Colombian Army commandos on May 17, 2021 killed Jesús Santrich, a 30 -year veteran of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The ambush took place in Zulia Province, in northeastern Venezuela; six others died.  Santrich was a spokesperson for the FARC negotiating team in the talks in Havana with Colombia’s government that led to a peace agreement in 2016.

Because former FARC combatants were being killed despite the Agreement and because Colombia’s government and US agents were trying to extradite him to the United States on drug charges, Santrich went into hiding in 2019. He joined the “Second Marquetalia” offshoot of the original FARC insurgency, which was returning to armed conflict.

Santrich’s  22-page essay, written in 2009 in honor of legendary FARC commander Manuel Marulanda, carries the title:  “Bolivarianism and Marxism – a Commitment to the Impossible” (Bolivarismo y marxismo, un compromiso con lo imposible.) Santrich examines the utopian underpinnings of the Marxist movement and the liberation struggles of Simón Bolívar.

With his essay, Santrich challenges our own modes of anti-imperialist struggle and of creating socialism, impeded in both instances, we suggest, by a lack of long-term, visionary aspirations. That’s clear, for example, in the blunted response of progressives and radicals to recent developments in U.S. hybrid war involving Colombia, Haiti, and Cuba. With an expansive view, Santrich insists upon political leadership and political mobilization that attend to the future, embrace great purposes, and fight with determination and commitment.

His words

In his essay, Santrich writes about Simon Bolivar; the fight for independence from Spain; the FARC’s early years; leadership qualities of Manuel Marulanda, pioneer socialists of the French Revolution; Bolivar’s teacher Simón Rodríguez, an early socialist; and more. Along the way, Santrich provides ideas that, taken seriously, might greatly strengthen the revolutionary project in our own era.

For example: “Marxists must keep utopia foremost in their consciousness. It drives mass actions. They must assume that a revolutionary movement, whatever its origins, doesn’t qualify as such if it lacks that component manifesting as irrepressible effort towards change categorized as “impossible.” But utopia must always take off from a basis in realty. We humans have the duty to regard the world we want as another world that’s possible. Paraphrasing Bolívar, we are looking for the “impossible,” while leaving the possible up to everyone else, every day …

He continues: “To declare oneself Bolivarian and, as such, declare oneself a revolutionary on the Marxist path implies lifelong motivation derived from the hope of transforming society and finding justice. This is a constant and is strong enough with its broad vision as to point to utopia as a characteristic of political consciousness and the natural result of rational belief.”

He adds: “Utopia is a higher goal of commitment. That’s so because even at the beginning, the matter of possibility or impossibility is already uncertain due to extreme difficulties ahead, or uncertain survival of purpose as historical implementation evolves. But like history itself, utopia does not end.”

Moreover, “In the hopeful quest for realization of the “impossible,” the process calls upon a mixture of illusions, realism, magic, and love for people as a reason for life … The essential interest of the utopian is preservation of man and nature in absolute equilibrium, thus displaying the potentials of historical memory, faith, dignity, and our identity as vital factors for existence.

“Confronting oppression and marching on the path of utopia, the revolutionary no longer is resigned. He or she is unconditionally, permanently, and creatively committed to the poor people of the world … Let’s say then that the Marxist-Bolivarian idea of a revolutionary is of someone who fixes on an ideology that, while encompassing reality, is not yet solidified and is perhaps uncertain. The goal is set of becoming absolutely convinced that this reality will be fulfilled, “impossible” though it may seem….

“The author of the Communist Manifesto, appealing to selfless purpose, was calling for struggle offering the possibility of risks. … Marx was calling for action needing to pass a test of fire in the face of historical commitment prompted by circumstances, even at the risk of death. He was clarifying a concept of living, whose own ethics intermeshed with the dialectics of reality that was moving, but always toward the future. …”

Santrich goes farther afield: “This kind of thinking envisions Marxists and Bolivarians alike as rising up, in our world, to the level of magical realism. And why not? Magical realism goes beyond mere rationalism. We have symbols, imagination, and creativity – all based on rich traditions rooted in indigenous experience in the Americas. It’s founded also on the syncretism of our mixed and oppressed mestizo peoples. Playing out, this proposition looks toward installing social justice, that is to say, accomplishes what’s ideal for the benefit of humankind.”

