(Français)
Haiti’s Prime Minister’s office, called “La Primature” or “Villa d’Accueil,” is located high in the mountains between Port-au-Prince and Pétionville, right next to the U.S. Ambassador’s residence and very near the embassies of Chile and Israel. As the seat of executive power, it is perhaps Haiti’s most heavily protected government building, second only to the U.S. Embassy in Tabarre.
In video messages issued in recent days, Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, the leader and principal spokesman for the Viv Ansanm (Let’s Live Together) political party, a coalition of the capital’s armed neighborhood organizations, has explained what they are trying to do.
“The Viv Ansanm political party’s goal is to reach the Primature, remove [Prime Minister] Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, [his behind-the-scenes strongman, former Senator] Nènèl Cassy, with his nine [Transitional Presidential Council] TPC acolytes at the head of the nation and to give the Haitian people the power to decide what leaders they want,” Cherizier said in an Apr. 4 video message to the Haitian people. But barricades manned by heavily armed groups “which defend the TPC and the government are blocking the road for Viv Ansanm to pass through Delmas 32, Christ Roi, Delmas 40B, Delmas 48, and Delmas 60… to arrive at the Primature,” he continued. “So the unpalatable reality is that some people are ready to take money and guns to defend the TPC, the government, and the bourgeoisie’s businesses,” thus preserving the status quo.
Cherizier compared the situation to what happened in the past year in Solino and Delmas 30 where “a bunch of cops… who postured as protectors of the neighborhoods… took money from the TPC, Primature, and bourgeoisie to block Viv Ansanmfrom attaining its objective, which is to arrive at the Primature… to remove those guys who have taken the nation hostage.”
This situation has alarmed CARICOM, which has been acting as Washington’s faithful handmaiden in dealing with the growing danger of revolution in Haiti.
“The Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) are deeply concerned by recent reports that a coalition of criminal gangs is threatening to seize power and compel a change in the governance arrangements in Haiti at this time,” the body said in an Apr. 13 statement. “This is completely unacceptable.”
“CARICOM strongly condemns any attempt to replace the transitional arrangements [our emphasis] by force and violence,” the statement continues. “These arrangements were put in place by Haitian stakeholders to pave the way for free and fair elections by Feb. 07, 2026, and to return Haiti to constitutional authority.”
This statement is absurd. The TPC was not put in place by “Haitian stakeholders” but rather in March 2024 by then U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who made all collaborating parties accept a foreign military intervention force in Haiti, called the Multinational Security Support mission (MSS).
Meanwhile, the Viv Ansanm is now also threatening the Haitian bourgeoisie’s stronghold: the cool heights above the capital, which are studded with magnificent fortress mansions, complete with 20-foot-high walls, large weapon arsenals, and helicopter landing pads.
These palaces were built through the cheap labor of penniless masons, bricklayers, and carpenters and paid for with the profits squeezed from the cheap labor of Haitian assembly factory workers and poor peasants. But the slums containing all these impoverished and displaced laborers are now rising up. The areas of Kenscoff, Fermathe, Thomassin, Laboule, and Pétionville are all finally experiencing the conflict that has been visited on the capital in recent years.
This week marks the 200th anniversary of Haiti’s “independence debt,” better called a ransom. It was on Apr. 17, 1825 that, with gunboats, France forced the first free nation of Latin America and the Caribbean to begin paying millions of gold francs for its freedom. Haiti began demanding restitution of this onerous debt 22 years ago this month, but France has so far refused. With interest, the payback could come to some $115 billion.
Nonetheless, in January, former TPC rotating president Leslie Voltaire spent tens of thousands of dollars to fly with a delegation to Paris to plead to Emmanuel Macron for money, unsuccessfully, of course. (It is the same city where, in 1994, Voltaire negotiated Haiti’s surrender to U.S. and European neoliberal austerity reforms.)
Now we see, in March, Voltaire’s rotating successor, Fritz Alphonse Jean, jetting off to Jamaica to meet with Blinken’s successor, Marco Rubio, and the CARICOM house-slaves, on how to keep Haiti under Washington’s thumb.
In Paris, it was not Voltaire who raised the issue of restitution of the “independence debt” but Macron himself, saying he would make a statement this month. Jean also did not ask Rubio for any restitution of the U.S. Marines’ theft of $500,000 in gold bars from Haiti’s central bank in December 1914, worth about $16 million today. Jean should also have asked for reparations for the September 1991 and February 2004 coups d’état that Washington engineered in Haiti, causing huge loss of life and treasure.
Of course, none of the TPC “presidents” would dare to make a peep directly to the bosses to whom they are mere puppets. (In fairness, Edgar Leblanc Fils and Voltaire did raise repayment of the “independence debt” at the 2024 UN General Assembly, but demagogically and incoherently.)
Clearly, Haiti is facing a multidimensional crisis that threatens its future as a neocolony under the political and economic domination of the former Western colonialist and slave-owning powers.
There is absolutely no help that can be expected from the U.S., France, Canada, or their vassals in CARICOM, which control the current government.
The only aid, political or material, that any revolutionary government could hope for is from the emerging multipolar world, which the Trump administration (like Biden’s before it) is intent on confronting.
Any government that is targeted by Washington – China, Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Colombia, Iran, North Korea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, or the nations of the BRICS or ALBA – are the partners a progressive, revolutionary Haitian government should turn to. Certainly, many if not most of them face very difficult economic and geostrategic challenges of their own. But their solidarity, goodwill, and shared experience will be invaluable to any emerging revolutionary government in Haiti.
Solutions based on foreign domination or the masses’ exclusion are all doomed to failure. The new revolutionary power will also have to rebuild from scratch the Haitian National Police, the Haitian armed forces, and eject the MSS and other foreign mercenaries. Years of sanctions, encirclement, provocations, sabotage, infiltration, and foreign invasion or destabilization efforts must be expected. Resistance to these moves will be aided by the solidarity of new allies from the multipolar world.
We will also need their help in rebuilding our infrastructure, carrying out a nationwide literacy campaign, and training doctors and nurses to return to hospitals and clinics, also in need of repair and reconstruction.
It will be years before we can overcome the poverty as well as social and economic inequality that are the root causes of Haiti’s insecurity and instability. Let us join with nations which have experience in escaping and rebounding from the exploitation and subjugation carried out by neocolonial powers which pretend to want to help us but, in reality, put us where we are today.
We need a socialist revolution in Haiti as part of a national liberation struggle to resolve the crisis. With the help of like-minded nations, the vanguard of the popular masses’ struggle in Haiti must offer a socialist alternative to the nation.
No to the military occupation of Haiti.
No to the renewal of the MSS mandate.
Haitian progressives, let us unite for Haiti’s national liberation struggle.
Liberty or Death!
Homeland or Death!
