Currents Summer 2024 (1) - Flipbook - Page 42
MA: Of course. I mean right now in the headlines of Haiti you'll see being labeled things like
the 8Republic of NGOs9 I think that that was coined even by like doctor Mark Schuler, you'll see
things about chaos and violence how bodies are stacked in the streets but nobody ever
mentions Haiti in the same sentence as being the first black Republic, being the only
successful slave revolution, and furthermore how haitian independence was what initiated
other colonized and enslaved populations to take back their own freedom.
Ever since 1804, when Haiti first gained its independence, it has been punished for that, for
some unspeakable truth that challenged the very foundation of things. We can see that in
the 90 million French Francs that Haiti paid back by 1940; we can see that in the first
occupation of the US marines coming in 1915, where they slaughtered 3000-odd people from
small agricultural planes; we see that in the response of the Dominican Republic in 1937 with
the massacre of some 30,000 Haitians; we can see that in USA coming in and supporting the
Duvalier regime which was essentially a dictatorship and almost fully an authoritative regime
- and then again we see that with the overthrow of the Duvalier regime and then the
installation of a military regime, and then again the ousting of - not once but twice - the
ousting of a popular and truly democratically elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide. So we see how
a consistent form of intervention - failed intervention - and militarized intervention has been
used to dehumanize the Haitian experience to dehumanize Haitians as a whole and to give
this sort of narrative of savagery and barbarism that says Haiti can't be fixed unless it's with
the iron fist.
And it's just not true.
We can see in moments of history where peace has been provided through Haitian-led
solutions, where stability has been maintained because of the Haitian population. And I think
that through a consistent militarized intervention Haiti has been pushed to the brink. It9s been
pushed so far that the international community are now - ironically - saying that we have
caused so much chaos and destruction to your own infrastructure that now the only true
response is another foreign militarized intervention in the form of a task force.
A lot of my Haitian friends they'll kind of look at it like: how do you bring peace with the bullet?
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