[News] Black Internationalism and the Colonial Challenges Facing Haiti and Venezuela

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/14105


  Black Internationalism and the Colonial Challenges Facing Haiti and
  Venezuela

By Jeanette Charles - Oct 18th 2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------

/Protests in Haiti over the misuse and pocketing of copious amounts of 
Petrocaribe funds stemming from Venezuela have turned violent this week, 
with a number of deaths being reported 
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/10/haiti-protests-erupt-politicians-misuse-petrocaribe-funds-181018074636173.html>. 
/

/In this piece, originally published before the protests by Haiti 
Solidarity, VA's Jeanette Charles looks at some of the historic 
challenges facing both Haiti and //Venezuela,//and the Petrocaribe 
relationship which Hugo Chavez established between the two nations./

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Solidarity as defined by President Aristide takes root in the African 
philosophy of Ubuntu, /Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu:/ “/a person is a person 
through other human beings. A person becomes a person through the 
community. A person is a person when she/he treats others well….Ubuntu 
is the source of all philosophy grounded in solidarity, cooperation, 
unity, respect, dignity, justice, liberty and love of the other/.”  – 
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haïti-Haitii?: Philosophical Reflections for 
Mental Decolonization

“/Haiti has no debt with Venezuela, just the opposite: Venezuela has a 
historical debt with that nation, with that people for whom we feel not 
pity but rather admiration, and we share their faith, their hope./” – 
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez upon absolving Haiti of all financial 
debt in the wake of the 2010 earthquake

After 35 years of incarceration, political prisoner and freedom fighter 
Oscar López Rivera was released in 2017. One of his revolutionary 
lessons urges us to recognize that “colonialism is the problem” we 
continue to face today. While he specifically referred to Puerto Rico 
and its colonial status, his reflection is applicable to anywhere in the 
world devastated by exploitation, occupation, and invasion at the hands 
of European colonialism and US imperialism. As such, we can examine the 
current and historical challenges facing both Venezuela and Haiti, as 
well as their complicated relationship, as cases that expose the open 
wounds and lasting effects of colonialism and counter-revolutionary 
attacks against revolutionary processes committed to liberation and the 
reconfiguration of global power.

Colonialism explains why United Nations forces implicated in mass rape, 
human trafficking rings, and the cholera epidemic continue to occupy 
Haiti. Colonialism is the driving force behind former US Secretary of 
State Rex Tillerson’s spring 2018 tour throughout the Caribbean, 
intimidating, threatening, and bribing states to vote at the 
Organization of American States (OAS), in favor of foreign intervention 
in Venezuela. Colonialism has cultivated the root of complex political, 
economic, and sociocultural relationships between the states, peoples, 
and grassroots movements of Venezuela and Haiti.

The most recent US efforts to isolate Venezuela from the region, 
demoralize its people through a concerted economic war, and intervene in 
its political process—by working with international collaborators to 
ultimately punish its black majority revolutionary process—have their 
historical precedents in Haiti. Haitians experienced these 
counter-revolutionary attacks as they fought to defend their own 
revolutionary process under the leadership of Fanmi Lavalas President 
Jean Bertrand Aristide and earlier, throughout the era of Haitian 
Independence.

“Haiti represents a moral and political reference. Chávez once said, you 
cannot pay back a moral debt, and what Haiti gave us is unpayable,” 
explains Jesús “Chucho” García—Afro-Venezuelan historian and Consul 
General for the Bolívarian Republic of Venezuela in New Orleans—with 
respect to Haiti’s critical role in Venezuelan independence. The bridges 
that Africans, and later Haitians, built with pre-independence Venezuela 
throughout the 18th and 19th centuries took on multiple dimensions, 
including material aid, strategic development, spiritual force, and 
principled political vision. Haitians’ intentional support of abolition 
throughout the Americas ensured South American independence and sowed 
the roots of the Bolívarian Revolution, which began in 1998 and 
continues today.

As such, Venezuela’s Bolívarian Revolution has attempted to return this 
“historical debt” with Haiti, rectify the harms of colonialism, and 
consolidate a Caribbean and Latin American united front against US 
imperialism, by extending its reparations model of oil wealth 
redistribution beyond its borders and by exercising a diplomatic model 
rooted in regional integration and cooperation. “Beyond Venezuela, I’m 
thinking about the integration of Latin America, this Afroamerica that 
is scattered throughout all these lands and all these waters,” Chávez 
voiced on May 8, 2005 on his television program Aló Presidente, speaking 
to the legacy of black liberation in the Americas and identifying Haiti. 
His call compelled hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of 
Venezuelans to direct their moral and political compass toward the first 
black republic of the Western Hemisphere.

