This month marks the 100th anniversary of the U.S. bosses’ first occupation of Haiti. The Haitian rulers and their international masters are celebrating a century of imperialist plunder with a CARIFESTA, a Caribbean Festival of Arts. But Haitian workers and students are fed up! U.S. imperialism has created the recurrent crises that have plagued the Haitian working class since 1915, including the current wave of racist expulsions of workers of Haitian descent from the Dominican Republic (see front page).
Which leads to some questions: How do the imperialists maintain their domination? And, most important: Is a communist-led working class ready to abolish this brutal exploitation?
Betrayal and Slave Labor
The twenty-year U.S. occupation of Haiti (1915-1934), backed by the local Haitian ruling class, was part of a regional imperialist strategy. In 1898, the U.S. annexed Cuba and Puerto Rico as spoils of the Spanish-American War. In 1910, after failing in previous attempts to take over Haiti and the Dominican Republic, U.S. rulers used the Rockefeller-owned National City Bank to lend large sums and gain a controlling interest in the Banque Nationale d’Haïti. The U.S. plan was for Haiti to use these funds to pay off its crushing debt to France, compensation for France’s loss of slaves and other property in Haiti’s revolt for independence (1791-1804). In return, France would recognize Haiti as a sovereign republic—and reduce European influence in what the U.S. considered its own backyard since the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. Then, in 1914, the U.S. opened the Panama Canal to control critical shipping routes.
On July 28, 1915, under the cover of protecting U.S. lives, businesses and property from the instability of Haitian politics, a battalion of 330 U.S. Marines debarked in Port-au-Prince and marched to take over the Banque Nationale d’Haïti and the Customs Office. With the U.S. ruling class effectively in control of the Haitian state and economy, the Haitian constitution was rewritten to permit foreign nationals to legally own property. The imperialists also established the corvée, literally kidnapping rural residents for slave labor to build roads, railroads and other infrastructure. The Marines administered provincial governments and dressed as officers (with second salaries) of the newly formed Haitian national police force, or Gendarmerie. Many of the Marines were Southerners and avowed racists. They vigorously carried out the racist policies of U.S. imperialism, including rape and theft.
Rebels vs. Racketeers
They were not unopposed, however. Rural fighters known as Cacos, who had rebelled for decades against the abuses of the grandons, or local landowners, picked up arms once again and for years fought a valiant guerrilla war against the Marines. But they were outnumbered and outgunned, and restricted to small-scale acts of resistance.
The formal U.S. occupation lasted until 1934. In 1935, Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler exposed the role of U.S. imperialism in Haiti and elsewhere in a speech and booklet titled “War Is a Racket.” Butler admitted that he was a “high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. I was a racketeer for capitalism.”
The real occupation of Haiti continues to this day. With the collaboration of the local Haitian bosses, the U.S. Embassy continues to call all the shots. It directs rigged elections through the Organization of American States. It determines how the capitalists exploit workers through CARICOM, the Caribbean Community and Common Market. The all-powerful arm of imperialism generates the political and economic crises that have made Haiti the poorest country in the Americas.
Two Languages, Same People
The working class of Haiti has a long and proud history of fighting back. Haitian slaves defied the slaveholders and colonialists and freed themselves from chattel slavery in 1794, 69 years before revolts and civil war compelled U.S. rulers to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1804, Haiti’s workers won a hard-fought battle for independence, only to become wage slaves of the capitalist class and their local lackeys.
The capitalist bosses, whether based in the U.S. or France or Canada, have created the current crisis that is forcing Haitian-Dominicans from the Dominican Republic. The capitalists feed off anti-Haitian racism to justify their continued domination of Haiti and the super-exploitation of workers identified as Haitian. They use the Dominican Republic to further their accumulation of wealth.
Even more devastating to the working class, the rulers use racism to sow disunity between Haitian and Dominican workers, who are the same people with different languages. This racist divide-and-conquer strategy hurts workers in both sides of the island. The capitalist strategy is clear: to prevent workers from uniting to fight their common enemy.
Smash All Bosses, Big and Small
On July 28, Haitian workers and students must commemorate one hundred years of U.S. occupation by organizing a sustained fightback against racism and exploitive free trade zones. Fight the imperialists, local capitalists and their lackeys.
We must fight against hunger and for clean water, affordable housing, and free and decent education and health care. Most important, workers in Haiti and elsewhere must build their revolutionary communist party—the Progressive Labor Party—to once and for all smash the profit system and transform society into a communist world, where workers rule the earth.
Forget CARIFESTA! We stand on the shoulders of giants! Fight for communism today and every day! Build PLP!