by Stan Goff

After a coup d’état planned, coordinated, and executed by the most reactionary elements in Haiti, with the substantial material support of the governments of the United States and its ever-obedient Dominican Republic, the proud nation of Haiti is again under foreign military occupation. The shameful fact, however, is that this time the occupation is being carried out by not only by the French, whose savage imperial history there is well known, and by the Canadians (perennial handmaidens of the US), but by Argentina, Brazil, and Chile – three nations who have themselves been victimized by the covert operations establishment of the United States, and governments who are making the now-specious claim that they are “progressive.”

The Haitian people and their popular organizations are utterly astonished by this grotesque betrayal and unabashed political opportunism. More than one Haitian with whom I spoke while there for three weeks in June posed the question: How will these allegedly leftist governments respond when and if we attack them?

This was not a rhetorical question.

Almost everyone with whom I spoke said explicitly that they would welcome such an attack as a needed catalyst to initiate another general uprising. The spectrum of opinion on this question ranged from those who merely asserted that attacking occupiers was a right, to those who said it will become a patriotic duty. In the interest of full disclosure, I did not speak with the macouto-bourgeois faction in Port-au-Prince who had been on the payroll of the US Embassy, via the International Republican Institute and the National Endowment for Democracy.

In fact, I spoke with few urban dwellers at all. On this trip, it seemed appropriate – given the demagogy about democracy with which we are constantly assailed – to go where the Haitian majority lives: the countryside. I encountered not a single peasant (at least in the Central Plateau) who accepted Latortue or anyone else in the de facto government appointed by the United States. They regard them not even with fear, but with derision as fools. What might surprise those unfamiliar with Haiti was how well many peasants understand the paradox of these Latin American occupiers. Almost all had heard of the landless peasants’ movement in Brazil, and wondered if these kinds of formations in Latin America might not rise up against their own governments for participating in the consolidation of the coup d’état in Haiti.

The timing of this coup d’état – Haitians believe, and I agree – on the bicentennial of the Haitian Revolution constitutes an intentional humiliation of Haiti, shepherded as it was by Roger Noriega, former aid to arch-racist Jesse Helms. That intent festers with every passing day in the sullen and smoldering determination that this will not stand.

The people of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile (A, B, & C) should perhaps grasp the ABC of American covert operations better than their ostensible leaders. Lending the US a hand in one imperial enterprise will not protect them from the predations of the US. In fact, it only strengthens the hand of the US foreign policy establishment to commit the same crimes against them when it’s expedient. That applies to the liberal US establishment – now out of power – that wants to increment its domination through financial structures, but it applies even more immediately to the black-shirted reactionaries of this administration who, if we look closely, are an aging replication of the self-same clique that brought us the Iran-Contra-Cocaine scandal – men who left thousands of Latin American bodies in their wakes.

Has Argentina’s Kirchner forgotten the US’s supportive role during the Dirty War? Has Chile’s Lagos forgotten 1973 and the CIA attack on Chilean popular sovereignty? And has Brazil’s de Silva developed amnesia with regard to Goulart’s ouster at the hands of the same CIA in 1964?

How is it, then, that these nations, of all nations, can send their militaries to prop up the transparent coup d’etat against yet another democratically elected government? How have they become obliged, in the face of their own histories of struggle against US plotters and assassins, to support this racist subjugation of a fellow Latin American nation?

Driving through Gonaïves, I saw pimply-faced youth in Canadian uniforms waving from atop their armored personnel carriers in the apparent expectation that they will be received with accolades – à la the Chalabi hallucination of cheering crowds in Iraq – only to be met with hostility and contempt from the street. The flags of A, B, & C snapped in the wind from behind barricades at Toussaint L’Ouverture Airport in Port-au-Prince, but the post-pubescent lads from those countries will soon be pushed out into Haiti’s genpop, and it is inevitable that some will be attacked.

How will these governments – all claiming to be progressive – explain themselves to their own general populations then? The United Nations imprimatur will be cold comfort indeed for the families of the fallen and a puny poultice for the political wounds resulting not from the actions of an external Right, like the manufactured crisis that culminated in the kidnapping of Aristide in Haiti, but from the home grown Left in A, B, & C themselves.

This acquiescence – no, collaboration – with the diktat of the US will not loosen the parasitic grip of the Imperial Center on a single Latin American, nor will it ameliorate that Center’s intent to continue exploiting the entire region until it is used up and dead. This pious fantasy that cooperation will be rewarded has been the downfall of many a leader, including Aristide who was taken from his home after calling for “peaceful mobilization” even in the faced of murderous paramilitaries.

It looks more and more, at least to this writer, like there are only three Latin American leaders left with a spine – Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Manuel Marulanda. With the commitment of troops to the coup against Haitian popular sovereignty, Kirchner, de Silva, and Lagos have displayed a craven disregard for their own people and for their own histories. They now stand objectively as allies of Jesse Helms – a man who praised D’Aubuisson’s death squads, and who never relented in his commitment to American Apartheid.

May they all admit this terrible error and quit Haiti now, or may history mark them with shame.

Stan Goff is the author of “Hideous Dream: A Soldier’s Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti” (Soft Skull Press, 2000) and of “Full Spectrum Disorder” (Soft Skull Press, 2003). He is a member of the BRING THEM HOME NOW! coordinating committee, a retired Special Forces master sergeant, and the father of an active duty soldier. Email for BRING THEM HOME NOW! is bthn@mfso.org. Goff can be reached at: sherrynstan@igc.org.

