Essential The Official Contemporary Haitian Geopolitics/Event thread

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Haiti and America Latina: It is as it always was

by Kevin Pina


Originally published in Race & Class, Vol. 49, No. 2, 100-108 (2007)


Abstract: The Bush administration forcibly removed democratically elected Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide as a power sharing deal with his political opposition was being brokered in 2004. This led to Haiti’s expulsion from the Caribbean Community and swift condemnation by the African Union. The imposition of the US-backed interim government of Gerard Latortue resulted in the rape, torture and false imprisonment of thousands of ordinary Haitians. The sole Latin American country to condemn the US led action in Haiti was Venezuela while other countries and organisations like the Organization of American States (OAS) were coerced or outright bought off to support the 2004 coup through a massive programme of civilian and military funding by the US. Keywords: African Union, CARICOM, covert action, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Organization of American States, Port-au-Prince, UN, US military

Now that we have finally passed through the cycle where the American public, by virtue of 9/11, gives the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt in Iraq, it is perhaps time to re-examine one of their other dirty, little wars – in Haiti. Although the Bush administration’s actions in Haiti have received the legitimacy of a UN Security Council resolution and the support of the ‘international community’, they have resulted in the murder, torture, rape and false imprisonment of thousands of Haitians since 29 February 2004. It was on that date that the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was forced on to a plane and unceremoniously shipped off to the Central African Republic.

The Bush administration and its allies in Latin America justified the removal of Aristide as necessary. Their official line, issued through the Organization of American States (OAS), was that Aristide had to leave Haiti to avoid bloodshed. They claimed he had lost the support of the Haitian people and was facing a popular uprising. They further claimed that he had voluntarily resigned his office and requested their help to leave the country.

Soon after, Aristide made it clear to the world that he had been taken out of Haiti against his will. US marines showed up at his doorstep the very moment his government was about to receive a resupply of weaponry and ammunition, provided by the government of South Africa at the request of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). The timing of his physical removal and relocation to a former French colony in central Africa ensured that his government would never have the means to defend itself. This version of events has since been corroborated by former Haitian prime minister Yvon Neptune who later spent more than two years in a Haitian jail under the US-installed government that took power after Aristide’s ouster.

The response of the other fourteen nations of CARICOM was swift: they expelled Haiti from the organisation and refused to recognise the US-installed regime of Gerard Latortue. They were joined by the 51 member states of the African Union (AU) in refusing to extend diplomatic recognition and demanded an immediate and thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding Aristide’s removal. The only Latin American nation to join them in this diplomatic action was Venezuela, the same government nearly decapitated in a similar Bush administration stratagem in 2002.

US marines, Canadian Special Forces and the French Foreign Legion were on the ground well before the 29 February 2004 ouster of Aristide. Immediately following the coup, under a UN banner called the Multinational Interim Force (MIF), these foreign armies waged a lightning campaign to pacify the country. In the days that followed, the US marines controlled the capital allowing paramilitary death squad (who had invaded Haiti in previous weeks from the Dominican Republic) to go on killing sprees in poor neighbourhoods resisting Aristide’s ouster. The MIF imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew but turned a blind eye when these paramilitary forces used the cover of darkness to indiscriminately strafe neighborhoods like Cite Soleil, La Saline, Bèl Air, Martissaint and other communities with automatic weapons.

 

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On 12 March 2004, US marines launched a major military operation against the poor neighborhood of Bèl Air, where residents had held daily street protests demanding Aristide’s return and an end to the 2004 coup. According to video interviews taken with survivors the next day, the blood ran so thick in the streets that fire trucks were called to hose them down before dawn. These survivors also reported they saw many corpses placed into black body bags by US marines and hauled away for disposal in the back of large trucks.

