Why don’t the Haitian people rebel against non-stop oppression and distress? / By W.T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{Image via OWP}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

Powerful forces weighing on the Haitian people keep rebellion in check. Predators armed with guns, and others with economic tools, have free rein. The U.S. government, recently rededicated to regional control – see the 2025 National Security Strategy – has long beat up on Haiti. All the while, Haitians’ lives and living are precarious.

U.S.-based Vectus Global is fighting gangs in Haiti. Its head is Eric Prince, well-positioned U.S. impresario of war-for-hire. His company’s drones killed 1,243 gang members and bystanders during a 10-month period. How can that be?

Haiti’s last elections took place in 2016. President Jovenel Moïse was murdered in 2021. Parliament closed down on 2023. The “Core Group” of nations appointed Ariel Henry as prime minister in early 2022, shortly after Moïse’s still unsolved murder. Escalating gang violence and delay in arranging for elections forced Henry’s resignation in 2024.

The U.S. government and the CARICOM group of nations replaced him with the Transitional Presidential Council (TPC), charging it with preparing for elections. Parliamentary elections projected for August 2026 probably won’t happen. Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime, a TPC appointee, had invited Vectus Global to Haiti.

A faction within the nine-person TPC defied U.S. pressure to seek Fils-Aime’s dismissal on grounds of corruption and weak response to gang violence. Three U.S. naval vessels arrived off Port-au-Prince four days before the TPC was scheduled to expire, on February 7. The TPC did go out of existence, and Prime Minister Fils-Aime did keep his job. He and his ministers constitute the entire Haitian government.

Gang violence had been expanding and, with UN Security Council endorsement, the U.S. government in 2024 arranged for, and partially funded, the Kenya-led Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission to Haiti. Funding and troop contributions lagged, and the Security Council in late 2025 approved a U.S-proposed resolution for transforming the MSS nto a 5,500 troop “Gang Suppression Force.” It will be collaborating with Haiti’s police.

The theme so far here has been foreign control of Haiti and her people, especially U.S. control. The U.S. government is well-versed in this, what with military occupation (1915-1934), backing of the father-and-son Duvalier dictatorship (1957-1986), and U.S.- inspired coups in 1991 and 2004.

Haitians’ interaction with the United States these days is mediated mostly through migration. As of March 2025, 330,735 undocumented Haitians were living legally in the United States by virtue of Temporary Protected Status (TPS). That program, established in 1990, provides relief for irregular migrants to the United States facing deportation to a dangerous homeland. The Trump administration determined that TPS for Haiti would end on February 3, 2016. A federal judge in February 2 ruled against that action. An appeals court agreed on March 6, and the Supreme Court will finally decide.

Dead end

If TPS ends, Haitians returning to their country will be in trouble. According to one report, “Many repatriated Haitians arrive with nowhere to go–nearly 20% were already internally displaced before leaving the country.” As of February 2025, 10% of Haiti’s population – 1,450,254 individuals – had already been displaced from their previous homes, and are living in make- shift housing and tents.”

Displacement has resulted from actual and/or threatened violence at the hands of gangs. Gangs now control large sections of Haiti’s cities – 90% of Port-au-Prince – and areas in rural Haiti, mostly in the North. Gangs killed nearly 6000 people in 2025 and more than 16,000 since 2022. They have unleashed a wave of sexual violence. Children, who are the primary victims, make up half of the gangs’ fighters.

Meanwhile, no sign appears of any moderate or left-leaning political movement or party actively pushing for democracy and social justice in Haiti. Although the social democratic Lavalas Party was the vehicle for Jean Bertrand Aristide serving as Haiti’s president off and on between 1990 and 2004 – and still surfaces on the Internet – its influence is nil. Our question is this: why are progressive resistance forces absent or inconsequential in circumstances of great danger for Haiti’s people?

Power plus

One determining element may be the fact of a political void. Opposition movements usually take aim at an objectionable government. Only a shell of government exists in Haiti. It so lacks substance as to hardly qualify as a target. On defeating Haiti’s powers-that-be, a progressive resistance movement would be charged with building entirely new governmental institutions and administrative components, not to speak of new vision and
commitment.

More fundamentally: realization of progressive aspirations would now entail confrontation with power so overwhelming as to render actual resistance as almost unthinkable. Part of that power is U.S. power, as examined above. But most certainly, power shows in Haiti too, specifically with gangs and with Haiti’s wealthy elite.

The gangs hold a near monopoly on lethal violence, as is evident in the numbers cited above. Gangs emerged during the presidencies of Michel Martelly (2011-2016) and Jovenel Moïse (2017-2021). Protesters intermittently filling the streets of Port-au-Prince were demanding relief from high prices, shortages, and governmental corruption. Haiti’s elite, seeking protection, paid the gangs and supplied weapons and ammunition.