The stakes are high:“Perhaps one of the most fateful legacies for revolutionaries is apprehension on facing the danger that imperialism poses for the very existence of the planet with its catastrophic kind of developmentalism. In the face of great challenges, great resolve is necessary, really a triple boldness: action that overcomes determinism; recovery of the role of subjectivity, passion, audacity, and recklessness; and faith in the initiative of the masses, as they face the immediate prospect of “defeat.” In such circumstances, uncertainty and silence are worth nothing. …

“What’s in play is the very survival of the human species, of life, of nature in general, all put at risk through the destructive power of capitalism. But we will not idle around patiently waiting for an automatic end to capitalism and for a communist alternative automatically to flourish. Humanity’s conscious intervention is necessary. It’s our immediate duty. Revolutionaries must connect utopia with liberation practice, at whatever cost …”

Meanwhile, on the ground

Next on our agenda is a survey of recent developments in Haiti, Colombia, and Cuba that are significant for the weak response they generated from anti-imperialists. Fragmentation and dwarfed ambitions seem to have paralyzed their fight against exploitation, plunder and militarization. We think the far-reaching aspirations of Santrich point to the alternative approach we need.

President Jovenal Moïse of Haiti was assassinated on July 7, presumably the result of rivalry among Haitian oligarchs, encouraged perhaps by leaders in Washington. All but two of the 28 perpetrators were former Colombian army regulars, now employed as mercenary soldiers. Many had received U.S. training. Colombia mercenaries have engaged militarily in the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Afghanistan and Dubai, Honduras, Venezuela and elsewhere.

CTU Security, a Florida company owned by right-wing Venezuelan émigre Antonio Intriago arranged for the assassination.  Miami – based Intriago has ties to regressive Colombian President Ivan Duque; to Juan Guaidó, the U. S. puppet  president of Venezuela; and to Christian Sanon, a Haitian physician living in Florida and seeking to be president of Haiti. Intriago’s company in 2018 carried out a drone attack against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The Cessna four-passenger plane owned by Helidosa company in the Dominican Republic is emblematic of imperialism’s convoluted presence in the region.  Intriago, Sanon, and two others traveled to Haiti on that plane to be on hand at the assassination. After surgical care in Florida for wounds suffered during the attack, Martine Moïse, the assassinated president’s widow, returned to Haiti on the same airplane. In 2019, it transported right-wing Venezuelans to Barbados for negotiations with President Nicolas Maduro’s representatives, and did so again the following year with Juan Guaidó aboard.

The U.S. blockade of Cuba comes into view. Campaigning in 2020, President Biden assured voters he would ease blockade-related restrictions on Cuba imposed by Donald Trump. Biden has added new sanctions. For 60 years, the U.S. government has blockaded Cuba in order to cause suffering there. Suffering is mounting now due to sanctions and adverse health and economic effects of the Covid-19 pandemic

On July 27 Biden met with Cuban-American elected officials in his office. He stated that, “I want Cuban Americans to know that we … hear the cries of freedom coming from the island … We’ve brought to bear the strength of our diplomacy, rallying nations to speak out and increase pressure on the regime.”

Correlations

The opportunistic Biden seeks electoral advantage in Florida. Bipartisan consensus remains as to replacing Cuba’s government. Opposition to the blockade is at the margins of U.S. politics.  No U.S. hand or hierarchy of control is evident in the assassination of Haiti’s president. Marking both cases is a mélange of private interests, transactional relationships, and profit-making opportunities.

The unpleasant details reported here likely will soon be forgotten. Many already distracted and pessimistic progressives probably prefer not to be reminded of politicians’ corrupt and faked behavioral patterns.

It could have been otherwise. A narrative might have been developed that, absorbing the incidents noted here, might have contributed to shaping a powerful indictment against the power structures. That in turn might have helped set the stage for a return of sustained political counter-attack – if, that is, a large and powerful movement actually existed.

That’s the contribution of Jesús Santrich. He traces out characteristics of political leadership and permanent mobilization needed now for fightback and revolutionary optimism. His prescription calls for a movement that satisfies the subjective needs of oppressed peoples. License would be created for great longings and dreams of fulfillment, for these to be normalized.

Santrich draws upon a world that now for many is off-limits. We honor his contribution, a rarity, as it seems, in our own time. But he is not alone. We remember:

Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, 1871 – “The Commune, they explain, intends to abolish property, the basis of all civilization!… Yes, gentlemen, the Commune [aims] at the expropriation of the expropriators … But this is communism, “impossible communism! …  [But] “if cooperative production is not to remain a sham and a snare; if it is to supersede the capitalist system …[W]hat else, gentlemen, would it be but communism, “possible” communism.”

José Mariátegui, founder of the Peruvian Communist Party, 1928 – “We certainly don’t want socialism in America to be a copy or tracing. It must be a heroic creation. We have to give life to Indian-American socialism with our own reality, in our own language.”

Ernesto Che Guevara, Socialism and Man in Cuba, 1965 – “[I]n moments of great peril it is easy to muster a powerful response with moral incentives. Retaining their effectiveness, however, requires the development of a consciousness in which there is a new scale of values. Society as a whole must be converted into a gigantic school.”

