THE STRUGGLES OF THE WORKING CLASS AND THE PEOPLES,
AND THE INTER-IMPERIALIST DISPUTES
We must explain why we have chosen to treat the main theme from a different perspective than the one proposed above, without departing from the spirit of the 27th International Seminar of SIPRAL (Seminar Problems of the Revolution in Latin America). To give it more emphasis, we will limit our development to the case at hand, that of Haiti as a theatre of struggle. Therefore, we call our contribution: "The Haitian popular masses and their struggles for their demands."
Although workers' struggles have an international character, we base ourselves on dialectical materialism to say that they are always related to the national specificities of each country. Karl Marx taught us this clearly in the Gotha Programme when he wrote that:
"It is altogether self-evident that, to be able to fight at all, the working class must organize itself at home as a class and that its own country is the immediate arena of its struggle. In so far its class struggle is national, not in substance, but, as the Communist Manifesto says, ‘in form.’ "1
In fact, Haiti is at the crossroads of two imperialist powers, France and the United States of America. And in recent years, Canada has participated as a logistical and complementary support for its large neighbor to the south. If in the past these two powers polemicized and defended divergent interests in order to seize the main national resources, the situation would change during the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.
With the occupation of 1915, U.S. imperialism established itself, along with the dominant Haitian puppet cliques, as Haiti's main governing force. This new nation which, thanks to the very bravery of the slave legions, declared itself independent on January 1, 1804, after defeating the most powerful colonial, slave-owning and racist army of the time, that of Napoleon Bonaparte, no longer has a monopoly on its sovereignty. As I wrote in one of my articles in May 2011 "National sovereignty is still at half-mast".
The Haitian masses have never surrendered to the excesses of their reactionary governments.
The Haitian people, always against their successive governments, have never lost their fighting spirit. They have always jealously guarded their right to self-determination. Among other limitations, for example, during the 19th century several U.S. governments attempted to sign a perpetual lease with the Haitian government to make the Bay of Môle Saint Nicolas a coal deposit. Their measure has always been rejected. They had to take advantage of multiple internal and external circumstances so that, on July 28, 1915, they could invade and occupy the country by force in order to satisfy their imperialist ambition. However, this crime would never have been possible without the participation of the country's unpatriotic ruling minority. The invaders took advantage of the pretext of fratricidal struggles between different fractions of the large feudal landlords and compradors to carry out their crimes. They mobilized the peasant masses by offering them seductive proposals in order to come to power. More than one of the different strata of the population took the bait before they were disappointed, and far from establishing calm and peace, as they claimed, the occupation forces formed a prototype of a government that was unsatisfactory for Haitian realities but corresponded to their own interests. They defeated the indigenous army that emerged from the War of Independence and created their own army, a true watchdog of their advantages.
1 Marx in "Critique of the Gotha Programme", FLP Peking, 1972, p. 20.
Today, this army, after its dissolution by former President Aristide who came out of exile in 1994, has been replaced by a police force that plays the same role. It is this model that remains dominant to this day; a model that the popular majority has never accepted.
The Yankees were not and never will be welcome here. They were met by the guerrillas of Charlemagne Péralte in 1916 [DS note: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne_Péralte ; October 10, 1886 - November 1, 1919, assassinated]. At the head of a guerrilla group made up mainly of members of the poor and middle peasant class, these fighters fought with obsolete firearms or almost unarmed for more than two years against this rising power. This peasant guerrilla against the US occupation lasted 5 years, from 1915 to 1920, and diminished after the assassination of Péralte and Benoit Batraville. It should be noted that petty-bourgeois intellectuals, professionals, trade unions and students also fought against the occupation, although this struggle had a different rhythm and temporality in relation to peasant struggles. This resistance has been fierce, determined and admirable. One of the immediate consequences of the imperialist invaders was the expulsion of the peasant masses from their lands for the benefit of the US capitalist multinationals. They were violently proletarianized in order to create surplus value in enterprises such as the Dauphin plantation in northeastern Haiti and the sugar factories of Cuba and the Dominican Republic. The racist white soldiers, whose vast majority were originally from the South, as usual without ethics, used the most mischievous tricks to put an end to the popular resistance, but without being able to destroy its spirit.