During this same period international outcry and resistance to the ouster of Haiti’s constitutional government came from CARICOM and the AU even as regional Latin American organisations such as the OAS and the Rio Group (RG) supported the Bush administration’s position justifying Aristide’s ouster. In fact, the OAS and RG would change from mere tacit support for Bush’s policy by joining a US led move in the United Nations to invoke a rare Chapter 7 intervention in Haiti. US-trained generals and commanders from the armies of Brazil, Argentina and Chile would enthusiastically assume leadership of yet another brutal military occupation of Haiti. On 1 June 2004, the UN military invasion of Haiti replaced the MIF and was launched by the armies of Brazil, Argentina and Chile, with responsibility for command and control assigned to Brazilian commanders.

Before addressing the possible motives of the OAS and the RG in backing the Bush administration in Haiti, a closer look at the reasons behind the positions of CARICOM and the AU is in order. While Venezuela’s reasons are more easily understood, CARICOM’s interests in leading the isolation of the US-installed regime and supporting Aristide are not.

What is rarely mentioned these days is that CARICOM had reached the end of its patience with the Bush administration in the months preceding 29 February 2004. It had worked closely with the constitutional government in Haiti to give the so-called opposition something that it could never earn at the ballot box, namely, power sharing. Aristide’s government argued that the so-called opposition was really window dressing for an initiative largely funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and France, through the European Union (EU). CARICOM specifically pointed the finger at USAID and the Democracy Enhancement Project financed by the US government. The Aristide administration also gave evidence of the role of these countries’ embassies in supporting opposition demonstrations demanding the president’s resignation. Despite this evidence, CARICOM convinced Aristide to agree to a power-sharing agreement that would give the opposition control of the prime minister’s office and all the positions of the cabinet. Again, this was a position of power in Haitian politics that the opposition, nurtured by foreign largesse against Aristide, could never have won at the ballot box.

 

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The governments of the US, France and Canada worked behind the scenes to sabotage CARICOM’s initiatives. They succeeded in scuttling these efforts but it was clear that their surrogates could not sustain the momentum to force Aristide out. So-called “pposition demonstrations” demanding Aristide’s resignation had dwindled to a few hundred raucous voices in the streets of the capital in early February 2004. A massive demonstration on 7 February, demanding Aristide fulfil his five-year mandate, swelled to several hundred thousand in the capital, dwarfing any previous opposition rallies by comparison.

Suddenly, the door to compromise was closed forever as paramilitary forces led by US-trained police commander Guy Philippe attacked Haiti from the Dominican Republic revealing the true face of the 2004 coup. CARICOM diplomats and Haiti-watchers knew that these forces enjoyed the tacit and overt support of the US through the military of the Dominican Republic. It would have been impossible for these paramilitaries to use DR territory for their training camps and to procure the large weaponry they were using against the Haitian police without direct cover of the US Embassy and support from the CIA. An editorial in the Jamaica Gleaner on 4 March 2004 summed it up best:

“It is curious that rather than placing pressure on the opposition to respect the tenets of democracy, Messrs. [Colin] Powell, [Dominique] de Villepin, and [Bill] Graham, quickly acquiesced. But worse, they turned the screws on Aristide. Noticeably, too, the insurgency, led by former death-squad leaders and coup planners, erupted after Aristide declared – for the second time – that he would embrace the power-sharing agreement.”

So, in the end, CARICOM expended a large investment of political capital to aid the constitutional government to broker a settlement with what was arguably a foreign-funded and foreign-backed opposition in Haiti. The fact that the triumvirate of the US, France and Canada never had any intention of allowing their Haitian surrogates to end the crisis was not lost on CARICOM. It was for this reason that its members felt justified in expelling Haiti from the organisation and leading the effort to diplomatically isolate the US-installed government that followed.

 

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President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa was closely watching events in Haiti throughout this period. He had had his own experiences with the so-called opposition in Haiti when he attended the country’s bicentennial celebrations in January 2004. Mbeki clearly saw that the opposition forces were being led by Haiti’s economic elites, who owned most of the radio, television and print media in the country. He and his staff were aghast as they watched, heard and read the most outlandish statements and rumours broadcast and written about his visit. Mbeki was overheard, during an official state dinner, saying to one of his diplomats: ‘Opposition? These people can only be described as crazy and unreasonable.’

