BLOOD IN THE WATER: PREDATORY CAPITALISM AND THE SCRAMBLE FOR HAITI

In the aftermath of the 7.2 earthquake that ravaged Port-au-Prince and environs on January 12th, the international policy response was swift. Contingents from China, France, Belgium, the UN, Australia, and a host of countries from across the political spectrum were pouring in within 72 hours. Concerts were held. Non-governmental organizations turned on a dime in order to send staff, supplies, antibiotics, potable drinking water, and simple human comfort. Many journalists put down their cameras, rolled up their sleeves, and shouldered slabs of stone to free men, women and children trapped under rubble.


For all the lifelines that have been thrown, however, the sharks have begun to circle, many of them under the pretence of altruism. Beneath this wave of compassion and support is a strong undercurrent of moral self-congratulation, especially on the part of world governments who had hitherto demanded their pound of flesh from the small, desperately impoverished Republic. While the powers that be pat themselves on the back and jockey for humanitarian acclaim, inquiring minds are sceptical as to why it required a massive earthquake for the international community, which has no small role to play in Haiti’s longstanding plight, to lift a finger to assist what is arguably the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.


In Haiti’s case, it may be argued that, from the outset, it has been besieged by a cabal of corporate, state and private interests that have had a vested interest in its destabilization ever since the Haitian Revolution.


Toussaint L’Ouverture, often overlooked during discussions of the most brilliant military and strategic minds in modern history, was able to forge an army and a national sense of identity powerful enough to outfight the British, the Spanish and of course the French in spite of the fact that practically all the major European powers with colonies in the Caribbean conspired against him out of fear that, should the ‘revolt’ be successful, it would spread throughout the Caribbean in a domino effect. The combination of shifting alliances, the use of top-notch guerrilla tactics as force-multipliers in the face of advanced weaponry, and stronger resistance to tropical diseases compared to their European invaders proved sufficient to best 21,000 of Napoleon’s finest. The Haitian Revolution rocked the world and sent shivers up the spine of Empire. The news was whispered in palaces and drawing rooms across the world: in the face of incalculable odds, black slaves had risen up, overthrown their imperial masters, and dared to form a new nation, replete with coat of arms, flag, government ministers, ambassadors, and a sophisticated administrative apparatus.


This simply would not stand. The French government demanded 150 million francs payable in gold in exchange for official recognition with the explicit threat of invasion should the ravaged Haiti refuse the terms. The US Government backed the French, and refused to recognize Haiti for sixty years. They also sent several warships of their own in 1850 which would patrol Haitian waters for at least another half century. Meanwhile, Haiti had lost thousands of acres of valuable arable farmland during the war for its Independence. Once the crown jewel of the French Caribbean, many of the fertile lands had been reduced to ash by scorched-earth tactics on both sides. The British, the US and the French imposed stifling embargoes to pressure Haiti to pay. Threatened with complete and utter isolation at a time when foreign assistance would have been instrumental in the reconstruction efforts, Haiti buckled to the French and US demands, paying down this debt scrupulously until 1947 in spite of the fact that debt service payments alone accounted for anywhere between 70%-80% of all foreign-currency denominated earnings. In a sadistic twist of irony, the only international banks willing to lend to the impoverished nation were French, British of American, and they demanded exorbitantly high interest rates in exchange for credit.


Yet in spite of all this, Haiti managed to produce one of the wonders of the world, the Citadel Laferrière. They routinely sent not only arms and materiel but also their best troops to South America in order to aid in the Bolivarian independence movements that were sweeping across the continent, gaining notoriety for their bravery, strategy, and unconventional guerilla warfare tactics.


But the pillage wasn’t over yet.


"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class thug for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism…I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in.”
-General Smedley D. Butler, United States Marine Corps, 1935.


