Category Archives: Haiti

Haiti: another military intervention looms large

by Jim Hodgson

Haitians (whose own proposals for building a better country are persistently ignored) once again face an illegitimate government, one that has proposed a foreign intervention force to quell gang violence and to keep itself in power. 

Haiti and the UN: another crossroads. Photo: Jim Hodgson, April 14, 2010, Port-au-Prince.

In reporting by many journalists from the global north, popular protest against the government, increased fuel prices, corruption and intervention is blended with reports of actions by the street gangs.

On Friday, Oct. 21, the UN Security Council approved its resolution authorizing a foreign military intervention and imposing sanctions on only one of Haiti’s gang leaders. (One might ask: when do gang leaders travel? Where do they go? Which banks do they use? Who sells them their weapons?)

The new intervention propositions emerged from the UN general secretary and Haiti’s “interim” prime minister: as if such interventions had worked in 1915, 1994, or 2004 to resolve the problems of people impoverished by the same imperial powers who are now invited to return.

Those powers misunderstand the present crisis. They can’t tell the difference between protest against the unelected government of Prime Minister Ariel Henry and the criminal activity of gangs. On Oct. 15, the United States and Canada delivered armoured vehicles for use by Haitian police.

Worse, the great powers continue to ignore the specific civil society proposals for a way forward that are contained in the “Montana Accord”  (named for the hotel where the group met). The group told a visiting U.S. delegation that it opposes foreign military intervention.

Cholera – never really eliminated after being brought to Haiti by support staff to soldiers in a previous UN force – is back. There are proposals to bring vaccines, but Haiti was able to deliver COVID vaccines to just a few more than three per cent of the population. Only 41 per cent of Haitian children are vaccinated against measles and 51 per cent are fully vaccinated against polio. Effective management of the cholera outbreak would require some sort of humanitarian truce, and that would require negotiations with the gang leaders – pretty much anathema to the imperial powers who seem more inclined to use force.

The current debates over the legitimacy of the government, possibilities for new elections, getting back on track with humanitarian aid and a reasonable development agenda are addressed in a new letter to U.S. President Joe Biden by four U.S. senators and nine members of the House of Representatives.

Recalling “decades of US meddling in Haiti’s internal affairs,” the group lauded the Montana Accord, which proposes a transition period that will ultimately result in elections, adding:

“None of these weighty issues can be addressed effectively in isolation. Neither free and fair elections, nor effective delivery of humanitarian assistance, are possible until the violence is quelled. Yet the Haitian police conspire with the gangs, and past U.S. efforts to build a professional, accountable police force have failed. The violence can only be quelled by Haitian authorities acting consistently with the rule of law through impartial judicial processes.”

News of the UN Security Council resolution (left); earlier, Amy Wilentz, a noted U.S. writer on Haitian events, expressed her doubts about intervention proposals.

I’ll share a short reading list with you:

Edwidge Danticat (my favourite Haitian writer) in The New Yorker: “The Fight for Haiti’s Future.” The United States and its allies should withdraw their support support for Henry and the Parti Haïtien Tèt Kale (P.H.T.K.), the Haitian Bald-Head Party. “During the Party’s decade in power, Haitians have consistently taken to the streets to protest against P.H.T.K. leaders’ ineffectiveness and corruption, and to demand accountability for the funds misused, misappropriated, and pilfered through Venezuela’s oil-purchasing program, Petrocaribe. Accountability never came.”

If you read French and would welcome regular updates on what is going on in Haiti, I would encourage you to sign up for Info-Haïti. This is the monthly bulletin of Concertation pour Haïti, a Montreal-based coalition of civil society organizations. Write to: communications@aqoci.qc.ca or follow the Concertation on Twitter at: @haiti_pour. 

On Oct. 20, members of the Concertation produced their own letter to the government of Canada with recommendations for a way forward. “Canada must now stop supporting the government of Ariel Henry and put its full weight behind this coalition, which offers the only viable proposal for a transition that would allow Haitians to organize free and fair elections. To continue to support the current Prime Minister is to condemn the country to corruption, impunity, the continued domination of gangs, and ever-worsening food insecurity.”