Fidel Castro (as recalled by Raul Castro) – “in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra, on Dec. 18, [1956], with seven rifles and a fist full of combatants, [he] stated, ’Now we have won the war!’”

_{Author: W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist whose focus is on Latin America, health care, and anti-racism. A Cuba solidarity activist, he formerly worked as a pediatrician, lives in rural Maine.}

_{The author translated the excerpts appearing here. Santrich’s entire essay may be read, in Spanish, at https://rebelion.org/bolivarismo-y-marxismo-un-compromiso-con-lo-imposible/}

_{Source: Marxism-Leninism Today / The Electronic Journal of Marxist-Leninist Thought, Aug 15, 2021  | https://mltoday.com/jesus-santrich-outlines-the-utopian-fundamentals-of-marxist-and-bolivarian-ideologies/}

In voting on June 6, Pedro Castillo, candidate of the Perú Libre(Free Peru) political party, defeated three-time presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori, daughter of imprisoned former president Alberto Fujimori. Five days later, with all votes counted, Castillo claimed a victory margin of 69,546 votes, or 50.2 % of the votes. Keiko Fujimori, who gained 49.8% of all votes, is charging fraud and demanding that 200,000 votes from rural areas be recounted.

Castillo’s narrow victory, yet to be officially validated, represents an abrupt shift from Peru’s norm of corruption, right-wing ascendency, and political instability (such that in one week in November 2020, three presidents took office, one after the other.) Castillo’s unexpected first-round victory on April 11, with 18.5% of the votes, was unsettling enough to his competitors that almost all of them backed Keiko Fujimori in the recent voting. Each of Peru’s two Communist parties backed Castillo (as evidenced here and here).

In office, Castillo will face formidable obstacles: a hostile national press, a Congress that overwhelmingly opposes him, business and financial establishments in panic mode, and retired military figures threatening revolt. Additionally, Peru’s total of deaths attributed to climate change is the third highest in Latin America and its rate of deaths due to COVID-19 infection is tops in the world.

Under the auspices of dictator Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000), Peru turned to undiluted neoliberalism characterized by foreign profiteering from mining and oil and gas extraction and by privatization of healthcare and education. A long-established rural-urban gulf widened. Rural disadvantage, affecting Peru’s indigenous population in particular, provided the boost accounting for the victory of Pedro Castillo and his party. 

The divide separates Lima, with 40% of Peru’s population, from rural districts, where Castillo scored overwhelming pluralities, some in the 80-90% range. Political attention to rural life from national centers of power, from Lima, has been sparse. Candidate Fujimori campaigned only fitfully in Peru’s countryside. 

Pedro Castillo, born in 1969 of illiterate parents, has taught in a rural elementary school since 1995. In 2002, he was an unsuccessful mayoral candidate.  Earlier, Castillo had taken a leadership role in autonomous peasant patrols (known as “ronda campesina”) responding to thievery and political turmoil. He gained prominence in 2017 for his part in a teachers’ strike. He and his family operate a small subsistence farm.

The Perú LibreParty, established in 2012, calls for nationalization of extractive industries, a new constitution, and respect for women’s rights, including reproductive rights. It claims to be Marxist, socialist, and anti-imperialist – but not Communist.  Campaigning, Castillo called for “No more poor people in a rich country.” Keiko Fujimori based her campaign on fear as she associated Castillo with terrorism, communism, and Cuban and Venezuelan socialism. She extolled her father’s success in corralling the Shining Path guerrillas.

According to the Party’s website, Perú Libre “originates from the provinces, represents Deep Peru, and is committed to people who are most in need … Perú Libre has governed in the regions and [small] cities … and firmly defends decentralization … We are internationalists … The Party condemns all types of imperialism … interventionism, and foreign dependency.” 

Perú Libre calls for the departure of USAID and closure of U.S. military bases. Castillo supports solidarity alliances such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the Union of South American Nations.

Vladimir Cerrón, a neurosurgeon educated in Cuba and Peru, founded Perú Libre’s predecessor party in 2012.  He has served as governor of Junim Province, was briefly a presidential candidate in 2016, and continues as Peru Libre’s secretary general. Charged with corruption, Cerrón entered prison in August 2020.  A judge annulled the charges against him on June 9, coincident with the election of Pedro Castillo.

Defeated presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori was imprisoned briefly in 2018 on charges of taking bribes from Brazil’s Odebretch corporation to finance her presidential run in 2011. Presently she is under investigation on charges of money-laundering and obstruction of justice. From age 19 on, she served as “first lady” for her father who, having abandoned his presidency in 2000, is serving a 25-year presidential term on charges of corruption and human rights abuses.

