<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
</head>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div class="container font-size5 content-width3">
<div class="header reader-header" style="display: block;"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="http://theinternationalcommittee.org/haiti-roots-of-an-uprising/">http://theinternationalcommittee.org/haiti-roots-of-an-uprising/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Haiti - Roots Of An Uprising<br>
</h1>
<br>
</div>
<div class="content">
<div class="moz-reader-content line-height4" style="display:
block;">
<div id="readability-page-1" class="page">
<div id="main-header">
<div>
<div id="top-area"><a
href="http://theinternationalcommittee.org/"><img
src="http://theinternationalcommittee.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/logo-web-120x85.png"
alt="" id="logo"></a> </div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="main-area">
<div>
<div id="content-area">
<div id="left-area">
<article id="post-3792">
<div>
<p>By Robert Roth on August 26, 2018</p>
<p>“The cauldron of corruption and lies has been
boiling non-stop 24 hours a day. The time has
come to overturn it, for Haitians to begin to
see the light of peace. Haiti is for all
Haitians.” – Fanmi Lavalas statement, July 8,
2018.</p>
<p>(Fanmi Lavalas is the party of former
president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s
first democratically elected president, and
represents Haiti’s poor majority.)</p>
<p>On July 6, 2018, Haiti exploded. By the tens
of thousands, Haitians poured into the streets
of Port-au-Prince to demand the resignation of
President Jovenel Moise. <span id="more-3792"></span>The
protests were sparked by the government’s
announcement that it would reduce or remove
subsidies on fuel, leading to a rise of 38% in
the price of gasoline, and that the price of
kerosene would jump 50% to $4.00 a gallon. The
uprising spread across the country and lasted
three days. Port-au-Prince was brought to a
standstill. Protesters set up barricades in
the streets, burned tires, and attacked stores
owned by the rich. Luxury hotels in the
Petionville area were sacked by angry
demonstrators. In the immediate aftermath, the
government rescinded the price increases (for
now), and Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant –
the same official who announced the fuel price
hike – resigned. And a squad of U.S. Marines
was sent to Port-au-Prince, supposedly to
increase security at the U.S. Embassy, but
also to send Haitians an ominous warning of
what was to come should the protests continue.</p>
<p>The Moise administration had waited until the
World Cup to make the price hikes official, in
the vain hope that Haitians would be so
preoccupied with the festivities that they
would ignore this attack on their already
precarious standard of living. But the writing
had been on the wall since February, when the
new Moise government reached an agreement with
the International Monetary Fund on an
austerity package in exchange for $96 million
in loans. Even after the protests, the IMF
insisted that the steep price rise was
necessary, but that the price increases should
be introduced more gradually. Clearly, the end
of this story has not yet been written.</p>
<p>The powerful and militant popular upsurge
caught the mainstream U.S. media by surprise.
Having ignored months of continuous
demonstrations against the stolen elections
that brought the current Haitian government to
power, media outlets like the <em>New York
Times </em>and <em>Miami Herald </em>could
only guess at the underlying causes of the
rebellion. CNN focused its reporting on the
plight of U.S. missionaries who were “trapped”
in Haiti. Media coverage was replete with the
usual racialized code words: “rioters”,
“looters”, “violence”</p>
<p>What was missing from the headlines was the
fact that the Moise government was already
operating under a cloud of popular suspicion
and anger long before the uprising. Birthed
via two elections so replete with fraud and
voter suppression that they were denounced as
an “electoral coup” by opposition parties, the
current Haitian government has no legitimacy
among the population. The first round of
elections in 2015 was annulled after weeks of
mass protests backed by Fanmi Lavalas, the
party of Haiti’s first democratically elected
president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The
overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations were
met by police clubs, chemical agents, tear gas
and bullets, but the grassroots movement
persisted, finally forcing the annulment,
leading to a new round of presidential
elections in October 2016. The new round was
yet another charade, resulting in the
inauguration of Jovenel Moise as the new
president in February 2017.</p>
<p>The electoral coup spawned a corrupt
presidency. Even before being installed as
president, Moise was implicated in a money
laundering scheme after an investigation by
Haiti’s banking watchdog agency. Dating back
to 2012 when Moise’s mentor, former president,
Michel Martelly, was in power, the money
laundering is said to have garnered Moise over
$5 million. In one of his early acts as
president, Moise replaced the director of the
investigating agency with one of his cronies
for the purpose of suppressing the
investigation. Peasant organizers have also
spoken out against Moise’s expropriation of
land for his banana plantation in northern
Haiti. Not only did small farmers lose land;
Moise’s much-heralded banana exporting
business now appears to have been a
short-lived election image gimmick. In
reality, $25,000 was spent to export only one
container of bananas worth $10,000 to Germany.