In 1910 the US State Department backed a National City Bank-led consortium of US banks to buy out the Banque National d’Haiti, the only commercial bank on the island and the correspondent bank for the government’s various accounts. When a popular uprising against the repressive regime of Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam in 1915 threatened American corporate interests such as the Haitian American Sugar Company, the corporatocracy responded in its usual fashion – by sending in US government troops to ‘restore order’. The invasion would result in the deaths of 15,000 Haitians and last for 19 years. The policies implemented by the new American overlords were predictable in retrospect. All restrictions on foreign landholdings were repealed. All import tariffs on American goods were dropped, key US advisers were installed in all major government outposts (their authority backed by the US Marine Corps under none other than General Smedley D. Butler) and all debts to First World banks and governments were scrupulously paid even at the expense of desperately needed domestic reforms that would have been able to alleviate widespread suffering.


In 1957, the notorious Dr. Francois ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier came to power on a Black Nationalist platform and within two years ruthlessly consolidated his power through a combination of corruption, theft, and militia-led terror. He would receive USD 15 million a year from the US until 1962, as well as untold millions from international aid agencies, US-backed Fulgencio Batista (up until 1959) and associated foreign banks, most of which were diverted into personal offshore accounts. Together with his son Jean-Claude, who would succeed him in 1971, they attained levels of corruption and outright theft worthy of Nigeria’s Sani Abacha. It is estimated that at the height of Haiti’s foreign denominated debt load, which stood at US$1.8 billion before HIPC debt relief initiatives began to erode it, 40% of Haiti’s external debt can be traced back to the Duvalier years.


Papa Doc would rely heavily on US support to cement his rule in spite of public misgivings on the part of various US administrations regarding his repressive policies. The Tonton Macoute, the Duvalier clan’s personal militia and secret service, were trained by instructors on loan from the United States Marine Corps and the CIA, and the leaders of this brutal militia were routinely trained at the US Army School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, recently renamed the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC. This institution, nicknamed the School of Assassins, boasts such luminaries as Manuel Noriega, Gen. Anastasio Somoza, and Roberto D’Aubuisson of El Salvador. The human rights atrocities committed by WHINSEC graduates have been carefully documented by watchdog groups such as Amnesty International.


Both Papa Doc and his son Jean-Claude Duvalier ‘Baby Doc’ would rely on the US to maintain their grip on power through the use of mass terror. Known for their characteristic dark sunglasses and black clothing, the Tonton Macoute exceeded the official armed forces of the country in number and were responsible for the torture, disappearance and mass executions of civilian dissidents or anyone suspected of being a ‘threat’ to the regime. Like Augusto Pinochet and their pro-American counterparts in Spanish-speaking Latin America, the Duvalier regime learned early on that all that was necessary to massacre and plunder without let or hindrance was to pay lip service to the Six Commandments of American Foreign Policy as dictated to third world governments from Mount Washington throughout the latter half of the 20th century:


1. There is no God but neoliberal free-market capitalism, and Milton Friedman
is its prophet.
2. There is no evil but socialism.
3. Thou shalt not covet, nationalize, expropriate, or otherwise demand
concessions from American corporate and banking interests
4. Thou shalt privatize any utilities or state-owned agencies that are remotely
capable of making a profit
5. Thou shalt give first preference to US-based firms (such as Bechtel) when
awarding engineering or supply contracts for debt-financed projects.
6. Honor the IMF and the World Bank and render them holy.


The US agenda in Haiti since the days of the Duvalier dynasty has been a relatively simple one when interpreted in the light of failed ‘neoliberal’ export-led strategies formulated in Washington, for Washington. The idea was to transform Haiti into a manufacturing base as a source of ultra-cheap labor for multinational corporations while also encouraging them to abandon agricultural production for local needs. Under the Duvalier administrations, there was no effective minimum wage for local wage worker performing menial tasks for foreign corporations.

