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Africa Today January 23, 2017 | Robert Roth and Pierre Labossiere Discuss Lessons From Haiti: Mobilizing Against Repression, Building A People’s Movement, Resisting Stolen Elections

KPFA Radio’s Africa Today | Robert Roth and Pierre Labossiere Discuss Lessons From Haiti: Mobilizing Against Repression, Building A People’s Movement, Resisting Stolen Elections

January 23, 2017

[Click Here To Visit Africa Today], A weekly news program providing information and analysis about Africa and the African Diaspora, hosted by Walter Turner.

INTRODUCTION

In 1990, Jean Bertrand Aristide became Haiti’s first elected president in free and peaceful elections. He was overthrown in a coup, which occurred in 1994. In 1995, UN peacekeepers came into the country of Haiti to ensure the return of Aristide. Aristide was elected president in 2000, and in 2004 he was again overthrown in a coup. Rene Preval came into office in 2006 and was in office at the time of the massive earthquake that hit the country in 2010. In 2010, .

Amdst continued resistance, protests by many segments of the Haitian society for free and representative elections the policies of neoliberalism continue and grow, under Preval, and the influence of the Bill Clinton Foundation. Michel Martelly came into office and held office until the elections of 2015. Some have referred to the elections of 2016 as an “electoral coup.” Robert Roth and Pierre Labossiere of the Haiti Action Committee join Walter Turner to sort through and clarify recent events in the country of Haiti.

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Africa Today – January 23, 2017

There’s a film coming to the Bay Area that you should know about, and hopefully we can get them in the studio, Guangzhou Dream Factory. It’s going to be down in Los Angeles on Saturday, February 11 at 2 PM at the Cinemark Rave, which is in Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza. It’s a film basically about the African community in Guangzhou, China. It will probably be coming up here to the Bay Area to the San Francisco Asian American film Festival. Somewhere in early March we will try to get someone in the studio. I saw some trailers of it and it’s well worth taking a look at.

I was looking at an article on the five elections to watch out for in 2017 on the African continent. There are elections coming up in Kenya near the end of the year. This is the second set of elections after the events in 2007 – Uhuru Kenyatta, of course, and William Ruto. There certainly will be an opposition party in that series of elections. Kenya, of course, is very close to the events in the country of Somalia. It has not been an easy period for Kenya after committing to being part of the peacekeeping forces in Somalia, events have occurred in the capital city, the Westgate Mall, as well as in the city of Mombasa.

There is an election coming up in the country of Angola. Dos Santos has decided not to run again. Representatives of the MPLA party – of course, the MPLA party formed around the same time as the Frelimo party in Mozambique in the PAIGC. It’s kind of a secret that Amílcar Cabral was part of the founding of all three of those parties – not only in his country of Portuguese Guinea, but also in Mozambique and Angola. Those elections will be coming up in Angola.

There are elections coming up in the country of Rwanda and I think there was a recent mandate added which allows Kagame to run for a third term. Kagame could be president up to 2025 or 2030 at this point, and that is an election that Kagame has received a lot of support from the West. He has play different roles in terms of peacekeeping forces in Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There was recently an agreement. Joseph Kabila wanted to run for office for a third time. You may remember at the end of last year in November/December a series of protest. The Internet was shut down. Apparently there is some agreement that there will be the making up of a folder roll. And we will talk about that tonight – the voter roll in those types of things when we talk about Haiti with our guest in the studio. That election is supposed to be held near the end of the year. Kabila, according to the agreement, is not supposed to be able to run.

Finally, we have the election that’s coming up in Liberia. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has filled out her second five-year term. She will not be running for office. We also have to give some coverage to the election which occurred in Ghana late last year. We will try to do that in the next couple of weeks.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf played an important role as the head of ECOWAS in the recent discussions around the country of the Gambia with Yahya Jammeh, who as a few days ago has decided to leave the country. He is going to go into exile in the country of Equatorial Guinea. People remember Alex Haley’s book which was entitled, Roots. Some of his tracing of Kunta Kinte, of course, was set in the country of the Gambia.

A very small country of about 2 million people. It is part of that struggle between the British and the French, which resulted in Senegal and Gambia. It’s a country which is about 31 miles wide – maybe two or 300 miles long. The population is about 2 million people. It’s basically agricultural. Basically some degree of tourism, and like many other African countries, received its independence in the mid-1960s. It’s interesting period for Africa because about 17 to 20 countries received independence in 1960, but also in the 1960s, there’s about 17 coups on the African continent, so it’s a larger discussion.

