Within a few weeks, Haiti’s president was assassinated and the country was hit by a 7.2-magnitude earthquake that killed over 2,000 people, followed two days later by Hurricane Grace. The plight of the Haitian people is again in the news and on many people’s minds.
Haiti is known to Canadians as a “poor” country, and many express concern or frustration over why their civil institutions consistently fail to produce good results and fail to lift the majority of the population out of poverty. Many Canadians take comfort in the knowledge that Canada has always been willing to help the Haitian people in times of need, especially in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. But this picture of an “unfortunate” nation, combined with a feeling of disinterested charity, serves to cover up the dark history of Canada’s involvement in Haitian affairs in the last few decades.
It is in the interests of Canadian-owned businesses with investments in Haiti to keep the country dependent on foreign capital and to in turn keep the majority of its people in poverty. The Canadian government, in support of these interests, helped lead and successfully executed a plot to overthrow the democratically elected leader of Haiti in 2004, and then aided and abetted state and paramilitary violence to suppress popular protest. The people of Haiti have a long history of being exploited by foreign capital, and while French and US imperialism are responsible for much of the misery experienced by the Haitian people, Canadian imperialism has played a part in violently enforcing that misery.
Former Slave Owners and US Imperialism Crushing Weight on Haitians
Haiti was a beacon of hope in the world in 1804 when the enslaved Haitians won their freedom and independence in the world’s first successful slave revolt. But peace with their colonial rulers could only be negotiated by paying indemnities to “compensate” the former slave owners for their loss of property (human beings). This debt, worth $21 billion in today’s money, was a crushing weight on future generations of Haitians, and only fully paid off in 1947. Added to this weight was the burden of US imperialism, which had an economy reliant on black slavery until after the Civil War which ended in 1865. The US rulers could never allow an independent nation of former slaves to succeed.
The US took direct colonial control of Haiti between 1915 and 1932, after which it created a system of US-backed military dictatorships that endured for decades. Starting in 1957, Haiti was under the control of François Duvalier and then his son Jean-Claude Duvalier. This regime regularly had to use violent death squads to repress the angry masses of Haiti who were perpetually kept in poverty while enriching international capital and the local elite. In 1986 these waves of mass revolt became too powerful, and Jean-Claude was forced into exile. The US backers of the dictatorship saw the writing was on the wall and decided to support introducing democracy to Haiti, so long as it would be neoliberal democracy.
Aristide Elected and Then Coup Forces him into Exile
But instead, the 1990 elections were won in a landslide by Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who spoke openly against the colonial powers who had been exploiting Haitians for hundreds of years. The CIA immediately backed a military coup against Aristide who was forced to flee while the military killed 5,000 protesters calling for the restoration of democracy. Aristide remained in exile from 1991-1994, but then popular international pressure forced the US to return Aristide to power while making demands to limit the scale of reform and keep Haiti capitalist. In the 2000 elections Aristide’s party ran on economic reforms and relief for the poor, and they won handily once again. But as so often happens when popular left-wing leaders win elections in the sphere of US imperialism, the US claims there were “irregularities,” then withheld aid and imposed sanctions. Despite this, Aristide introduced major reforms that increased taxes on the rich to build public services and raise the minimum wage.
Canada Plots Aristide’s Overthrow
These developments were deeply concerning for international capital, including Canadian capital, who needed a colonial Haiti to remain poor and dependent while filling the pockets of foreign investors. After the 2000 election, Canada led the way in immediately plotting Aristide’s overthrow. The government immediately cut off all aid, and in 2003 hosted the “Ottawa initiative on Haiti” with leaders from Canada, the US and France. This group claimed that the 2003 legislative elections were illegitimate, and that Aristide was setting up a dictatorship, despite the fact that the election had 60 percent voter participation and was deemed free and fair by independent monitors. The hand wringing about dictatorship is especially rich coming from imperial powers that had set up and supported pro-capital military dictatorships for decades previously.
Canada met with and funded opposition groups, including paramilitary groups with connections to the old death squads under Duvalier. These groups proceeded to use violence and torture to wage a civil war against the Aristide government. As these Canadian-backed opposition forces closed in on the capital Port-au-Prince, Canadian military troops were sent in to secure the airport so that Aristide could be removed. Thus, the colonial powers of the “Ottawa initiative on Haiti,” having successfully plotted and carried out the overthrow of a democratically elected and re-elected leader, proceeded to appoint their own preferred Prime Minister, neoliberal economist Gérard Latortue, flown in from Florida, to rule over Haiti. Latortue proceeded to privatize public services, lower the minimum wage, and cut taxes on big businesses.
