HAITI Statement of the Fourth International THE FOURTH International hails the courageous people of Haiti, who, through their mobilizations over the last months of 1985 and the first months of 1986, brought down the hated dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier and its gang of murderers, the Tontons Macoutes.
The toppling of this US-backed dictatorship - the second oldest in the Americas - opens for the first time in many decades the opportunity to organize open political and trade-union activity by the oppressed and exploited working people of Haiti.
The new military-civilian junta in Haiti, largely handpicked by Duvalier from among his cronies just hours before his flight, is now trying to deprive the Haitian people of this hard-won opening for democratic political organization and activity. We stand beside the Haitian workers and peasants in their demands that the torturers and murderers of the Duvalier tyranny be brought to justice and punished; that all the prisoners be released; that all political exiles be allowed to return to Haiti immediately; and that an end be put to all police and army attacks on popular demonstrations and meetings.
The massive US military presence in the Caribbean looms as a danger to the gains that the Haitian people have conquered and are now fighting to consolidate and extend.
We demand:
No US Military intervention in Haiti!
in the demonstrations against this government.
Now that the first few days of joy have passed, it has to be recognized that the Duvalier regime was only one of the problems we have faced in the history of our country. Cleaning out the Augean stables for a few weeks will not end the evils that are caused not specifically by the Duvaliers but by a colonial and imperialist legacy.
The basis of the savage repression exercized for so long against our people has other roots. It is the need that a class of parasites has to maintain an outdated social order. Only a radical change in this order could guarantee democracy.
Such a radical change would have to involve the following points as a minimum:
- giving the land to those who work it, not just to limit hunger but also to save the soil from erosion (1);
nationalizing the import export trade, which has been robbing the peasants of an important part of their labor;
-expropriating the big industrial, commercial and financial companies that are transferring the fruits of the labor of Haitians to the multinationals (in particular in the so-called export assembly industries) or to the foreign bank accounts of the Haitian bourgeoisie. And there are, of course, many other tasks before us in educa tion, revival of the national culture, health, housing, and so forth that have never been taken up by any government that has ruled in this country. Obviously, only a government coming out of the mass struggles underway would be prepared to set about making such a change. The drama in the coming months and perhaps years is that the establishment of such a new economic and social order is exactly what the United States wants to avert at all costs. Our road to democracy is still being blocked by an enormous obstacle - the United States. The time, however, may not be too long before we have the lever for tipping this obstacle over a cliff, the massive mobilization of the cities and countryside leading to an armed insurrection, not against the symbols of the social system but against the social system itself. The time is perhaps not too far off when we will have the underpinning necessary for this lever, the revolt of enough peoples to disperse the forces of foreign aggression.
1. The peasants poverty has force nem back on gathered tood to meet a their energy needs. The result has bee that in the last 30 years, about half forests have been destroyed, leading disastrous soil erosion. -IV.
International Viewpoint 10 March 1986
No imperialist pressure on Haiti! Imperialist forces out of Haiti!
"The negotiations to arrive at a political formula acceptable for the majority of the democratic forces will no doubt be difficult. Nonetheless, they should be successful. And the United States, as indicated by the January events, seem to favor such an outcome. This is what Serge Gilles wrote in a well-documented article in the last issue of le Monde Diplomatique (February 1986, p. 10.) Unfortunately, the United States is in fact hostile to any genuinely democratic solution in Haiti. To the contrary, it is for maintaining the social and economic system that it consolidated through 19 years of military occupation (1915-34) and 29 years of the Duvalier regime (19571986). The military junta with which it replaced Jean-Claude Duvalier does not in any way represent an acceptable formula for the majority of the democratic forces."
The new junta members were all high up in the Duvalier regime and up to their necks in crime, with the exception of one stray - Gerard Gourgue. To give just one example of the new crimes already committed by the government of General
Namphy, in the week after he took 6