The second major guerrilla, which manifested itself during the years 1968-1969, was that of the Unified Party of Haitian Communists (PUCH), during the dictatorship of François Duvalier. This was also savagely suppressed by the Tontons Macoutes, the military and the CIA. Their goal was not only the end of the dictatorship, but also the building of a socialist society.
How to talk about the class struggle in Haiti?
If we mention these first two great struggles, one of which was identified as anti-imperialist and the other more complete, which had socialism as its ultimate goal, this does not mean that other forms of resistance never existed. The class struggle in our country has a special character because it has never been led by the proletariat. This particular character is not only due to its numerical weakness, as quality could be transformed into quantity, to quote Engels in "The Dialectics of Nature", provided that conditions were met. Among the obstacles that have been raised against the development of the national proletariat, we can cite the persistence of the various dictatorships that have succeeded each other in the course of our history, some of which were more ferocious than others, such as that of the Duvaliers, which lasted 30 years. Dictatorships also helped paralyze the proper development of progressive trade unions. There are several trade union federations. With some rare exceptions, such as that of Batay Ouvriye (Workers' Struggle), which is a left-wing organization, they do not espouse a left-wing ideology. Since the symbolic departure of the occupiers in August 1934, all successive governments have united with great tenacity against communism. Revolutionary parties always developed clandestinely until the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier on February 7, 1986. Systematic anti-communist repression also greatly damaged the formation of unions close to the working class. This is one of our revolutionary tasks at the moment.
However, the Haitian masses have never surrendered to the atrocities of these reactionary governments. All the struggles that have been waged to overthrow reactionary governments have had an anti-imperialist character, because these governments have always been conceived in the laboratory of the U.S. embassy. If the working class is inevitably the ruling class of any socialist revolution, for the moment it is the masses of people as a whole who constitute the driving force of the anti-government battles and, therefore, of anti-U.S. struggles. We cannot fight our reactionary powers without associating them with their de facto boss, US imperialism and its ambassador, who behaves like a proconsul.
It is in this perspective that we, the Socialist Regroupment Party for a National Initiative of Tou Nèf (RASIN), declare that the Monroe Doctrine is still in force in Haiti. The following example alone can help us understand this statement.
"On Thursday, January 10, 2019, at the OAS, Haitian diplomacy, by order of former President Jovenel Moïse, voted in favor of the United States but against the legitimacy of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The latter won the support of the majority of his people in an election, which resulted from an electoral system recognized even by former President Jimmy Carter as one of the best in the world. This system may be more reliable than that of the United States of America, which began to reveal its weakness with the election of the second Bush and the current Donald Trump. This infamous act consisted of a double violation: that of trampling on the internationalist principle of the founders of the Haitian nation-state and that of not having the minimum decency in politics to remember the benefits of a power that supported your government while the international community mocks you to the fullest extent of the term.
"This act has also demonstrated, once again, an obvious truth: the irreducible subjection of the traditional Haitian political class to US imperialism and the incoherence of the current leadership team. Haiti's ambassador to Caracas, Lesly David, officially participated in President Maduro's inauguration, while her colleague, Mr. Leon Charles, Haiti's representative to the OAS, voted against the Bolivarian revolution on behalf of the same Haitian head of state, who had recognized the victory. of President Maduro in May 2018, less than a year ago."1 This infamy is based on the logic of the Punta del Este vote of the Duvalierist dictatorship.
The vote of Punta del Este.