Subsequently, Venezuela has provided funds and subsidized oil for Haiti 
as well as other Caribbean nations through its program PetroCaribe. In 
the case of Haiti, Venezuela has also ensured additional disaster relief 
humanitarian aid and dissolved all loans. However, these significant 
gestures have facilitated contradictory results. Instead of reaching the 
people and improving economic conditions for the majority Haitian poor, 
these initiatives have lined the pockets of Haitian Duvalierist elites. 
Recent mass mobilizations and legislative accounts have denounced 
corruption of PetroCaribe funds and the displacement of Haitians across 
the island of Ile-à-Vache, both cases tied to the Haitian government’s 
misuse of Venezuelan aid. In October 2017, news surfaced after years of 
concerns from Haitian grassroots about the PetroCaribe program, after 
five Haitian senators who commissioned an audit of the international 
program publicly released the report. The audit attested to the corrupt 
use of funds and cited payments to private corporations. High level 
officials in the Haitian Government under then President Michel 
Martelly—supporter of current President Jovenel Moïse—were implicated. 
Months prior, in February 2017, to the disappointment of Haiti’s 
grassroots movement, the Venezuelan Government immediately recognized 
the illegitimate (s)election of Moïse, closely associated with Martelly 
and the Duvalier dictatorship, at the very moment when mass 
demonstrations were continuing to protest the fraudulent election that 
installed him as president.

These contradictions, while contemporary examples, speak to the 
unresolved consequences of the independence era and colonialism’s 
impact. Similarly, they correspond directly to Venezuela’s attempt to 
return this “historical debt,” via the shared resources of oil wealth 
without an intentional political orientation and management oversight, 
which has caused harm and exacerbated the economic and political crisis 
in Haiti.
In order to understand today, we must look into the more than two 
centuries of interwoven histories between Haiti and Venezuela. These 
histories offer a window into understanding the challenges found in 
building regional integration and promoting a black internationalist 
solidarity model that is under constant siege by imperialist powers. 
Today, it’s necessary for us to uncover, explore, and act on these 
histories in order to evade damaging historical cycles.


      The ripple effect of the first Pan-Africanist and Black
      Internationalist Revolution

“Black internationalism” in this article refers to the solidarity 
expressed between oppressed nations focused on the liberation and 
interests of African/black peoples from the continent and throughout the 
Diaspora. Haiti’s founding is exemplary of a successful black 
internationalist and pan-Africanist revolutionary process whose 
solidarity with African peoples and independence forces in Venezuela 
made shockwaves throughout history.

Chávez was the first president in Venezuelan history to identify with 
his African and indigenous descent, as a feminist, as well as an 
anti-imperialist. He was also the first president to declare Venezuela’s 
historical debt to the island nation. Yet in spite of these critical 
testaments, Chávez often referred to criollo Independence leaders such 
as Simón Bolívar and Francisco de Miranda’s relationships to Haiti, 
shadowing accounts of Venezuela’s African and African descendant leaders 
and their connections to the Haitian Revolution.

Historian Gerald Horne attests to the uncontainable impact of the 
Haitian Revolution, initially marked in 1791 by the Bois Caïman ceremony 
led by resistance and spiritual leaders Cecile Fatiman and Dutty 
Boukman. The ceremony inspired a wave of successful pan-African-led 
rebellions on the island against mainly French colonialism. Horne 
attests, “Haiti, which was not opposed to extending aid to the 
neighboring enslaved, was invoked even when it was not directly involved 
in spurring unrest. Haiti, the island of freedom, mocked the pretensions 
of slaveholders—those on the mainland not least—and inspired the 
enslaved to believe realistically that their plight was not divinely 
ordained, nor perpetual, but could be overcome.”

The rapidly spreading rebellions from Martinique to Barbados were 
inspired by and aligned with the Haitian revolution and its call for an 
end to colonialism. Venezuelan Consul General and historian García 
explains, “[Haiti was] an indisputable reference in the early nineteenth 
century to all oppressed peoples across Latin America and the 
Caribbean….Haiti was the Cuba of the 19th century [which] spread 
solidarity to our country [of Venezuela] as well as the nations of 
Colombia, Ecuador, Panamá, Bolivia, and Peru, while bearing in mind 
liberation projects of Cuba, Santo Domingo, and even Mexico.”

