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Thousands of angry workers and the unemployed
poured into the streets in over a dozen Haitian cities in April to
protest policies that are taking millions of Haitians to the brink of
starvation. Those policies are being dictated by the U.S.-dominated World
Bank and backed by a U.S. / United Nations occupation force that has
been in Haiti since 1994.
On April 8, crowds attacked the capital’s
National Palace, a symbol of privilege and oppression, shouting,
"We’re hungry. Feed us!" Attempts were made by some
protesters to scale the palace gate. Throughout the day, burning tires
were lit all over town. Food was seized from stores. All private and
government offices were closed for three days.
The rebellion began on April 3 and 4 in Les
Cayes, Haiti’s third largest city, where thousands marched. UN
occupation soldiers, mostly from Uruguay, fired on protesters, some of
whom attacked a UN compound and two trucks. UN forces killed four and
injured 20, according to one local politician.
UN occupation troops mowed down at least six demonstrators in the
capital and other cities. During the protests four UN
"peacekeepers" were shot, and one killed, in Port au Prince.
Soaring rice prices forced families throughout Haiti to endure extreme
hunger. Rice, a critical part of the Haitian diet, has jumped in price
45 percent in the last two years. Some have described their hunger
pains as "swallowing Clorox."
Haiti’s food crisis is shared by dozens of other countries whose food
prices are spiraling out of control. The appalling human misery we see
today is the product of an irrational capitalist system, a system based
on profit, not human needs. The immediate causes have been the dramatic
increase in oil prices, which affects fertilizer production, and the
withdrawal of crops from the food market to produce ethanol, an
environmentally unsafe but profitable bio fuel.
"It’s the worst crisis of its kind in more than 30 years,"
admitted Jeffry Sachs, the economist and special advisor to UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.
The New York Times reported that one resident of Cite Soliel, a slum in
Port au Prince, had begged a stranger as she held one of her five
children, "Take one. You pick. Just feed them."
While the capitalist press has portrayed Haiti’s rebellion as a mostly
non-political "food riot," many Haitians carried signs
demanding an end to U.S./World Bank starvation policies, nick-named
"The American Plan" or "Death Plan." Another theme
was ending the UN occupation by forces known as MINUSTAH, whose troops
have killed and wounded hundreds of Haitians in poor urban
neighborhoods since the occupation began.
Haiti is one the most unequal societies on
earth and ripe for revolution. One percent of Haitians control half the
country’s wealth. But most Haitians live on less than the official
Haitian minimum wage of $2 a day. Some 55 percent live on 44 cents a
day. Two-thirds or more workers have no steady job. Twenty percent of
Haiti’s inadequate state budget goes to paying off debts. The World
Food Program says Haiti has the lowest caloric intake of any nation,
460 below the recommended 2100.
As MINUSTAH bullets flew, threats were issued to protesters by Haiti’s
President Rene Preval, an ex-radical turned World Bank enforcer. Preval
also chided protesters about the cost of cell phones, a popular form of
communication in a country where phone service is usually bad or
non-existent.
In a measure widely viewed as scapegoating by a frightened ruling
class, Haiti’s parliament dismissed Premier Jacques-Edouard Alexis and
is now considering Preval nominee Ericq Pierre. Pierre is Haiti’s
representative to the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), a
notorious enforcer of U.S. imperialist policies in the region. Pierre
has had a lengthy personal career with the IADB.
In addition, Preval announced April 13 that three major rice importers
had agreed to lower prices by $3 a bag and that international funding
will further reduce bags of rice by $7. No timetable was set, but both
measures are seen as inadequate. Haiti never imported rice until World
Bank neo-liberal policies in the 1980s resulted in the flooding of
Haitian markets with what’s known as "Miami rice," destroying
domestic production.
President Preval was the hand-picked successor in the 1990s to exiled
Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had been deposed for a
second time in a 2004 CIA-funded coup. Although the two have drifted
apart, both were firm supporters of the U.S.-led UN occupations in
1994, and again in 2004, during which Aristide was sent abroad on a
U.S. Air Force jet. He currently resides in South Africa.
In 1994, U.S. President Bill Clinton made a deal with Aristide to send
a U.S.-led UN occupation force to Haiti, which removed a CIA-backed
military junta and returned Aristide as president. As part of the
package, Clinton demanded that Haiti adhere to starvation policies of
the World Bank. Often described as "neo-liberalism," it
demands the removal of trade barriers on all U.S. goods; privatizing
public utilities; encouraging foreign owned assembly plants (sweatshops)
; and, mechanizing agriculture for export, thus forcing most peasants
from their land into urban sweatshops.
For years, the largest number of MINUSTAH troops have been Brazilian
and are under Brazilian command. A protest letter by Pablo Stefanoni, a
former advisor to Bolivian President Evo Morales, was posted April 23
on the internet, which questioned the use of Latin American troops in
MINUSTAH. After citing so-called "progressive" governments
that are providing troops in Haiti, such as Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay,
Ecuador, and Bolivia, Stefanoni asks, "Is the role of the left to
"humanize" the international missions devised by the great
powers?"
What is desperately needed in Haiti is a revolutionary workers party
that will decisively break with ruling-class forces. Perhaps there is
no greater relevance than today for the words of Russian revolutionary
leader Leon Trotsky, who said, "The crisis of humanity is the
crisis of leadership."
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