"On January 13, 1962, in Uruguay, at the seaside resort of Punta del Este, the Haitian vote of shame took place. The Organization of American States, OAS, or to put it better, the U.S. government, needed one more voice to get socialist Cuba out of this diplomatic tool founded in 1948. It is an instrument created by U.S. power to breathe new life into the Monroe Doctrine. That is why it has always been placed almost exclusively at the service of U.S. capitalist interests. The blackmail of dictator François Duvalier to sell his vote is further proof that the internal is decisive in conflicts, even with foreign powers. The sinister Papa Doc, who did not smell sweet to President Kennedy, made the support of his government conditional on financial aid. He resisted all the pressures of the U.S. diplomat Dean Rusk until he found what he was looking for, money for his power. The Alliance for Progress, founded the previous year by President Kennedy to block the road to communism, had brought him nothing. In reality, however, his primal anti-communism placed him closer to U.S. than to the Cuban revolution, as President Kennedy well knew. To defend his immediate interest, Duvalier was able to make a display of his determination to be independent. Anthony Georges-Pierre, who has always been a faithful Duvalierist, stated the following:
"On this occasion, President Duvalier had kept two irons in the fire. In condemning the communist regime in Cuba, he sided with the United States. By criticizing U.S. economic aid policy to Haiti, he took advantage of favorable circumstances to fight back and demand more reasonable U.S. assistance. The OAS rostrum in Punta del Este offered him an extraordinary opportunity to defend the Haitian cause and force the United States, in a gesture of solidarity, to open their wallets to poor Haiti."23
1 Marc-Arthur Fils-Aimé. La doctrine Monroe est toujours en vigueur en Haïti (The Monroe Doctrine is still in effect in Haiti). Article published in Haiti Liberté of January 30 to February 5, 2019
2 Anthony Georges-Pierre “François Duvalier Titan ou tyran” (“François Duvalier Titan or tyrant” – 2nd edition. Printed in Educa Vison Inc., p. 771
3 Marc-Arthur Fils-Aimé Jr. – Ibid
The inter-imperialist conspiracy under the leadership of the CORE GROUP
Today, the country is under the control of an association of foreign embassies known as the CORE GROUP. The CORE GROUP is like a union of the most powerful embassies in the country, and brings together Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, the OAS, the United Nations and the European Union under the leadership of the United States of America. This association even gave itself the authority to appoint the country's presidents, as was the well-known case of Michel Martelly in 1910. The former representative of the United Nations Secretariat, Ms. Lalime, of U.S. origin, congratulated herself at a United Nations Assembly for having united the gangs that today besiege Port-au-Prince, the capital, and other parts of the country, committing the most heinous crimes .
Since the installation of this coalition of embassies, the popular masses have never ceased to mobilize against the reactionary governments and the foreign forces that support the latter in all their unconstitutional measures. As we pointed out earlier, the masses have initiated different forms of struggle in search of their well-being. Even if, for the reasons we have considered, these struggles have not been carried out under the leadership of the working class, they nevertheless have a class character. The various peasant organizations have always opposed the landowners, such as Têt Kole Ti peyizan Ayisyen and Mouvman Peyizan Papay (MPP). They claim the land for those who cultivate it. The working class, in addition to strikes within the assembly plants, often demonstrate in the streets demanding better living conditions. These demonstrations have always been savagely repressed, often resulting in deaths. Unfortunately, these struggles are not coordinated and remain very sectoral. This is one of the immediate tasks of the revolutionary parties. In more oriented protest movements, the masses, in a broad popular alliance, shout anti-U.S. slogans, in demonstrations supported by the revolutionary left, sometimes gathering several thousand people, even when these demonstrations were planned against the power in place.
The activists who claim to be left-wing are very numerous. But for reasons that must be studied on another occasion, they are content to live isolated from each other. However, for some six years many efforts have been undertaken to unify certain currents of the revolutionary left. We meet under the name ''Group of Five – RASIN, AKAO, Kontra Pèp, Ayiti Djanm, Gwoup Rezistans Benoit Batraville”. This effort is not limited. The regroupment is in negotiations with ASO to reach unity, without forgetting the peasant federations and the women’s associations of the left. The great perspective must be the task of the Haitian revolutionary left to unite to form a real force to accompany and nurture the popular masses, to participate in the transformation of their anti-U.S. instinct into a revolutionary consciousness.
Marc-Arthur Fils-Aimé
Secretary General
Camille Charlmers
Spokesperson
August 17, 2023
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