In the 1990’s President Rene Préval would face massive resistance to any and all initiatives to raise minimum wage requirements not only from local business elites and factory owners, but from none other than the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) which would famously state in one of its project papers that “…wage systems should not be the forum for welfare and social programs” and that wage increases would endanger Haiti’s ‘comparative advantage’ in ‘low cost labour’. This was in the face of widespread starvation among the very poor as opposed to record profits for garment makers. Companies whose clothes or products were manufactured by Haitian workers under such conditions include Disney, Wal-Mart, Kmart, Kids R’ Us and J.C Penney. Factory workers were exposed to the same sweatshop conditions that appear to be identical across the globe: constant exposure to hazardous materials, inhumanly long working hours, constant fear of instant dismissal for the slightest infraction, physical, sexual and psychological abuse from managers and foremen, and subsistence wages sufficient only to delay starvation. The average sweatshop worker earned a dollar a day, if so much, which by the UNDP’s (United Nations Development Programme) own definition constitutes severe and life-threatening poverty. Unionization was banned, and any attempts to organize labor for collective bargaining purposes were promptly met with beatings and assassinations by the ubiquitous Tonton Macoute death squads, whose innovative execution methods included binding their victims’ hands, hanging used tires around their heads and setting the tires on fire in a practice referred to as ‘necklacing’. They carried machetes at all times, and in their frenzied attacks would quite literally chop their victims into pieces.


THE RICE RIOTS


Perhaps the most well-known example of predatory capitalism masked by free-market rhetoric is the infamous privatization of the main water treatment plant in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Engineering giant Bechtel had successfully tendered a bid for a water treatment and distribution plant that had been hitherto subsidized by the government. Under the previous arrangement, water rates were charged pro rata based on the income levels associated with different regions. The net effect of this policy was that water rates were effectively progressive, with the very poor paying heavily subsidized rates. Within months of acquiring the plant, water rates tripled under Bechtel in some of the most economically destitute regions of the province, leading to rioting, water shortages, social unrest and public outcry from the international community. The policy was so nefarious that Bechtel would post notices attempting to discourage the collection of rainwater as an alternative. This was no isolated incident of corporate thuggery. A similar dynamic would play itself out in Haiti, and with equally disastrous consequences. This sordid tale, like many similar ones throughout the Caribbean, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa, can be traced back to what could be described euphemistically as misguided IMF policy prescriptions.


Under the neoliberal model, all forms of protectionism were discouraged, and Haiti was under intense pressure to privatize broad swaths of industry and open Haiti to foreign competition under heavy-handed terms.


In the 1980’s rice was one of Haiti’s chief exports in an economy where at least one out of every four Haitians depended on the agricultural sector for day-to-day survival. The USAID program, under the pretense of alleviating starvation allowed US agribusiness interests to flood Haiti with surplus rice exports at rock bottom prices, wiping out the local farmers. Having effectively neutralized the local competition, the price of rice, a staple in the Haitian diet, began to rise dramatically. The result was starvation, rioting, and social displacement.
In 1971 Papa Doc died, and his 19 year-old son Jean Claude ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier took his place. Whatever he lacked of his father’s sheer brutality, (although the Tonton Macoute continued to operate) he compensated for in theft, stashing hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid and state funds in private accounts under false names at the Lichtenstein branch of UBS AG. During this period the Haitian people suffered severe, frequent crises such as the famine and disease outbreaks. After he lavished US$3 million on a fairytale wedding in1980 in the midst of unimaginable poverty, the Duvalier dynasty was beginning to crumble from lack of even minimal popular support, even amongst the military.


In 1986, a popular uprising against the now isolated Duvalier regime toppled the younger from power. The army asked Jean-Claude to resign, and a provisional government ruled until finally in 1990, a Roman Catholic priest named Jean-Bertrand Aristide won 67% of the vote in a national election.


In retrospect, his administration was doomed from the start. His radical policies made local business elites and foreign corporations ill at ease, and he argued vociferously for reparations to the Haitian Republic from the countries that had siphoned off so much of its wealth for nearly 200 years. Overthrown by a military coup in 2001 under General Raoul Cédras, a well-funded league of assassins called the Front for the Advancement of Progress of the Haitian People (FRAPH) massacred thousands of dissidents and Aristide supporters without let or hindrance.


