The recent coup d’etat in Haiti where the Americans spirited the president Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of power and out of his own country, is just the latest event in two hundred years of U.S. complicity and support of repression in Haiti. During the hard-fought Haitian Revolution, which occurred roughly a decade after the U.S. revolution, the government of George Washington, which talked about liberty to all men, entered the conflict, but not on the side of liberty. The Washington administration authorized the grant of $400,000, a vast sum in the 1800s, not to support the forces of freedom, but to the white planters. They sent money to the French for arms and food to support their resistance to the uprising. America’s Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson, writer of the Constitution, did the actual paperwork.
When it came to slavery or freedom, the Americans, slave owners themselves, chose slavery to support. By January 1, 1804 Haitian independence would be declared, and for the first time in world history, a slave army bested imperial armies, and freedom resulted. How did the U.S. respond? Did they welcome them to the brotherhood of free nations? The words of a U.S. congressman, said some 20 years after Haitian independence stated U.S. policy towards the Black Republic, “Our policy with regards to Haiti is plain. We never can acknowledge her independence. The peace and safety of a large part of our union forbids us even to discuss it.” So said South Carolina Senator Robert Hayne, in 1824. It wasn’t until 1862 when the Civil War was raging, that the U.S. recognized its nearest free neighbor.
They couldn’t recognize it for almost 60 years, because they didn’t want Blacks in the U.S. to see a free Black people as diplomats and leaders of government functioning in the United States. The official U.S. policy was therefore white supremacy. From 1915 to 1934 the U.S. occupied Haiti, fighting a bitter guerrilla war that left thousands dead. They murdered guerrilla leader Charlemagne Péralte in 1919 and then paraded his nearly naked chained body to try to stifle the Cacos rebellion. They installed and supported the Duvalier regimes, and since the fall of that dictatorship, have actively and secretly supported Duvalierist elements in the army and the government. Indeed, they trained many of the people who were the most repressive elements in the army and back the FRAPH [Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti], which was an anti-democratic terrorist army in Haiti. They have always opposed [unclear] Aristide for his support of the Lavalas, Creole for “the flood” or “the masses” Movement.
The empire, based on dominance, control, and fear, cannot countenance the Haitian example of people’s power, of yes, the barest fraction of democracy, thus they use various means to achieve the same ends. Thus, the removal at gunpoint of Aristide for the “good” of the Haitian people, they say. Let the Haitian people decide their own government. It isn’t for the U.S. to decide for them. It’s time to end this empire for the good of the people of America and for the good of the people of the world. We must demand it and then work for it to end this reign of madness. From death row this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are produced by Noelle Hanrahan for Prison Radio.
