This is the third time in the past century that U.S. troops have intervened in Haiti for that purpose. After Washington asserted its domination of the country through its invasion and occupation in 1915, it propped up a string of dictators, including the bloody reign of terror under the Duvalier dynasty. Popular discontent grew, however, and by the mid-1980s the Duvalier tyranny had outlived its usefulness to imperialism. In 1986 working people rose up in a popular rebellion and ousted the dictatorship.

Bourgeois forces, however, stood at the head of this process. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had built a following through his outspoken opposition to the tyranny, was elected president on the crest of heightened hopes among working people for improvements in their conditions of life.

Because a naked dictatorship was no longer to their advantage, the U.S. rulers sought to use the Aristide government to maintain bourgeois stability and boost illusions in the capitalist system. When rightist military officers, seeking to return to the old days, toppled the elected government in 1991, Aristide turned to Washington for support. His reinstatement on the bayonets of 20,000 invading U.S. troops entailed a Faustian bargain: the price was increased subordination to Washington’s prerogatives.

Back in power, the Aristide government willingly carried out Wall Street’s demands to open up Haiti to greater imperialist penetration, relying more and more on thuggish methods against opponents. It became riddled with corruption, and its leaders became increasingly distanced from the brutal realities of life of the Haitian masses.

The Aristide government was never a representative of working people, not even one that betrayed their interests. It did not “push the toilers to the sidelines,” as a Militant headline said in an earlier issue—a phrase that could imply that somehow Aristide was a misleader at the head of a movement of the exploited. The regime simply acted like the capitalist government that it was.

As a result, protests began to mount—both by workers and farmers and by bourgeois forces competing with the regime and each other for power. The rightists seized on the widespread discontent to make their move and successfully organized a coup. Despite statements by Aristide and by radical organizations in the United States that describe the events as a “U.S. coup,” there is no evidence that the revolt began with imperialism. While often applying economic and political pressure to get the regime to toe the line over the past few years, until the coup the U.S. rulers had preferred to rely on the Aristide government to defend their interests and investments against working people.

What’s more, the “leftist” opposition to Aristide, including Stalinists and social democrats, made the fatal mistake of failing to take into account the rightist danger as they campaigned against the government. The events show that it’s not enough to oppose a government and denounce corruption—the ultrarightists did so too, and more effectively. As a result, the most reactionary forces easily overtook the bourgeois reformers.

As the crisis deepened and the government proved increasingly unable to guarantee stable bourgeois rule, Washington pressed it to compromise with the rightists. But the latter gained ground as the regime failed to organize a defense, having already disarmed itself by dissolving the Haitian army in 1995—a gift to U.S. imperialism that contributed to its undoing. Washington finally decided to dump Aristide, no longer useful to its interests. The outcome was inevitable.

Today, liberal supporters of Aristide in the United States—including Democratic politicians, who were the most aggressive in campaigning for another U.S. invasion of Haiti, all in the name of defending the former president—complain that he was “kidnapped” by Washington. But whether he was physically forced into exile or he handed a resignation letter to U.S. officials before getting on the plane does not change the more important fact that from the beginning his administration was totally subordinate to U.S. imperialism.

It will take time for workers and farmers in Haiti to absorb the lessons of this setback and, through experiences in struggle, develop a political leadership of their own. In this process, one vital lesson that will be drawn is that our class can never look to any imperialist government as an ally, nor to some capitalist figure or party representing the employer class. Working people will only be able to get rid of all the exploiters, foreign and domestic, by organizing their struggles independently of the employers, and charting a program that does not simply oppose the existing order but offers a strategy to replace it with one in the interests of the producing classes.

That is how the July 26 Movement and Rebel Army of Cuba were able to lead working people in their millions to overthrow a U.S.-backed dictatorship in 1959 and carry out a socialist revolution, successfully defending their revolutionary gains for the past 45 years.

Working people in the United States and around the world should join with our Haitian brothers and sisters in demanding:

U.S., French, and Canadian troops out of Haiti now!

Cancel Haiti’s foreign debt to the imperialist bankers!

Stop the U.S. government’s arrests and detentions of Haitian immigrants and refugees!
 
 
Related article:
Haiti: U.S. gov’t seeks to patch together new regime in wake of rightist takeover  
 
 
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