The Perú Libre Party adopted the thinking of José Carlos Mariátegui, founder in 1928 of Peru’s Communist Party. Mariátegui endeavored to adapt Marxist thought to the rural and indigenous realities of Latin America.  As explained by Gilberto Calil, whose report appears on rebelion.org, Mariátegui held that Peru’s elite, concentrated in Lima, despised and oppressed indigenous peoples. The divide was such, according to Mariátegui, that Peru lacked a “national project” and a bourgeois revolution. Only indigenous peoples based on the land were potentially ready to advance social and democratic demands.

Mariátegui insisted that any socialist revolution in Peru and Latin America would have rural and indigenous origins. Accordingly, Calil regards Perú Libre’s program as “coherent … in centering on concrete demands of Peru’s rural population: agrarian reform, social rights, education and healthcare.”

Photo: Pedro Castillo’s supporters took to the streets in the capital, Lima. From: Reuters.

Colombia is afire with a National Strike mounted by working people young people, and the excluded. They are protesting neoliberal reforms that diminish lives and hopes. Tax-reform proposals from President Iván Duque’s rightwing government triggered large demonstrations that began on April 28 and are continuing. Brutal repression has inflamed the rebellion. The government quickly withdrew the tax proposals. The finance minister was dismissed. 

A National Strike Committee coordinates the actions of “26 social sectors at the national level” plus regional, departmental, and municipal strike committees. The demonstrations, unprecedented in size and scope, follow the student uprising of 2011, the agrarian strike of 2013, marches in September 2020 against police abuses, and a large strike in November 2020 against pension and education reforms.

One stimulus for the uprising is the rise in poverty in Colombia from 37.5% of the population in 2019 to almost 50% in 2020; 15% live in extreme poverty. Another is widespread disapproval of the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Young people are enraged. Their futures are blunted, claims commentator Germán Muñoz González. Often regarded as “expendable,” they are being killed, he asserts. Polling shows that 75% of Colombians support the National Strike.

Colombian Cecelia Zamudio paints a grim picture. Protesters “are constantly being attacked by the forces of state repression who shoot with high caliber rifles … use weapons of war … utilize paramilitaries for covert actions.” So far “more than 60 people have been killed … 600 people taken away and disappeared … thousands injured, thousands imprisoned.”

The proposed tax reforms represented the tip of the neoliberal iceberg.  Healthcare privatization after 1993 led to healthcare inequalities because of reduced investment in personnel, training, and facilities. Over the course of three decades, most education at all levels has been privatized. For the “poorest sectors of the population, public education for children and adolescents has deteriorated.”

Flexible labor arrangements developing over three decades has centered on outsourcing. Self-employment, mostly work in the informal sector, now exceeds 60%; the unemployment rate is 18%. In the same neoliberal spirit, the government farmed out management of pension and disability funds to banks. Consequently, the equivalent of $83 billion of workers’ and employers’ money held by bankers is profitably invested and pension benefits are reduced.

The proposed tax-reform program was supposed to have supplied the government with the equivalent of $6.3 billion that would have enabled payment on debt that between 2016 and 2021 jumped from $79 billion to $157 billion, a figure representing 58% of Colombia’s GDP. Payment to foreign creditors consumes 38% of the government’s budgeted expenses.

The tax plan called for assessing a value added tax (VAT) on rent payments by those earning the equivalent of $470 per month or more. Some previously-exempt renters would have now been paying the tax. The plan also required that middle income private and public sector workers pay a 19% VAT on fees for energy use, water, and sewerage. People with big inheritances would have seen higher taxes. Well-to-do Colombians opposed the tax proposals along lower income people.

The National Strike Committee met May 15 with the government’s minister of labor and the high commissioner for peace. The Committee announced that no further negotiations would take place without guarantees assuring “no more violence and freedom to protest.” President Duque quickly responded: “In Colombia full guarantees exist for the exercise of protests.”  He declared that the blocking highways represented criminal action “affecting the economy.”

The National Committee indicated that future negotiations must involve the departmental and municipal strike committees. As with earlier national strikes, people’s assemblies are underway – in Ibagué, for example.

The Colombian state looks to be on the verge of ungovernability. Taken together, longtime negative features of Colombia’s national existence now pose formidable obstacles. They are: divisions between rich and poor, urban and rural; state power in the hands of oligarchs; continuing destitution and precarious lives for the many; their exclusion from meaningful political participation; ruling-class resort to extreme violence; and governmental complicity with U.S. hegemonic ambitions.  Integration of the national economy into the worldwide neoliberal system, with its own set of stern requirements, is relatively new.

The government has failed a three-part stress test. Colombians have suffered more from the Covid-19 pandemic than all but a few peoples of the world. The government’s implementation of the peace agreement between the FARC insurgents and the government was disastrous. There is the debt crisis.

