"If progressives, at least, do not expose the USA double game and demand support for the democratic government of Haiti, Haiti could succumb to that game. Haitians will have been set back yet again in their two-century struggle for sovereignty and dignity. The USA could win its double game in Haiti not in a matter of years, but within weeks." -Tom Reeves, Feb 17, 2004

Tragically, the “progressives” to who Reeves was appealing did not rise to his challenge, On the evening of February 28/29, US marines “removed” Haiti’s President Jean Bertrand Aristide and whisked him off to the remote and inaccessible Central African Republic – with strong diplomatic support from the governments of Canada and France. What has happened in Haiti is not just the latest ugly flash of US-led imperialism. It is also a reflection of the full embrace of Washington, engineered by the Paul Martin-led Liberals, and the remarkable weakness of our own Left in challenging this first clear sign of “deep integration”.

Haitian history is a toxic cocktail of slavery, debt servitude, gunboat diplomacy, quisling dictatorships, and a lasting overhang of colonial arrogance and racism. It is also a heroic story of the first republican revolution in the hemisphere to liberate all men – including black men – from slavery and colonial oppression. This history merits more detailed examination than possible here. Nonetheless, the recent crisis might be given some context by looking back to l990. That year, following decades of popular struggle against the US-supported Duvalier dictatorships, Haitians were finally able to elect their own leader, democratically, from among their own ranks of poor, black, mostly Creole-speaking peasants. That leader was the liberation theologist priest, Jean Bertrand Aristide. He was elected with some 67 percent of the vote over the US-supported candidate, a former World Bank economist and Duvalier-era finance minister.

Shocked by this unprecedented eruption of democracy right under their noses, the US government – particularly those who urge intensification of the cruel embargo on Cuba – has despised Aristide ever since. When he was overthrown by the military-business class just seven months into office in 1991, the US reaction was to accommodate the return to “normal”. The military junta that took over established a brutal regime of repression and violence that killed some 5,000 Haitians. There was scarcely a reaction in the US (outside the black community), except for some discomfort over increasing numbers of Haitian refugees fleeing the slaughter for Florida. That discomfort and the Haitian military regime’s ongoing lack of legitimacy eventually led Bill Clinton to re-install Aristide in 1994.

However, this re-installation did not come without a price. Aristide was forced to sign on to the “Paris Plan” which was essentially the economic program of International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment that had been rejected by Haitian voters in 1990: privatization, government spending cuts, foreign debt service, trade liberalization, cuts to subsidies, the whole package. Aristide himself came in for significant criticism for having accepted the plan – criticism not very different from that directed at Lula in Brazil, Chavez in Venezuela, and other left-populist nationalists who make hotly-debated compromises. The difference here is that the alternative to accepting the compromise was known and bloody in the extreme – the continued US-financed liquidation of the grassroots popular forces to which Aristide’s election had given rise. (See the work of Noam Chomsky, Tom Reeves, and Kevin Pina on Znet for details on the US role in financing the death squads known as “FRAPH”)

Between 1994 and the February coup, the US shifted its efforts to an active campaign to de-legitimize President Aristide and his political movement, particularly when Aristide would demonstrate signs of hesitation in imposing the most destructive elements of the austerity plan. This campaign primarily involved funding and support for opposition political parties and organizations that are linked to Haiti’s ruling business elite – an elite that is largely lighter-skinned (the term “mulatto” is used by Haitians), French-speaking, wealthy, linked to US business interests, and in control of most of the private economy and the media. Significantly, Haiti’s wealthiest one percent owns about 45 percent of all wealth. while some 70 percent of the population lives in abject poverty and are significantly dependent on international food aid for survival. The leader of the so-called “civic opposition” Group 184, Andre Apaid, is the owner of some 15 Haitian sweatshops, and was the foremost opponent of Aristide’s daring move last year to increase the bare-subsistence minimum wage.

The strategy of the Haitian business class to undermine the government and incite violence and conflict was greatly advanced with the “election” of Bush II in late 2000. Bush’s new government exercised maximum hypocrisy by denouncing Aristide’s landslide re-election in November 2000 as “flawed”. Bush imposed a crushing economic embargo through the Inter-American Development Bank that withheld and delayed some $650 million of funds targeted for health care, education, water services, and basic infrastructure.

Deprived of these critical funds, and forced by his “Paris Plan” commitments to privatize and liberalize, the already impoverished Haitian economy spiraled out of control into recession, 70 percent unemployment, and a massive health crisis. When the armed uprising exploded in Gonaives on February 5 of this year, Aristide had few resources, no military, and a small national police force of some 4,000 officers. Then, when the thugs in Gonaives were joined on February 14 by well-armed former death squad thugs and they began a gradual march on the capital, it was clear that Aristide’s weakened government was teetering. Aristide appealed to Canada and the international community for assistance.

On February 21, an international delegation including representatives from Canada, the US, France, the Organization of American States (OAS), and CARICOM (representing governments of Caribbean countries) concluded a “peace agreement”. It involved the establishment of a new governing council composed of representatives of the US-financed opposition parties. Aristide immediately accepted the deal, and Colin Powell, France’s Dominique de Villepin, and Canada’s Bill Graham committed themselves to selling it to the intransigent political opposition. When the opposition rejected it outright, Powell and de Villepin ended their pretence of non-partisan mediation and unveiled their real agenda – they began talking about Aristide’s resignation by February 24. Graham joined this chorus the next day.

With the US, France, and Canada (the relevant colonial triumvirate) all onside, the US felt empowered to ignore the views of the Caribbean countries. On February 28, just two days after Graham’s statement, US marines occupied the presidential palace. What happened next continues to be debated, but somehow Aristide was coerced into signing a letter of resignation and then promptly removed from the country against his will. Within hours, the long-withheld military and financial support – including that from Canada – began to flow. The coup is now being sold as yet another humanitarian intervention by caring rich countries wanting to build “democracy”.

Deeply complicit in marketing this move, the mainstream press hit new lows in its subservience to Bush administration objectives. Canada’s opinion-makers competed to see who could be the most despicably racist in belittling the Haitian people’s capacity to govern themselves..

Disappointingly, the mainstream Canadian Left appears to have barely registered what has happened, with the honourable exception of Svend Robinson’s ferocious (and studiously unreported) attack on the Liberals in an emergency March 10 House of Commons debate. Otherwise, NDP foreign affairs critic Alexa McDonough and federal leader Jack Layton said and did very little about Canada’s new role as coup collaborator. Similarly, the Canadian labour movement, which took unprecedented stands against the illegal war on Iraq, appears to have silently accepted the illegal overthrow of a democratically elected leader. Quite obviously, his US-backed replacement will be controlled by Haiti’s notorious sweatshop ruling class, and is not likely to be any friend of Haitian workers.