Tracing the roots of Haiti’s US-sponsored troubles

Because the summer of 2018, Haiti has been the scene of massive protests, demonstrating against the social conditions worrying people since August 22 of this 12 months, and likewise against the federal government’s request for foreign intervention within the country. 

The interim president of the island, Ariel Henry, relayed his government’s intent to ask for international assistance to handle the situation after writing to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to implement a military intervention through the organization. On the tenth of October, Guterres accepted the request and asked the international community for military aid to assist bring Haiti back on its feet. 

Shortly after Henry’s request, the US government sent a delegation to Haiti to revise the situation. On October 17, the UN Security Council convened to debate a suggestion by the US and Mexico to deploy non-UN troops, afterward announcing the imposition of sanctions against what they called leaders of “gangs”.

The US and Canada have been shipping military equipment to Haiti for “security” reasons, including armored vehicles utilized by police against “criminal gangs”. It was reported that until October 28, Haiti was receiving additional weaponry. 

The trace-back to where it began

1791 is the 12 months that the black enslaved people of Haiti executed the primary black revolution and in 1804, established the primary Black Republic within the Western Hemisphere. For the following 218 years, self-determination, social justice, and socioeconomic independence remained on the highest of the Haitian people’s agenda as they struggled against occupation, instability, US intervention, government corruption, natural disasters, and the payment of reparations to their former enslavers. 

Read more: Haiti, Wounded Mother

In accordance with a Latest York Times article in May 2022, Haiti took a loss of roughly $115 million, eight times the dimensions of its economy in 2020. Prior to invading the island, the US stole $500,000 value of gold from the National Bank of Haiti, transported the gold via the USS Machias, which ended up within the vault of what’s now Citibank. Later, the island took an ever deeper loss by the hands of dictator and US-backed Francois Duvalier, referred to as “Papa Doc”, and his son Jean-Claude Duvalier “Baby Doc”, from 1957 to 1986.

One other US-led mess got here together with coups against Haiti’s president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, first in 1991 and in 2004 after flooding the country with US-grown rice, which sold for less expensive than locally-grown. 

The Canada-Haiti Information Project reported that since 1995, greater than $13 billion in subsidies has been given by the US to US rice farmers, keeping its prices significantly lower than rice produced by Haitian farmers – that put Haitian farmers at a loss because they can not compete with a disproportionate agreement that ultimately forces lots of them out of business.

To counteract this, Haiti tried to boost the minimum wage to satisfy the prevailing social conditions, but US intervention once more blocked that from happening. Nonetheless, the PetroCaribe Agreement established in 2005 by Venezuela under the late President Hugo Chávez offered reasonably priced prices for petroleum products, in an try and strengthen socio-economic development.

Haiti was an element of that agreement but because the US had sanctions imposed on Venezuela, it wasn’t possible for Haiti to participate, nor to learn from it.

The following crises in Haiti usually are not a results of the “criminal gang” activity but of the US-backed and Western-puppeteered coups and interventions that continually drive the island into chaos. Haiti is battling food insecurity, high inflation and fuel shortages, and the tip of foreign interference and intervention in the inner affairs. 

The persons are also demanding the resignation of interim president Ariel Henry on account of his incapability of resolving the socio-economic crisis he vowed to handle.