[News] Confronting the Occupation: Haiti, Neo-liberalism, and the US Occupation

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Confronting the Occupation: Haiti, Neo-liberalism, and the US Occupation

Written by Kali Akuno
National Organizer, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
Sunday, April 11, 2010

The three-month marker for the earthquake that 
devastated Haiti is now upon us. The significance 
of this marker is not one determined by the 
Haitian people, but rather by the enemies of the 
Haitian people and peoples’ movements throughout the world.

According to Milton Friedman and the intellectual 
guru’s of neo-liberalism there are critical 
timelines and stages that must be strictly 
adhered by to successfully capitalize on a 
catastrophe and transform a society. The three 
month marker is one of these critical timelines, 
and in the words of Friedman himself “ a new 
administration has some six to nine months in 
which to achieve major changes; if it does not 
seize the opportunity to act decisively during 
that period, it will not have another such 
opportunity.”  Based on experiences in Iraq, Sri 
Lanka, and New Orleans over the past ten years 
several things must be in place at the 
three-month marker in order for the catastrophe 
to be fully exploited. These include: sufficient 
military force to contain the population, the 
dispersal and fragmentation of the affected 
population to limit its ability to mobilize 
resistance, and the legislation and 
implementation of a new policy regime that seeks 
to privatize nearly everything and eliminate all financial controls.

One of the central enemies of the Haitian people 
is the guru’s of the ideology of neo-liberalism. 
These guru’s are the neo-liberal theoreticians 
and policy hacks who control Wall Street, the US 
Federal Reserve, the Bretton Woods institutions – 
the IMF, World Bank, and WTO, and most of the 
central banks of the world since the 
1990’s.  These gurus, most particularly the 
theoreticians, created a script in the 1970’s to 
exploit catastrophes, natural and human created, 
not only for material gain but radically 
regressive social transformation. After waging an 
incessant ideological war against socialism and 
communism the theoreticians won critical support 
amongst the commanders of government and the 
captains of capital by the early 1980’s and were 
able to start fully unleashing their fury on the 
world after the test run of General Augusto 
Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile during the 
1970’s. This neo-liberal script is a form of what 
Karl Marx termed “primitive accumulation”, and 
what David Harvey calls “accumulation by 
dispossession”, and is becoming popularly known 
via the works of Naomi Klein as “disaster 
capitalism” and the “shock doctrine”.

A key ideological and strategic tool of this 
neo-liberal script is the concept of 
“humanitarian interventionism.” Despite how well 
intentioned this concept sounds, it is a tool 
developed through the auspices of NATO, under the 
guiding hand of the US government, to be executed 
through the UN to allow the imperialist powers to 
legally and morally interfere in the domestic 
affairs of weaker nations. Stated plainly, it is 
colonialism dressed in fine linen. As a practice 
it gained legitimacy after the imperialist 
induced atrocities in Rwanda, Burundi, and the 
former Yugoslav republic in the 1990’s to 
allegedly put an end to crimes against humanity 
such as ethnic cleansing and genocide. In the 
wake of these atrocities the UN under the 
direction of the US and its European allies has 
executed the doctrine of humanitarian 
intervention in all of the aforementioned 
countries and the Congo, Iraq, Somalia, and Haiti.

The latest imposition of humanitarian 
interventionism in Haiti was in 2004, after the 
US overthrow of President Aristide and the 
Lavalas government, allegedly to restore order 
and maintain peace. But, this cut was just a 
deeper penetration of the affliction of 
neo-liberalism imposed upon Haiti by US 
imperialism with the willing aid of Haiti’s own 
decadent ruling class beginning in the 1980’s 
under the regime of “Baby Doc” Jean-Claude Duvalier.

The current US occupation (the third since 1915) 
of Haiti removes the mask of the UN occupation in 
place since 2004, and is promoted and (sadly) 
widely unquestioned, in the US and throughout the 
world, as a “humanitarian operation” allegedly to 
stabilize the situation in Haiti in order to 
provide quake relief  - which is nothing more 
than a perpetuation of the long standing racist 
view of the US government that the Haitian people 
are incapable of adequately presiding over their 
own affairs. The fact is, with the advancements 
and refinements in the application of the “shock 
doctrine” stemming from the occupation of Iraq, 
the political transformation of Sri Lanka 
following the Tsunami of 2004, and the social and 
demographic transformation of New Orleans and the 
Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, 
the US government and transnational capital are 
seeking to apply a “coup de grace” on the 
people’s movement in Haiti in order to clear the 
way to remake it as a neo-liberal paradise.

Stakes is High

The stakes at play in the US occupation couldn’t 
be much higher for the people’s movement and the 
working and peasant masses of Haiti. Under US 
military rule the overwhelming bulk of the 
international relief aid (materials and finances) 
is centrally controlled by a handful of relief 
agencies hand picked by the US and the UN, who 
along with elements of the Haitian elite, control 
who gets anything and when, and thus turned 
relief aid into a weapon of social and political 
control. The major ports of entry into the 
country and its main transportation arteries are 
under tight US control restricting people’s 
ability to organize and mobilize under the 
ongoing dire circumstances. Potential routes of 
refuge to the US via the sea and the Dominican 
Republic via land have been effectively closed 
and legally barred. And the political repression 
unleashed after the liquidation of the Lavalas 
government in 2004 by the Haitian ruling class, 
former military and Tonton Macoute forces, and 
MINUSTA (the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti) 
is intensifying, particularly with the ongoing 
banning of the Fanmi Lavalas Party from running 
in upcoming elections.  And the hunting down by 
the US military and mercenary forces of political 
prisoners associated with the Lavalas movement 
and government, who were liberated by the 
collapse of several prison facilities during the 
January 12th earthquake. To top it all off, the 
Hurricane season is approaching rapidly, and no 
one, not the US military, the UN and NGO relief 
agencies, or the Haitian government is prepared 
to face it and the potential calamities it could 
bring, particularly as it relates to further 
displacement, the deepening of food insecurity, 
and the spread of infectious diseases.

