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<font size="4"><b><a id="gmail-label" href="https://blackagendareport.com/leftism-americas-collapses-door-haitian-sovereignty" rel="bookmark"><span>The "Leftism" of the Americas Collapses at the Door of Haitian Sovereignty</span></a></b></font></div><div class="gmail-taxonomy"><a id="gmail-label" href="https://blackagendareport.com/leftism-americas-collapses-door-haitian-sovereignty" rel="bookmark"><span><br></span>
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<span><a href="https://blackagendareport.com/author/Jemima Pierre, BAR Editor and Contributor">Jemima Pierre, BAR Editor and Contributor</a></span>
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28 Sep 2022
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<div class="gmail-field gmail-field--name-field-cover-image gmail-field--type-image gmail-field--label-hidden gmail-field--item"><a href="https://blackagendareport.com/sites/default/files/2022-09/Pierre%20-%20BAR%209.27%20-%20Article%20Main.png" title="The "Leftism" of the Americas Collapses at the Door of Haitian Sovereignty" class="gmail-colorbox gmail-cboxElement"><img src="https://blackagendareport.com/sites/default/files/2022-09/Pierre%20-%20BAR%209.27%20-%20Article%20Main.png" alt="The "Leftism" of the Americas Collapses at the Door of Haitian Sovereignty" class="gmail-img-responsive" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="393" height="183">
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<div class="gmail-field gmail-field--name-body gmail-field--type-text-with-summary gmail-field--label-hidden gmail-field--item"><p><em>While
many are celebrating the potential rise of another “Pink Tide” in Latin
America and the emergence of a truly multipolar world, it seems clear
that the fight for Haitian sovereignty will continue to be outside of
“leftist” imaginations.</em></p>
<p>It is an exhilarating time for the “leftists” of the Americas. This
past week, at the 77th meeting of the United Nations General Assembly in
New York City, leader after Latin American leader made grand statements
against U.S. and Western imperialism, the hypocrisy of U.S. foreign
policy, the violations of human rights, and the West’s assault on the
sovereignty of smaller nations. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/colombias-petro-calls-latin-america-unite-against-war-drugs-2022-09-20/" rel="nofollow" class="gmail-0" target="_blank">Colombia’s<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a> brand-new president, Gustavo Petro, made an impassioned plea against the genocidal “War on Drugs.” <a href="https://gadebate.un.org/en/77/cuba" rel="nofollow" class="gmail-0" target="_blank">Cuba’s<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a> Minister for Foreign Affairs, Bruno Eduardo Rodríguez Parrilla, rejected the attacks on the sovereignty of China and Russia. <a href="https://gadebate.un.org/en/77/venezuela-bolivarian-republic" rel="nofollow" class="gmail-0" target="_blank">Venezuela’s<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a> Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos Faría railed against the Western sanctions against Nicaragua, Cuba, Iran, and Russia. <a href="https://gadebate.un.org/en/77/honduras" rel="nofollow" class="gmail-0" target="_blank">Honduran<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a>
president Xiomara Castro demanded that the U.S. stop its attempts at
destabilizing her country and strongly pushed against Western policies
of intervention in the region. Nicaragua’s Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Denis Ronaldo Moncada Colindres, made perhaps the most explosive claims
when he <a href="https://twitter.com/BenjaminNorton/status/1574527561891078148" rel="nofollow" class="gmail-0" target="_blank">stated<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a>:</p>
<p>"The assault, the robbery, the disgraceful abominable depredation,
the looting and the genocides unleashed by the colonialists and
imperialists of the Earth, are the real crimes and they are the real
criminals against humanity, and we denounce this….It's time to say
enough to hypocritical imperialism that politicizes, falsifies and
denigrates the very human rights which they themselves violate and deny
on a daily basis."</p>
<p>Most of these leaders spoke to the urgent question of Cuba, calling
for the lifting of the economic blockade against the country, and for
Cuba’s removal from the US-created list of countries that supposedly
“sponsor terrorism.”</p>
<p>Yet for all the eloquent denunciations of imperialism and the
impassioned defenses of Latin American and Caribbean sovereignty and
independence, one country was conspicuously avoided: Haiti. Not a single
one of these countries applied their critiques of imperialism to Haiti.
