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The
Struggle
in Haiti
By
Aduku Addae
Several days ago Lil
Joe made the observation, in passing, that the drama
unfolding in Haiti, in which Aristide has copped the role of
“leading man,” is really a shoving match between the
Democrats and Republicans of the USA. In accordance with the
script of this schoolboy tiff between the major political clans
of America, it is the role of the Republicans to topple Aristide
and the role of the Democrats to re-install him. This is a
remarkably acute and beautifully simplistic summary of the game
being played with Aristide at center-stage. By focusing on
Aristide both parties play to their respective constituencies.
The Republicans play to their 'white' and religious bases and
the Democrats play to their liberal constituency and,
secondarily, to the Negro polity. Race becomes the issue
and the workers are duped and distracted from the more pressing bread
and butter issues which devolve into class politics of the
kind now simmering just barely beneath the surface in Haiti (NYTimes).
The experience of Haiti is pressing those who
preach race politics into a very uncomfortable position. The
questions assailing them are these: How do they explain the
role of Colin Powell in the unseating of Jean-Bertrand Aristide?
Again, how do they explain the role of Guy Philippe in the
shenanigans orchestrated by the US and EU? And, above all
else, how do they explain the role of the AFRICANS in the
Central African Republic (whose melanin is untainted) in this
assault on the "democratically elected president" of
the first BLACK republic in this special year of its 200th
anniversary? These are very disconcerting questions which are
leading hitherto astute men (and women) to make utter
fools of themselves in identifying all sorts of psychological
'causes' for the actions of these folks who have so resolutely
renounced their brotherhood in black humanity in favor of wealth
and status and a common class interest with rich ‘white’
people. To speak of betrayal, even in the biblical sense,
seems patently inadequate and even the die-hard racialists are
reaching for other, “less simplistic”, explanations.
Some folks have called for "a healing" and
"a recovery" from the scourge of "white
supremacy." Of course, some of us have come to know,
through long and painful experience, that retreating into the
"balm yard" is naught but escapism born of impotence.
Unfortunately this is where melanin-based politics leads – to
political impotence and escapism!
As Haiti's mass of BLACK workers and peasants rebelled against
the BLACK president, whom they themselves elected to office, the
black luminaries world-wide have taken to adopt the
language and attitudes of the "white supremacists"
that they have decried for so many years. They have taken to
referring to their “black brothers” as "thugs"
and “hoodlums” and have chastised them, in the same
language as the white supremacists, for harboring the intent to
orchestrate a “coup” against the "democratically
elected" head of state. How soon they forget that they are
bonded by the pigment in their skin! (www.iol.co.za)
It is instructive to note the speed with
which these black luminaries descend to accuse their
rebellious black brethren of being the dupes of white men. It is
revealing, indeed, that as soon as the black workers and
peasants demonstrate independence of mind, resoluteness, and
political initiative the black elite begin to despise them as
“mindless creatures”. The independent action of the BLACK Haitian
workers and peasants has in effect exposed black luminaries
as white supremacists!
But that is the least of what this
independent worker and peasant action has done. This revolt
has revealed the relative strength and weaknesses of the
contending forces in the Caribbean. It has revealed to the world
that the position of the super-rich ruling class in Haiti is
untenable. It has revealed the fact that only US military
intervention and an American-backed colonial-style regime can
prevent the workers and peasants of Haiti from seizing the
productive forces and realizing the egalitarian society that
they have been striving towards since January 1804 (heritagekonpa.com).
The rebellion foreshadows the impending doom
of the Caribbean political bureaucracy. It has revealed these
agencies of national oppression to be caught in the pincer-grip
of the American and European political agenda from above and the
swelling tide of worker and peasant rebellion from below.
Interestingly, this is inducing frenzy among the politicos of
the Caribbean and breeding in them sentiments that are shaping
up to be patently anti – American (and for that matter,
anti-French), to use terms that are in vogue. According to
veteran Jamaican journalist John Maxwell, in an interview with
Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! broadcasted 03/05/04, the CARICOM
politicos are deathly afraid that what has happened to Aristide
could happen to them at any time. Here is how he puts it: “...
I imagine that they are very much aware that if it can happen to
Aristide, it can also happen to them or any other small
country.” This unhappy prospect is forcing the
petty tyrants of the Caribbean to forge regional compacts
designed for mutual protection, which effectively propels them
to the “federation” they have so mindlessly resisted since
the late 1950s. Federation at last, then! (trinidad
express; trinidadexpress;
democracynow).
The rebellion in Haiti is also spurring the
leaders of CARICOM to do something which shall prove devastating
to their hold on political power. Fear of being deposed is
causing them to whip up the regional population (workers and
peasants) to a fighting frenzy against the capitalist behemoth
from the north. The irony is that these ‘conjure men’ of
Caribbean politics dare not resort to their trademark politics
of the skin and identify the “enemy” by race. This would
only focus the wrath of the black masses on the brown and white
masters right there in the Caribbean. No, they do not have the
race option this time! They will have to cry “Imperialism”
and “Capitalism.” Pragmatism will lead them to
speak the empty, showy, language of the American “left.” But
this in itself is dangerous, for, the Caribbean workers will
give this rhetoric their own practical interpretation (Seattle
Times).
The rebellion in Haiti is a flash point. Two
hundred years after Dessalines’ citizen soldiers found the
Republic the revolution has been brought to the threshold, the
teetering edge, so to speak. Yonder the last defenses of the
capitalist brigades (US Marines and French gendarmes). Thither
the teeming masses of Haitian workers and peasants - desolate,
hungry, tattered, with nothing to lose but their chains. It is
though the script is being rehearsed for the awful battle that
is pending on a world-wide scale. --- End.
updated 11 June
2008 |