Yahya Jammeh as a Lieut. comes to office, he wins an election in 1996 to 2001, 2005, 2011. In the most recent election it was a coalition party led by Adama Barrow, and they won those elections. Initially, Yahya Jammeh said that he would accept those elections. He later reversed his decision and said he was going to hold on. ECOWAS, the United Nations and the AU, said that they were not going to allow him to stay in power, and moved troops from Senegal and other countries. There are some other sub stories here about Senegal and its relationship to Gambia – particularly some of the conflicts in southern Senegal. The Casamance region and some other sub stories here about the role of the United Nations.

The African Union (AU) doesn’t have a military force, but they have an emergency response force that they have built over the last two or three years. That was part of this notion. People were fleeing the country. It was painted in the press as a disaster. The first thing that goes out is the tourists and the tourists were airlifted out of their. Negotiations with Mauritania with Nigeria where ECOWAS is housed, with Liberia led to Yahya Jammeh going into exile. The most recent stories are that if he left the country, he emptied the treasury. He took a lot of wealth and property, and some of that is yet to be traced down in terms of its truth. He had been in office for about 22 years. We will keep you updated on that particular story.

In 1990, Jean Bertrand Aristide became Haiti’s first elected president in free and peaceful elections. He was overthrown in a coup, which occurred in 1994. In 1995, UN peacekeepers came into the country of Haiti to ensure the return of Aristide. Aristide was elected president in 2000, and in 2004 he is overthrown in a coup. We can ask our guests about how they characterize that in history. Preval comes into office in 2006. By 2010, he is in office and there is a massive earthquake that hits the country of Haiti. Over 300,000 deaths and the introduction of a cholera epidemic which has still dragged on in terms of restitution and clarity. In 2010, Michel Martelly comes into office and hold office until the elections of 2015.

Those elections were held in the first round. There was protest from the candidates, concerns about the process and concerns about the dropping percentage of people in Haiti who are registered to vote and eligible to vote, but they are not voting at this period of history. There have been protests. There’ve been a number of key themes as we talked about Haiti here on Africa today over the years. The continued resistance, protests by many segments of the Haitian society for free and representative elections. The economic and political interests of countries, actors and actresses outside of Haiti, the role of the United States, the Dominican Republic, international allies, and hopefully we can talk about the Dominican Republic this evening. The role of the Haitian relates to ensure that policies of neoliberalism continue and grow, such as under Preval, the Bill Clinton Foundation which was talked about during the recent electoral period, and the ongoing resistance of the Lavalas movement, which has its roots in leadership in president the Jean Bertrand Aristide. I was reading an article the other day that says that the elections of 2016 were referred to as an “electoral coup.” We are joined in the studio by Robert Roth and Pierre Labossiere of the Haiti action committee with the goal this evening of sorting through and to make Haiti as clear as we possibly can in our 40-45 minutes. It’s not a topic that receives a lot of press. It is one of those – in contrast to maybe the news about Yahya Jammeh , or the news about the Ghana election. You search for news when you are looking about Haiti.

We invited both Pierre and Robert in this evening to talk about this. Welcome to Africa Today. Before we jump into details, key themes that define Haiti from the period of 1990 into now. You both worked on Haiti for as long as I can remember. Give our listeners some way to start to understand the Haiti narrative.

PL: What jumps to my mind is very vibrant, active grassroots movement. Haiti had just emerged from the dictatorship of the Duvalier family – “Papa Doc” from 1957 to 1971 when he died. He made his son dictator for life – president for life. He was 19 years old. By 1986, he was overthrown by this movement that had been growing underground. The movement came to the fore by the end of 1985. On February 7, 1986 he was gone. When we look at Egypt, for example, one brother from Egypt said, “The dictator was gone, but the dictatorship remained.”

So, “Baby Doc” was gone. He fled the country, but the dictatorship – all the structures of it – remained. The Haitian military was there under the command of General Namphy, who led a group that took power at that time – a caretaker government called the CNG. From 1986 to December of 1990, there was a lot of repression by the Haitian military. In other words, they were trying to repress the grassroots movement and the demands of people for free and fair elections, and basically to be able to sit down at the table of decision-making.

