Haiti: Rebellion and the threat of imperialist intervention

America is, without doubt, a red zone of the world, Haiti in particular, is going through an scenario of ongoing rebellion facing the threat of imperialist intervention in the service of saving the ruling caste and curbing the initiative of the masses. Economic crisis, international disputes and perspectives of an open struggle that requires active and urgent revolutionary solidarity.

By Martín Carcione 

Haiti is going through a very acute process of class struggle, the last months passed between the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, massacred in the presidential residence, and the irruption of a real popular rebellion against the adjustment measures imposed by his successor Ariel Henry, following the dictates of the international organizations.

Although in the country this scenario implies violent contrasts due to its own particularities, it does not cease to represent the global continental plan that is evident in the different countries of the region: inflation, high cost of living, budget cuts and all this at the service of guaranteeing the survival of a handful of business parasites linked to transnational capital. In August 2021 a terrible earthquake intensified this disaster to the extreme.

Far from modifying the plans of the elites, the government, with a clear alignment to the US and the NATO powers, continued its adjustment measures, provoking a massive response and an outburst that has been going on for weeks and has no clear future in sight.

Migratory crisis, confrontations and the crossroads of new interventions

Thousands of Haitian men and women have tried to flee in recent months, finding the true face of imperialist diplomacy, persecuted on the borders of the United States and other countries in the region, they constitute a mass of dispossessed who spread out throughout the American geography. It is not strange, considering that the last continental “response” to the crisis provided by “progressives” and right-wingers was the sending of occupation troops that caused havoc.

Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia and other States in those years governed by Kirchner, Lula and Evo Morales did not hesitate to accompany this perspective, while today they hold a resounding silence in the face of the new attempt at imperialist intervention that is on the UN agenda and the United States requested as the Haitian government is cornered by the popular mobilization that, this week, once again occupied the capital, Port-au-Prince and the main cities.

The most recent days of protests were triggered by fuel hikes and their violent repression further fueled the flame of a mobilization that demands the fall of the government and categorically refuses any US or UN intervention.

This same week, a new massive mobilization took to the streets of Port-au-Prince on the anniversary of the death of independence hero Jean-Jacques Dessalines, showing once again the combination that has been seen in other popular processes between the demands of the processes of national liberation, vindicating figures like Dessalines who confronted colonial oppression in a revolutionary way and generating a progressive and powerful mix between anti-racist, anti-colonial and anti-capitalist demands, with a deep social base.

They reject the intervention of international organizations, clearly identified with the problems and not with the solutions, and put into debate the need for profound changes that go beyond the current institutional framework.

The mobilization not only faces the onslaught of the official repressive forces sent by the government, but also the constitution and action of armed paramilitary gangs supported by it, and yet it persists, largely demonstrating another characteristic of the international situation as a whole: the polarization that assumes increasingly extreme and radical expressions.

International solidarity against imperialist intervention and at the service of the triumph of the rebellion

Like all acute facts of the class struggle, the situation in Haiti involves forces that exceed the limits of national borders. The call for direct imperialist interference pushed by the government has the clear objective of crushing the independent initiative of the masses. At the same time, on the international chessboard other actors such as China or Russia, together with their allies in the region, intend to measure forces and positions not at the service of the mobilization, but at the service of their own interests.

This is why it is key to develop an active international solidarity that starts from supporting the rebellion of the Haitian people against their government and confronting any kind of Yankee or UN intervention without relying on imperialist diplomacy, generating actions of mobilization and international support, repudiating any sending of troops and promoting a particular support to the workers and revolutionary organizations that act in the process.

It is important in this sense the set of actions that are beginning to be prepared from the popular organizations in multiple countries from Mexico to the Southern Cone, strengthening ties and seeking to join efforts in this sense. From the International Socialist League and all our sections we contribute to these tasks with the firmness that only the unity of the workers, the youth and the peoples will be able to generate a new framework of continental unity to confront the plans of the governments, imperialism and the plundering international organizations.

No to imperialist intervention in Haiti!

Absolute rejection to any sending of troops!

Full support to the rebellion of the Haitian people!

Unrestricted defense of their right to self-determination!

Down with the plans of the IMF and other multilateral organizations, in Haiti and throughout the continent!

For international coordination and active solidarity in the service of these tasks.