The gangs multiplied, joined in competing alliances, and found their own generous sources of income. According to a United Nations report, “Gangs dominate supply chains and extort commerce and humanitarian transport routes, giving them huge power to siphon off Haiti’s resources and destabilize its economy.” They profit from “extortion, kidnapping, drug trafficking and arms sales … Firearms … are mostly trafficked to Haiti from the United States for local use.”

The Report says that money the gangs generate is “smuggled through bulk amounts of cash, unregulated money transfer services, or front companies – many of which are linked to politically-connected economic elites.”

Really big bourgeoisie

Wealthy oligarchs control Haiti’s commerce and industries. In a comprehensive report from 2025, journalist Eric Andrew-Gee refers to “the dozen or so families of European or Middle Eastern descent who largely control Haiti’s impoverished economy” and are known for “dodging taxes, financing politicians and funding gangs as private militias …[A] rapacious economic elite …own virtually everything of value in the country.” One powerful family’s wealth comes from “soap and oil,” another’s from “steel, telecom, banking, oil and food,” and another’s from “supermarkets, news outlets and agribusiness concerns.”

Victimization of Haiti’s workforce, and of all Haitians, by the rich and powerful complements oppression at the hands of gangs and U.S. interventionists. The scenario clearly is that of class against class. Struggle on that basis apparently has to wait. Prisonlike circumstances require that Haitians confine themselves to fighting for their own survival.

This combination of gang violence, U.S. intrusions, and exploitation by Haiti’s rich and powerful has to be crushing, especially for a people who are deprived and suffering. Two thirds of the population are poverty-stricken. More than half of the people require humanitarian assistance. According to the World Food Program, more than half of all Haitians suffered from “acute food insecurity” in mid-2025. Most Haitians are deprived of anything approaching adequate healthcare and housing.

Additionally, Haiti’s working people and certainly unionists play only a marginal role within Haiti’s overall economy. They are weak and ill-prepared for fight-back. Half of all workers labor in agriculture, fishing or forestry. Those occupations account for only 20% of the country’s GDP. Remittances produce another 20%. Industry in Haiti in 2023 did contribute
25% of the GDP. But only 12.4% of all workers had manufacturing jobs. And some of those are disappearing, notably in Haiti’s garment industry, source of 5% of the county’s GDP. Factories are closing. Haiti’s unemployment hovers around 15%.

Division

Haiti’s African-descended people, through the generations, have consistently harbored a big impediment to entering into struggle, one existing apart from current circumstances. From slavery times, through the period of rebellion and independence struggle (1791-1804), and subsequently into the present era, Haitians have splintered according to class and skin color. Throughout, a minority class of more privileged, lighter-skinned, and French-speaking mulattos have remained apart. Their antecedents collaborated with the French slave owners.

They gained dominance over Haiti’s Black working-class masses, as national life developed. The tension remains. In his writings, Communist leader Jacques Roumain (1907-44) put the population’s social-class divide ahead of color differences. Author Philippe-Richard Marius summarizes: “The Haitian Revolution defeated White supremacy and gave rise to a new ruling class divided into color categories but united in the subjugation, exclusion, denigration, and exploitation of the Black working classes.”

_{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 and lives in rural Maine.}

Brazilian Workers Lead in Offering Solidarity to Venezuelans under US Attack / By W.T. Whitney Jr.

_{^{The leader of Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST), João Pedro Stédile, declares solidarity with the Venezualan government and people as they are threantened by a U.S. military intervention | Photo credit: brasildefato.com}}

_{South Paris, Maine}

Since August, U.S. warships, fighter planes, and troops have deployed in Caribbean waters off Venezuela and in Puerto Rico. Venezuela’s neighboring countries in Latin America and the Caribbean area are reacting variously. Many oppose U.S. aggression, but at a distance. Others are either non-committal or accepting.

Colombia and Brazil are backing Venezuela – or soon will be – in very different ways. Recent remarks of João Pedro Stédile, co-founder and a director of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), warrant special attention.

U.S. attacks from the air have killed dozens of crew members of boats alleged to be carrying illicit drugs. U.S. accusations against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro that he is a top-level drug dealer, serve as pretext. The U.S. government now offers a $50 million reward for his capture. The allegation that he heads the drug-dealing Cartel de los Soles is false. The cartel doesn’t exist, according to a United Nations report. A U.S. coup plotter recently claimed the CIA created the cartel.

President Trump recently indicated the CIA would be operating inside Venezuela. It’s widely assumed that the U.S. government wants control of Venezuela’s oil and other resources and is contriving to remove a government heading towards socialism.

Venezuela’s government is training militia troops by the millions. Venezuelan defense minister Vladimir Padrino López announced on October 21 that Venezuela’s’ military will cooperate with Colombian counterparts to fight narcotrafficking. Relations between the two nations are quickly improving.

They had deteriorated after Colombia’s government backed accusations that Venezuela’s 2024 presidential elections were fraudulent. But on August 10, Colombian President Gustavo Petro stated on social media that, “Colombia and Venezuela are the same people, the same flag, the same history. Any military operation that does not have the approval of our sister countries is an act of aggression against Latin America and the Caribbean.” Petro recently announced the Colombian military will be sharing military intelligence with Venezuela.