Sure, Cuba and Venezuela mentioned Haiti. Cuba’s representative called
for reparations for the Caribbean for slavery, said that humanity owed a
debt to the Haitian revolution, and stressed that Haiti needed
international support “through a special contribution for its
reconstruction and development.” Venezuela’s representative name-dropped
Haiti within a list of countries which have suffered bloodshed from
“imperialism and supremacism.”</p>
<p>Beyond the casual mentions, the hollow rhetorics, and the empty
invocations, there were no concrete critiques of the current imperial
machinations in Haiti – of Haiti’s complete loss of sovereignty through
the ongoing destruction of the Haitian state apparatus, of the current
occupation of the country by the Western-led Core Group, and of the
repression (and violent misrepresentation) of the Haitian people as they
have taken to the streets to demand their sovereignty and call for an
end to foreign intervention. Instead, the extension and intensification
of foreign intervention appears to be the strategic end goal of not only
the usual suspects of the West, but our supposed Leftist allies in the
Americas.</p>
<p>One has to ask: do the leaders of the region even know what has been
going on in Haiti? Surely they know about the 2004 US/Canada/France-led
coup d’etat against Haiti’s democratically elected president, and the
Chapter 7 deployment of a <a href="https://blackagendareport.com/content/blame-illegal-military-occupation-cholera-outbreak-haiti" rel="nofollow">United Nations occupation force</a> (euphemistically known as a “peacekeeping” force). Indeed, it was <a href="https://www.blackagendareport.com/content/brazil%E2%80%99s-haitian-training-ground" rel="nofollow">Lula’s Brazil</a>
that led the military wing of that occupation that brought nothing but
violence and devastation to Haitian peoples. Brazil's active
participation in that occupation led to the migration of thousands of
Haitian workers to Brazil, where they provided cheap labor to build the
infrastructure for the Olympics and World Cup. The savage racism
experienced by Haitian migrants in Brazil, combined with the
disappearance of work, led them to<a href="https://boomcalifornia.org/2017/12/25/black-life-in-adelanto/" rel="nofollow" class="gmail-0" target="_blank"> flee overland through<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a> Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border in search of asylum.</p>
<p>The leaders of the Americas must also know about the <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t6RmBawvRCIY9VPYdv1ng_4fdEtor_zZp6njuzbBhlw/edit" rel="nofollow" class="gmail-0" target="_blank">Core Group<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a>
- the self-selected, unelected group of foreigners, with
representatives from the European Union, the U.S., Brazil, Canada, that
was created during the early months of the occupation. The Core Group
continues to control Haiti’s internal political affairs. They certainly
know that the UN still occupies Haiti; after all, it is the left’s
“anti-imperialist” darling, Andrés Manual López Obrador (AMLO), who is
serving, along with the US, as <a href="https://blackallianceforpeace.com/bapstatements/haitiunmandate" rel="nofollow" class="gmail-0" target="_blank">“co-penholder” <span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a>and
writing the UN Security Council’s imperial policies on Haiti. Similar
to Brazil, will Mexico’s bid to play power-broker in the region comes at
the expense of Haitian people and Haiti’s sovereignty?</p>
<p>AMLO must know what he’s doing. Afterall, even as it gets celebrated
for its “leftist” credentials, the Mexican government continues to
collude with the U.S. Border Patrol to <a href="https://katehon.com/en/article/militarize-southern-border-joe-biden-strikes-deal-mexico-and-central-american-states-curb" rel="nofollow" class="gmail-0" target="_blank">militarize<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a> its southern border against migrants, and <a href="https://pulsenewsmexico.com/2021/12/03/amlo-administration-to-accept-remain-in-mexico-asylum-seekers/" rel="nofollow" class="gmail-0" target="_blank">enforce<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a> the U.S. “Remain in Mexico” policy. Meanwhile, Haitian and other Black migrants continue to suffer racist abuse in Mexico. </p>
<p>It is not lost on me that there is a deep-seated, racist view of
Haiti as exceptional–and therefore exceptionally difficult to engage.
