Two Centuries of War Against Haiti!

Berthony Dupont

08 Mar 2022

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Haitians protest in the capital against the United Nations military occupation of Haiti on Sep. 23, 2011. Credit: Thony Bélizaire/AFP

The Haitian people have been targeted by more powerful nations ever since they dared to secure their freedom two hundred years ago.

This article was originally published in Haiti Liberté.

Is it not appropriate at a time when the world is concerned about the war taking place between Russia and Ukraine to recall that there is another one as disastrous that has never made the news in international opinion, the war between the aggressor, the United States (1776) and the victim, Haiti (1804), the first two free and sovereign states of the Americas?

Haiti has been on the blacklist of countries to be covered diplomatically since birth. Yet the first dream of the founding revolutionaries of the Haitian Nation was not only to place it in a place worthy of its rank in the concert of independent nations, but also in the annals of the history of humanity.

The Haitian anti-slavery and anti-colonial revolution had a lot to do to gain acceptance. The very pattern of its existence as a new free state was unacceptable and very frowned upon by some colonial powers of the time. In fact, it found no welcome of solidarity simply because it proclaimed his independence and acquired his freedom with arms in his hand.

American international policy in accordance with the former metropole (France) had only harmful effects on the fate of the first Black Republic of the West Indies. The Haitian experience was conditioned, deemed too dangerous and undesirable. It was therefore necessary to isolate Haiti, if not bring it down to prevent it from spreading the virus of national liberation to other peoples.

The Monroe Doctrine in 1823 "America to the Americans" in a conception of colonial and imperialist policy simply served to install a growing hostility against the Haitian nation, and which turned into a quasi-colonization.

Haiti could not count on anyone, no state, even one of its allies in Latin America, in this case Simon Bolivar who benefited from Haitian solidarity and generosity. In the Congress of Panama in 1826, under pressure from the United States, Bolivar was forced to exclude Haiti from this event because the United States wanted at all costs to isolate this people who were in love with freedom and social justice. Since then, Haiti's future has been linked to drastic retaliatory measures.

The fundamental objective was to precipitate its complete decline, destabilize it without any measure, paralyze it totally by every possible and imaginable means so that it never regains its balance. The principles of freedom, equality and, above all, the abolition of slavery condemned Haiti to be a state to be ignored, despised, and weakened even its simplest expression, to the point of becoming a pariah state. It is this criminal and increasingly deadly war that the Haitian people face daily and have always faced.

Unlike the high-profile war between Russia and Ukraine, that of Washington and its Western allies against Port-au-Prince has never been televised. A permanent war that is done with a classic subtlety covering the damage that only grows worse.

Two centuries of interference, of domination using the worst and most retrograde and reactionary means, to prevent us from building any form of resistance.

Nothing that the Haitian people have undertaken for their political, economic and social survival has been spared. Everything is sabotaged in a perspective of total destruction by the United States. In the hope of deceiving international opinion, they claim to be one of Haiti's "friendly countries". Oh, yes! With such friends, one does not need other enemies.

The savage imperial domination of the United States in Haiti is no different from bombs raining down, destroying the nation. It is a question of annihilating all the economic, industrial and human potential for development of the first independent Black country of the New World.

This war, which does not say its name, has often taken many forms either through a bloody coup or through a military occupation, often causing hundreds of thousands of deaths without taking into account the displaced, wounded and victims of all kinds.

Two centuries of war without truce still continues. American imperialism has always shown what the rights of peoples to self-determination mean to it, Haiti is the most concrete example, victim of a silent bombing, of a latent, programmed destruction of the American empire. It is under the effect of this weapon of destruction that we can without exaggeration compare to an earthquake, that all the institutions and administrations of the country were liquidated and destroyed. Agriculture has been reduced to a skin of sorrow, local industries are non-existent or have disappeared under silent bombs that, precisely, have pushed thousands of Haitian workers to abandon the national territory to emigrate or take refuge in other regions.

When the United States sheds crocodile tears over the fate of Ukraine, a way to demonize Russia, who do they think they are fooling? They are solely responsible for this war for having used, sacrificed on the altar of NATO, the Ukrainian people as a scapegoat in order to guarantee the profits of the capitalists.

The Haitian people say NO to war, also NO to the total destruction of their country for more than two centuries by the Western consortium of looting, theft and rape of national sovereignty. The only solution to this international poaching is the definitive overthrow of capitalism, which continues to subjugate and kill oppressed peoples.

Two centuries of war against Haiti is too much!

Berthony Dupont is Director of Haiti Liberte.

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