We Have an Anti-imperialist Obligation to the People of Haiti

It is only through people-to-people solidarity based on mutual respect and principled collaboration that Haiti will rid itself of the United Nations’ (MINUSTAH) occupation force;⁷ force France to repay Haiti the ransom of 90 million gold francs (over $23 billion today) that was extracted from the latter as the price for diplomatic recognition and freedom from the threat of re-enslavement;⁸ end the cycle of Western military interventions, coups and/or propping up of anti-democratic, anti-people regimes;⁹ and put an end to the local elite’s and foreign capital’s exploitation of the people.¹⁰ Based on Haiti’s contribution to humanity, it should hold a special place in the internationalist programs of progressive forces across the world.

“The current Michel Martelly regime in Haiti is pursuing a path toward dictatorship.”

The enslaved Africans in Haiti were the only people to have successfully overthrown a system of slavery in the annals of history. They defeated the strongest military forces of the day, that of France, Britain and Spain, in order to free themselves from the servile labour regime and boldly assert their freedom and humanity.¹¹ This historic feat, the Haitian Revolution, was significant beyond the victory that the enslaved Africans registered in using armed struggle to effect emancipation-from below. These Black Jacobins¹² etched the fear of revolution in the hearts and minds of the enslavers or agricultural capitalists in the other slave-holding territories in the Americas.

America’s Declaration of Independence and France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen are hailed as seminal texts that affirm inalienable, universal human rights, but the revolutions associated with these two documents were comfortable in maintaining slavery, a state of unfreedom.¹³ It was the Haitian Revolution by way of its June 1801 Constitution that unambiguously declared universal freedom from enslavement in Article 3, “There cannot exist slaves on this territory, servitude is therein forever abolished. All men are born free, live and die free and French.”¹⁴ Essentially, it was Caliban, in a switch of roles, who introduced Prospero to the virtue or practice of universal freedom and paid for this significant achievement with the former’s blood.