One such instance involved African-Indigenous leader José Leonardo 
Chirino, who orchestrated a maroon rebellion in the Venezuelan Caribbean 
coastal township of Coro, Falcón in 1795. Venezuelan historians suggest 
that Chirino frequently travelled to Curacao and Saint Domingue as part 
of his enslaved work. This led to his exposure to African anti-colonial 
and abolitionist struggles. While records of who he met and who he may 
have trained with or received direct material support from are difficult 
to secure or may not exist, there are clear accounts that after these 
travels, Chirino launched a rebellion on May 10, 1795 alongside hundreds 
of enslaved and free blacks as well as the Jirahara, Ajagua, and Caracas 
Indigenous peoples. Records indicate they launched attacks on Macanillas 
Hacienda, which spread to El Socorro, Varón, Sabana Redonda, La 
Magdalena, and haciendas in other regions of Venezuela. It’s still 
undetermined whether or not Africans from Saint Domingue were directly 
involved in Chirino’s maroon forces as they were across the Americas 
from the US South to islands stretched across the Caribbean.

Upon the arrival of Chirino’s forces to the central square of Coro, the 
criollo slave-owning elites arrested one hundred black maroons and 
executed 86 others by firearm. Subsequently, Spanish colonial forces 
captured Chirino several months later on August 1795. He was publicly 
executed and dismembered. His wife and children were separated and sold 
to different haciendas.

For Venezuelans, this African-Indigenous insurrection represents one of 
the first political movements that voiced the demands of the 
independence era and chipped away at colonialism’s stronghold in South 
America. The launch of the rebellion is commemorated every year during 
Afro-Venezuelan history month. Chirino’s rebellion is one of potentially 
hundreds more examples where Haitian struggles inspired or accompanied 
revolutionary acts in Venezuela.

Today, Afro-Venezuelans have addressed the omission of Haiti in their 
nation’s founding by exploring documented accounts and oral histories of 
often anonymous Haitian maroon leaders and warriors and their efforts to 
topple Spanish colonization across Latin America. Haitians’ historical 
actions solidified the foundations for Venezuela’s future international 
solidarity efforts, support for Caribbean-wide reparations campaigns, 
and the very establishment of cumbes (societies founded on the 
principles of self-determination by self-liberated Africans and 
indigenous people), which continue to exist as revolutionary organizing 
spaces.


      Miranda, Bolivar, and Venezuela's unfulfilled promise to Haiti

The names most often mentioned in official Venezuelan accounts on 
anti-colonial struggle across the Americas are Europeans and their 
American-born descendants. In the case of Venezuela, this includes Simón 
Bolívar and Francisco de Miranda. Both travelled to Haiti seeking 
refuge, to enrich their ideological vision, and to develop their 
military might against Spanish colonialism in South America. Perhaps the 
most pivotal to understanding Venezuela’s complicated relationship with 
Haiti today can be seen through the lens of Bolívar’s voyages to Haiti.

Bolívar initially sought support from Haiti in 1815, eleven years after 
the triumph of the Haitian Revolution, after his troops lost to Spanish 
forces in Cartagenas, present-day Colombia. Southern Haiti’s President 
Alexandre Pétion provided food and shelter for Bolívar and his company 
as well as material aid, financial support, and military strength ahead 
of his upcoming independence battles. Pétion explicitly extended Bolívar 
solidarity during one of Venezuela’s most dire moments in its 
independence struggle, on the condition that Bolívar abolish slavery in 
any territory his forces liberated. According to some scholars, Bolívar 
departed from Haiti with approximately 4000 rifles, gunpowder, a small 
fleet, printing press, food, and at least 250 Haitian veterans who 
fought in the revolutionary wars.

Despite this incredible show of support, after another bout of defeats, 
Bolívar returned to Haiti to recuperate, re-arm, and regroup. In one of 
his letters written December 4, 1816 before sailing back to South 
America, Bolívar etched into historical memory Venezuela’s debt to 
Haiti: “If men are bound by the favors they have received, be sure, 
General [Marion], that my countrymen and myself will forever love the 
Haitian people and the worthy rulers who make them happy.”

On this voyage, after his exchanges in Haiti, Bolívar was victorious in 
South America. Bolívar along with African and indigenous forces 
succeeded in liberating Venezuela from Spanish control. The independence 
forces also freed today’s Brazil, Guayana, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa 
Rica, Nicaragua, Bolivia, northern Peru, and Panama.