After the bloodthirsty paramilitaries crossed into Haiti from the Dominican Republic and began attacking police stations and taking over townships, CARICOM requested that the government of South Africa provide assistance to the Haitian police. Mbeki responded by dispatching a cargo plane of weapons and ammunition to Haiti on 27 February 2004. At the very moment the plane was refuelling in Kingston, Jamaica, US marines, led by CIA station chief Luis Moreno, entered Aristide’s residence and gave him an ultimatum. He could get on a plane to leave Haiti or they would clear the way for the paramilitaries to enter the capital. He was told the bloodletting would be on his hands and that he would most likely be killed.

President Aristide had already seen the writing on the wall. Two of the last calls he reportedly made before Moreno showed up on his doorstep were to Jamaican President P. J. Patterson and President Mbeki. He told them that the Bush administration was urging him to resign and that the US embassy had made it plain that the South African shipment for the police would never be allowed to leave Jamaica. He also said his conversations with them had included a veiled threat of violence.

As soon as it became clear that Aristide was being taken out, Patterson and Mbeki mobilised to ensure that CARICOM and the AU would speak with one clear voice and position. Whatever government the US used to replace Aristide would not receive diplomatic recognition from their member states and an investigation into the circumstances of Aristide’s ouster would be demanded.

The OAS was already bought off and predisposed to accept the Bush administration’s claim that Aristide had left Haiti of his own volition. The regional group had already allowed itself to rubber-stamp an earlier smear campaign to taint the Aristide government’s reputation.

This was exactly the role played by the OAS in 2000–2003 under the leadership and influence of US diplomatic hit-men like Otto Reich, Luigi Einaudi, Lino Gutierrez and Roger Noriega. The most scandalous example of this was the OAS laying the blame for an attempted coup on 17 December 2001 on the victim. After a military assault force failed to take over Haiti’s national palace, a frightened and angry population went on a rampage and attacked the opposition, which claimed that Aristide had orchestrated the whole affair. The OAS agreed and, adding insult to injury, forced the cash-strapped government of Haiti to pay reparations to the opposition. By any objective accounting of the evidence that has surfaced since, including public admissions by paramilitary commander Guy Philippe, the opposition was probably complicit in the attack. In May 2007, Philippe corroborated long-held suspicions that leading opposition figures Evans Paul and Andre Apaid had provided funds and logistical support to his paramilitary organisation.1 The so-called ‘peaceful’ opposition to Aristide had allegedly worked in concert with the paramilitaries in the Dominican Republic to oust Aristide.

To better understand the role and position of the OAS, we should never forget the amount of aid its member states and their respective militaries receive through Pentagon funding, via InternationalMilitary Education and Training (IMET) and Foreign Military Financing (FMF). Military aid to Latin America is estimated to have increased to US$122 million, more than thirty-four times its year 2000 levels.2 Beyond military aid, there is annual Foreign Aid and Assistance programmes of nearly a billion dollars, not to mention the thousands of NGOs involved in every facet of social and economic ‘development’ in the region.

Therein may lie one of the answers to why the nations of Latin America provided cover and troops for the Bush administration’s policy in Haiti. It helps to explain why a number of apparently progressive governments have provided troops to the UN occupation forces in Haiti. They must appease their militaries and, by extension, the Pentagon or the same machine of destabilisation might turn against them. It is a reality all leaders of Latin America and the Caribbean have had to face since the Monroe Doctrine.

 

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Moreover, the present-day collusion of the US-led ‘international community’ against Haiti has a long history. Since its independence in 1804, Haiti has been treated as a pariah state – punished, in effect, for mounting the world’s only successful slave revolution. Two centuries ago, the US and its primary allies were slave-holding nations whose economic development depended upon trade in human chattels. The US senate of 1806 reflected this when it called Haiti the ‘greatest threat to US interests at home and abroad’ – a declaration which actually displayed uncanny foresight, as the example of Haiti would, ultimately, be cited by the likes of Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser and John Brown as inspiration for their like-minded slave revolts on US territory. Haiti’s existence established an institutional fear in the halls of US power that would lead to a crippling economic blockade of the country that lasted for more than half a century.

