Caribbean women support Aristide

We, the undersigned women of the Caribbean and of Caribbean descent, denounce the U.S.-backed coup, which culminated in President Aristide's removal from Haitian soil by U.S. forces.

While we recognize that there are likely to be legitimate criticisms of the Aristide government, that is not the issue. The issue is that there was a democratically elected government which had not completed its term, and an opposition which included armed gangs, purported drug dealers and mercenaries led by former leaders of the FRAPH death squad and Duvalierists.

The Haitian people achieved the first successful slave revolution in history. ... But they have never been allowed the conditions in which they could build their future without premeditated outside interference. The imperial powers, especially France and the U.S. ... have made the Haitian people pay. Backed by the United States, France ordered Haiti to pay 150 million francs in gold as "reparations" to former plantation and slave owners as well as for the costs of the war, in return for international recognition. It has been estimated that French bankers and big business alone owe Haiti at least $21 billion in reparations for the forced debt that took Haiti 120 years to pay off.

For 60 years following the revolution, the U.S. government refused to recognize the Haitian Republic. The U.S. threatened Haiti 26 times by anchoring warships in its harbors to protect U.S. business interests. It invaded Haiti in 1915 and stayed until 1934, nineteen years of occupation. U.S. Marines robbed $500,000 from its National Bank in 1915 and deposited it in the Nation al City Bank--now part of the Citibank octopus. In the 200 years since Haiti's independence, it endured 13 coups before the coup of Feb. 29, 2004. The bloody Duvalier dictatorships ... were backed by both the U.S. and France. Cedras, appoint ed by Aristide during his first term to head the army, later led a coup against Aristide, which was the joint work of the Haitian business elite and the CIA.

Under the Bush administration the U.S. stepped up its campaign to force "regime change" in Haiti. It pressured the Inter-American Develop ment Bank and other agencies to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in development assistance to Haiti, earmarked for safe drinking water, literacy programs and health services. It instructed the IMF and the World Bank to place Haiti under a financial embargo. This is the administration which now asks us to believe that it is acting in the interests of "peace" and "democracy" in Haiti, as in Iraq.

All Caribbean people have a long experience of U.S. economic, political and military domination and subversion in this region. ... It was CLR James, a Caribbean man born and bred in Trinidad and Tobago, who wrote in "Black Jacobins," the great history of the Haitian revolution, "The transformation of slaves, trembling in hundreds before a single white man, into a people able to organize themselves and defeat the most powerful European nations of their day, is one of the great epics of revolutionary struggle and achieve ment." We have always felt deeply that we must defend Haiti because Haiti is ours. Now we must act.

The following are contacts for this Caribbean women's statement:

In the Caribbean: Andaiye, andaiye [at] solutions2000.net;

Jacqueline Burgess, jacquie.cafra [at] wow.net.

In the United States: Margaret Prescod, margaretprescod [at] crossroadswomen.net.

http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/caribwomen0318.php