Upon this incredible feat, Bolívar declared slavery abolished in these 
territories and issued the first decree in Venezuela on June 2, 1816. 
Bolívar himself had already freed enslaved Africans associated with his 
family’s properties earlier in 1813. However, it wasn’t until 
thirty-eight years later on March 24, 1854 that slavery was officially 
abolished in Venezuela, under President Jośe Gregorio Monagas. Despite 
Bolívar’s greatest efforts, he faced fierce resistance by other 
slave-owning independence generals and high-level authorities in the new 
South American republic. Consul García reminds us that even General 
Miranda stood against abolition and advocated that enslaved Africans 
serve thirty years in the Venezuelan military before granting their 
freedom. This contradiction left lasting effects on the relationship 
between Haiti and Venezuela and speaks volumes to the engrained nature 
of white supremacist slave economies in the Americas.

Moreover, in addition to the aforementioned delay on abolition, while 
Bolívar held Pétion and Haiti with the utmost respect, he did not 
formally recognize Haiti or establish official diplomatic relations once 
Venezuela became independent. Consul García as well as historical 
records remind us that this decision was significantly informed by 
external intimidation from imperialist forces, including the US which 
feared the implications of recognizing the Black Republic. Haiti 
represented to the US and its colonial allies—and what they have 
declared Venezuela since 2015—“an unusual and extraordinary threat to 
[US] national security.”

Perhaps a strategic decision, yet undoubtedly one that undermined 
Haiti’s unwavering commitment to regional liberation, Bolívar also 
excluded Haiti from the first regional gathering of independent states 
in the Americas—the Congress of the American States in Panama in 1826. 
Today, we find Venezuela facing the similar exclusion at the hands of 
OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro and the Lima Group, namely rightwing 
states from Latin America and the Caribbean in alignment the US, calling 
for intervention in Venezuela’s domestic affairs. Overwhelmingly, 
however, progressive states have stood beside Venezuela in these trying 
times.

Bolívar’s unfortunate decision to omit Haiti played a role in the French 
and US’s racist counter-revolutionary backlash against the nation that 
persist to this day. France devastated the Haitian economy, demanding 
financial restitution for sugar industry losses after the Revolution, 
further exposing the French state’s racist notions concerning their 
control over African life. Threatening military intervention and 
surrounding the island, Haiti paid France 150 million gold francs, the 
equivalent of $22 billion in gold, lumber, and other resources until 
1947, under-developing its infrastructure—as we have witnessed occur 
with other majority African and indigenous nations.


      We must center black internationalism and reparations

These histories touch the surface of what we need to know to understand 
the layers involved in Venezuela and Haiti’s contemporary relationship 
and the dilemmas they face together and independently at this present 
conjuncture.

How does Venezuela return the historical, moral, political, material, 
and spiritual “debt” of Haiti’s hand in its independence? And how do 
Venezuelans repair harms caused by the decisions their founding leaders 
made in the 19th century? What measures can be taken by Venezuelan 
grassroots movements to demand that the Bolivarian Revolution also 
responds to concerns raised in light of cases like the Haitian 
Government’s mismanagement and corruption of PetroCaribe funds? How can 
Venezuelans stand in solidarity with Haiti’s majority poor? And how can 
Venezuelans’ actions and strategic interventions to rectify these 
contradictions serve as examples for grassroots movements around the world?

Haiti’s deeply abolitionist, black internationalist, and pan-Africanist 
solidarity model were critical and necessary to defeat occupying 
colonial forces in South America. Given this, it is critical that 
Venezuela, as a majority black nation, as well as other black nations 
and those around the world fighting for liberation, study Haiti’s 
historical internationalism and commit their struggles to active 
solidarity now with the Haitian people.

Our solidarity must follow earlier models of anti-colonial struggles as 
manifested in Haiti’s example as well as the Cuban revolutionary model 
which has transformed over time, from direct military support in 
anti-colonial struggles in Africa and internationally, to present-day 
medical training for youth from majority poor nations. Our revolutionary 
work with Haiti should emerge in our collective efforts to accompany the 
people’s grassroots movement and inherited revolutionary process: /Fanmi 
Lavalas/.

The Bolivarian Revolution should be directly tied to the Haitian 
grassroots movement. There are historical and, at present, intentional 
imperialist reasons intervening and preventing this relationship from 
taking shape. However, ensuring that this relationship flourish would 
encourage steps toward a reparatory approach to this historical debt. 
The Bolivarian Revolution is facing the same global confusion campaign, 
media smear tactics, economic strangulation, and racist attacks—not only 
experienced by Chile’s Salvador Allende—but also experienced by Fanmi 
Lavalas. There are countless lessons to learn and share between these 
two nations which will contribute to all our movements moving forward.

Until such a black internationalist relationship is forged, we will 
continue to witness inefficient, unsatisfactory, and contradictory 
results in the solidarity model Venezuela and other international 
movements apply to Haiti.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20181019/78cdb7ef/attachment.htm>