Washington, Préval and the macoutes

By G. Dunkel, Workers World, 5 September 1996

Growing numbers of Haitians and their popular organizations see both the current terror campaign of the ultra-right paramilitary macoute forces and the government of Rene Preval as enemies of Haiti's workers and peasants.

They see the U.S.-United Nation occupation forces as protecting the ultra-right while Washington uses the Preval government to impose privatization on Haiti.

The Haitian National Peoples' Assembly (APN) has spray- painted the slogan Protection for criminals = violence for the people; The occupation forces are accomplices throughout Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital.

In the poor Port-au-Prince neighborhoods of La Saline, St. Martin and St. Joseph, people took to the streets in mid- August, building barricades of burning tires to put a monkey wrench into the wheels of the Macoutes and all the foreign occupation forces.

POPULAR MOOD: DISARM THE MACOUTES!

We are going to disarm them all, one of the demonstrators told a local radio station. If the government doesn't do it in 48 hours, we will do it in its place. Everyone in the neighborhood came out into the streets to confront the macoutes and to show their scorn for the government and the occupation forces.

In Grand-Goave, a town about 30 miles west of Port-au- Prince, a coalition of progressive organizations warned that demobilized soldiers, together with some macoutes, were meeting to plan a local assassination campaign.

The coalition called on the people to form vigilance brigades to prevent the former soldiers from the Duvalier dictatorship from carrying out their boasts to overthrow the current government.

Jacques-Henry Pericles writes in the newspaper Haiti- Progress that the current situation demonstrates a level of consciousness that is growing daily. The people are identifying their real enemy. They are starting to mobilize themselves, despite the foreign troops occupying Haiti under the flag of the UN.

The stated purpose of this U.S./UN occupation is to preserve law and order. Progressive mass organizations in Haiti believe its real purpose is to protect the macoutes from the people's wrath.

Since a U.S. military occupation of Haiti restored the popularly elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide to office 20 months ago, Washington has pushed reconciliation on the Haitians. This means allowing the criminals who carried out the military coup against Aristide and then killed 5,000 Haitians to live freely in Haiti.

While most of the original U.S. troops have been withdrawn, the occupation goes on under a UN fig leaf. In July a new contingent of 250 U.S. troops landed in the capital, and there are still 300 special force troops patrolling Haiti pretending to be engineers.

A major task of the U.S. forces has been to protect coup criminals from popular wrath, often freeing ex-soldiers or macoutes who had been seized by the masses. U.S. forces also stole 160,000 pages of documents and thousands of video tapes from the offices of FRAPH, the organization the ultra right used during the coup as a death squad. This material is the property of the Haitian people, who need it to prosecute the guilty.

Besides seizing the documents, the U.S. has allowed the leader of the FRAPH, Toto Constant, to live and work and freely walk the streets of New York, even though Haiti has requested his extradition. Constant is an admitted CIA agent.

RESULT OF RECONCILIATION: MASS TERROR

According to a Aug. 26 APN press release, the macoutes in complicity with the occupation forces have installed a climate of violence and terror with kidnappings of both wealthy and working people, the assassination of political leaders, judges, simple citizens; bank robberies and drive- by shootings in broad daylight in public places. The government, the police and the Justice Department have done nothing concrete to stop this.

The most glaring incident of this terror campaign occurred on the night of Aug. 19 when 20 men attacked the National Police headquarters with automatic weapons, grenades and rocket launchers for close to an hour. They also exchanged fire with guards at the nearby Presidential Palace and Parliament building.

That no cops were killed and the UN reaction force with its helicopters and armored cars didn't arrive until after the attackers had dispersed leads some Haitians to believe the government was complicit with the attack.

Haitian President Rene Preval has tried to use this upsurge of violence to push his plan to restructure the Haitian economy down the throats of the Haitian people, according to the APN. He wants to impose a U.S./World Bank/ International Monetary Fund plan to restructure the Haitian economy and reduce incomes, wages and jobs in a country with the poorest workers in the Western Hemisphere.

If Preval and the U.S. succeed, this plan will mean death for Haitian workers and farmers. The APN and other popular organizations in Haiti are calling for the creation of vigilance brigades.

The APN would welcome the solidarity of people living in the United States.