A former U.S. ambassador to Haiti, Dan Foote, has warned that if the U.S. moves forward with the UN plan to send armed forces into Haiti, the result will be a predictable catastrophe.

And The New York Times has managed to produce pretty useful lesson plans for teachers about Haitian history and culture.

Summit of the Americas: U.S. can’t break old habits

That the White House announced Canada’s planned response to the flow of refugees in Central America said a lot to me about the way the Biden administration mishandled the Summit of the Americas, held in Los Angeles last week.

Canada will welcome 4,000 additional migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean, the White House announced on June 10. That number is insignificant compared to the size of the challenge: 

  • Mexico reported apprehending 307,679 undocumented migrants in 2021. About one-third were deported; another third sought asylum in Mexico. The main countries of origin of those apprehended were Honduras (41%), Guatemala (26%), El Salvador (8%), Haiti (6%), Brazil (5%), Nicaragua (5%), Cuba (2%), and Venezuela (1%). None of the leaders of Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala or El Salvador chose to attend the summit – and Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela were told by Biden not to come. It’s hard to solve problems when you’re not talking to people who can do something about them.
  • As of February in the United States, about 164,000 (Reuters) or “just under 179,000” (Axios) migrants are currently in alternatives-to-detention programs managed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement  (ICE). This is “roughly double the total on Sept. 30, 2020, before Biden took office,” Reuters reported, and doesn’t include dependents – or the people actually held in detention.

The White House announcement of Canada’s support included commitments from other countries on migration issues, and was reported by Canadian Press in an article widely shared in Canadian media (CBC, CTV, the Globe and Mail, among others).

“The agreement also includes a pre-existing Canadian commitment to bring in an additional 50,000 agricultural workers this year from Mexico, Guatemala and the Caribbean.” (Those are temporary workers whose rights are limited.)

To its credit, the government (via the Prime Minister’s Office, not Global Affairs Canada) also announced an additional $118 million for “progressive initiatives” aimed at improving the lives of people where they already live in Latin America and the Caribbean. That includes $67.9 million to promote gender equality; $31.5 million in health and pandemic response spending; $17.3 million on democratic governance and $1.6 million for digital access and anti-disinformation measures. It will also spend $26.9 million to address “irregular migration and forced displacement” in the hemisphere.

Washington “still trying to dictate” to neighbours

But it was the exclusions and boycotts that drew most attention. Because Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua were excluded by the host country, Mexico, Honduras, Bolivia and some Caribbean leaders chose to stay away. Leaders of Guatemala and El Salvador did not attend because of issues with U.S. treatment of allegations of corruption and abuses of human rights in their countries. In the end only about 20 of potentially 35 heads of state or government attended.

Apparently modelling the art of understatement, Reuters reported: “Hosting the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, Biden sought to assure the assembled leaders about his administration’s commitment to the region despite nagging concerns that Washington, at times, is still trying to dictate to its poorer southern neighbours.”

The presence of the unelected prime minister of Haiti, Ariel Henry, drew fire. During a panel discussion on “journalistic freedom,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had the good grace to seem embarrassed when challenged over Henry’s presence. As Alterpresse pointed out, “not only does Henry govern without a mandate in violation of the Haitian Constitution, he is also implicated in serious crimes, including the death of a Haitian journalist in February 2022 by Haitian police.” (Two other journalists had been killed in January in a gang attack.)

In the tradition of each Summit of the Americas (including the teargas summit in Quebec City in 2001), a People’s Summit was held, gathering more than 250 community organizations, social movements, trade unions and other progressive groups. “In the ‘richest country in the world,’ 140 million live in or near poverty. The US government is addicted to militarism and war and will spend over $800 billion in 2022, on death and destruction,” said the final declaration. “Instead of preparing for war, society must be organized to meet human needs. We want a future without evictions, police violence and mass incarceration, deportations, sanctions, and blockades. We say: no more!”