Amnesty International would later report that the leader of these extrajudicial executioners, Emmanuel ‘Toto’ Constant, was an unabashed CIA asset who flaunted his Washington connections and was paid a stipend of US$500 a month. After he was detained by INS officials in the US in 1995, there was a broad-based campaign to have him deported back to Haiti to stand trial for war crimes. When he threatened to divulge the details of his involvement with the CIA, the Clinton administration ordered his release, and he was quietly relocated to Long Island.


POGO, MEET THE REAL PABLO ESCOBAR

“We can’t compete with the government.”
– John Gotti Jr.
(In response to allegations that his organization was involved in the
distribution and sale of heroin and cocaine)


In 1993, President Clinton dispatched former President Jimmy Carter to attempt to convince the military regime to step down while US troops prepared to invade should the attempt prove unsuccessful. The military assented, and Aristide prepared to return to power. Before he did, however, he delivered a speech in front of the UN General Assembly in which he claimed that the military regime was raking in $200 million a year in profits from the hundreds of metric tons of cocaine from the Colombian Cali cartel that was flowing through Haiti en route to the US. In the light of CIA support of death squads such as FRAPH and the allegations of CIA drug-related protection racketeering that resulted in the Oliver North/Iran Contra scandals of the 1980’s, the subtext to Aristide’s words are very clear- just as General Smedley D. Butler made Haiti ‘safe for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in’ someone had a vested interest in making sure that vital drug smuggling routes went unmolested.


Patrick Elie, anti-drug czar under Aristide, was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying that CIA liaisons rebuffed all attempts on his part to call to their attention the rampant drug-smuggling by the Haitian military, and the National Intelligence Service (which was created by the CIA under the darkly appropriate acronym SIN) were among the most prolific in the drug trafficking trade. SIN operatives such as Col. Gambetta Hyppolite were routinely trained at the US Army School of the Americas. As in Manuel Noriega’s Panama, the intention was clear- to create yet another CIA funded narco-state to assist the agency in carrying out its dark agenda. As outlined in the Kerry Report of 1988, it was testified before the Senate that Minister of the Interior General Williams Regala would routinely facilitate mass cocaine shipments under the watchful eye of DEA agents. Investigative journalist and author Dennis Bernstein would allege outright that the Haitian military elites, many of whom were on the CIA payroll since the mid 1980’s, were merely a proxy for yet another CIA drug op.


Aristide served the remainder of his term, but was defeated by one-time ally René Préval in 1996. He would be reelected in 2000 amidst allegations of election fraud. Drug trafficking continued to be rampant even under the Aristide administration, and high-ranking figures would accuse Aristide himself of demanding a share of their illicit profits in exchange for protection. Aristide, in his defense, would argue that this was part of a disinformation campaign design to destabilize his administration, and that the US had reneged on a deal in which he would privatize certain key state enterprises and sell them off to US firms in exchange for ongoing support. Though Aristide’s words bear the ring of truth, it would be both disingenuous and naïve to paint him as being a virtuous white knight.


After a tumultuous and violent four years, a revolt broke out in the city of Gonaives and rebel contingents marched towards Port-au-Prince. Although the United Nations’ official version of the events claims that at this point Aristide resigned, Aristide himself maintains to this day that uniformed US troops escorted him out of office for his ‘safekeeping’. A provisional government would govern until 2006 when sitting President René Préval was reelected with 51% of the vote.


It is painfully evident that Haiti’s plight up until January 14th is due in no small part to the rapacious policies of international banks, intelligence agencies, multinational corporations, short-sighted aid agencies, powerful drug cartels and world governments that have been able to bring their vast resources to bear on a country that was vulnerable from the beginning. Slowly, signs of normalcy are beginning to appear in Haiti. However, as the foam subsides, the sharks have begun to circle once more. There is yet another reason why there are 10,000 US troops are strategically located throughout Haiti, and once again it has nothing to do with restoring order, providing aid, or altruism.


The feeding frenzy is about to begin anew.

Veritas vos liberabit

Marli A. Creese