Compounding the effects of the US embargo, in 1825, France demanded that Haiti repay its former coloniser for the ‘property’ of slave owners that France lost as a result of the Haitian revolution. This indemnity payment left Haiti with a staggering debt, which it was still repaying after the first world war. Haiti was not recognised by the US until 1862, when Frederick Douglass became the first US ambassador to Haiti. In the lead-up to the bicentennial in 2004, Haiti’s President Jean-Bertrand Aristide demanded that France repay the sum the former slaveholders had wrested from Haiti in 1825 – which, he calculated, amounted, with inflation and interest, to over US$21 billion.

France responded with hostility, leading calls, which were joined by the US and Canadian governments, for Aristide to leave office. Beyond the well-known machinations of the self-professed leaders of the free world in the North, Latin America has never embraced Haiti as the symbol of freedom and liberty she should rightfully be. Eduardo Galeano, whom I deeply admire, best sums up the perception of Haiti in America Latina in a famous poem: In the French Caribbean islands, history books present Napoleon as the most admirable warrior of the West. In these islands, Napoleon restored slavery in 1802. With fire and sword, he forced the free blacks back into slavery on the plantations. Of this, the texts make no mention. The blacks are Napoleon’s grandchildren.3

Did Galeano not know that the great Haitian general Jean-Jacques Dessalines lined up French officers and urinated in their faces before sending them to the gallows? ‘Koupe tet! Boule Kay’ (cut off their heads and burn their houses) was his kreyol battle cry and most Haitians today would identify more with that sentiment than any offers of returning to slavery. The Haitians today are the children of Dessalines, not the grandchildren of Napoleon – he would have to run for his life to survive their ire. Latin American brothers and sisters wanting to understand Haiti should be concerned with its history and context. Had not Haiti offered arms and support to Simon Bolivar at a crucial moment to deliver the independence of Latin America?

 

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The template for US repression in America Latina had been established in Haiti nearly fifteen years before the gringos kidnapped and assassinated Sandino in Nicaragua and hunted down Farabundo Marti in El Salvador in the 1930s. US marines kidnapped and assassinated Haitian resistance leader Charlemagne Peralte and killed more than 10,000 Haitians before they preyed upon the rest of the region.

Beginning in 1915, the US marines committed a scorched earth policy, and massacres in Haiti were meant to set an example for the rest of America Latina and the Caribbean in the decades that followed. We must never forget the common history America Latina shares with the black former slaves of Haiti.

Returning to the present, we find the armies of Brazil, Chile and Argentina leading a military force that occupies Haiti under the banner of the UN. Isn’t it miraculous how these three countries, with historically the most heinous records of human rights abuses in the western hemisphere, are transformed into ‘peacekeepers’ by virtue of a UN Security Council resolution, sponsored by the Bush administration? The truth is that a strong case can be made that these militaries are more beholden to the Pentagon than to their own civilian leadership. Research how much money these militaries still receive in arms and training from the Pentagon and study their participation in a supra-regional military command structure to combat terrorism.4 The chain of command leads to the Southern Command of the Pentagon not to Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Buenos Aires or any other capital in the region.

 

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More importantly, there is a direct parallel between the military tactics utilised by UN forces under the command of Brazilian generals in Haiti and similar military operations in their own country. These are the same commanders who order soldiers to open fire in the favelas of Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro. A 2005 Amnesty International report on the ‘death squads’ of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo explains that when the Brazilian military police forces ‘intervene in favelas, it is often by mounting ‘‘invasions’’ – violent mass raids using no warrants or, on rare occasions, collective warrants that label the entire community as criminal. The majority of the victims of police violence are poor, black or mixed-race youths.’ 5 Similar tactics in Haiti have resulted in several high-profile massacres committed in the poor slum of Cite´ Soleil, where protestors challenged the UN’s authority by continuing to launch massive demonstrations demanding the return of President Aristide. In each instance, the entire community was demonised by the UN and the elite-run Haitian press as being criminals and gangsters and/or collaborators of criminals and gangsters. While it is true that armed gangs operated in the neighbourhood and a few claimed they were aligned with Aristide’s Lavalas movement, these military raids had a clear correlation to the ongoing demonstrations.

