Haitian workers rebel against unbearable conditions here ♦ History of struggle in Haiti here ♦
October 21— Haitian workers are rebelling against unbearable living conditions, including the worst poverty and shortest life expectancy in the Americas. Their long, inspiring history of fighting back includes the successful slave rebellion of 1791-1804. Since then, Haiti has constantly been battered by the US and other capitalists. It’s time to organize the International Communist Workers’ Party (ICWP) to mobilize the masses for communism and nothing less.
Haiti: A History of Struggle
Before Columbus, a million Arawak/Taino people lived on an island of abundance they called Haiti (land of mountains). Everyone, including chiefs, helped to hunt and fish, to gather, plant, and harvest. The Taino were committed to feeding everyone–even the Spanish invaders.
This cooperative production and sharing was an early form of communism. It left ample time for cultural life and for collective problem solving. Even some of the Spaniards were impressed.
The Europeans quickly wiped out Taino society through disease, brutal greed and outright genocide. The French replaced the Spanish. The island was still rich, but its riches benefited France’s rising capitalist class. They continued to force enslaved Africans to produce cash crops, subjected to torture and under conditions so horrible that few survived for long.
By the French Revolution, Saint-Domingue (Haiti) accounted for a third of the Atlantic slave trade. It was called the “Pearl of the Antilles:” France’s most profitable colony, the world’s largest exporter of tropical products, and the second-largest trading partner of the United States.
Thousands freed themselves, escaping into the mountains and forming “maroon” communities. A massive and ultimately successful revolt of the enslaved workers in 1791 took the French Revolution to a whole new level. The rebels’ pledge to “live free or die” resounded across the Atlantic. Those who survived won their legal emancipation – but not freedom from exploitation.
In 1802, Napoleon sent a massive invasion force to tighten France’s grip and restore racist slavery. But an army of former slaves again rocked the world by defeating his best fighting units and winning independence. We can learn a lot from the decades of struggle that followed.
Then in 1825, France threatened another invasion. The French capitalists forced Haiti to pay 150 million gold francs (later reduced to 90 million) to “compensate” plantation owners for the loss of the property they’d extorted from enslaved labor. That would be some US$40 billion today!
This is the true source of the impoverishment of the Haitian masses. They had to pay down that debt over the course of more than a century. Meanwhile, they continued to fight back and rebel and revolt.
The US invasion of 1915 – in the interest of US banks trying to collect on still more debts – provoked the unsuccessful “Caco” uprising of 1919-20. By then, the flames of communist revolution were already burning in the hearts of masses in Haiti and around the world.
(Reprinted from Red Flag v. 10 #15)
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