Varieties of eating dirt: US, Haiti & Nicaragua

[Judi Lynn]

Varieties of eating dirt: US, Haiti & Nicaragua
Monday, 25 January 2010, 3:43 pm
Column: Toni Solo

Varieties of eating dirt: the United States, Haiti and Nicaragua
by Toni Solo, January 22nd 2010

The US government and its international and regional allies view real autonomy and independence for Caribbean nations and for Central and South American countries as a threat. The US government response has been to militarize Latin America and the Caribbean with new bases, principally in Panama and Colombia. Now, President Obama's administration has exploited the catastrophe in Haiti to militarize that country under the pretext of providing security for humanitarian relief operations.

Governments in the region see straight through that pretext to the menace behind it. Within Haiti, the US military occupation enables the US government to suppress any resurgence of the virtually banned, but widely popular, Fanmi Lavalas political movement, Haiti's largest. It also makes less likely a return from his involuntary sojourn in South Africa by Fanmi Lavalas leader, the exiled ex-President Jean Bertrand Aristide.

Cuban and Venezuelan support for vital medical, education and other development cooperation programmes in Haiti puts US government aid to shame. The US occupation is likely to hinder Cuban and Venezuelan development cooperation to Haiti. It also gives the US government another base from which to menace Cuba and Venezuela while warning off other countries in the region anxious to benefit from extremely successful Venezuelan-led development cooperation programmes like Petrocaribe or ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas).

History the corporate media cover up

Much comment on the terrifying catastrophe in Port-au-Prince has referred in passing to Haiti's history. Virtually no reports mention that the United States occupied Haiti for almost 20 years between 1915 and 1934. From 1917 to 1919, patriotic Haitians in the north of the country resisted the US occupation under the determined leadership of Charlemagne Peralte. Back then, Peralte wrote,

“For four years the Occupation has been insulting us constantly. Each morning it brings us a new offense. The people are poor and the Occupation still oppresses us with taxes.......Let’s get rid of those savage people, whose beastly character is evident in the person of their President Wilson—traitor, bandit, trouble maker, and thief.”

Peralte was killed when he was betrayed to a US Marines murder squad. With the US government's latest military takeover of Haiti, President Obama follows in the footsteps of President Woodrow Wilson, also a Nobel prize winner. Like the Honduran military coup, Haiti's recent history is a solid refutation of the big lie that the US government promotes democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In the national elections scheduled for early 2011, as in past elections, the Haitian authorities, have deliberately blocked the participation of Fanmi Lavalas. The US government and its allies are also determined not to allow President Aristide to return from the exile imposed by them during the 2004 coup. President Aristide was kidnapped by US military and dumped in the Central African Republic before finding refuge in South Africa.

Western Bloc countries – the US, Canada, the European Union and its Pacific allies - deliberately drove Haiti and its people down into the privatized neo-liberal dirt. Now those rich countries' leading politicians lament the Haitian government's inability to respond to the disastrous earthquake. One wonders what they expected. A report by US writer Greg Palast noted that in all of Haiti – a country of around 10 million people – there were only two fire stations.

More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1001/S00158.htm