Category Archives: Colonialism and Resistance

Cops, robbers and intervention talk in Haiti

by Jim Hodgson

A few nights ago, I watched the British actress Joanna Lumley in conversation with a group of homeless 14- and 15-year-old boys in Port-au-Prince. This was a scene in her 2019 documentary, “Hidden Caribbean,” about her travels in Cuba and Haiti.

I found myself thinking about similar conversations that I have had with teens in Mexico, Haiti, El Salvador and elsewhere: What about the gangs?

“They defend us,” said the teenage son of a woman I knew in La Estación, a neighbourhood where the train station used to be and near where I lived in Cuernavaca, Mexico, in the late ’90s. 

Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime report, Gangs of Haiti. And headlines about gang violence from Alterpresse, an excellent alternative media site in Port-au-Prince. 

I’m not an expert on the sociology of gangs, but it seems to me that for unschooled, unemployed adolescent youth, they might provide a sense of team and friendship that in other places would be provided through schools, organized sports and other activities. And no doubt, there are people who manipulate younger people into activities to “defend” their barrio, and those then become fronts for extortion, drug-trafficking and kidnapping. (You can read more about the sociology of gangs of Haiti here and here.)

Criminal gangs are blamed for extreme levels of violence in and around Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital. Their actions become justification for calls from the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and others for an international intervention – this time with police forces.

A “robust use of force” by a multinational police deployment is required to restore order in Haiti and to disarm the gangs, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres said in a report to the Security Council Aug. 15. Such a force may be led by Kenya, and also involve police forces from several Caribbean nations.

“The longer that we wait and don’t have this response, we’re going to see more Haitians being killed, raped and kidnapped, and more people suffering without enough to eat,” said Ida Sawyer of Human Rights Watch a few days earlier.

Headlines and photos from Mexico’s La Jornada daily newspaper: “Gangs control 80% of Port-au-Prince;” “200,000 displaced.”

By all accounts, the situation in Port-au-Prince is dire. On Aug. 17, Haitian aid groups backed by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said they were temporarily shutting down operations, including some mobile health clinics, in the face of violence. Over the previous weekend, according to the UN, nearly 5,000 people fled their homes from areas around Carrefour Feuilles, Port-au-Prince. They are added to about 200,000 people displaced from their homes so far this year.

And more than 350 people are said to have been killed in lynchings by vigilantes since April.

You might think it’s progress that international actors are talking about police interventions rather than full-out military interventions after those have already failed in Haiti more than once. But decades of financial support and training of Haitian police (much of both coming from Canada) failed to overcome corruption and incompetence. 

Much of this could have been avoided. Three years ago, a viable set of proposals emerged from a coalition of civil society groups – the Montana Accord, named for the hotel where their accord was signed. They offered a “passarelle” or series of steps for an interim government as a way to move to new elections. If the imperial powers – Canada, the US and France – had backed those proposals instead of Ariel Henry (the unelected “prime minister”) things might be different today. 

Beyond the external powers, part of the problem is that the six richest families in Haiti don’t give a damn about the people or the violence, and prefer the current mess to a stronger and more effective state. 

Recent headlines about the crisis in Haiti; a statement by the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) condemning calls for armed intervention.

For now, the civil society groups continue to insist that theirs is the best way forward. There are various tables of negotiations to try to find a way forward. Some involve members of the Montana group and the acting prime minister. 

I think too that, for the sake of peace, the gang leaders, who perceive themselves as defenders of their communities, may need to be reckoned with as political actors, not mere criminals. In July, Tom Hagan, a U.S. Catholic priest, said he had worked out an agreement with four gang leaders in the Cité Soleil neighbourhood. They committed themselves “before God” to “work to put an end to the violence and to bring peace to all peoples.” In the past, bishops have enabled similar agreements in El Salvador and in Guerrero state, Mexico.

I made my first visit to Haiti in 1984, when the dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier was still in power, and I’ve been back countless times since then. High points for me were in August 1987, when a massive popular movement seemed capable of wresting power from the military, and in December 1990 with the election of Jean-Bertrand Aristide as president. What gives me hope is still the capacity of Haitian popular movements – workers, farmers, women, students – to organise and re-organise themselves for change, small and large.

