Vol. 74/No. 7      February 22, 2010

“Haiti’s culture is powerfully influenced by its religion” and is “without ethical content,” claimed Lawrence Harrison. He was head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Haiti from 1977 to 1979 during the bloody regime of François Duvalier.

It has been 24 years since the Duvalier family was driven out of Haiti by an uprising of workers and peasants. A review of those years demonstrates that the curse working people of that country confront is not their culture (or their oppression, for that matter) but the culture of class exploitation that drives imperialist powers and their backers in Haiti, those Harrison speaks for.

The Duvalier family belonged to the tiny oligarchy in Haiti—1 percent of the population—that skimmed off 40 percent of the national income.

Large landowners controlled 66 percent of the arable land. Most working people lived in the countryside where they tilled tiny plots of land. Some worked seasonally as cane cutters across the border in the Dominican Republic, under a program where the Duvaliers collected a fee for each Haitian sent to the harvest there.  
 
Deforestation of country
Facing extreme poverty, Haitian farmers resorted to cutting down trees to provide fuel and to sell as charcoal. The country has only 1 percent tree cover today, making it particularly vulnerable to floods.

Attracted by the antiunion stance of Duvalier and his refusal to enforce such basic labor standards as overtime pay and limits on working hours, some 250 U.S. businesses flocked to Haiti to set up assembly factories producing baseballs, garments, and electronics. They got away with paying the workers at best $3 a day.

Meanwhile, the government amassed a huge debt. From 1957 to 1986, Haiti’s foreign debt actually multiplied by a factor of 17.5, reaching $750 million. The personal wealth of the Duvalier family, by comparison, was $900 million.

To make its debt payments, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) insisted that Haiti carry out more and more austerity measures that cut deeply into the few social programs available to working people. From 1982 to 1984, Jean-Claude Duvalier, son of François, cut government spending by 25 percent.

These intolerable conditions could only be maintained through brutal force. The elder Duvalier had established his own private paramilitary force, the 15,000-strong Tontons Macoutes. Opponents of any stripe—from prounion workers to rival bourgeois politicians to dissident Catholic priests—were routinely arrested and tortured. Some were forced into exile, others killed.

Immediately after the fall of the younger Duvalier in 1986, workers and peasants began organizing unions, peasants’ associations, and demanded free elections. Neither Washington nor the Haitian ruling class was willing to grant that. For the next four years a succession of military-controlled governments backed by Washington tried to impose stability.

In the course of those years, a new theft of Haiti’s resources took place. The IMF offered the Haitian government a loan of $24.6 million—if it agreed to lower tariffs on imported agricultural produce. Within two years so much cheap rice from the United States (some of it in the form of “food aid”) had flooded Haiti that local peasants could no longer make a living growing the staple. Domestic sugarcane production was undermined in a similar fashion.

The failure of the U.S.-backed juntas to resolve any of the problems facing Haiti led to new clashes with the masses of working people, who had gained self-confidence with the overthrow of Duvalier. They pressed for their demands, despite continued repression by the armed forces and Tontons Macoutes that were still active. In the 1990 presidential elections eighty-five percent of the population turned out for the vote and elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide by 67 percent.

Aristide had been a Catholic priest in a working-class district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, who emerged as one of the most prominent critics of Duvalier and his mentors in Washington. Given the lack of a revolutionary party in the country with a perspective of bringing workers and peasants to power, many working people looked to Aristide for leadership in the fight to forge a new Haiti.

Upon taking office, Aristide pledged to purge the military of Tontons Macoutes. He jailed some of them, along with other corrupt figures from the previous regimes. He began some efforts to cope with the economic devastation facing the country. But Aristide believed he could carry these efforts out with the cooperation of Washington and imperialist financial institutions.

The Haitian ruling class and its military, along with Washington, worked to undermine the Aristide regime, which they saw as deepening the expectations of working people. After seven months in power, Aristide was overthrown by a coup and forced into exile.  
 
U.S. troops restore, exile Aristide
Over the next three years, a succession of unstable military governments attempted to rule Haiti. Clashes continued with Aristide’s supporters in the working class and peasantry. In 1994 the U.S. government concluded it was better off sending Aristide back to Haiti to bring the masses under control. He returned in October of that year on a U.S. government jet, backed by 20,000 U.S. troops.

In his first national speech Aristide urged Haitians to take no reprisals against the police and paramilitary thugs who had terrorized them for three years. “No to violence, no to vengeance, yes to reconciliation,” he said.

He pledged to appoint “some key ministers coming from the wealthy.” One of the first appointments was businessman Smarck Michel as prime minister. A favorite of Washington and the World Bank, Michel had quit the first Aristide cabinet to protest the president’s lowering of food prices.

USAID organized financial “aid” for the new government, including $32 million for the police force and $25 million to make sure Haiti paid its debt to imperialist bankers.

After completing his term, Aristide stepped aside and his prime minister, René Préval, was elected president. But Aristide ran for president again in 2000 and won reelection. This time he adopted more economic measures demanded by Washington, such as lowering tariffs on goods imported from the United States and privatization of some state-owned companies. Washington, meanwhile, cut off loans.

By 2004 rightist forces were again threatening to depose Aristide as the country sank into deeper and deeper economic crisis. He accepted a “peace plan” crafted by Washington to allow the deployment of imperialist troops in Haiti so he could finish his term. On February 29 Washington placed an “interim” regime of Aristide’s opponents in power and U.S. armed forces flew the deposed president to the Central African Republic against his will.
 
 
Related articles:
Medical brigades from Cuba offer long-term care in Haiti  
 
 
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