Anacaona and the Day of Indigenous Resistance 

Today, October 12, is the Day of Indigenous Resistance, at least in Venezuela and in the hearts of millions of people in other lands. In Costa Rica, it’s the Día de las Culturas. But in many places, it’s still called Columbus Day or the Día de la Raza. In Canada, the date is mostly ignored. Here, I am sharing the lightly-edited text of a piece I wrote in 2011.

Now, 529 years have passed since Chris got lost in the Greater Antilles and was found by the Taíno Indigenous people. 

At La Caleta, near the entrance to the Santo Domingo airport, there is a park that contains an ancient burial ground of the Taíno people, the original inhabitants of Quisqueya or Ayiti (the island the Spanish called Española).

Within 50 years of the Spanish arrival, the Taíno people had been wiped out. We have many of their words: names of places and rivers, along with words (some shared with other First Nations languages) that found their way into Spanish and English, including: barbacoa (barbecue), hamaca (hammock), kanoa (canoe), tabaco (tobacco), juracán (hurricane), plus the names of the staple of the Taíno diet, cassava or yuca. 

Two views of a (now controversial) statue of Christopher Columbus and the Taíno leader Anacaona in the central plaza of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

The history of Taíno resistance is not lost 

The story of one woman, Anacaona, stands out. My friend Félix Posada of the Latin American Centre for Popular Communication (CEPALC) in Colombia wrote about her in the January-March 2010 issue of CEPALC’s magazine, Encuentro. (Wikipedia has some accessible articles too, but the best source is the work of Bartolomé de Las Casas, the priest who wrote everything that he saw and heard over the first 50 years of the 16th century.) 

When Columbus showed up in 1492, there were five Taíno chiefdoms (cacicazgos) and territories on the island, each led by a principal cacique (chieftain). 

Anacaona, born in 1464, was chief of Jaragua, the territory on the southwest part of island. Her husband Canoabo was chief of neighbouring Maguana. They had a daughter, Higuerota. 

From the time Anacaona was small, she distinguished herself by her intelligence and talent for composing and memorizing poetry that she recited in festivals, in the areitos (party, song, dance, and rhythm, all at the same time). 

The cazicazgos of Ayiti/Quisqueya.

When the Spanish arrived, they were received with a certain sympathy. But disillusion came quickly. Columbus left a group of men in what was called “Fort Navidad” (located between the mouth of the Guarico River and Picolet Point on the northwest coast of what is now Haiti) while he returned to Spain to report on his discovery. 

The 39 men left behind stole from the Indigenous communities, mistreated and raped the people, and tried to destroy the local culture. Anacaona convinced Canoabo and other chieftains to attack and destroy the Spanish fortress and the soldiers who lived there. The attack was devastating: the soldiers were killed. Canoabo was eventually captured and shipped to Spain, dying in a shipwreck during the journey. 

Conflict, negotiation and treachery 

Columbus visited Anacaona and her brother Bohechío in Jaragua in late 1496. Columbus successfully negotiated for a tribute of food and cotton for the settlers under his command. Months later, Columbus arrived with a ship to collect part of the tribute. Anacaona and Bohechío sailed briefly aboard the ship in the Gulf of Gonâve, near today’s Port-au-Prince. 

Very quickly, Española became the centre of European colonization in the Americas. Santo Domingo, the city that Columbus founded on the south coast of the island, became home to civil servants, soldiers, missionaries and investors who took the best land, sought to enslave the Indigenous people and imported African slaves. 

As the Spanish presence grew, rumours of rebellion swept the island. Anacaona was a leader of the resistance movement, and her efforts became known to the Spanish governor, Nicolás de Ovando. Ovando sent a message to Anacaona that he would visit her in a spirit of friendship. He arrived at Yaguana with 350 soldiers. Received as a guest with feasts and dances, he ordered his men to burn the community and to make its leader his prisoner. 

Anacaona managed to escape together with her daughter Higuemota, grand-daughter Mencía, and also with the cacique Hatuey.

But Anacaona’s freedom did not last long. She was captured by Ovando and, at age 39, was hanged in 1504. 

The administration of Ovando was a cruel one. When the Spanish arrived in 1492, the Indigenous population was estimated at 500,000. According to a census taken in 1507, the Indigenous population had been reduced to 60,000.