What’s going on now in Haiti is a tragic mess that could have been prevented with some courage and imagination from the international community. In the first year or so after the 2010 earthquake, it seemed to me that the UN, foreign and Haitian NGOs, and the government of René Préval were working together toward a Haitian state that would be strong enough to deliver health, education, transportation, security, even land reform and other public services. But that was not the outcome sought by the United States and Haitian elites.

Debt crisis again provokes “deprivation and misery” in Global South

Asia Debt Monitor, April 2023 

by Jim Hodgson

Forty years ago, I spent five weeks of July and August in the Dominican Republic, learning from families, churches and unions about the ways people confronted their impoverishment. The people that I met taught me about long-haul, multi-generational struggle and solidarity.

Soon after that visit, protests in the D.R., Egypt and Peru erupted against conditions imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and foreign banks. The issue then – and again now – was how to cope with national debt, budget deficits, and rising interest rates.

The 1984 debt crisis: “Dominicans pay in blood”

“You are plunging Global South countries into a greater debt debacle that will cause more deprivation and misery,” wrote the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD) to leaders of the G7 rich countries on the eve of their mid-May summit in Hiroshima, Japan. Countries as diverse as Argentina, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Zambia have confronted large debt and harsh repayment conditions in recent months. (Zambia has reached an agreement with lenders to restructure $6.3 billion of debt.)

This month, new reports from two United Nations agencies provide warnings and suggest some solutions to the weight imposed by banks and Global North governments on the people of the Global South.

The UN Development Program (UNDP) said 165 million people were forced into poverty between 2020 to 2023 as debt servicing pushed aside expenditures for  social protection, health and education. All of these additionally impoverished people poor live in low- and lower-middle-income economies, with the most-impoverished 20 per cent in low-income countries suffering the most with incomes in 2023 still below the pre-pandemic levels. Their governments cannot do more to assist because of conditions attached to debt repayment plans.

The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) said that public debt has increased faster in developing countries compared to developed countries over the past decade. “When developing countries borrow money, they have to pay much higher interest rates compared to developed countries, even without considering the costs of exchange rate fluctuations. Countries in Africa borrow on average at rates that are four times higher than those of the United States and even eight times higher than those of Germany.”

UNCTAD reports that 3.3 billion people live in countries were interest payments on debts are greater than spending for education and health care. An editorial in Mexico City’s La Jornada daily newspaper recalled thatUN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has denounced this injustice as “systemic failure.”

In a second editorial a day later, La Jornada noted the impact of Global South debt on efforts to confront the climate emergency. “In 2015, the 10 per cent of the world’s wealthiest people were responsible for half of the greenhouse gas emissions, and only one per cent were responsible for 15 per cent of those emissions. The most impoverished half of the people of the Earth generated only seven per cent of the emissions, but it is they who are most affected by climate change, higher food prices and even the destruction of their homes in severe weather events. The countries whose transnational corporations devastate the environment of the Global South with their unceasing extraction of natural resources close their doors to migrants and condemn them to remain in regions that have become uninhabitable because of the actions of those corporations.”

Historically, the ways that the IMF, banks and Global North governments have contended with debt crises have been to use them as opportunities to push neoliberal development models: free trade, extractivism, privatisation of state-owned companies and services, low-wage factory jobs and export-focused agriculture. And they avoid conversations about debt cancellation and reparations for colonialism and slavery.

APMDD and other Global South movements propose different approaches. In the letter cited above, APMDD urged G7 governments to: 

  1. Cancel the debt for countries in need, including public debts of a questionable and fraudulent nature that violated human rights and contributed to exacerbating the climate crisis.
  2. Support the elimination of IMF surcharges, which penalizes the most debt-distressed countries and further erodes the capacity of developing countries to respond to urgent social needs. 
  3. Enact/strengthen national legislation to require the participation of private creditors in debt relief, which is a key element in any serious wide scale debt reduction or restructuring effort. 
  4. Immediately deliver new, additional and non-debt creating climate finance for adaptation, mitigation and loss and damage, much more than the unfulfilled $100 billion/year pledge, to adequately meet the needs of the Global South. 