Piedad Córdoba, once a left-leaning Liberal Party senator and always a target of reactionaries, portrays the strike as “only the most prominent symptom of a social order that’s now unsustainable. She calls for the “development of social struggle” and laments that, “in contrast to other countries of Our America, Colombia has not had a revolution of any type.”

She regards the high levels of poverty and debt as “big changes obliging us to look for [new] solutions.” Córdoba rejects neoliberalism and anticipates “a movement of new and developing leaders, and of generational change on the part of young people condemned to no future.”

Observer Fernando Rubio agrees: “The main protagonists of the present Strike are young people impacted by the breakdown of the neoliberal model.” These include “professionally trained people facing bankruptcy, the chronically unemployed, and those living precariously without a future.” 

Hope is alive for some Colombian young people. That’s apparent in the faces of the 200 or so orchestra members performing in Medellin’s Park of Desires on May 5. Under the baton of Susana Boreal, 26 years old, and before 6000 singing onlookers, they played and sang “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido” (The people united will never be defeated), and other numbers.

The symbolism is clear. That song materialized in Chile prior to the overthrow of President Salvador Allende’s socialist government. It’s since been heard worldwide. The title, morphed into a slogan, became a staple of political demonstrations throughout the Western Hemisphere. Readers may go here or here to hear and see the performance.

The youth uprising in Colombia parallels the massive outpourings of young Chilean protesters from October 2019 on, the Occupy phenomenon in the United States in 2011, and the Indignados in Spain. Maybe, one surmises, a new way of doing politics is afoot.

Colombian youth in rebellion, acting spontaneously and mostly unaffiliated with political parties, are maybe attending to moral and community values as they defend their material interests. They are workers – or would-be workers – but presumably don’t carry the sectarianism and memories of failure burdening their left-leaning predecessors.

From our editorial team

(May 5) According to the website of the Colombian Communist Party, “there is a massacre in progress in Colombia: 21 murders, 208 seriously wounded, 503 arbitrarily detained, dozens of disappeared, ten women raped by Esmad police, attacked human rights defenders and journalists.” A nation strike has been ongoing nationwide in Colombia since April 28.

Analyst Angel Guerra Cabrera provides background information in a report written May 2: 

Presently in Colombia a national strike is underway in rejection of President Iván Duque’s tax reform and a health reform bill that seeks to deepen the failed model of privatization established in the health system.

The tax reform would impose a 19 percent VAT on eggs, meat, fish, coffee and salt, and proposes to tax salaries over 2.4 million pesos per month and pensions over 7 million pesos, to freeze for five years the salaries of public employees and even a scandalous tax on burials. The protesters had to overcome two factors. First, the third peak of the pandemic. The Ministry of Health reported that day an accumulated death toll of 72,725, one of the highest in the world per million inhabitants, higher than that of India and the United States.

A second factor was the judicial prohibition of the protest, which was not heeded by either the organizers or the local authorities. Despite being rejected by the government and the mainstream media, the marches were massive taking place in at least 600 of the country’s 1,100 municipalities.

In a previous survey, 73 percent of the population expressed their support for the strike and 35 percent said they would be willing to take that position to the streets. Seven million people took part in the strike and marches, with mobilization in Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, Manizales and Pereira standing out. Clashes with riot police were severe in Cali and Bogotá. Mirar al Sur reported that there were eight deaths due to police repression.

The crisis in Colombia is very deep, has been going on for a long time, but has deepened with the pandemic. Poverty has recently increased 6.8 percent and now affects 42.5 percent of Colombian which means that 21.2 million of them cannot meet their basic needs. Extreme poverty now impacts 7.4 million people. To make matters worse, the government is trying to take the country back to war and more and more people are opposing it. The assassinations of social activists and former FARC combatants who have joined the peace process continue unabated.

1182 words

Since mid-March Venezuelan army units have been attacking and expelling Colombian operatives active in Apure state, in western Venezuela. Colombians have long used the border regions to prepare cocaine arriving from Colombia and ship it to the United States and Europe. Fighting has subsided; eight Venezuelan troops were killed. Seeking safety, 3,500 Venezuelans crossed the Meta River – an Orinoco tributary – to Arauca in Colombia.

The bi-national border is porous and long enough, at 1367 miles, to encourage smuggling and the undocumented passage of cross-border travelers such as the narcotraffickers in Apure. These include paramilitaries, bands of former FARC-EP insurgents, and drug-trade workers – pilots, truckers, laboratory workers, and more. Also involved are Colombia’s Army; Mexican drug cartels; officials in Washington; and DEA functionaries in Colombia. 