It is as it always was in America Latina and the Caribbean. The power of the US consumes all national dignity and sovereignty. Yet we know the Haitian people have earned their true name and reputation from Dessalines as a symbol of liberty and freedom in the world. They are dreaded by many and loved by few in the halls of power throughout the world. Bolivar understood this after Haitians offered him arms and assistance to liberate his continent from the yoke of Spanish colonialism. Unfortunately, the governments of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Uruguay, among others, continue to pretend that they are acting in the best interests of the Haitian people as they dutifully fulfil Bush’s policy under the guise of a baby-blue banner. Can they really believe that their civilian leadership will have more control over their own militaries once they return home from Bush’s misadventures in Haiti?

Kevin Pina is an independent journalist and filmmaker based in Port-au-Prince. An associate editor of the Black Commentator, he also founded the alternative news agency, Haiti Information Project.

References

1 ‘Guy Philippe fait des re´ve´lations embarrassantes’, Le Nouvelliste (31 May 2007), <http://www.lenouvelliste.com/article.php?PubID=1&ArticleID=44223>.

2 Frida Berrigan and Jonathan Wingo, The Bush Effect: US military involvement in Latin America rises, development and humanitarian aid fall (World Policy Institute, 4 November 2005), <http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/MilitaryAid LA110405.html>.

3 Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces (New York, W. W. Norton, June 1973). 4 See <http://www.southcom.mil/AppsSC/pages/exOps.php>.

5 ‘They come in shooting’: policing socially excluded communities (Amnesty International, 2 December 2005), <http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR190252005>.

link:
HaitiandAmericaLatina-itisasitalwayswas

 

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Old 2005 article on how certain "left" orgs cause confusion between progressives abroad by misleading them about the situation inside the country. these type of "left" groups always have the habit of always supporting who Washington back

 

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Supporting a Leftist Opposition to Lavalas: The AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center and the Batay Ouvriye

the narcosphere, Nov 18th, 2005

For many activists, academics, and labor historians in the 1980's the AFL-CIO became referred to as the AFL-CIA. Founded in 1961 the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) was the AFL-CIO's foreign organizing wing for Latin America and the Caribbean. Along with its counterparts in Africa, Asia, and Europe, AIFLD was used to undermine leftist trade movements, support dictators such as the Duvalier's and back military coups in Chile and Brazil.

Throughout the Cold War, the CIA heavily infiltrated AIFLD, as discussed in Phillip Agee's 1984 whistle blower Inside the Company: CIA Diary. Agee fingered Serafino Romauldi as being involved in AIFLD throughout the 1940's, 50's, and 60's as a known CIA asset heading up AIFLD at one point. In 1984, with 'Baby Doc' Jean-Claude Duvalier's consent the Federation des Ouvriers Syndiques (FOS) was founded as a conservative pro-business union with the assistance of AIFLD.

Following the departure of 'Baby Doc,' the State Department feared radical labor unrest in Haiti so it increased funding for the FOS. In June of 1986, the State Department, at a White House briefing for the chief executive officers of major corporations, requested AIFLD's involvement in Haiti because "of the presence of radical labor unions and the high risk that other unions may become radicalized".1 Members of Duvalier's secret police and the Tonton Macoutes heavily infiltrated the FOS.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) provided funding, often funneled through AIFLD, to Haitian unions such as the Conféderation Autonome des Travailleurs Haïtiens (CATH) and the FOS. According to Thomas Carothers in his 1994 article, "The Ned at 10", the National Endowment for Democracy "believed that democracy promotion was a necessary means of fighting communism and that, given sensitivities about U.S. government intervention abroad, such work could best be done by an organization that was not part of the government."