Once in a while, cracks appear in the wall of Global North indifference. In June, French President Emmanuel Macron convened a summit to reach a new “global pact” to finance the fight against poverty and human-induced climate change. I’ll share some outcomes in coming days.

Womin is a network of women’s organisations across Africa that proposes cancellation of African debt and ecofeminist alternatives to extractives models of development.

Jujuy, Argentina: “Despite pain and loss, the people always win”

by Jim Hodgson

In Jujuy, northwest Argentina, a struggle is playing out that shows how right-wing political forces repeatedly apply repression to hold on to power even as democratic space continues to open across most of Latin America.

Front pages June 21 and 22 of a Buenos Aires daily, Página 12: “Jujuy burns” and “A sea of candles”

The most recent flare came after teachers went on strike to press their demand for salary increases amidst Argentina’s 114-per-cent inflation rate. Jujuy provincial governor Gerardo Morales responded by rushing through changes to the province’s constitution that restrict freedoms of assembly, protest and speech. The constitutional changes came without approval of the province’s Indigenous peoples.

 “We have received reports of events that could constitute an improper use of force against individuals in the context of the demonstrations,” said Jan Jarab of the South America regional office of the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights. In a letter addressed to the governor, he also questioned “the handling of the recent demonstrations by the security forces, as well as about some of the provisions of the approved provincial constitutional reform text.”

“Despite pain and loss, the people always win.” Canadian trade unions, solidarity groups and Common Frontiers joined together June 22 to send a message of solidarity.

Amnesty International also denounced those changes, and called for on the Jujuy government to cease the “excessive use of force against those exercising their right to peaceful protest, which has resulted in hundreds of people being injured in recent days.”

President Alberto Fernández responded to the continued unrest in Jujuy by saying he will seek to have the reforms to the provincial constitution struck down as unconstitutional.

Morales has used excessive measures before, notably in the case of Indigenous leader Milagro Sala, imprisoned since Jan. 16, 2016, after a protest. Sala is leader of the Movimiento Tupac Amaru, and led the creation of “workers’ neighbourhoods” that allowed workers to live for the first time in houses that they owned and to have access to schools and health centres.

Página 12 headlines describe different positions on the Jujuy conflict. Inset (bottom right): map showing the location of Jujuy in northwest Argentina.

The drama in Jujuy plays out against the backdrop of Argentina’s volatile political calendar. The two-term Jujuy governor is the presidential candidate of one of the conservative parties, the Unión Civic Radical (UCR). The UCR is part of the centre-right coalition, Juntos por el Cambio “Together for Change”) which also includes former president Mauricio Macri. 

That coalition, however, is fractured now by the emergence of Javier Milei, a libertarian economist, as a candidate who has drawn support from the right and from sectors of the centre-left dissatisfied with the current administration of Fernández and his vice-president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (triple-digit inflation and a deteriorating economic situation).

Primary elections will be held on Aug. 13 for parties that opt to choose candidates by that system. The general election is to be held Oct. 22, and a presidential run-off would follow Nov. 19 if necessary.

In a move that surprised many observers, the president and vice-president and other leaders of their Unión por la Patria (UP) coalition came together June 23 to back a single candidate and slate headed by Economy Minister Sergio Massa.

Along with the national political context, a second factor driving the repression is the presence of lithium in Jujuy (which borders the lithium-producing regions of northern Chile and southern Bolivia). Lithium is used in batteries for electronic vehicles. 

A recent visit to the region by film-maker James Cameron was manipulated by Jujuy’s governor to give a positive spin to lithium mining operations undertaken despite Indigenous opposition.

Cameron, the director of Avatar and Titanic, said later: “Ironically, the outcome of this is that I am now aware of the problem and we will now assist through my foundation with the issue of Indigenous rights with respect to lithium extraction.”

A third factor in the present conflict is the region’s history of 480 years of colonial exploitation and Indigenous resistance. 

A recent statement by archeologists and anthropologists declares their solidarity with the Indigenous people of Jujuy. “And without community territory, rights to the land and the possibility of social protest against diversion from that vision, there is no equality, inter-culturality, or social peace.”