The Haitian people protested to demand the restoration of their democracy. Canada responded by sending in 500 military troops to quell the protests, and 100 RCMP officers were sent to train and fund the Haitian National Police (HNP). The HNP proceeded to round up and execute Aristide supporters in an effort to impose order. The Canadian government spent $20 million to fund the HNP between 2004 and 2006 while these executions were going on and while poverty in Haiti skyrocketed. Canada then spent $35 million dollars to support their preferred candidate in the 2006 elections, while the leader of Aristide’s party was thrown in jail to prevent him from running.
2010’s Devastating Earthquake
In 2010, over a quarter of a million Haitians were killed in a devastating earthquake. Many of those deaths were due to the poor quality of construction and the lack of regulations under the neoliberal regime Canada helped enforce. Nevertheless, Canada patted itself on the back after it sent in 2,000 troops to help with the relief effort. The relief effort was by all accounts a disaster in which aid money was funneled into Canadian and American NGOs to pay their staff rather than going to the Haitian people. Billions of dollars were spent to pay NGOs salaries and luxury hotel bills while poor Haitians were rarely employed to do any of the work.
In the intervening decade and a half since the 2004 coup, the Haitian government passed between different neoliberal factions. During that time Canada was a consistent proponent of expanding the HNP from 5,000 to 15,000 members. In 2014 Canada’s International Development Minister, Christian Paradis, explained that the purpose of expanding the HNP was “in order to create a climate to attract private investment.” Meanwhile the police are used to jail poor protestors, maintain the rule of the neoliberal elite, and protect the interests of international, including Canadian, capital.
Moïse Becomes President
In 2016, Jovenel Moïse was elected president with the US government supporting his campaign. Popular trust and participation in the presidential elections was incredibly low. In a country of eleven million people, Moïse received only around six hundred thousand votes. Moïse had been appointed successor to the leadership of the party of President Michel Martelly, who himself was a friend of Gérard Latortue. Moïse’s administration had been in turmoil since 2018, when a Senate report uncovered massive corruption in the Haitian government’s participation in the Petrocaribe program led by Venezuela. Petrocaribe is a program in which participating countries buy oil from Venezuela and only pay for a portion of it up front. The rest is converted into low-interest debt, with the idea being that countries could use those savings to fund social programs and develop infrastructure. But it turns out that much of that money accumulated by the Haitian government as part of this program since 2008 cannot be accounted for.
After the report made its findings public the International Monetary Fund (IMF) threatened to end its low-interest loans to Haiti unless Haiti raised its fuel prices. The IMF claimed that the subsidized prices “disproportionately benefited the wealthy” (despite the obvious fact that higher fuel prices disproportionately hurt the poor). The Haitian government relented and declared that it would be raising fuel prices in 2018. This sparked massive protests in which protestors blocked roads and demanded Moïse’s resignation. The government eventually reversed its decision to raise fuel prices. But over the subsequent months, increasing poverty, state repression, and the poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has meant that protests and unrest have been continuously re-emerging. Moïse didn’t hold legislative elections in 2019, meaning that since parliament was dissolved in 2020, he had been ruling by degree. He then did not step down as president after his constitutional 5-year term in office ended earlier this year. Despite this, and continued repression of civilians and journalists, the Biden administration never withdrew support for Moïse.
Moïse’s Assassination
On July 7, Moïse was assassinated by a band of armed men who invaded his family home. The exact details of who hired and trained these men, who knew about the plot and who helped it succeed, are unclear and there are signs of a flawed investigation or possible cover-up. The questionable constitutional situation that Moïse created led to a factional struggle for who would become the next president of Haiti, with Prime Minister Ariel Henry eventually getting the job (as required by the constitution), but in the early hours, Minister of Foreign Affairs and former Prime Minister Claude Joseph declared himself acting president, eventually yielding to diplomatic pressure. Meanwhile the majority of Haitians continue to live in poverty, a situation which has been made dramatically worse by COVID with more than half of households reporting a loss of more than 79 percent of their income from before the pandemic.
Interests of Canadian and Haitian Working Class are Linked
It’s important for Canadians to understand the role that the Canadian state has played in creating the chaos and misery experienced by the Haitian people today. The Haitian masses are fighting for genuine democracy in their country, but the national ruling elite and the neoliberal system that is keeping them in poverty is supported by the combined forces of global imperialism. Far from representing a “kinder capitalism” of justice and democracy or being a nation of “peacekeepers” as we are all taught to believe, Canada is an imperialist country like all the others. Haiti is just one example. Throughout its existence and continuing today, the Canadian state supports and commits violence against poor and Indigenous people around the world in order to defend global capitalism and the interests of its national capitalist class. The working class in Canada needs to recognize that its interests are linked to the interests of the working class in Haiti, and that both are opposed to the interests of the Canadian ruling class. The working class is international, and only through international solidarity and struggle against capitalism will humanity be able to achieve an end to poverty and the beginning of genuine democracy.