During the first 7 months of the Aristide administration (before the Cédras coup), CATH under the sway of Auguste Mesyeux held a campaign of demonstrations against the government known as the Vent de Tempête (Wind of the Storm). This was the first attempt to put pressure on the Aristide government, mounted by a U.S. funded union. In March of 1992, following the first coup against Aristide and a brief suspension of funding, AIFLD reactivated its $900,000 program supporting conservative unions in Haiti. Beth Sims in her 1992 policy report "Populism, Conservatism, and Civil Society in Haiti," writes "CATH was once a militant, anti-Duvalierist federation", but in 1990 a conservative wing took over with backing from AIFLD.

Following increasing criticism over its international organizing activities the AFL-CIO disbanded AIFLD and its counterparts, and created in their place the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), more commonly known as the Solidarity Center, in 1997, supposedly giving a new face to its international organizing campaigns. The Solidarity Center, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, was launched with the goal of "work[ing] with unions and community groups worldwide to achieve equitable, sustainable, democratic development and to help men and women everywhere stand up for their rights and improve their living and working standards."2 Attempting to wipe away its dirty Cold War history, the AFL-CIO had grouped together its former four regional institutes, including AIFLD, under one roof.

 

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As pointed out in Harry Kelber's six-part series, the "AFL-CIO's Dark Past," the Solidarity Center employed many past AIFLD members such as Harry Kamberis, a former Department of State employee who had been involved in fighting leftist unions in South Korea and the Philippines.3 The Solidarity Center also funneled over $154,000 to the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV), a right wing union, which led a strike in 2002 attempting to overthrow the democratically elected government of President Hugo Chavez. Between 1997 and 2001 the NED provided $587,926 to the Solidarity Center. Kim Scipes, an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Purdue University and a leading critique of the Solidarity Center, argues that while "considerable evidence that AFL-CIO foreign operations have worked hand in hand with the CIA, or that AFL-CIO foreign operations have benefited U.S. foreign policy as a whole or supported initiatives by the White House or the State Department" it has been a top ranking group within the AFL-CIO that have guided foreign operations, refusing to report on their operations to rank and files members.4 The murky tradition of subverting democratically elected governments during the cold war would continue on with the Solidarity Center.

The Solidarity Center (ACILS) would approach labor organizing in Haiti from a different angle than its predecessor, AIFLD. During much of 2000 and 2001 the Solidarity Center refused to operate in Haiti. Yonnas Kefle, the labor attaché at the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince, from February 2000 to October 2001, explains, "I tried to involve the Solidarity Center but they refused to work in Haiti at this time."

With USAID funding as its primary income source for its projects in Haiti, the Solidarity Center, by 2004, had restarted operations in Haiti, cooperating with a union that had strong leftist credentials, the Batay Ouvriye.

In 2003 the Solidarity Center engaged in a NED-funded study of labor conditions in Haiti; analyzing the history of the domestic labor movement, women in the work force, rural labor codes, and the debate over reforming the aging labor codes.5 The study utilized Solidarity Center interviews with the Batay Ouvriye that predated to 1999. The study failed to critically analyze the role of USAID and the U.S. in supporting sanctions against the Haitian government in 2001, which was a prime factor for the shortfall of payments to the public workforce and leverage used towards the Free Trade Zone Initiative. The study, entitled "Unequal Equation: The Labor Code and Worker Rights in Haiti," while putting forward many important points in regards to the antiquated labor codes, relied heavily on interviews with the Batay Ouvriye, the formerly Duvalier sponsored Federation des Ouvriers Syndiques (FOS), and the formerly AIFLD-supported Conféderation Autonome des Travailleurs Haïtiens (CATH).

 

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Batay Ouvriye in Kreyòl translates roughly as the "worker's struggle." Since 1994, Batay Ouvriye has been associated with organizing sweatshop workers and others in Haiti, where some of the most exploitative and low wage garment industry jobs exist in the entire Western Hemisphere. Not a formal union, the Batay Ouvriye calls itself a "workers organization." Originally initiated as an office space in Port-Au-Prince for organizing workers in 1994, the Batay Ouvriye Federation was founded in May of 2002.

