PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI, June 29 — Led by Progressive Labor Party and friends, more than two hundred State University of Haiti (UEH) students took to the streets yesterday, turning a demonstration against fee hikes into a fight against imperialism and capitalist inequality.
The immediate struggle was sparked on June 24, when the UEH executive counsel announced a 200 percent fee hike for college entrance exams. Students quickly organized. Fifty people blocked traffic and broke gates and windows at the administration building. Students marched through UEH’s 11 metropolitan campuses, chanting, “The State University of Haiti will not be privatized!” They banged the gates of each campus to announce their arrival and painted slogans on walls as they marched through. U.S. students have much to learn from the militancy of these young fighters, and from their potential to build a communist movement.
At the medical school campus, protesters forced open the gate. Fifteen medical students in white lab coats joined the march in a show of unity against the ruling class. They shouted, “State University is of the working class; this is the result of the mass struggles!” They were referring to the long history of militant fightback at UEH, from an uprising against fascist dictator Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier to the struggle against the United Nations’ “stabilization” troops (MINUSTAH) who brought cholera to Haiti.
Fraud 101
UEH is the main public university for Haiti’s working-class students. The entrance fee hike is an attack on rural and city workers and a move to exclude them from higher education. In a country where nearly half of all adults are illiterate, students already face intense competition to get into college. (At the UEH medical school, there are 100 seats for 6,000 applicants.) Those left out are at high risk of joining Haiti’s 80 percent unemployed and underemployed.
As they marched toward the administration building, students spray-painted every government vehicle in sight. They tore down the advertisement for the “Darling Mother” fraud, a phantom government program that diverts funding to pay off the bosses’ cronies. Students approached tents of street vendors, bus passengers, and passersby with a class-conscious message: “The working class can’t send their sons and daughters to college. We already have no work or wage. The government wants us to pay for their debts. Students are demonstrating once again they are aware that a fight against the state is a fight against the bourgeoisie!”
Arriving at the administration building, the students found that the bosses had shut the gates in fear. Protesters denounced the administration, threw stones, smashed windows, and broke open the gates. The courtyard was empty. The administrators had fled, but not before calling the cops. Students put large stones down the road to slow the police. As the protesters retreated from the cops, they kept chanting.
On their way, they ripped up a street poster of Haitian President Michel Martelly and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Maduro visited the city this week to strengthen Haiti-Venezuela relations through the PetroCaribe fund, an alliance based on the exchange of food for oil. Under the agreement, Haiti has used millions of dollars from PetroCaribe to pay for fuel and repave the airport runway, renaming it after Venezuela’s phony-leftist late president, Hugo Chavez. Meanwhile, Martelly skimmed millions of dollars in kickbacks from funding for social programs. Be it Haiti, Venezuela, Bangladesh, or South Africa, the capitalist state can never serve workers’ interests. It uses its courts and police thugs to protect capital, legalize theft, pacify workers, and quell rebellions.
When the police caught up with the protesters, they threw tear gas and shot into the crowd, which threw rocks and tear gas canisters back at them. The cowardly cops targeted student leaders by shooting them in the back and neck with rubber bullets, and also kidnapped two women nearly unconscious from the gas. Protesters alerted the crowd and barricaded the streets, demanding the students’ release. After several hours of battle by the police station, they were freed.
Smashing the Bosses’ Schools
At a mass assembly the next morning, most students agreed the demonstration was successful. But some believed it was not militant enough, and most agreed the struggle should be expanded to the whole working class. Students made a list of demands, including refunds of exam fees to those not admitted, a more political curriculum, and UEH’s return to its bylaws to support “the community in the struggle for progress.” Others called for a more global analysis of the struggle against imperialism. A planning leadership committee was created.
So begins a potential long-term struggle. UEH students can be won to understand that all universities, public or private, are ruling-class institutions. No commitment to “progressive” bylaws can fundamentally change these factories for capitalist ideology. They must be destroyed. Our fight is not merely for reform, but to build a world where education is designed by and for the working class.