U.S. vilification extends to Petro who, speaking at the United Nations General Assembly on September 23, condemned U.S. support of Israel’s war on Gaza and U.S. imperialism generally. He railed against the U.S. at a rally outside the UN Headquarters. In response, the U.S. government revoked his visa. Petro had previously refused to accept Colombian deportees sent handcuffed from the United States in a military plane.

International solidarity

On October 18, Petro accused the United States of killing a Colombian fisherman and violating Colombian sovereignty. Responding, President Trump called Petro “an illegal drug dealer … [who] does nothing to stop” drug production. He imposed import tariffs and suspended subsidies granted Colombia for drug-war activities. Petro recalled Colombia’s ambassador in Washington.

Colombia may be on Venezuela’s side, but that’s not clear with other countries in the region. Colombia, president pro tempore of the CELAC group of nations, arranged for a virtual meeting of CELAC foreign ministers to reach a common position. In 2014, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States – CELAC –had declared the entire region to be a “zone of peace.”

At the meeting taking place on September 1, representatives of the 23 CELAC nations present (out of 33) considered a general statement that filed to mention the U.S. -Venezuela confrontation. It expressed support for “principles such as: the abolition of the threat or use of force, the peaceful resolution of disputes, the promotion of dialogue and multilateralism, and unrestricted respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Most of the countries voting approved, but Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay, Perú, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago did not.

Member nations of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America–Peoples’ Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP) did condemn US military action in the Caribbean. The CARICOM group of Caribbean nations, meeting in late October, expressed support “for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of countries in the region,” again without reference to the United States and Venezuela. Trinidad and Tobago was an outlier: Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar insisted that, “I have no sympathy for traffickers; the US military should kill them all violently.”

Regional presidents spoke out against U.S. intervention, specifically: Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum; Honduras’s president Xiomara Castro, Daniel Ortega, co-president of Nicaragua, and Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

Brazilian workers, especially those associated with Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) are taking matters into their own hands. Their leader João Pedro Stédile was interviewed October 16 on Rádio Brasil de Fato. (The interview is accessible here.) He points out that:

“The United States has been threatening Venezuela for quite some time. The process was accelerated by the Trump administration, a mixture of madness and fascism. He thinks that, with brute force, he can overthrow the Maduro government and hand it over to María Corina [Machado] on a silver platter. Part of this tactic was awarding her the Nobel Prize …The United States is making a tragic mistake because it is basing its actions solely on information from the far right….

“Never before has the Maduro government had so much popular support … It is time for Lula’s government to take more decisive action and show more active solidarity with Venezuela.

“If the United States is exerting all this military pressure to try to recover Venezuela’s oil, and … [if] María Corina … comes to power after the invasion, her first act will be to privatize PDVSA [Petróleos de Venezuela] and hand over other Venezuelan resources—I imagine iron, aluminum, gold, which they have a lot of—to American companies for exploitation. …

“At this event I attended in Venezuela, the World Congress in Defense of Mother Earth, … we agreed … to organize, as soon as possible, internationalist brigades of activists from each of our countries to go to Venezuela and place ourselves at the disposal of the Venezuelan government and people.

“We want to repeat that historic epic that the global left achieved during the Spanish Civil War of 1936, when thousands of militants from around the world went to Spain to defend the Republic and the Spanish people.”

The MST webpage testifies to the class consciousness and anti-imperialism inspiring MST solidarity with the Venezuelans:

“Brazil’s Landless Worker’s Movement was born from the concrete, isolated struggles for land that rural workers were developing in southern Brazil at the end of the 1970’s. … Brazilian capitalism was not able to alleviate the existing contradictions that blocked progress in the countryside … Little by little, the MST began to understand that winning land was important, but not enough. They also need access to credit, housing, technical assistance, schools, healthcare and other needs that a landless family must have met…. the MST discovered that the struggle was not just against the Brazilian latifundio (big landowners), but also against the neoliberal economic model.”

The MST “is the largest social movement in Latin America with an estimated 1.5 million landless members organized in 23 out 27 states.”

Stédile himself articulates a rationale for calling the U.S. government to account. In a recent New Year’s greeting, he noted that, “The world and Brazil are experiencing serious crises, such as the structural crisis of capitalism, the environmental crisis and the crisis of the bankruptcy of states that are unable to solve the problems of the majority … A good 2024 to all Brazilian people!”

His recent interview with Monthly Review is revealing:

“The MST has drawn on two key concepts from the historical experience of the working class in general and campesinos in particular: mass struggle and solidarity.

“Our strength does not come from our arguments or ideas; it comes from the number of people we can mobilize … I believe there has been a process of integration and mutual learning among Venezuelans, Brazilians, and Latin Americans in general. … The MST … has promoted brigades in various countries … and a permanent brigade here in Venezuela.”

_{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 and lives in rural Maine.}