Organized upon anarcho-syndicalist principles, the Batay Ouvriye has had a clear ideological line of advocating for the control of industry and government by federations of labor unions through the use of direct action, such as sabotage and general strikes. Ideologically opposed to working with or under any form of government, the Batay Ouvriye has focused its attention primarily on organizing workers in the garment industry. Syndicalism has long existed as a revolutionary political strain in the Caribbean as discussed in Frank Fernandez 2001 book "Cuban Anarchism." Running contrary to it's own ideology the Battay Ouvriye leadership in 2004 began accepting monetary aid and oversight from a foreign government, the United States, and it's foreign labor operative, the Solidarity Center.

So what would the Solidarity Center want with a radical syndicalist union in Haiti? How could the Solidarity Center justify to its State Department and USAID oversight the funding of such an organization? The Solidarity Center's support for the Batay Ouvriye seemed a far cry from it's predecessor AIFLD's approach in working with conservative unions such as the CATH and the FOS.


The Batay Ouvriye had numerous victories in organizing against multinationals, which were exploiting Haiti's cheap labor. In the weeks before the February 2004 coup, the Solidarity Center and Batay Ouvriye's sub-grantee Sokowa were deeply involved in a campaign against Grupo M, a company that sold to U.S.-based companies Levi Strauss and Sara Lee. In December 2004, 300 workers at the Codevi Free Trade Zone in northeastern Haiti had been out of work for six months as a result of their attempts to form a union. As Batay stated in an October 1st statement, that "amongst others.$3,500" was channeled to Sokowa by the Solidarity Center to help the fired workers.

 

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Throughout 2004, the Sokowa Union underwent a labor struggle in the Grupo M factories in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. While Sokowa sought much-needed wage increases for its workers, Groupo M threatened to close down its CODEVI free trade zone. Work stoppages were held in response and a campaign to pressure Grupo M into negotiation, in which the Workers Rights Consortium and the Solidarity Center were successful contributors. On February 5, 2005, Sokowa and Grupo M negotiated a contract. In a March 2005 report, Charles Arthur of the Haiti Support Group, a key Batay Ouvriye backer in Europe, stated, "The US Solidarity Center is co-coordinating some low-key pressure on Michael Kobori, Levi's Global Code of Conduct director, to let him know of concerns relating to Levi's non-action on increasing orders."6

But for all its good work in organizing in the garment industry, one important theme separated Batay Ouvriye from the majority of popular organizations in Haiti. Batay Ouvriye was adamantly and ideologically opposed to any cooperation with the Aristide government, or for that matter any leftist or populist government that was democratically elected. With its backing for the Batay Ouvriye, the Solidarity Center was able to kill two birds with one stone. (1) The Solidarity Center was able to claim the credentials of supporting a legitimate labor struggle to organize workers in Haiti's miserable garment industry. (2) While simultaneously supporting a group that adamantly opposed and organized against the largest and most popular party of the poor in Haiti, Fanmi Lavalas, a pariah for Haiti overseers at the U.S. Department of State.

The U.S. Department of State has oversight on all "democratic enhancement" funding, which is funneled through USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives into groups such as the Solidarity Center. Gerry Bart, head of the Haiti desk at USAID's main office in Washington, D.C., explains that "it's kind of a negotiation between USAID and the State Department The democratic assistance money comes from the State Department."

 

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Following the 2000 elections and 2001 inauguration of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the Convergence Démocratique (an internationally financed and trained coalition of opposition political parties) pressured the OAS and the international donor community into engaging in sanctions against the elected government of Haiti. While the Aristide administration continually complied with OAS requests, the sanctions held, having a long lasting and harsh effect upon the national and local economies. The capability of the government to pay the wages of its public workforce and come through on many of its goals fell through.

By April, 2002, doctors from the main Port-au-Prince hospital went on strike, and by May teachers went on a one-day strike for more than 13 month's back pay. These 13 months corresponded closely with the cut off of international aid in 2001 to the government. The Bush Administration, using its veto power on the Inter-American Development Bank (IDV) board of directors, blocked the release of already-approved loans for health care, education, and water. $500 million in development assistance and $146 million in loans for water, health, and education were cut off.

