[News] The Haitian Revolution Today and the Limits of Token Solidarity

[Anti-Imperialist News]

counterpunch.org
<https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/06/24/the-haitian-revolution-today-and-the-limits-of-token-solidarity/>
The Haitian Revolution Today and the Limits of Token Solidarity
by Seth Donnelly - June 24, 2022
------------------------------

[image: Ecuador and Brazil Training New Haitian Army – Global Exchange]

Demonstrator in Haiti in early March 2004, protesting the Feb. 29 coup. He
is definitely facing the assault rifle of a U.S. soldier by raising both
hands with his five fingers outstretched to symbolize the five-year term
mandated by the Haitian constitution that President Aristide was not
allowed to complete. – Photo: Haiti Information Project.

In 1826, the Congress of Panama was organized by Simon Bolivar, including
representatives from Peru, Mexico, and what was then Gran Colombia
(Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela) and the United Provinces of
Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa
Rica). Bolivar, who had been given refuge twice in Haiti,  promised that
Haiti would be invited to what was arguably the first international
Pan-American summit with the goal to unify the Americas against the
imperial interests of Spain. The US government, however, recognized an
opportunity to expand its hegemony in the region by implementing the Monroe
Doctrine. Inserting itself as the new ‘protector’ in the region, it
insisted that Haiti, the exemplary nation of anti-slavery Black revolution,
be excluded from the Congress. Even those who were most committed to
anti-imperialist unification accepted the condition – a betrayal which set
a pattern not only against Haiti but against other countries that attempt
to steer a course independent of North American imperialism.

Ever since the Haitian people successfully overthrew slavery and French
colonialism in 1804, the US government refused to recognize the independent
Haitian republic; instead the US sided with the French government to
internationally isolate Haiti and force the Haitian people to pay
“restitution” to their former enslavers in France, a massive robbery
well-documented in the recent *NYT* article “The Root of Haiti’s Misery:
Reparations to Enslavers”
<https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/americas/haiti-history-colonized-france.html>
.

Echoing this history of the US exclusion of Haiti in 1826, the Biden
Administration convened another Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles,
excluding Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua from participation. There was
massive international attention and opposition by progressives to this
measure. The Haiti Action Committee was part of this opposition and stands
in full solidarity with the people of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

Compared to the opposition to this exclusion,  there has been little
international opposition to the Biden Administration’s exclusion of the
people of Haiti from authentic representation in the same Summit. Instead,
the Haitian people were “represented” by the ruling Haitian Tet Kale Party
(PHTK party), a neocolonial dictatorship installed, financed, and
weaponized by the US government during the UN occupation of Haiti which
followed the US-orchestrated 2004 coup against President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide and the Fanmi Lavalas Political Organization. This coup was also
backed by the French and Canadian governments. On June 7th, 2022, US
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was directly questioned
<https://twitter.com/EugenePuryear/status/1534403650679844864> by
journalist Eugene Puryear about why the Biden Administration excluded Cuba,
Venezuela, and Nicaragua from its Summit, but gave the “red carpet
treatment” to the US-backed PHTK dictatorship in Haiti.

In opposition to the Biden Administration’s Summit, a wide range of
activists organized a concurrent and successful People’s Summit
<https://peoplessummit2022.org/>, also held in Los Angeles as well, which
included Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. The Summit was an important step
forward for expanding and deepening ties of international solidarity.

But the question remains for anti-imperialist activists as we organize new
international forums, alliances, and actions: will Haiti’s revolutionary
popular movement be truly represented and involved in leading these
efforts? Unfortunately, some US activists have supported and promoted
Haitian “leftists” who have a track record in enabling and/or justifying
the 2004 US-backed coup. One example is Raoul Peck, the renowned filmmaker,
who belonged to the pro-coup Group 184 being funded by the US government.
He was also a member of a group of Haitian intellectuals who opposed the
celebration of the bicentennial of the Haitan Revolution prior to the
coup.  Following the coup, Peck publicly and internationally carried out a
campaign <https://haitisolidarity.net/voices-from-haiti/jafrikayiti/> of
vilification against President Aristide. For more information on the role
of Peck and other Haitian intellectuals in the coup and the rewards
bestowed upon them following the coup, see this article
<https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/blar.12072>.

Another example is Camille Chalmers, an alleged representative of the
Haitian popular movement. While Chalmers has been a prominent participant
in previous World Social Forums and has a well-versed leftist vocabulary,
he also has a history of collaboration
<https://www.academia.edu/35332847/PAPDA_CIDA_s_Alternative_Development_includes_Coups_and_Repression>
with US imperialism in Haiti. Chalmers is a leader of the Haitian Platform
to Advocate Alternative Development (PAPDA), an organization supported by
Grassroots International. One of the journalists who documented the links
between PANDA and the US and Canadian governments during the early coup
years is Anthony Fenton. As Pierre Labossiere, the co-founder of the Haiti
Action Committee, has noted:

“Camille [Chalmers] and PAPDA supported the racist, imperialist bloody coup
d’etat in Haiti led by the US, France and Canada against the democratically
elected and popular Lavalas government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The late Senator Jesse Helms was the driving force to bring about the coup.
After two failed attempts by Haitian “contras”, consisting of members of
the FRAPH death squad, the disbanded repressive military and Duvalier’s
Tonton Macoutes, special forces from the US, France and Canada carried out
the kidnapping/coup on February 29, 2004, the year of the bicentennial of
the Haitian Revolution. It resulted in an estimated 10,000 victims. The
continuing 18-year US-UN occupation to shore up the coup d’etat with Brazil
and other Latin American nations joining the US have added to the number of
our sisters and brothers being killed, their lives destroyed and fleeing
Haiti as refugees.

