A report from friends of the Party travelling in Haiti:
About 100 trade unionists and students
listened attentively to a Cuban diplomat speak about the Cuban Revolution. This political
forum was organized by the teachers’ union as part of a campaign to raise the political
consciousness of their constituency as well as the Haitian masses.
After the Cuban diplomat’s talk, members of the audience raised some interesting questions about how the world viewed the Cuban and Haitian revolutions and how the reversal of socialism impacted Cuban society. Then a university student asked the speaker if the Cuban government had publicly criticized Brazil for supplying MINUSTAH with the vast majority of their troops (MINUSTAH is the UN military force which occupies Haiti today). The student pointed out that since Cuba and Brazil have an alliance, Cuba’s criticism would carry a lot of weight in exposing MINUSHTAH’S role in advancing U.S. imperialism’s agenda for Haiti.
The diplomat’s response to the student drew an angry reaction from many in the audience. She said, while making it clear that this was the official position of the Cuban government, that Cuba would not criticize Brazil because this was “not Cuba’s business” and the “Haitian people have to work out their own problems.” Like any other slick liberal politician, she pretended to take the high moral ground, making it seem as though taking a stand in solidarity with Haitians was equivalent to appropriating their struggle.
The 20,000 MlNUSTAH troops that occupy Haiti today replaced the 22,OOO U.S troops that seized the Haitian airport the day after the earthquake. Their convoys ride through the teeming streets of Port-au-Prince in full riot gear with machine guns conspicuously displayed, conveying power and control. They are doing nothing to minimize the wretched misery of the 1.5 million Haitians made homeless by the earthquake.
MINUSTAH has shot into anti-government demonstrations, arrested and threatened radical students with their lives, and aided the Haitian police in murdering prisoners. Without MINUSTAH or other troops terrorizing the masses, the plans of the Haitian bourgeoisie and U.S. capitalists to reshape Haiti would be impossible to implement.
Cuba’s refusal to oppose this repression exposes more than its opportunism. It exposes the true failure of socialism. Since socialist Cuba maintains commodity production and must, therefore, compete in the world capitalist market, it has joined with Venezuela, Brazil, and Bolivia to form the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). ALBA is an economic regional bloc that will strengthen their hands in competing with U.S. imperialism.
Progressive Labor Party, on the other hand, makes a complete break with this capitalist framework. We are building a new international communist movement that has learned from the reversal of the old one. One of the main lessons is that communists must make the politics of building egalitarianism primary over economic advancement or else we will lose it all, just like the USSR and China did. Cuba is rapidly moving down this same path. For the Cuban government today, economic alliances come before international working-class solidarity. This is an important lesson for all the Haitians, and others, who still look to Cuba as a model for social change.