People were demanding schools. People were demanding greater freedom. People were demanding that they have the right to vote. There was a whole agenda, and elections played a key role because people didn’t want to be represented by these holdover Duvalierists. There was a lot of massacres that were committed under General Namphy. One of them that jumps to mind is the burning in the massacre at St. Jean Bosco church, which was President Aristide’s church (Father Aristide at that time) and the poor neighborhood of [inaudible]. So, they burned it down and killed close to 30 parishioners during mass. That was protected by the military. Some of these guys were military in plainclothes who conducted that massacre. There are massacres of peasants who had organized demanding land reform – demanding that they had access to equipment so that they could farm better. Namphy had opened the country so that cheap price and cheaper imports could flood the marketplace and really drive any peasants out of business, so they were demanding that this stop. So, there were massacres – two of them. One, the Piatre massacre and the other one in Jean-Rabel, 1987. There was a very brutal massacre that took place when people tried to vote on November 29, 1987. As people were lined up to vote there was a massacre of the people waiting in line to vote. All of that conducted under General Namphy’s orders. This is the period when, finally, 1990 the grassroots movement came together, drafted father Aristide to run, and under UN supervised elections – at that time the UN played a positive role – and people overwhelmingly, massively voted Father Aristide to power

WT: Whether in 1990, his return, his return to office in 2000, the coup against him, his forced exile, his return to Haiti, why is Aristide such a central figure in understanding the interests of outside forces and the voices of people in Haiti? Is there over 25 years at this point, and his name doesn’t disappear.

RR: This is connected to your first question about a theme from Haiti since 1990, which is that you have this movement that has existed now for over 30 years. The roots of Lavalas are in an ’86 movement that overthrew Duvalier. Here it is in 2017, and as we speak today, there were demonstrations in Haiti where they have been demonstrating for 48 days in a row since the election results in November to protest this stolen election and this electoral coup. So, you have thousands and at times that tens of thousands of the poorest people in Haiti, the base of Lavalas in the streets still 30 years after. So, you have a sustained movement. A sustained popular movement that has survived two coups, thousands of people killed, massive imprisonment and repression, exiled of his leadership, the kidnapping and we know of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine – one of the emerging leaders of Lavalas while Aristide was in exile – and a UN military occupation of thousands of troops under the direction of the US, France, and Canada and then implemented by Brazil and other forces in Latin America and around the world. You have this incredible example of sustained resistance, and it relates to Aristide, but not just as a person. Not just as a popular figure, but it relates to the accomplishments of the administrations that he was a part of. Lavalas actually did things for the people of Haiti. The people who had been marginalized who had never had anything in their lives got schools, health clinics, got lighted parks in places like Cite Soleil which the elite in Haiti consider the despised people of Haiti. They got concrete things that they’ve never forgotten. The minimum wage was doubled. There was investment in agriculture, more schools were built in that period than in the entire history of Haiti. Aristide represents that and when he speaks to the people he speaks from that experience when people rally to him and rally to Lavalas, it’s not as the great leader, but it’s as a representative of a popular movement that has actually done something for them and that they feel is them.

WT: Let me move to something that’s contemporary and perhaps link it to something in the past and then let’s move forward and talk about this period of 2010 when Preval is in office. In the press now, as a reference point for listeners, is a story about Guy Philippe who ran for – one of the senators, he had run for office in the 1990s, he was arrested on drug charges and money laundering charges. He was part of a coordinated effort from the Dominican Republic and outside forces to create chaos in the country in 2004 – the kidnapping of Aristide and taking him to Africa. Put that in context. It was strange to me because it seems like if Guy Philippe was involved in drugs as far back as they say, why was he just being arrested in 2016 and 2017? Put that coup into context. Is it in fact a coup? Why is the United States involved? What was the hope? At that point, of course, Aristide had completed his second term. Was he prevented from running for another term?

PL: Yes.

WT: Right, so explain that to us – these events in 2004 – because that’s when Aristide is taken out of the country.

PL: Guy Philippe represents the old regime. The Duvalier regime. He was a Lieut., from what I read, in the old patient military. During the coup of 1991-1994, particularly 1992, he and a few other officers from the Haitian army (which at the time was in existence having conducted the coup) were selected by the US and sent to a special training in Ecuador. It was a special ranger or some kind of special forces training in Ecuador. There, they started out until the coup ended.

