biden would reverse Haiti’s vis-à-vis course. Why, then, would Immigration and Customs Enforcement continue to deport 1,800 people, some not even born in Haiti, sending not one but two deportation flights on February 4 alone?
Making the connections, the Family Advocacy Network Movement in Florida (FANM) sent an open letter denying state violence and human rights violations.
The voices in Haiti that foreign corporate media amplify are the voices of political parties. The Anakawona Kolektif outlined at least two much larger opposition segments related to grassroots organizing. On November 29, the popular Konbit organization coalition issued a five-language call for unity. The Batay Ouvriye workers’ organization outlined popular calls about whoever takes the job. A group of professionals, Fowòm Politik Sosyopwofesyonèl Pwogresis Ayisyen (FPSPA), denied the United Nations for rushing elections and its support for what FPSPA qualifies as a dictatorship.
David Oxygène, with the popular organization MOLEGHAF, criticized the political party consensus as olye yon lit de klas, se yon lit de plas – rather than class struggle, it is a struggle for position (power). He and activist Nixon Boumba underline that the opposition plan is a short-term solution, when Haitian movements demand long-term solutions and change the system. Activist-journalist Jean Claudy Aristil and others point out the fundamental hypocrisy and limits of “Western democracy.” The benefits of money, including imperial powers, that dominate the political process in Haiti are not part of the same transnational capitalist class that has rigged the system in the United States – the model for other American political systems .
These Haitian activists and scholars do not require US intervention to support what Oxygène called 2 zèl yon menm malfini – two wings of the same vulture.
They ask us to dismantle imperialist intervention and join them in transforming our institutions so that people’s unity for people and a democratic global economy can then be possible.