The Aristide administration, inheriting a poverty-stricken country burdened with international debt, was forced to take the blame for the effects of the austerity measures that had been pressured, and some would argue imposed, upon it. Emerging economies, such as Argentina's, suffered tremendously from the institution of economic reforms backed by the international financial community. This was a common theme in neo-liberal economic reforms carried out during the 90's, with long lasting effects on much of the developing world. While the Lavalas government was able to resist many of the "reforms" which were being forced on it, this became increasingly difficult in 2001 with the discontinuance of foreign aid to the government, which had long depended on aid for much of its budget.

While the capability of the Haitian government to function properly declined because of these cuts, social unrest increased and international groups such as the Solidarity Center and others began to criticize the Haitian government on a number of issues. Many of the accusations that Solidarity Center made against the Haitian government were problems that stemmed from the actions of their own funding source, USAID and the United States government. Through collecting on out-dated debts to past dictators, pressuring the Haitian government towards the maintenance of low wages, privatization, the firing of half of Haiti's civil servants, and then pushing for the cut-off of nearly all international aid to the Haitian government, the United States and institutions such as the World Bank subjugated the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere to what it called "financial responsibility" and "fiscal austerity measures."
While it was not uncommon for leftists to criticize Aristide, Preval, or Lavalas for cooperating with international reforms, Batay was different in that they refused to coalesce behind the elected government when it faced an openly coordinated and heavily financed campaign of political destabilization led by the U.S. government and other international donors. The international donor community, along with the United States, heavily financed the opposition to Aristide's government, most notably organizations within the Convergence Démocratique and Group 184.

 

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At "training sessions," funded and organized by the International Republican Institute (IRI) in the Dominican Republic throughout 2002, 2003, and early 2004, an opposition to Aristide's government was coordinated and formulated plans to organize, protest, and campaign against the government. Meanwhile a small group of rebels, with connections to the Group 184, CIA, and the death-squad Front pour l'Avancement et le Progrés Haïtien (FRAPH), came out of the Dominican Republic to invade Haiti in January of 2004. With the sovereignty of Haiti under attack, soon after the 2004 coup, the Batay Ouvriye was itself on the U.S. bank roll.

In September 2005, Mario Pierre, a representative of the Batay Ouvriye in New York City, explained that he knew nothing about U.S. funding for his organization. He stated: "The Batay Ouvriye does not receive any funding from the U.S. government." When asked if the Batay Ouvriye might have a leadership or a group of organizers that made these decisions and could be questioned about them, he stated: "The Batay Ouvriye has nothing like that. We have no leaders."

Batay Ouvriye has presented itself as a utopian worker's alternative to Famni Lavalas, the majority political party of the poor in Haiti. Utilizing the example of the Free Trade Zone constructed along Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic, Batay Ouvriye argues, as have others, that the Aristide administration sold out, betraying the popular movements that had voted it into power. As Haïti-Progrès stated in July 2003, the first of seventeen free trade zones was being constructed "near Haiti's northeastern border town of Ouanaminthe, development of what was once the most precious farmland in this barren, hungry corner of the country."

Few observers realized the immense constraints the international community had placed on Haiti in the Debt-For-Development Initiative that was being pushed hard by the U.S. Department of State. The only alternative the government of Haiti had was to continue on, with an unadjusted sky rocketing debt. World Bank officials have explained that the government's inability to pay was compounded by the withdrawal of international aid to the government. While the "international community" ripped apart Haiti like a wild pack of cheetahs, the Aristide government came under increasing domestic criticism.

An underlining dichotomy in Batay's message was their claim at being a democratic organization, representing "small workshops, shantytowns, and peasants," yet opposing all elected government and all elections. A mystery has been the role of its leadership. While its members claim to have no leadership or central structure, from numerous communiqués and interviews, it is obvious that a central leadership does exist within Batay Ouvriye, although an unelected and arguably unaccountable leadership.