Little or no aid has reached hundreds of people in remote villages of the flood-ravaged rural section of Mapou in southeast Haiti, according to Ninaj Raoul, director of the Brooklyn-based Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees (HWHR). Twice in the past month, she has traveled by jeep to the towns – or rather the ruins of towns – of Katidye and Galet in concert with several other grassroots groups to deliver bags of food and clothing.

HWHR raised some $6,000 in aid from individuals and Haitian community groups in Brooklyn like KAKOLA, an anti-coup coalition. The Janin & Marie Raoul Foundation, established by Ninaj’s late father, contributed $2,000 to the pot, and also gave a $2,000 grant to HWHR to cover administration, transport and travel costs.

Haïti Progrès interviewed Ninaj on June 26 at her Brooklyn office just after her first trip.

HP: Please tell us who was on your June delegation and how was it organized.

Ninaj Raoul: We were working with Movimiento de Mujeres Dominicano-Haitiana (MUDHA), an organization of Haitian-Dominican women which started in 1983. They are part of an emergency response coalition which also includes the parish of Father Pedro Ruquoy in Barahona, one of the bateys for Haitian sugar cane cutters. There was also the Haitian Pastoral Association.

Two of us from HWHR went down from New York.. We brought some medical supplies and some dried foods.

When we got down to the DR, we had meetings. There was a list of about 300 families in these two towns - Katidye and Galet – which are part of Mapou and which apparently no aid had reached. So we decided to drive over in three pick-up trucks.

We passed through Pedernales, which is at the southwestern tip of the Dominican Republic and drove to the neighboring Haitian town of Anse-à-Pitres. Just the day before we were going to leave, we heard that some people in Anse-à-Pitres were saying that no food was going to get by because they are hungry too. So that way MUDHA was bringing one extra truckload to allow the other two truckloads to get through. So there were three pick-up trucks but two larger trucks of food too. It was 500 bags of food and clothing for 300 families. It took awhile to load it. We in fact were not there when the trucks arrived. We passed it at the border on our way back.

In the towns, the situation was bleak. People told us that they had lost most of their family members, and almost all the homes were gone. Where the towns had been there was just a flat plain of white rocks. Absolutely no international aid had reached there, except on one occasion when some people said that they got two little cans of rice.

In order for them to reach the area where the helicopters had been coming down, which is on the other side of the mountains in another part of Mapou, they would have to walk two hours each way to get there. Some had attempted to do that. But when they got there, they were bullied. The people from that area got the food and not them because they were considered outsiders. One lady had her head gashed – it was still bandaged up – so they said it wasn’t worth it. Some people made the trip, but got nothing. They said at one time they heard a load of food was coming to them by sea, but by the time they got to the coast, other people from the other side of Mapou had gotten their first and nothing was left.

HP: Have there been any visits from the de facto Haitian government?

NR: I read this week that the Haitian government was saying it couldn’t reach there because the roads are covered with debris and so forth. I know the road that we took was one that had not been used in years. The previous used road to Mapou had been washed away in the floods. But we were able to get there. And on the way, we met two NGOs: a representative of the Red Cross from Santo Domingo, and some Haitians working with Save the Children. They asked us if the road from Pedernales to Katidye was safe. We told them absolutely, because we had just used it.

Neither of those delegations were bringing any aid. They were just going to visit the area to check out the situation and they were in SUVs.

HP: So some towns in Mapou got aid at the expense of others?

NR: Some aid has reached some parts of Mapou. In some areas, the Red Cross is moving people up to higher ground as a precaution, in case water comes through again.

There were previously more loads of aid going in by helicopter. But since the U.S. Marines have pulled out, so have the helicopters, and such deliveries are now rare. Some NGOs went there by horse or by mules, I heard. The women of MUDHA originally went by horse, and then by boat. This was the first time they traveled there by car.

But basically nothing had reached these two towns: Katidye and Galet. The people had been surviving off of mangos, many of them unripe green mangos. There was also a little corn which survived as well.

HP: Can you describe the scene and the people there?

NR: As I said, the town [of Katidye] is now just a field of white rocks. It’s shocking when people say “The church used to be here, the school used to be here, my house used to be here,” etc. You don’t even see remnants of the houses. You don’t even see an old wall. I saw only two or three houses remaining. These people had been sleeping under trees...

I really admire these people. For some reason, the people in Galet looked a little weaker than the folks we saw in Katidye. They were very thankful and receptive of our visit. They wondered if anyone knew of their plight. “What are they saying about us?” they asked. Because no aid has reached them, they’re wondering if people even know that they are there. We had a two hour meeting with them. We let them know that there was aid on the way. We talked to them about the necessity to organize to receive aid and to redevelop, which is hard to think about when you are hungry.

HP: Is more aid needed, and how can people help?

NR: Absolutely there is aid needed. I feel that what we are doing is a drop in the bucket because we’re a bunch of small organizations. Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees is a tiny organization. MUDHA is a small organization and more established than us. They’ve been around longer, yet they’re small. As of Monday (6/22), they sent down two more people to look for another road since the one we took was so rough. They went through Jimani, to the north, instead of Pedernales. They came through Fond Verettes to reach Mapou, and that road was a little better than the one we took. So that will be the new road to use. As of June 25, they went back. MUDHA contacted the Red Cross, which gave them tents. So their setting up tents to keep staff down there. MUDHA will have two people down there. We’ll have one person there. And the Red Cross will have one person in Katidye to help with distribution and health aid.

So there is aid needed, and people can contact us at Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees at 718-735-4660 or call MUDHA at 809-686-3300.