And these are just the short-term issues posed by 
the US occupation and the militarization of the 
relief and reconstruction effort. The long-term 
issue is the suppression of the people’s movement 
for self-determination and the imposition of 
permanent structures of dependency and 
subservience that the US government and the 
transnational ruling class are seeking to impose 
via a prolonged occupation. US imperialism is 
seeking to do no less to Haiti than it did with 
the occupation of 1915 – 1934, and that is to 
remove the threat of social revolution in Haiti 
and rebuild the Haitian military to serve as a 
repressive instrument against it in the service of transnational capital.

The US occupation of Haiti is not just a singular 
containment initiative. It is also an initiative 
to further the rollback of progressive social 
transformation that has swept large parts of 
Latin America and the Caribbean since the late 
1990’s.  The first major rollback initiative 
under Obama’s command was the Honduran coup that 
successfully ousted President Manuel Zelaya. The 
second, albeit with far less US intervention, was 
the election of a right wing government in Chile, 
under the leadership of billionaire President 
Sebastian Pinera. The occupation of Haiti is the 
third and by far the most deeply penetrating of 
these rollback initiatives. With it US 
imperialism is seeking to contain initiatives 
like ALBA, which in English translates into the 
Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our 
America, initiated and principally led by 
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as an 
alternative of the FTAA. ALBA, through the 
solidarity initiatives of the Cuban and 
Venezuelan governments, was making significant 
headway in Haiti prior to the earthquake with the 
creation rural hospitals and schools and the 
provisioning of subsidized oil and low-interest 
development loans. Under the US occupation these 
initiatives are being stunted and contained in 
their growth. The greatest rollback threat 
however, is the occupation itself. It is a stark 
reminder to the aspiring progressive governments 
and social movements in Latin American and the 
Caribbean that as far as US imperialism is 
concerned the Monroe Doctrine is still in full 
effect over its historically claimed “backyard”, 
and that there are limits to the progressive 
reforms it is willing to tolerate.

Solidarity and Joint Struggle: What is to be done?

The US occupation is not just a problem for 
Haitians, and social movements in Latin America 
and the Caribbean, it is and must be understood 
as a problem for the progressive social movement 
within the US itself. Sadly, the Black Liberation 
Movement (BLM) has been divided and largely 
demobilized in relation to Haiti since the 2004 
coup, in large part due to differences over how 
to view, understand, and relate to Fanmi Lavalas 
and President Aristide. Many have succumbed to 
accepting the grave distortions and outright lies 
perpetuated by the US government and right wing 
and ultra-left Haitian forces against President 
Aristide, Fanmi Lavalas and the Lavalas Movement. 
This position ignores the popular will of the 
Haitian masses and distorts the significant 
contributions of the Lavalas movement and 
government towards the realization of a 
participatory democracy and a people-centered 
path of economic and social development as an 
alternative to neo-liberalism. Similar dynamics 
have also occurred within Caribbean and Latino 
social movements within the US. And for the most 
part Haiti and the UN, and now, US occupations 
hardly register at all within the largely white 
dominated anti-war movement (gaining even less 
attention than the ongoing occupation of 
Palestine). Undoubtedly, racism, particularly the 
long-standing specter of the Black hoards of 
Haiti, is at play in this sad scenario.

This situation must change, and the varied forces 
of the Black Liberation Movement must lead the 
way. The Haitian masses and popular movement 
without question are and will continue to fight 
valiantly to end the US occupation, but they 
cannot be left to fight on their own. It is 
incumbent upon the forces of the Black Liberation 
Movement to organize a multi-national and/or 
racial anti-imperialist initiative and coalition 
within the US that fights for the immediate end 
of the US occupation and the neo-liberal 
impositions it seeks to impose. The initiative 
must also take a committed stand in support of 
the demands of the Haitian popular movement that 
call for the return of Aristide, freedom for 
political prisoners, reparations and restitution 
(particularly from France for the brutal 
Indemnity imposed in 1824), and the cancellation 
of foreign debt and the negation of their 
structural adjustment conditionalities. In short, 
we must seize the opportunity to create our own 
script to counter neo-liberalism and humanitarian 
interventionism in support of the people’s 
struggle for self-determination and sovereignty in Haiti.

This initiative must be conceived as one of joint 
struggle. One that is clear on the mutual and 
reinforcing self-interests of the social movement 
in Haiti, with its peasant and working class 
base, and the social movements in the US, and 
their multi-national, working class base, in the 
context of the ever increasing interrelated and 
interdependent capitalist world-system we live 
in. Our actions should not be contingent on 
charity or (worse) pity. But a firm grasps that 
as the social movement in Haiti goes, so goes the 
potential for the social movement in the US, for 
the allowance of one tyranny is the spawn of a 
hundred more. As we gather our forces to support 
the resistance of the Haitian people, and join 
with it in common struggle against imperialism, 
we will appear as a new defiant spirit and a force to be reckoned with.

Kali Akuno is based in Atlanta, GA and works as 
the Director of Education, Training and Field 
Operations at the US Human Rights Network (USHRN) 
and is in the process of writing a book about his 
experiences organizing in New Orleans and the 
Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina tentatively 
called “Witness to a Cleansing”.



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