HAITI MAY DAY Letters

I first met communist members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) following the earthquake in my hometown in the summer of 2021. I could see that these people want us to have an egalitarian society, where everyone can get what they need and want. Here in Haiti (and I believe elsewhere too) there is a greedy and a brutal bourgeois minority which monopolizes almost all the wealth of the country. This goes back not only to slavery, but the period after too, when the mixed race children of the French slave masters demanded and gained , through fraudulent maneuvers, property and power. Now workers want a real redistribution of wealth so that everyone can live life as it should be.
A few months after I met PLers, a friendly relationship developed between us. We often

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Haiti: this is capitalist democracy in crisis

HAITI, February 14—The Haitian working class is once again facing a political and economic crisis, mired in widespread violence unleashed by an emboldened president. There were mass demonstrations over the last year demanding that President Jovenel Moïse step down on February 7, the end of his constitutional mandate, culminating in a nationwide general strike that shut everything down. But this was not enough to force Moïse out.

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Striking Teacher-Student March Roars Through Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE, November 13 — Up to 15,000 students and striking teachers marched through the capital today, their battle cry, “The  only solution is revolution”  filling the streets.

The march stopped at over a dozen public and private schools, with students and teachers swelling the ranks at each one. At many schools, large metal gates locked by administrators to keep students inside and marchers out were forced open by persistent students banging on and climbing the gates, signaling to the students and teachers inside that the strike was here to pick them up. Soon the gates were flung open and a flood of students poured out into the march. The demonstration was carried along on the energy and vitality of students chanting: “Schoolchildren today, university students tomorrow.” 

Strike Spreads

In the militant march, tires were set afire and eventually the police shot into the crowd, essentially made up of schoolchildren, while the UN force MINUSTAH lobbed tear gas into the march for hours, including at

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Capitalism+Earthquake=Mass Murder

U.S. Rulers Enforced Racist Poverty, Magnifying Quake Death Toll

Profit-hungry — mainly U.S. — racist capitalists, having looted Haiti for 100 years, have condemned more than 200,000 of its working class to die in the recent earthquake. Just as disgustingly, these same bosses, led by liberal phony Obama, seek military and political payoffs from the slaughter through media-hyped “relief” efforts that benefit their own class far more than they do workers.

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U.S. and European Imperialists Looted Haiti for 500 Years

1492 — Columbus lands and claims the whole island for Spain. In the following years the indigenous population was nearly completely wiped out by disease, enslavement and murder.

1606 — British, French and Dutch pirates establish bases to attack Spanish ships.

1664 — France takes control of the western part of the Island; began importing slaves in 1670. Slave insurrections were frequent. Some slaves escaped to the mountains and settled with the few remaining indigenous people.

1791 — A slave revolt begins the Haitian Revolution. Former slaves establish a government.

1796 — The British invade and are defeated.

1802 — Napoleon sends a massive invasion force, including 40,000 troops from other European countries. France gains control of part of Haiti and tries to reestablish slavery, but are defeated after a brutal war that killed tens of thousands of Haitians and ended with over 30,000 French and European troops dead. Poland’s military force refused to fight; about 100 joined the Haitians to fight Napoleon’s forces. Afterwards the Poles were the only whites allowed to remain in the country.

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