Haiti: Workers, Students Battle for Survival

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haïti, February 8 — Since early February, the streets have been filled with barricades, burning tires and burnt-out vehicles in efforts to demand lower gasoline prices. These actions follow a series of struggles over the last couple of years against the high cost of living.
In  Haiti, the price of gas has not gone down, even with a reduction in price on the international market. It has become clearer to many that the rulers here will go to great lengths to protect their racist criminal profiteering and that the government is putting even more money stolen from the working class into their own pockets.
Despite Sellout, Students Continue to Mobilize
On February 2, a confederation of transport unions and the political opposition to current president and U.S.-favorite, Michel “Haiti-is-open-for-business” Martelly, called for a two-and-a-half day strike.  They demanded USD$2.20 reduction in gas prices. The first day paralyzed almost all of the economic, political and social activities of the country. However, sellout leaders called it off after day one, having negotiated a US10¢ reduction in gas prices. The sellouts also got government jobs and other crumbs for themselves. The average cost of gas at the pump in Haiti now is about US$4.20. In comparison, the average cost of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. in August was $3.60, and is now $2.20.
In the face of the sellout, some progressive forces inside the State University (UEH) called for a mass mobilization to continue the struggle. They reasoned that lowering the price of gasoline in Haiti would result in also lowering the viciously high cost of living for the working class, which gets steadily worse as capitalism continues to do its dirty work.
On Feb. 5 at 10 AM, a march was organized by students and workers to the offices of the Minister of Finance/Economy, followed by a sit-in. The police came, armed to the teeth, and dispersed the demonstrators with tear gas, water cannons (filled with chemically treated water), rubber and live bullets, and batons. No one was spared this violence by the armed forces of repression who have all of state power at their disposal. Yet, as news of the attack spread, militant student organizations from other campuses joined the resistance. The police attempt to spread terror throughout the working class was not allowed to go unanswered.
Fake Left Sides With the Oppressors
It is also becoming clearer to many here that the opposition and other political parties are organizing to put themselves in Martelly’s place. They hang onto the coattails of the working-class movement, whose demands are just but whose organizational level is not yet developed enough for the task at hand. The working class is also saddled with a so-called trade union movement that is either openly on the side of the bosses or somewhat less openly so. These forces are constantly in conflict for the leadership of struggles. But because they are all ready to sell out at the drop of a hat, they weaken the mass working-class movement.
The Progressive Labor Party in Haiti understands that this struggle is on the wrong road when workers and students let themselves be influenced by the “militant” speeches of the bourgeois politicians on the fake left (who only call for the reform of the capitalist system) and other political parties vying for power. The bosses’ press buries the revolutionary aspirations of the working class and covers every syllable of the sellouts’ speeches because they hide the true nature of capitalism and imperialism — the system depends on the super-exploitation of workers in order to make profits, and they will not give up easily. Only armed struggle for communist revolution and an egalitarian system without money, racism, sexism, wars and profits will change the lives of the billions of workers around the world.
Workers Need Determined, Communist Party: PLP
On campus, we are determined not to let the leadership of the student-worker movement fall into the hands of those close to the fake-left or openly bourgeois parties. For progressive and revolutionary-minded students, all struggles need the analysis and leadership of a well-organized revolutionary communist party, the PLP. Our Party is still young and developing in Haiti. Despite living under very difficult conditions, we are working to build a solid party, well-entrenched in the working class.
On Feb. 8, a mass meeting was held at the social science branch of UEH. The agenda was to analyze the current situation, and take stock of the progressive forces and their political line in relation to the bourgeois politicians. With leadership from PLP, it was agreed that students and workers need a determined, unapologetic revolutionary communist party to give direction to workers’ struggles in this and the coming period.
Our Party must be bold and militant in word and deed, and fight ceaselessly in the interests of all sections of the working class: unionized and non-unionized, employed and unemployed, urban and rural, young and old, women and men, worker and student. For the current fight, we need to do a better job in raising the political consciousness of workers and students. We need more literature explaining why the local and imperialist bosses have kept workers in Haiti from “enjoying the benefits” of the current drop in gasoline prices. We need to expose how the current crop of criminals in power — Martelly & Co. — serve the interests of their imperialist masters, and how to prepare the groundwork for building our international communist party. Dare to struggle, dare to win.