The paramilitaries in Apure represent Colombia’s largest drug cartel, “Los Rastrojos.” Colombia’s paramilitaries in general are the products of advice given Colombia’s government by U.S. Army consultants in the 1960s. They claimed paramilitaries were essential for defeating leftist guerrillas.  The Colombian military controls the paramilitaries’ actions, as verified recently by the prototypic paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso.  He was testifying before a Colombian judge virtually from a U.S. prison. 

The former FARC-EP insurgents active in Apure are known by the name of their leader, Gentil Duarte. In 2016 they rejected the forthcoming peace agreement that the FARC-EP would be signing with the Colombian government. They’ve taken up narcotrafficking.  Other dissenting ex-FARC fighters took up arms again in 2019. Calling themselves the “Second Marquetalia,” they are not present in Apure.

In March, the Colombian Army transferred 2000 troops to the Colombian side of the border. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken spoke with Colombian President Iván Duque by telephone on April 5; they discussed “their shared commitment to the restoration of democracy and rule of law in Venezuela.”  U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela James Story, stationed in Bogota, held meetings from February 19 to 26 with Venezuelan opposition leaders Leopoldo López, Julio Borges, and Manuel Rosales. They style themselves the “Venezuelan Presidential Commission.”

The U.S. Air Force on March 30 and 31 flew four C-17 “Globemaster” troop and equipment-carrying planes to airports in Colombia. Colombia’s Semana newspaper anticipates that the U.S. Congress will soon authorize the sale to Colombia of fighter aircraft worth $4.5 billion. The report laments the “worrisome picture” of air force capabilities in comparison with those of Venezuela.

Colombian President Iván Duque in late February announced the creation of the “Special Command against Narcotrafficking and Transnational Threats.”  This will be a 7000-person elite military force with air assault capabilities.  Its “certain objective,” according to the Communist Party’s website, is war against Venezuela.

During the tenure of left-leaning Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and that of his successor, President Nicolas Maduro, Colombian paramilitaries repeatedly crossed the border on destabilization missions.  Organizers for a 2000 seaborne anti-Maduro assault called Operation Gedeon were based in Colombia, as were some of the plotters who mounted a drone attack against Maduro in 2018. The U.S. and Colombian governments in February 2019 failed in their attempt to deliver humanitarian aid across the border at Cucuta, Colombia. Their idea had been to divide Venezuela’s military.

The outcome of the fighting in Apure is unclear. The Colombian and U.S. governments undoubtedly would utilize any humanitarian crisis as an opening to further destabilize Venezuela’s government.

It’s certain that the U.S. government in the Biden era continues to seek the overthrow of Venezuela’s government. Without question the reactionary Colombian government is at the beck and call of the U.S. government. The U.S. capitalist hierarchy, of course, has its eye on Venezuela’s massive reserves of crude oil, in excess of 550 billion barrels.

What is underappreciated is the role of drug-trafficking in serving interventionist purposes, as in Apure. U.S. military aid under Plan Colombia, which began in 2000, was supposed to have reduced narcotrafficking. The same was to have happened after the FARC-EP insurgency gave up arms in 2016.   Nevertheless, Colombia afterwards continued to produce 70 percent of the cocaine consumed in the world, according to a 2019 United Nations report. Production has increased since.

Some 70 percent of Colombia’s cocaine heads to the United States – the world’s leading consumer – via the Pacific Ocean route. But much of the remainder does pass through Venezuela, and Washington officials pay attention.  

The Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission is “an independent, bipartisan entity” serving U.S. policymakers.  Its December, 2020 report noted that: “Traffickers operate freely in large swaths of the country s territory [and] The US State Department is offering rewards of $15 million for information leading to [President] Maduro’s arrest and $10 million for information on four other top officials.”

The U.S. Fourth Naval monitors Venezuelan waters and air space for supposed Venezuelan drug-trafficking.

The assumption here is that Colombian narcotrafficking has great appeal to Washington deciders on Latin America. Nobody likes drug dependency. The United States suffered some 70,000 drug-overdose deaths in 2019. In short, to trumpet war on drugs has great public-relations value. It’s an easy sell to promise to stem the flow of drugs into the United States in return for free rein for harsh policies in Latin America.

Therefore, the United States uses the presence in Venezuela of Colombian narco-trafficking to serve regime-change purposes. Public support for U.S. Plan Colombia told a similar story. After 2000, U.S. taxpayer money readily flowed into what was billed as war on narcotics. The real purpose was assistance to the Colombian military as it attempted to defeat leftist FARC-EP guerrillas. 