When the military was disbanded by President Aristide as the people demanded because the military was so brutal and so repressive, he came back and was selected by the US to be put in charge of the new police force as 1 of its commissioners. His record was terrible. Human Rights Watch has documented a number of brutal killings, extrajudicial executions that took place under his command. So, he was moved from there to the city of Cape Haitian, but according to the records from 1997 on through the period, there was a lot of allegations of drug trafficking. In 2000, he was involved in a plot to stop the elections. There were going to be elections in 2000. He was involved in a plot to overthrow Preval and stop the elections. These elections Lavalas were slated to win by the sheer power of the movement. So, he was going to disrupt that. Then he fled Haiti, and went into exile.

During that whole time, he was supported by the US, and that’s why everybody is puzzled. Well, they had all this record about him drug trafficking, so why wasn’t he arrested at the time instead of being supported – instead of being given weapons and all kinds of assistance until the special forces and France and Canada came into Haiti kidnapping President Aristide? He was escorted into Port-au-Prince by those very forces. The US particularly could have nabbed him since then. What’s happening here is that there has been an attempt to reimpose the Duvalier dictatorship and Guy Philippe has been the main enforcer of this Duvalierist elite that’s in Haiti that wants to take back political power and repress the grassroots movement. That is the war that has been playing out these years.

WT: The question here… The US certainly has responsibility for enough. There’s no shortage of things the US imperial power and the other imperial powers are responsible for. In what interest is it to reinstall a Duvalierist regime in a country that is – I don’t want to say is poor because, Haiti in fact, has numerous resources – but the US interests specifically in maintaining this role in a country where there’s just been unrelenting resistance? Why? What’s the bottom line here or the middle line here?

RR: You understand and you’ve talked about it on air about Haiti’s history as the 1st black Republic, as the beacon against slavery, as the refuge for anyone who was escaping slavery around the world. The way in which European and US powers surrounded Haiti, enforced the debt on Haiti, that crippled the country from way back. The thing today is that, number 1, it is the power of a good example. Lavalas represents a dangerous example for the United States and for other imperial powers. It’s interesting in the world today we don’t talk about imperialism as much as we once did. And about how Empire exists everywhere. An imperial power enforces its empire everywhere. The US invaded Grenada, which had 100,000 people. It invaded Grenada because it wanted to overthrow a government that it found dangerous as an example in the Caribbean. The Caribbean is its neighborhood in its own manifest destiny mentality, and Haiti as a black radical movement – a black radical People’s movement – has been seen as something to crush. Now, are there resources in Haiti? Absolutely! Mineral wealth, oil, gold and what they also want is cheap labor. I was at Target the other day and the whole T-shirt section… “Made in Haiti.” That’s recent. They had that under “Baby Doc” and it’s back under Martelly. The Martelly government was installed by the US. Hillary Clinton was in Egypt during the Arab spring and she came all the way to Port-au-Prince to make sure that Martelly was in the runoff election.

WT: This is 2010.

RR: 2010. And it’s so interesting, because if you look at Martelly, he’s like that “Trump” of Haiti on every single level in terms of his obscene all vulgarity and his misogyny and homophobia and the ways in which he shames Haitians around the world.

WT: But the resistance is not going to stop. Other than us not hearing about it in the news it’s shown no hopes that it was going to stop or it was going to slow. One might translate that from a journalistic point of view as a losing battle because the resistance hasn’t slowed at all.

RR: Well, what they’ve done is they’ve stolen 2 elections. That’s been their response. They had to give in on the first election because the popular movement was so strong. What we believe is that the second election the US, the European Union and the OAS went to the elite in Haiti and said, “Don’t you dare give in on the second election.”

WT: The most recent one in 2016.

RR: Yes, the most recent one. The most recent one that’s being contested now. 45 days 50 days 60 days – they are determined to install a puppet regime in Haiti just like they were determined to keep AR ENA in power in El Salvador or just like they determined to keep the settlements in Palestine. Yes, there is a very very strong movement, but they are determined to crush it. We think that Jovenel Moïse is the next stage of the coup.

The reason they call it an electoral coup is that it goes in stages. This is now the new stage to reinforce the coup.

