Haitian need to get ride of USA involvement in
their country
*‘Stop treating Haiti as a basket case*
The means to the transformation of Haiti is for the United States, Canada, and France “to step away and stop treating the country as a basket case,” says Haitian Associate Professor of African Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, Dr Jemima Pierre.
She urges, “We need to redefine what the international community means regarding assistance to Haiti. At the moment, it means the US, Canada, and France, and that’s a very narrow group of people understanding what the international community means.”
Having delivered the Kwame Ture lecture here last weekend, the Haitian-born researcher-lecturer in African Studies and international political affairs made a statement about Haiti’s importance for the Caribbean, for Pan-Africanism, and against US imperialism. In an interview with Guardian Media, Dr Pierre expressed deep outrage against the use of counter-violence to conquer the gangs of young people who are committing severe atrocities against Haitians, mainly in the capital city, Port-au-Prince.
She makes this point notwithstanding the insistence of United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that what is needed is a strong, armed force in Haiti. As he says, the gang leaders will not put down their weapons and easily give away their hold on what brings them material reward.
“The first thing thought of is counter-violence through an occupying force. Between 2004 and 2016, there was such a force that brought about the CORE Group of non-Haitian people,” notes Dr Pierre. The group established by the UN to stabilise and bring peace to Haiti included representatives of the UN, US, Brazil, Canada, Germany, and France, but none from Haiti, notes Dr Pierre.
“It (the CORE Group) brought violence and cholera, destroyed the environment, and established a UN Office which made all the decisions for Haiti. We cannot take what the UN Secretary-General says,” says Dr Pierre, unbelieving of the outside forces setting the agenda for peacemaking in Haiti.
Dr Pierre has analysed the history of US involvement in Haiti, going back to the early 20th-century occupation by American forces and its takeover of the customs and other forms of revenue collection. The purpose then was to pay off Haiti’s debt to France and the US. And secondly, to preserve the 1823 doctrine of President Monroe, which dictated that no nation outside of this hemisphere could come into America’s “backyard”.
“People do not understand what US imperialism means and how it operates in the present. It works through NGOs, which means taking young activists working in the field and turning them into bureaucrats. In this way, the US works to make occupation not seem like occupation,” says an impassioned Dr Pierre.
‘Educate people on what’s going on, how US imperialism works’
“The first thing that needs to be done is to educate people on what’s really going on, how US imperialism works, and what it is doing with regard to the militarisation of the people of the Caribbean, especially through the US Southern Command,” says Dr Pierre.
Today, the USSOUTHCOM is the unified command responsible for all US Military activities on the landmass of Latin America, south of Mexico; the waters adjacent to Central and South America; and the Caribbean Sea, with its 13 island nations.
“That is very important. Once we know what the problem is, then we can figure out why we can’t have conversations with Cuba and Venezuela, two countries which are against a military invasion force into Haiti,” says Dr Pierre claiming that USSOUTHCOM is an attempt at “a different option to invasion, a different solution.”
To further her advocacy for the attempt to spread the notion of a wider world solution to the problems of Haiti, Dr Pierre suggests bringing Cuba and Venezuela into the comity of nations to assist Haiti on its own terms and with its own people. The Haitian-born political researcher acknowledges that any attempt to bring those two Spanish-speaking countries with approaches to governance and economic development different from the American-Western mould will attract strong retaliation from Washington.
“Connecting with Cuba and Venezuela is going to raise the ire of the US, and that is why the CELAC (Community of Latin America and the Caribbean) group is being left out of the Haiti conversation, and that’s why they are using some of the leaders of Caricom who are more amenable.”
But she remains cognisant of the reality that the USA, with its strategic interest in the region, will not easily tolerate involvement from Cuba and Venezuela. “The US is fighting an economic war with China; they need military bases in the region. The US wants a permanent presence here to have countries do their bidding; once they start losing to the cheap goods coming out of China, they will need a permanent presence here to conduct military exercises in the Caribbean Sea and to have regional governments do their bidding,” the Haitian-born, American-based intellectual told Guardian Media.
Dr Pierre makes a condemnatory assessment of the present Caricom leadership, whom she accused of being complicit with the US, Canada, and France in agreeing to an extra-Haitian agenda for solving the problems of Haiti.
She also acknowledges the weak position of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his lack of credibility to be involved in Caricom-Haiti affairs. “One of the problems is that we see Haiti as an exceptional problem, and I think there is a lot of anti-Haiti feeling in the region, and that is why Haiti was not given full membership in Caricom till 2003/4. The left in the Caribbean has been silent, and they need to come together to work against neo-imperialism,” states Dr Pierre.
‘Get the oligarchy to stop providing guns to gangs’
Regarding the gangster culture, which is very prevalent in Haiti’s capital city and has resulted in rape and the murder of hundreds of Haitians, and how that is to be conquered, Dr Pierre insists that the “biggest offenders concerning Haiti are the USA, Canada and France,” whom she accuses of “rigging elections and installing leaders on the population.”
She notes that the three-time popularly-elected Bertrand Aristide was removed from office and eventually exiled.
“Haiti does not produce guns and ammunition. The easiest way to stop the violence is to get the oligarchy to stop providing guns to gangs,” says Dr Pierre claiming that Washington has a major responsibility in this regard. “The US needs to stop allowing guns and ammo to get into Haiti from Florida. Second, you cannot just go in and shoot up people; it’s going to be a bloodbath.”
She recounts what happened between 2004 and 2017 when a UN Peacekeeping Force was deployed in Haiti: “They went into poor neighbourhoods and shot 27,000 bullets, saying they are going after the gangs, which was not true.”
Dr Pierre recognises the desperate need of the impoverished classes of Haiti for jobs. “There must be a conversation with these young people; transform these young people, and provide them with jobs and the possibility of a future.
“There has to be a movement in the region which takes Haiti as a full member and not as a bad, broken, backward place as if something is intrinsically wrong with the people. And I do think that your leaders have to come together to form something outside of US imperialism,” insists Dr Pierre.
Is the approach you are advocating too revolutionary an agenda for Caricom, itself made up of small countries and a region that has traditionally been dependent on the US and Europe for its economic viability and political and military protection, and one important to the geopolitical agenda of the US?
Do you acknowledge that adopting what will be considered such a revolutionary approach, will not only be bad news for the region but can provoke extreme action from the North? I asked Dr Pierre.
“There is always room for revolutionary thinking. We must plant the seeds and allow them to grow and flower,” Dr Pierre said. “It may sound revolutionary, but Trinidad and Tobago has a long history of revolutionary people and action. My revolutionary father is CLR James, (a Trinidadian political theorist and activist (1901-1989) who wrote The Black Jacobins. I always think about Trinidad as a revolutionary space,” says Dr Pierre as her final comment on what lies in front for the future of the place of her birth, Haiti, the first Black Republic that emerged under the generalship of Toussaint L’Ouverture.
*By Tony Rakhal-Fraser*