Geography Archives: Haiti

A popular uprising has paralyzed life in much of Haiti. While police are violently suppressing protesters, don’t expect Canadian officials to criticize security forces they fund.

Rosa Luxemburg popularized the dictum “Socialism or Barbarism”. Since World War I Leftists of various stripes have adopted or modified the maxim. In Haiti the struggle has been between those seeking “poverty with dignity” and oligarchic gangsterism. Unfortunately, Canada has been on the side of barbarism.

Empires never forgive rebels; an insubordinate rebel plants a seed that can sprout many generations later.

Scientists theorize that empathy developed as an evolutionary strategy to build stronger bonds among animals that depend on cooperation for survival.

Capitalism’s need for labor is the determining factor in immigration policy. Its contradictions create a system that is consistently inhumane.

Black women in the French-speaking world have been marginalized throughout history and even if they did not lack autonomy within the family unit (which often they did), they certainly suffered as a result of their colonial status. This often created double oppression.

Toward the end of his life, Frederick Douglass served briefly as U.S. ambassador to Haiti. The disastrous episode reveals much about the country’s long struggle for Black sovereignty while always under the threat of U.S. empire.

Pigs and Canadian imperialism. Most people would have difficulty understanding the connection. But for many Haitians the relationship is a historical memory.

Re-reading Guy Endore’s “forgotten masterpiece” it is striking how this novel from 1934, long-noted for its shocking and sophisticated account of slavery and resistance in the lead-up to the Haitian Revolution, is also a penetrating account of the ethical and political deformity and alienation perpetuated by the ideology of “whiteness.”

The Washington Post has a piece on the current deportation of Haitian migrants from the U.S. and how it is charged with racism.

The spectacle of violence against Haitians at the U.S.-Mexico border needs to be seen in light of ongoing U.S. imperialism in Haiti.

The Banque Nationale d’Haiti (BNH) was housed in a whitewashed, two-story colonial building at the corner of rues Ferou and Américaine in the downtown business district of Port-au-Prince.v

The early history of U.S. imperial banking and the internationalization of Wall Street began alongside the project of U.S. colonial expansion at the turn of the 19th century and ended amid the financial and economic crises of the 1930s.

On the night of 14 August 1791, enslaved Africans gathered in the Bois Caïman forest and planned the revolt that would begin the Haitian Revolution. Last week, on the 230th anniversary of this meeting, Haiti was hit by an earthquake that has upturned the lives of more than a million people.

Joe Biden’s response to the earthquake was to put war hawk Samantha Power, who now heads USAID, in charge of U.S. relief efforts in Haiti.

Plan follows precedent of 1970s state-sponsored assassination campaign targeting leftists.

In March, hundreds of thousands of Haitians took to the streets of Port au Prince to demand an end to corruption and the departure of President Jovenel Moïse, whose term of office had expired.

Over eight days, from June 25-30, Haiti had been subjected to increasing state-sponsored, imperial and gang violence. Massacres killed almost 60 people in Port au Prince, including in Cité Soleil, Delmas and Pétionville, as well as on on Rue Magloire Ambroise.

Haiti Liberté editor and writer Kim Ives talks about the possible motivations behind the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, revealing developments about a possible uprising that the U.S. press rarely reports.

Analysis the day after the Haitian president’s assassination focused on liberal constitutionalism and elections. This narrow view overlooks the longstanding demands from organized popular sectors.