WT: Explain who Jovenel Moïse is. He is the gentleman who actually was in the runoff in 2015 and he was declared out right the Victor in the most recent election. I want to just make it clear so people know and get to the report that you and others did. From my reading of it, was Moïse a member of the party or was he appointed or selected by Martelley?

RR: He was handpicked by Martelley.

PL: Yes, the PHTK party is very new. It really translates into…

WT: Translate the name of the party.

PL: PHTK… It stands for Parti Haïtien Tèt Kale, meaning that Haitian party of skinheads. That’s what it is.

WT: Thanks for that, Pierre.

PL: Fairly new and because Martelley has a bald head, people were calling him “baldhead” or “skinhead” so, that’s how he named the party. It was pretty much nothing there, basically. No ideology, except that it represented… Because Martelley was a young man. He was a member of the Tonton Macoutes. He was a youth member of theTonton Macoutes. He was also reportedly a member of FRAPH, also. He fraternized with FRAPH, the death squad that was killing a lot of activists during the period of the first coup (1991-1994). He has been fairly close to the Haitian military structure – the old military reputed for its brutality. That’s where he is at and the basic thing is that they want to return. To reimpose the Duvalier dictatorship and this fits right into line with the Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton because as a young couple, they were in Haiti in ’75. They want to take Haiti back to those days of 1975 because that’s when there was such a reign of terror in Haiti. You had sweatshops and tourists would come to Hades. To them, to the ones who have [inaudible] it was a magical land. That’s what they see as the future for Haiti. This clashes with the way that Haitians see the future of their country, because at that time they were strangers in their own land. They were starving. People were not eating. The minimum wage was very low. It was as Robert mentioned earlier very exploitative, and that’s why people rose up against the regime of the Duvalier’s. So, they want to bring those days back and Martelley was really there man. That’s what we are seeing. Also, what they wanted to do – when I save “they” I mean the people who decide for Haitians – they took over a number of lands. A lot of the goldmines, a lot of the silver mines, a lot of the mining operations – they have their sights also on the oil that’s in Haiti. The number of contracts that they have written up or given them access to were illegal, but having the parliament, which will be headed by the Martelley group would simply rubberstamp all of those contracts whereas a truly People’s elected government would not allow that to happen. According to the present Haitian Constitution, which Haitians voted for overwhelmingly in 1987, the first time we ever voted on a Constitution meaning a grassroots vote on the Constitution, that Constitution says the resources of Haiti belong to the people of Haiti. It spells out procedures so that not anybody come in and just grab, or government turn it over to people. It’s got to go through a process of parliament and a lot of discussion. That’s too much for them, so they want to change that part and that’s why they are so bent not only of grabbing it, which is an illegal move that they did, but now they want to legalize their illegal grabs of the resources of Haiti.

WT: We are speaking with Pierre Labossiere and Robert Roth of Haiti action committee and they are joining us here on, Africa Today, which is heard on Monday evening to talk through and walk us through developments in the country of Haiti where they have both worked for many many years. Two questions, and then let’s jump into the contemporary period. Going chronologically, there is the presidency of Preval (2006-2010), which [inaudible] when Clinton comes in, is right around the time when the earthquake hit and it’s very very close to that. Some of his format is his neoliberal agenda, but also, it was also proffered I think at some point that he had some connections or had some point had been an ally or quasi-ally of Aristide, so correct that for us if we are incorrect, there. The second thing is Parliament. We talk a lot about the presidency, but parliament has a key role in this process too. There were elections in 2010, backspace and some of those parliamentary seats lapsed in the Senate and they were supposed to be [inaudible]. So, give us a sketch on Preval. Talk about parliament, and then we will move into the most recent developments.