Jaime Caycedo, secretary general of the Colombian Communist Party, outlined these dynamics in writing about Plan Colombia in 2007:

“For the purposes of strategy, it’s essential to have it understood through continued propaganda that the guerrillas are associated with narcotrafficking and understood too that the war is being fought precisely because of that characteristic.”  Drugs become a “demonic phenomenon [and] imperialist military intervention figures as something ‘natural.’” The imperialists offer “no tie to history or realities that might explain things,” with the result that, “violence in the form of daily manifestations of repression and super-exploitation of workers appears simple as a consequence of narco-trafficking.” (Colombia en la Hora Latinoamericana, Ediciones Izquierda Viva)

Capitalists taking a broad view accommodate drug-trafficking for another reason. Selling cocaine yields vast amounts of money; laundered, cocaine becomes a source of liquidity for their financial system.

Former director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime Antonio Maria Costa, writing in 2009, claimed that, “In many instances, drug money is currently the only liquid investment capital.”  According to the Samuel Robinson Institute, “the events in Apure show off Venezuela … as a threat, but only in what has to do with allowing the (narco)metabolism of the West to continue functioning.”  He cited journalist Roberto Saviano who notes that, “Cocaine is a safe asset … an anticyclical asset…. Cocaine becomes a product like gold or oil, but more economically potent than gold or oil. [Without] access to mines or wells, it’s hard to break into the market. With cocaine, no.”

Haiti faces serious political crisis. The country has experienced great political difficulties ever since gaining independent nationhood in 1804. Impaired governance stems in large measure from U.S. meddling over many years.  We examine the current crisis and the basis for U.S. zeal to curtail Haiti’s future.

Mass demonstrations have continued intermittently since mid-2018, when two million Haitians were in the streets. At various times, protesters have called for: (1) relief from high prices for oil and gas, the result of IMF austerity decrees; (2) relief from shortages of basic supplies; (3) punishment of government officials who embezzled billions in funds from Venezuela’s PetroCaribe program of low-cost oil for Caribbean peoples (President Jovenel Moïse stole $700,000); (4) Moïse’s resignation. 

Demonstrators targeted Moïse aggressively after he closed down Haiti’s parliament in January 2020. He’s ruled since by decree.  A general strike took place prior to February 7, 2021, which, according to lawyers and judges, marked the end of Moïse’s presidential term. He remains.

Moïse’s 2015 election victory was fraudulent. A transitional president served for one year. Moïse took office in early 2017 after winning a second election weeks earlier. Only 18 percent of Haitian adults voted.

Moïse recently appointed his own electoral council and his own committee for amending the constitution. He cemented ties with President Trump by supporting U.S. regime-change plans for Venezuela. His new National Intelligence Agency looks to one observer like “a new Gestapo-like force of armed spies.” Moïse has disregarded the suffering of Haitians, the most poverty-stricken population in the Americas.

Opposition elements recently named Supreme Court Justice Joseph Mécène as a transitional president replacing Moïse. Moïse responded by arresting 23 officials of whom three were Supreme Court justices. He replaced them.  

Haiti’s opposition is divided between center-right political parties, headed loosely by lawyer André Michel, and protesters in the streets. Many of these belong to social movements and labor unions making up the new Patriotic Forum.

Violence is rampant. Some “150 criminal bands” have carried out murders and massacres. According to Argentinian Lautaro Rivara, active in Haiti, “Most of these groups have been organized and financed by senators, ministers, and presidents – when they are not directed fomented by the imperialist powers.”  Some gangs have united under government auspices as the “G9 and family”.

These various problems reflect political norms from Haiti’s past. On display then and now have been: ineffectual, corrupt, undemocratic governance; governmental inattention to people’s basic needs; persistent, if unsuccessful, popular opposition; and politics mediated through violence. Submission to foreign masters has been less obvious recently than is usually the case. None of these failings operate against U.S. expectations for Haiti.

Setting the stage

The many foreign NGOs active in Haiti function autonomously, rarely collaborating with Haiti’s government. The “Core Group” of nations involving the United States, France, Canada, and others make strategic decisions for Haiti on their own.

The U.S government does likewise. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton inserted singer Michel Martelly into Haiti’s 2010 presidential elections. He won, and named banana tycoon Jovenal Moïse as his successor.

Haiti has long had to cope with burdensome foreign-debt obligations. Between 1825 and 1947, Haiti sent payments to France as compensation for Haiti’s slaves having liberated themselves. Said one observer recently, “the constant of financial needs forces all Haitian governments to take on even more debt with North American and European Banks.”

Bill Quigley, a close observer, notes that, “The US and the US dominated world financial institutions forced Haiti to open its markets [allowing] millions of tons of US subsidized rice and sugar into Haiti – undercutting their farmers and ruining Haitian agriculture.” 

Holding Haiti in Check

The United States has long had its way with Haiti. It withheld recognition of Haiti’s national independence until 1862, and embargoed trade with Haiti until 1863. A U.S. naval squadron arriving at Môle Saint-Nicolas in 1889 sought to occupy the port permanently to block access to Haiti by ships of other nations. The effort failed, partly due to the intercession of U.S. ambassador Frederic Douglass, the famous abolitionist.    

