Readying the Cataclysm. posted by Richard Seymour

First of all, on Haiti, I want to know how some reporters can write sentences like "the troubled Caribbean country struggles to hold its first election since former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in an armed revolt in February 2004" and still sleep at night. Aristide was deposed by US marines, a straightforward and widely reported fact that was occluded only briefly by a weak lie that Aristide had 'resigned'. The press aren't even bothering to claim that this is the case any more. As for the "struggle" to hold an election, isn't it mind-numbingly obvious that the reason it continues to be put off is because the French-American-Canadian occupation wants to destroy Lavalas and its supporters first?

In this light, I can only agree with Le Colonel Chabert's suggestion that Lt. Gen. Urano Teixeira da Matta Bacellar, the Brazilian head of the UN forces was whacked on account of some dispute with the new sweatshop-deathsquad rulers. Chabert cites Haiti Action:

Bacellar's death comes on the heels of Boulos's announcement of a nationwide general strike on Monday aimed at forcing the UN mission to get tough with bandits in Cite Soleil. The term "Bandits" is often seen as a code word for Lavalas supporters, and Cite Soleil has served as a launching site for massive demonstrations demanding the return of ousted president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Mario Andresol, the current Chief of Police, representing the US-installed government of Gerard Latortue, recently alleged that the community was also being used by Columbian drug traffickers and "certain political forces" to hide victims of a recent spate of kidnappings in the capital.

It transpires that the recent UN assassination of Emmanuel Wilme, a key Lavalas grassroots activist, exacted a heavy toll on civilians in the area. The effort to wipe out the 'street gangs' who are trying to defend themselves and their communities from the revenant genocidaires is clearly being stepped up, and the Haitian ruling class is desperate enough to turn to genocide. If they cannot persuade the UN to provide a humanitarian blue facade for it through a capital strike, who can doubt that they will visit the same cataclysm on Haitians that they did after 1991? It is, after all, what they have been preparing for.

Shortly after the coup in early 2004, Stephen Kerr wrote:

Since 1% of Haitians control 50% of the country’s wealth, and this 1% forms the backbone of opposition to Aristide, the USA, France and Canada were without a large Haitian social base from which to organize effective electoral opposition. Unable to win at the polls, they used their money and connections to arm the convicted criminal military officers and death squad commanders who in 1994 fled to the Dominican Republic and Queens NY. Behold Haiti’s latest coup d’etat, made by our “rebels.” Today armed death squads roam the streets of Haiti, killing their enemies in the streets, while Canadian and US soldiers stand aside.

And why has this hell been unleashed on Haiti? Well, just for example:

As of March 2nd, 2004 Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) states, “some Canadian companies are looking to shift garment production to Haiti.” DFAIT provides research and Haitian contacts through a variety of sub-agencies to Canadian companies that want to exploit low Haitian wages.

Montreal based Gildan Activewear is already subcontracting work to Haitian owned sweatshops, and they have opened a new factory in Port au Prince which employs 400 to 500 people. Gildan, one of the largest T shirt makers in the world, claimed recently to CBC radio to pay its workers a premium on the minimum Haitian wage. However unionized workers at Gildan’s Montreal factory earn more than 10 times the Haitian wage, and unorganized Haitian workers employed by Gildan recently told the CBC that their wages are not enough to live on. With recent increases in the cost of fuel in Haiti – the IMF demanded it be deregulated and the price has soared – Haitian workers have once again been demanding their minimum wage of 36 Gourdes per day be increased to keep up with inflation.

But what’s bad for Haitian workers - low wages and appalling conditions - are good business for the T shirt trade. At the time of writing, a blank Gildan T sells on Ebay for about $1.25. It’s a volume business, our appetite for T shirts. Gildan’s sales have nearly doubled, from $344 million in 1999 to $630 million in 2003. In the same period Gildan stock soared on the Toronto Stock Exchange from $5 to $44 per share. According to UNITE, Gildan has received over $3 million dollars of federal subsidies while it contemplated moving production offshore.

But:

Haitian union organizers understand their situation well. According to one, “The general weakness of the bourgeoisie…makes it extremely ferocious toward the working class, seeing it as merely a means to extract the maximum profits. To do this the local bourgeoisie leans on the imperialists who, as bandleaders, manipulate and organize the forces of repression, still in the hands of the paramilitary Ton-tons Macoutes….They refuse workers any form of the historical social gains long acquired by the working class internationally and established by national legislation yet constantly violated by the bosses. By denying sick leave, pensions, severance pay, and so on, the Haitian and foreign capitalists can expect to receive super-profits in Haiti.” Your tax dollars at work, financing state terror.

Indeed, as Penny Green and Tony Ward write in State Crimes: Governments, Violence, and Corruption (Pluto Press, 2003), there is a close correlation between the level of state violence and the ability of the ruling class to satisfy demands emanating from below while remaining profitable. In particular, they note the contrast between different Latin American states in the US-sponsored drive to crush the workers and peasant movements during the 1980s:

Honduras in the 1980s faced a rebel threat of comparable severity to those in Guatemala and El Salvador, but although it employed a CIA-trained death squad to 'disappear' and torture suspected guerillas (National Commissioner 1994), it did not engage in the wholesale murder and destruction practised by its neighbours ... Brocket argues that because Honduras had a weak army, less coercive and exploitative rural class relations than Guatemala or El Salvador, and sufficient land available to concede some of the peasant movement's demands, it did not perceive the guerilla threat as warranting such an extreme response. Similarly, Jonas (1991) attributes the exceptional brutality of Guatemalan repression from the 1960s to the 1980s, in which an estimated 200,000 people were killed (CEH 1999), to the attitudes of the ruling elite following the US-backed overthrow of a progressive elexted government in 1954. The elite was unwilling to contemplate concessions to the peasants or to the working class, and unable to fomrulate any political project that would achieve broad support. Thus violent repression, for which (thanks to the US) it was well equipped, appeared the only available means to achieve its goals. [p 109]

The opportunity-motivational structure in Haiti is reasonably transparent: the Haitian ruling class and the international capital to which it is integrated is unwilling to accept trade unions, working class mobilisation, or even a modest minimum wage; has not been able to formulate a political programme with any popular purchase; and has the means available to destroy the opposition. If the UN will not step up its activities, the US, France and Canada will simply encourage the genocidaires to throw off MINUSTAH like a bespoke strait-jacket and set the rebels they have been training in the Dominican Republic to their task. Haiti, for all the bloodiness and awfulness of the past two years, has yet to see the worst.