RR: Well, in terms of Preval, Preval had followed Aristide as president after Aristide’s first presidential election. When Aristide came back with US troops, and Clinton made sure that Aristide would not serve his full term, they said it ends in ’95. Even though you were in exile for a number of years you are not going to serve anymore. That’s because Aristide wouldn’t bend on a number of issues, especially privatization in Haiti. Preval came in, and then Preval was a Lavalas president at that time. In the election after the coup, there was a de facto government for a couple of years, which oversaw…

WT: 2004-2006…

RR: … Exactly. In the election in 2006, it was the people who elected Preval. It was the popular movement that brought Preval into power and Peval came into power saying that he was going to bring back Aristide. And a lot of those rallies where there were tens and hundreds of thousands of people, you would see more Aristide signs than Preval signs. When Preval took power, he took power as part of another party – not Lavalas – [inaudible]. He created another party, and he immediately moved into a tight relationship with the US, the State Department, privatization, going after militants in Cite Soleil, working with the UN and Brazil, which did numbers of raids on some of the grassroots activists. More people were in prison. More industries were privatized, and the price of food and gas skyrocketed. There were food riots in Haiti under Preval. So, the people completely lost. 1 of the things in Haiti is that the consciousness of the people is so great on the ground. Here, if you promise and you don’t keep the promise sometimes people forget, right? In Haiti, if you promise something and you don’t do it, they remember. By the end of his term, Preval was anathema to the people of Haiti and the demand was, “Bring back Aristide.”

WT: And the parliament?

PL: Parliament has been… under Martelly elections were supposed to be taking place to renew one third of parliament at different times to ensure that there was continuity. When Martelly came in, he didn’t allow any elections to take place, and he had the full support of the US to do that. What ended up happening is that the parliament was really reduced to bare-bones, basically. By the end of 2014, there was no existing parliament anymore. It didn’t have a quorum. There were some members who still had some time left in their term, but they didn’t have a quorum. So, Martelly took on running by decree, which was something that he always wanted to do. He was helped to do this by Sec. Hillary Clinton, by Bill Clinton who at the time was like the proconsul of Haiti – like the governor of Haiti – and also the US Embassy. They all work in concert, which helped Martelly not having elections. People were in the streets demanding that elections be held. What he did was he reverted back to something the Duvalier’s used to do – appointing people. A number of mayors, for example. There were no municipal elections. Mayors were just appointed. It became like the rule of this one guy appointing people who should have been elected by the people, but then he put that way that would ensure his grip on Haiti from the national officers down to the municipal to the local officers. This is something that has been a major thing that they have done. The parliament ended up doing really Martelly’s bidding – acquiescing to anything he wanted – except for about six senators who were holdovers, and they held pretty strong. Because the number of members of Parliament was so reduced, those 6 senators were able to form such a voting block, and that’s what stopped a number of the abuses that Martelly could have done. By the time that 2015 came in, a lot of those people – their term had actually expired. So, Martelly started ruling by decree.

WT: I am going to be a bit unfair here with the question, but it’s a question hopefully that someone else is also asking, and that is that… When there is discussion about the Caribbean or South America, Cuba, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, etc., somehow Haiti doesn’t make it to that at level that, you know, when we stand up and do our political rallies and we say, “You gotta stand with this group of people,” less I hear Haiti. This is not to denigrate the other issues that are deserving of attention, but Haiti doesn’t seem to make it to that table. We talked about this before. I get answers from you. I don’t know if I’ve gotten an answer I’ve ever been satisfied with, but why not? Why in the recent developments as we talk about the new presidency in the United States and Obama’s machinations and after he visits Cuba he goes to Argentina. Elections in those countries have changed dramatically. Why don’t we hear the word Haiti? Why don’t we hear about the movement and Haiti? The resistance and Haiti? Just a speculative question, and then we will keep going.

PL: This is a question that has so many aspects to it. I think that what has happened is that if we look at it historically, Haiti was such an example as Robert has mentioned and as you have mentioned, in the struggle for black liberation in the Caribbean that many of the slaveholding plantation owners were so scared of the example of Haiti that this example and black people all over the world took so much pride in that it had to be demonized. There was a certain narrative of Haiti – a certain story about the Haitian revolution – that was told just so that people would be turned off by Haiti. This is historically speaking. It has continued to the present. We have publications saying the US war against Haiti, and that was continued to the very present. There is quite a bit of racism that takes place there. Also, you have a certain classism too, in the movement. Many people do not know about the Caribbean thinkers. Those who led the movement for liberation and who made tremendous contributions, but seldom are acknowledged. Aristide is one such man, but he’s never acknowledged. Whether you look at him from the standpoint of liberation theology or revolutionary practices or the example that the grassroots revolutionary movement in Haiti has done based on their accomplishments, Haiti is never mentioned. We will hear people – well-meaning friends and good people – talk about the bad things of the Clintons, but they mention the poor in Honduras and never anything about Martelly or the coup in Haiti for example. It’s as if Haiti does not count, or its overlooked. The accomplishments of Haiti in terms of the abolishment of slavery and the struggle that it waged alongside the South American revolutionaries like Simon Bolívar and those people and the leadership that Haiti has shown in the struggle to abolish slavery throughout the Americas is never acknowledged. You have to search for bits and pieces of it mentioned here and there and try to pull that body together. Those are the things that come to my mind. I tried to let people know about and to educate people. As a Haitian it pisses me off, frankly. I’m very annoyed by it, frankly.