Camille Chalmers’ PAPDA was part of the ultra-right wing Latortue
government imposed on the Haitian people by the US, France and Canada
immediately after the coup. The record of atrocities of this and the
succeeding US-installed coup d’etat governments is well-documented and
continues to this day.”

Camille Chalmers and PAPDA did not stop at supporting the February coup and
taking part in the imposed government that ruled after the coup, a regime
that was jailing and killing thousands of Lavalas activists and supporters.
In March  2004, immediately after the coup, Camille Chalmers and PAPDA
circulated a letter urging people to publicly oppose the Jamaican
government’s offer of asylum to President Aristide and Mrs. Mildred
Aristide who were in the Central African Republic after having forcibly
taken there by a US military plane. Many feared for their lives. At great
risk, Congresswoman Maxine Waters flew to the Central African Republic to
bring the Aristides to Jamaica. In this letter, Chalmers and a handful of
others urged their “Caribbean partners to exert pressure on their
respective governments so that they understand that Mr. Aristide’s presence
constitutes a real threat to the fledgling and fragile democratic process.”
In other words, they wanted the Aristides banished from the Caribbean while
the new dictatorship in Haiti consolidated its power through a wave of
extrajudicial killings. At the same time, the Bush Administration was
exerting tremendous pressure on the Jamaican government, forcing the
Aristides to accept asylum in South Africa.

The recent *NYT* article “Demanding Reparations, Ending Up in Exile”
<https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/americas/haiti-aristide-reparations-france.html>
made clear that the coup against President Aristide was first of all in
response to his call for reparations for the money Haiti had been forced to
pay France for their “lost property”, in the form of human beings.

With knowledge of this history, the late veteran Guyanese activist Andaiye
and Margaret Prescod, both with Women of Color/Global Women’s Strike, had
to denounce
<https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/02/01/17996271.php?show_comments=1>
the organizing committee of the World Social Forum in 2006 for inviting
Chalmers. Andaiye stated:

 “Solidarity in the fight for social justice must be international. It’s
not acceptable to be in solidarity with the Venezuelan people, but not in
solidarity with the Haitian people; it’s not acceptable to be for Iraq, but
against Haiti.”

While Chalmers strove to block the Aristides from receiving asylum in
Jamaica, the repression wrought by the 2004 coup he supported has continued
to intensify, culminating in a relentless pattern of massacres by
paramilitaries against popular, poor neighborhoods that are bases of
Lavalas. Fact-findings teams involving members of the Haiti Action
Committee and the National Lawyers Guild have documented two such
massacres, one carried out by UN occupation forces on July 5th, 2005 in Cite
Soleil
<https://www.democracynow.org/2005/7/11/eyewitnesses_describe_massacre_by_un_troops>
and the other carried out by the PHTK regime’s police and paramilitary
attaches in Lasalin
<https://www.nlg.org/report-the-lasalin-massacre-and-the-human-rights-crisis-in-haiti/>
during several days in mid-November, 2018. While these massacres have
proliferated across Haiti, along with targeted political assassinations, so
too has destitution, reaching new levels of hunger
<https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/03/1114422#:~:text=According%20to%20recent%20projections%2C%2045,Security%20Phase%20Classification%20(IPC)>
and other forms of deprivation.

The Haitian revolution was the first in world history to decisively uproot
slavery. Ever since then, Haiti has been relentlessly punished by the
former slave owning and imperial powers such as the US and France. This
never stopped the Haitian people from supporting Africans and Indigenous
people escaping slavery and colonialism in the Americas. Haiti opened its
borders and welcomed them, just as the Haitian republic provided material
assistance to freedom fighters like Simon Bolivar.

Today, the Haitian people are waging the most courageous resistance against
the US-backed PHTK dictatorship. Fanmi Lavalas– despite the thousands of
its militants killed since the 2004 coup– continues to play a pivotal role
in organizing and mobilizing popular resistance. Fanmi Lavalas is the
political party that grew out of the Lavalas movement of Haiti’s poor
majority, twice electing Aristide in overwhelming majorities, first in 1991
and then in 2000, both times being interrupted by US-backed coups. While
Chalmers and PAPDA tried to discredit Fanmi Lavalas, they have not
succeeded. As Margaret Prescod recently put it:

“Since the coup there are continued efforts on both the right and some
sectors of the left to silence, discredit and sideline President Aristide
and Fanmi Lavalas, an effort which has had more success within the
international arena than on the ground in Haiti. Without US interference in
the last Presidential election, the Lavalas candidate Dr. Maryse Narcisse
would [quite likely] have become Haiti’s first elected woman president.
Those in the popular movement in Haiti know very well who stands with them,
who is being used by those who want to discredit Lavalas, and who has
betrayed their movement.”

It is far past time that anti-racist and anti-imperialist activists
organizing forums and summits make sure that coup collaborators are not
given a platform to spread lies and undermine the Haitian popular movement
and its leadership. Bridges of solidarity must be built with the true
representatives of the Haitian people, including members of Fanmi Lavalas,
in this decisive moment of their history. As US journalist and veteran
Haiti solidarity activist Kevin Pina expressed during a June 22  interview
on Pacifica Radio’s  Sojourner Truth with Margaret Prescod
<https://soundcloud.com/sojournertruthradio>:

“The greatest act of solidarity is to carefully choose who you work with
and you do that based upon a very conscious understanding of the situation.
Anything short of that, you should not be involved in solidarity. You’re
doing more harm than good.”
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