The constant refrain from anti-imperialist groupings in the West is that
Haiti is so “complex” and its sociopolitical terrain so difficult that
there’s no way to truly understand what’s going on there. During a
recent webinar against U.S. imperialism in Latin America, I brought up
the current UN/US occupation in Haiti, only to have the host soberly
agree with me that this was, indeed, an important problem to engage, but
that, perhaps, Haiti needed a separate webinar. Many webinars later,
discussion of Haiti’s destruction by a brutal Western imperialism,
continues to get short shrift.</p>
<p>While we celebrate the rise of another “Pink Tide” in Latin America,
the emergence of a truly multipolar world, with new economic and
political alignments, it seems clear that Haiti will continue to be on
the outside of “leftist” imaginations - beyond, of course, the
non-specific words of “solidarity” thrown its way.</p>
<p>In a discussion on Twitter about the ways that Haiti appears - and dismissed - in global discourses, a colleague, <a href="https://twitter.com/VikSoho" rel="nofollow" class="gmail-0" target="_blank">Vik Sohonie<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a> <a href="https://twitter.com/VikSoho/status/1574750951801769984" rel="nofollow" class="gmail-0" target="_blank">lamented<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a>,
“Haiti is unfortunately where all good will, solidarity, and Third
Worldism goes to die…The ‘int’l comm’ that occupies it, as you know, is
Nepali, Brazilian. You get looked at funny elsewhere in the Carib if you
compliment Haiti. It’s astonishing.” He’s not wrong. One of the
reasons that the brutal UN military occupation of Haiti could fly under
the radar was because it was populated by a multi-national and
multi-racial military and civilian force. The US admitted as much, as
revealed in the Wikileaks files. Former U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, Janet
Sanderson, <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/wikileaks-haiti-us-cables-paint-portrait-brutal-ineffectual-and-polluting-un-force/" rel="nofollow" class="gmail-0" target="_blank">lauded<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a>
the occupation force (MINUSTAH) as a cheap source of US power in Haiti,
as it is made up of a multinational coalition of western and nonwestern
forces, including countries ranging from Benin and Kenya to Brazil and
Ecuador, who seem all bent on using Haiti as their training ground.</p>
<p>Why is it so easy for these nonwhite and oppressed nations to come
and serve U.S. and Western imperial interests in Haiti? Could it be that
they, too, have imbibed the dehumanized and, frankly, racist views
about Haitian people? Is Haiti’s Blackness seen as the root cause of its
problems and struggles – even by many Black people? One would think so
if one reviewed the recent actions of the leaders of CARICOM who, also,
deploy the dehumanizing language and white supremacist <a href="https://www.caribmagplus.com/statement-from-the-caribbean-community-caricom-on-developments-in-haiti/" rel="nofollow" class="gmail-0" target="_blank">assumptions<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a> about Haiti that is the foundation of Western imperialist actions in the country.</p>
<p>This wasn’t always the case, of course. Back in 2004, under the leadership of PJ Patterson, CARICOM at least <a href="https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2004/03/01/16719861.php" rel="nofollow" class="gmail-0" target="_blank">spoke up against<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a>
the US/France/Canada coup d’etat against elected president Jean
Bertrand Aristide (and this was despite his often problematic public
positions against him). Jamaica was even <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2004/3/25/exclusive_condoleezza_rice_threatens_jamaica_over" rel="nofollow" class="gmail-0" target="_blank">threatened<span class="gmail-0"><span class="element-invisible"> </span></span></a>
with sanctions - by the Bush Administration's Condoleeza Rice - if it
attempted to provide Aristide asylum. The other bold voice was
Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who railed against the coup and later provided
direct support to Haiti’s masses through the PetroCaribe fuel subsidies.</p>
<p>Where are those voices now?</p>
<p>Perhaps if people in the region saw Haiti less as an abstraction and
more as a place with real humans, citizens of the world, with the same
claims to rights and livelihood, confronting a white supremacist
imperialism, they would recognize the current denial of its sovereignty.
Until that time, the Leftists of the Americas are betraying a people
that have given so much to the struggles for sovereignty and
independence in the region.</p>
<p><strong><em>Jemima Pierre is an editor and contributor to Black
Agenda Report, the Haiti/Americas Co-Coordinator for the Black Alliance
for Peace, and a Black Studies and anthropology professor at UCLA.</em></strong></p>
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