RR: I just wanted to add two things. One is that it’s a mistake not to look at Lavalas as one example of a resistance that we should be looking at right now in terms of our own resistance and our own fight. The slogan in Haiti is, “Nou pap obeyi” (“we will not obey”). I’ve been in the streets in these last few days, and people are talking about being ungovernable, right? That we need to be ungovernable, and in Haiti they have really done it. That doesn’t mean that we have to take everything from Haiti, but it means we have to pay attention to Haiti. And attention to the lessons that Haiti teaches about what popular movements can do and have done. The other thing is that I did work for years around Central America. I traveled there during the war in both El Salvador and Nicaragua. My heart is still there as well as in Haiti. I was never asked why would the US care about those places. I’m always asked that about Haiti. ALWAYS asked that about Haiti. We can answer the question in a million different ways, but I think that the thing that Pierre is saying about the stereotypical demonization of Haiti and how it carries over into this… Every time you hear about Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Right? Undoubtably, as in Africa – as someone who is trying to project the struggles in Africa – I’m sure you’ve faced this all the time. People look at Africa as just one mass of confusion. I think all of those things are in play, and we are trying to get a place for Haiti in the middle of this movement – not on the periphery in this period because we think it’s important.

WT: So, these elections which were held last year… Everyone was pressuring. The elections need to be held even though the storm had hit and people were without homes, etc. It seemed to be quick to have elections. Reading your reports in the reports of others from across a broad spectrum, there were problems with ID cards. There are problems with people getting to polling stations, people whose homes had been destroyed. In fact, it turned out that all of the candidates –Jovenel Moïse – all of the other candidates protested the way in which the elections were conducted. Even the electoral board protested the way in which the elections were conducted. If you look at the percentages in the elections, essentially this new president, Jovenel, is coming to office with less than 10% of the more than 6 million people were there who voted. It seems just to be moving forward. What has been the response on the ground, because it seems like just a blatant – as I think the word you or someone else used – “electoral coup?”

PL: Definitely. When you look at the numbers and the percentage it was exactly the same thing in 2015. In 2015 there was no hurricane. What it is is that the old system that the coup d’état of 2004 was designed to do, which was to remove the people from participating in the decision-making of their country. I was 8 years old in 1964 when I voted for “Papa Doc” to be president for life. Imagine that… An 8-year-old voting. Those were not serious elections. There has never been any seriously conducted election in Haiti. People sit somewhere and determine that these are the people who will be in parliament, these are the people who will be the mayors, this is who the president is going to be, and then they impose that. It’s theater. What they hold on the day of election is theater so that they create an image – a good theatrical production that people are out there voting and they are determined, except in 1990-1995 and 2000 when the Lavalas people were in power and said, “we will have fair and free elections.” Since that time, it’s all been made up. It’s all been preselected candidates and then they hand you those results. It’s easier to them. From what came out during the 2015 verification process of these elections that there was massive fraud that occurred, voter suppression where people who showed up to vote couldn’t vote because their names were not on the list and that’s the place that they had always voted or they would see their names outside but inside it wasn’t there. I met a man who told me ever since there was voting you always voted at the same place. He was 57 years old, but here at this time he was told that he had to go vote in Cap-Haïtien 150 miles away and he was furious. What was going on at the same time from what was emerging from all of the investigation that has been taking place around these recent elections is that somebody else was actually voting for this man. Many people were facing this. It was a whole massive theft of these elections where they had already handpicked the people who were going to be in parliament, handpicked the president, Jovenel Moïse, and were imposing that on people. When the parties contested and they demanded verification and after a lot of obstacles were put in their path so that the verification process would not take place, they started the verification process looking at all the tally sheets, the attendance sheets. They wanted to compare the fingerprints – because when you don’t know how to write, they take your fingerprint instead of your signature – comparing signatures. They saw 85% of the votes cast for Jovenel Moïse were fraudulent – 85%! Then the CEP, which is the electoral council stepped in and stopped the verification and demanded that the verification be stopped. So they still gave Jovenel Moïse the win.