This is part of a pattern where government
officials tout projects, get funding, take
over land, and then pocket the money rather
than develop the country’s agriculture or
infrastructure.</p>
<p>In addition, a massive scandal has been
brewing over the outright theft of $3.8
billion in Petrocaribe loans given to Haiti by
the Venezuelan government. Yes, $3.8
billion. These funds were supposed to lower
energy costs and fund education, agriculture
and infrastructure, but they ended up instead
in the coffers of government officials,
including members of Parliament. “Where is
the Petrocaribe money?” Haitians demanded in
an anti-government demonstration on August
24th. Where is the money for hospitals
desperate for supplies of blood and in need of
new medical equipment? Where is the money for
education, as families prepare to send their
children back to schools with reduced or
non-existent subsidies for school supplies and
uniforms?</p>
<p>In the Artibonite region, the center of
Haitian agriculture, recent rains have led to
dangerous floods due to neglected
infrastructure, but sanitation workers have
not yet been paid to clean up sewage canals
and drains, while the hurricane season looms.
In Port-au-Prince, police have burned down
the stalls of market women, a particularly
cruel form of gentrification tearing at the
heart of Haiti’s economic life and the
foundation of so many families’ ability to
survive. Haiti’s prisons are now bursting at
the seams, with one epidemic after another
sweeping through overcrowded, nightmarish
cages.</p>
<p>When Haitians took to the streets in July,
they were demanding an end to <strong><em>all</em></strong>
of this. In essence, they were letting the
government know that there would be no peace
without justice. They went far beyond the call
to curtail the fuel price increase, insisting
that the Moise government had to step down.
The protests were a reminder that Haiti’s
popular movement — long the target of both the
U.S. government and the Haitian elite —
remains viable and powerful. Despite two
U.S.-orchestrated coups against the
administrations of former president Aristide,
despite a sophisticated COINTELPRO-style
campaign aimed at dividing and marginalizing
Fanmi Lavalas and its allies, despite 14 years
of United Nations military occupation, despite
stolen elections, and despite the grinding
economic misery facing most Haitian families,
the popular movement has persisted.</p>
<p>Why? This is a movement that has sunk its
roots deep — and it remains the central force
in the country capable of building an
alternative to corruption and repression.
During the years that Lavalas governments
were in power, more schools were built than in
the entire previous history of Haiti. Health
clinics sprouted up throughout the country, as
the Aristide administrations spent
unprecedented amounts on health care. When
the earthquake hit in 2010, killing over
300,000 and forcing over one million people to
live under tarps in desperately overcrowded
camps, it was grassroots activists who
immediately went to work with limited funds to
set up mobile health clinics and provide food
supplies. In the wake of the devastation
unleashed by Hurricane Matthew in 2016, Fanmi
Lavalas organized caravans to provide aid to
the affected regions. As living conditions
have spiraled downwards, grassroots
organizations have stood with the poor —
backing striking teachers, garment workers and
students, supporting market women as they
defend themselves against government attack,
increasing the reach of independent media to
combat the lies of the elite-run radio and TV
stations that dominate Haiti’s airwaves.</p>
<p>One prime example of the movement’s vision
for a democratic and inclusive Haiti can be
seen in the work of the University of the
Aristide Foundation (UniFA). Founded in 2001
as President Aristide began a new term in
office, UniFA’s medical school was violently
shut down after the 2004 coup, its campus
taken over by U.S. and UN occupying troops.
When President Aristide and his wife and
colleague Mildred Trouillot Aristide returned
to Haiti in 2011 from forced exile in South
Africa, he announced UniFA would be reopened
and expanded. As promised, seven years to the
day since the Aristides’ return, UniFA held
its first graduation ceremony. With over 1000
people in attendance, UniFA graduated 77
doctors, 46 nurses and 15 lawyers. Many of the
graduates were recruited to the university
from poor communities that have had little
access to higher education. <strong> </strong>Already,
UniFA doctors are working in areas that have
rarely, if ever, seen a doctor before. With
1600 students now studying in the fields of
medicine, nursing, law, engineering, physical
therapy, and continuing education, this is
only the beginning, a microcosm of the kinds
of advances Haiti could make with a true
people’s government in power. The contrast
could not be more stark — education or
militarism, democracy or authoritarian rule,
inclusion or exclusion, development or
corruption, self-determination or occupation.
With the July uprising, the Haitian people
have once again made known their choice.</p>
<p>(Robert Roth is an educator and a co-founder
of Haiti Action Committee)</p>
</div>
</article>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div> </div>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://freedomarchives.org/">https://freedomarchives.org/</a>
</div>
</body>
</html>