On the 15th anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, our working-class sisters and brothers there are reeling yet again from an onslaught of violence by armed groups of small capitalist gangsters. Within the last month, these bloodthirsty gangs have gone on a series of murder sprees, massacring more than 350 people (New York Times, 1/6). This horror is just the latest chapter of a story of racist violence that began when the French first arrived in Saint-Domingue (the former name for Haiti) in the early 1600s. From then to now, one gang after another, from the French and U.S. imperialists to small-time local bosses, has subjected workers to vicious exploitation. Yet the history of the working class in Haiti, who overthrew slavery and French colonial rule, also reminds us that workers never sit idly by in the face of oppression. Workers fight back!
Indeed, on the 221st anniversary of their historic defeat of colonial rule, workers in Haiti are fiercely fighting back today against the raw brutality and racism of capitalism. Like their counterparts in Gaza and Sudan, workers in Haiti hold no illusions about capitalism’s absolute inability to provide a decent life for our class. It is for this reason that Progressive Labor Party sees the leadership of Black workers as essential for revolution. Equipped with communist ideas, Black workers can lead our entire class out of the misery of capitalism and into a new world, where racist exploitation is outlawed, where all workers will be free to contribute to society, no matter where they were born or what they look like.
Destroying the French slave system
Brute force and violence defined French imperial control of Saint-Domingue from the start. Under dreadful conditions, masses of enslaved people stolen from Africa toiled on lucrative sugar and coffee plantations day in and day out, filling the coffers of greedy French capitalists on the island and in France. The despicable business was so profitable that the colony became the principal exporter of sugar to Europe.
The enslaved workers fought back. In 1791, they set off the Haitian Revolution, which would deal a final and historic blow to the French slave system. Under the leadership of Jean-Jacques Dessalines and others, workers organized and fought until 1804, when they defeated a combined force of the leading colonizers of the time: France, Britain, and Spain. When the ashes settled, Haiti became the first country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery. This heroic revolt inspired enslaved workers and struck fear into slave owners throughout the world.
Then the capitalists struck back. Under threat of invasion, Haiti agreed to France’s demand for payment for the loss of their human “property.” This crippling debt, alongside continuous oppression and exploitation from other imperialist powers, has impoverished Haiti to this day (NYT, 5/2022). Haiti is now the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (World Bank, 11/2024).
Duvaliers, Clintons, cops from Kenya—gangsters all
Well into the 20th century, workers in Haiti were oppressed by a series of foreign and local gangs. In 1915, the U.S began a 19-year occupation, followed in the 1950s by a murderous 30-year reign of the father and son duo, “Papa Doc” and “Baby Doc” Duvalier. These U.S. puppets used their feared militia, the Tonton Macoutes, to kill and torture thousands of workers and force thousands more into exile. In the wake of the 2010 earthquake, Bill and Hillary Clinton, like the rapacious imperialist dogs they are, exploited the catastrophe to impose a neocolonialist nightmare on Haitian workers. Their capitalist cronies stole fertile land from farmers in the north, drove rural workers into the cities, and opened the infamous sweatshop factory Caracol, which paid starvation wages while making clothes for Gap, Walmart and Target.
As in other times, workers fought back—not only against the U.S. exploiters, but also against President Michel Martelly, who’d welcomed the Clintons into Haiti. As reported in CHALLENGE (2/2014), GREPS, (Group for Reflection on Social Problems), a student activist group, put out a leaflet titled, “President Martelly, Enemy of Haitian Students!”
Now the workers of Haiti face a new onslaught from armed gangs that are seizing on Haiti’s instability, created by centuries of capitalist exploitation, to grab all they can. The tools of their trade: drug trafficking, kidnappings, murder, and rape. Last year, more than 5,600 workers were killed and more than one million forced to flee their homes (UN News, 1/7). Children make up 50 percent of the displaced and up to 50 percent of recruited gang members (Aljazeera, 11/22/24). As these warring gangs continue to tighten their grip, access to already limited healthcare, education, and other basic services is becoming unattainable.
Worldwide bosses strike
In their latest bid for imperialist control, the U.S., France and Canada have committed to send in 2,500 troops to try to make the island stable enough for foreign investment. The force will be led by cops from Kenya, who began arriving last June and are notorious for the violent abuse of civilians (BBC, 6/26/2024). Such predators are unfortunately all too familiar to workers in Haiti. Before and after the 2010 earthquakes, UN “peacekeeping” troops murdered and raped their way through the country. They also brought an epidemic of cholera that killed more than 10,000 workers, on top of the more than 300,000 that died in the earthquake.
For anyone seeking more evidence that identity politics and nationalism are deadly for the working class, we need to look no further than the Dominican Republic, Haiti’s eastern neighbor. DR is another longtime target of imperialist brutality, notably a U.S. occupation from 1916 to 1924. Racist exploitation of workers there has its own brutal history. Taking a cue from Donald Trump’s fascist playbook, the Dominican bosses are building a wall along the Haitian-Dominican border and using racist terror, including the mass deportation of more than 250,000 Haitians in 2024 alone (CNN 1/2). The photographs of workers trapped in cages as they await their expulsion are graphic evidence that we cannot have a just world without smashing nationalism and borders.
No strangers to resisting capitalist oppression, workers from Haiti are fighting back. Many are building solidarity with one another through mutual aid organizations. In neighborhoods controlled by small gangsters, they have united in groups like Bwa Kale for protection, turning the guns around on known gang members. Local self-defense groups have blockaded neighborhoods to keep out gang activity (Washington Post, 5/18/2023)
In one sense, the history of Haiti is a chronicle of one group of savage gangsters after the next, whether French enslavers, U.S. imperialists, local Haitian bosses or the hundreds of street gangs that rule much of the country today. They’ve all sought the same thing: to turn a profit on the sweat and blood of Haitian workers. But the history of Haiti is also a history of fightback, from the great revolt that ended slavery to now. Wherever we can, we should build solidarity and collective struggle with the courageous workers in Haiti. The working class has no borders, only a common need to rid the world of racist bosses and their bloodsucking profit system. Progressive Labor Party aims to be the force that leads this fight. Join us!