WT: So, the resistance has taken off and has continued from that point from the day of the election.

PL: From the day of the election.

WT: On the ground, Pierre, and Robert, people’s lives… Not only did we have the hurricane that came through at the end of the year, but in terms of access to food and transportation, what is that situation like?

RR: It’s a disaster. It’s a disaster. You have a government that has no interest in its people, you have the marginalization of probably 80% of the population. One of the things that happened right after the election was that the community of La Saline rose up in protest. The Haitian police (they are always backed by the UN) came into La Saline, which is one of poorer communities that are the backbone of Lavalas and – there is video of it that you should see – these people are standing up demanding with pictures of Maryse Narcisse the Lavalas candidate and they are being tear gassed so massively that 3 infants died. 3 infants were suffocated, all right? If you look at La Saline or you look at Cite Soleil for you look at what happened after hurricane Matthew, there’s 1 million people that are still homeless after hurricane Matthew, and the government has done nothing.

WT: … And the numbers for cholera unbelievable in terms of the death and in terms of people who have also been affected.

RR: It’s well over 10,000 deaths and the infection rate is in the hundreds of thousands by now. This was brought by the UN directly. It was brought by Nepalese troops defecating in the Artibonite River and there had not been cholera in Haiti. Now there is this massive medical crisis and you have a government that, again, will not be providing healthcare for people and will not be sending health workers into rural areas. They will not be building schools, but will be building sweatshops for US companies. That’s the reality on the ground.

WT: Two things here as we come to conclusion. The website for Haiti action committee?

PL: It’s haitisolidarity.net and we are also on Facebook.

WT: I do see more organizations that have followed Haiti. Maybe NGOs. Not necessarily in a political analysis, but have talk more about the crisis and this unending cycle. What would both of you who have spent your life on this issue say to listeners to how do we connect what’s being talked about now and been talked about through the Obama years – the deportation of Haitians, etc., what would you say is how we need to move to ensure that the issues of Haiti are formed into the other issues that we talk about?

PL: Let me invite people. We will be discussing those very points at an event we are having this Sunday, January 29 at 3 PM at 518 Valencia St. – 16th St., very close to BART that’s in San Francisco – Lessons from Haiti: Mobilizing against Repression, Building a People’s Movement, Resisting Stolen Elections. So we do want to invite people to come. We will be discussing…

WT: 29 of January at 3 PM. 518 Valencia St.

PL: That’s correct. Something I wanted to say, I would be very remiss if I did not bring it up. Jovenel Moïse, the currently handpicked president, so-called, of Haiti is now facing a very serious case of money laundering. This is the big news that erupted a couple of days ago. The Haitian equivalent of the IRS actually sent a judge a dossier to pursue him judicially by the justice system. So, that something people should stay tuned on. What’s happening is that it appears to be quite a government of narco traffickers taking hold of Haiti right now. That’s what’s going on.

RR: We want to be in dialogue. We were both in Haiti Action Committee, have been in the streets in all of these demonstrations and we see the stirrings and the resistance that’s happening here. We think that that has to be connected to what the US is doing around the world. The connections between Haiti, the black struggle, the connections of resistance that are going on in Haiti and here – those connections are really important to me and for all of us.

WT: Sunday, January 29 at 3 PM. 518 Valencia St.,. Haitisolidarity.net. Also on Facebook. There is also an event coming up. Save the date. Sunday, February 26 a benefit concert for Haiti. Pierre and Robert we talked a lot of times over the years and we’ve been following Haiti as well as we can. We appreciate you coming in. We will continue to make sure that it’s on the front burner and we have some way to understand the best way to struggle for the rights of people who have struggled.

PL: … And let me give kudos to Dr. Maryse Narcisse who was the former Lavalas presidential candidate. If these elections hadn’t been stolen from her, she would be now the 1st elected woman president of Haiti. That’s what the masses are so outraged about – this blatant theft of that election.

WT: Thanks so much, Pierre. Thanks so much, Robert.

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