U. S. military units occupying Haiti between 1915 and 1934 encountered armed resistance. Some 15,000 Haitians were killed. U.S. officials wrote a new Haitian Constitution, collected taxes, controlled customs, administered sections of Haiti’s government, and forced payments on loans held by U.S. banks.

The plundering, murderous Duvalier dictatorship, father and son, ruled Haiti from 1957 until 1986. The U.S. government cited anti-communism as justification.  

CIA personnel collaborated with Haitian military officers to plan the coup that in 1991 removed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. That he returned to power in 1994 by means of a U.S. invasion typifies Haiti’s subservience to decisions made in Washington.

Paramilitaries trained and funded by the United States removed President Aristide in 2004. Canada and France helped out. A U.S. plane conveyed Aristide to the Central African Republic. The three nations arranged for United Nations troops to occupy Haiti. They would remain until 2019.

Particular reasons

“There was hell in Hayti (sic) in the red waning of the eighteenth century … while black men in sudden frenzy fought like devils for their freedom and won it … the shudder of Hayti was running through all the Americas.”  (W. E. B. DuBois, John Brown, 1907)

Reports of the “tempest created by the black revolutionaries … spread rapidly and uncontrollably.” A maritime proletariat brought news to places like Charleston, South Carolina; “Afro-North Americans … derived inspiration from the example of Haitian freedom,” recalls historian Julius Scott. (Common Wind, 2018)

The U.S. slavocracy had much to protect. “Between 1775 and 1825 … a slave-labor large farming system [developed]. There was a close and indissoluble connection with the world’s cotton market.”  (DuBois, Suppression of the African Slave Trade,1896) The labor of enslaved people generated wealth and enabled debt repayment. Slave ownership represented 20 percent of private U. S. wealth.  

Fearful slaveowners had Haiti on their minds, more so when slaves were unruly. Slaves conspired, sometimes were discovered, and rebelled. That Denmark Vesey, leader of a failed slave rebellion in Charleston in 1822, had been enslaved in Haiti was hardly reassuring.

The enslavement of Black people in the United States eventually ended; racism did not.  Haiti manifested a new orientation that would by no means mollify U. S. animosities against its people.

Historian C.L.R. James explains that, “Haiti had to find a national rallying point [and] discovered ‘negritude’ [involving] “substitution of Africa for France.” Until then, “Mulattos who were masters had their eyes fixed on Paris.” At work was the influence of pan-Africanists Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, and Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, regarding whom, says James, “it is Africa and African emancipation that he has in mind.” (Black Jacobins, 1989)

As a kind of African extension in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti solidified its place within the orbit of U.S racism. That showed in 1898 when U.S. troops intervened in Cuba’s war for independence from Spain. Later Cuba would become a U.S. protectorate of sorts. U.S. justification for both endeavors, according to statements, was to prevent “another Haiti,” a “second Haiti.”     

Indeed, Cuba’s rebel army was full of Black soldiers. African-descended General Antonio Maceo led rebel troops. Maceo at the time was a favorite in the U.S. Black community.

Much later, U.S. imperialists were alert to real or imagined socialist stirrings in Guatemala (1954), Dominican Republic (1965), Indonesia, (1965-66), Chile (1973), Cuba perennially, and Haiti. There, anti-communism competed with racism as motivation.

Maybe with the advent of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti, whispers were heard in U.S. government circles of “another Cuba” in the making. After all, Haitians are poor, they suffer, they die young, and they are heirs of a revolution.

Aristide was new. His 1991 election victory with a 67% plurality was Haiti’s “first successful democratic election ever,” according to the  conservative National Republican Institute.  Aristide gained reelection in 2000 with 91% of the vote.  

An observer notes that, “In the period of governance by Fanmi Lavalas, the party founded by President Aristide, more schools were built than the total constructed between 1804 and 1994. Twenty percent of the country’s budget was mandated for education.  Women’s groups and popular organizations helped coordinate a literacy campaign …The minimum wage was doubled. …  Health clinics were established in the poorest communities.  The government also launched an aggressive campaign to collect unpaid taxes owed by the wealthy elite.”  

Haiti waits. Maybe Haitian President Moïse will be removed and maybe Haiti’s parliament will reopen. Maybe the new Biden administration will go along with a new array of officeholders.  His representatives may pull strings selectively, or give a nudge to favorites. What the U.S. government does in the short term, however, won’t matter much to masses of Haitian people who are victims. What would matter for them is certainty of their independence, of being able to take charge of their own existence. Movement in that direction depends on change in the United States, forced by popular mobilization there, toward a politics that embraces the notion of human equality.