This publication was launched on 22 August 2022, the two-hundred-thirty-first anniversary of the beginning of the Haitian Revolution on the island of Saint-Domingue. In an article for our launch of the Red Clarion, we covered the history of that revolution in some detail. Since the day the revolution broke out across the island, Haiti has been the subject of vicious imperialist attack. From Napoleon to Jefferson, and from Jefferson to Biden, the Western powers have tried to bring the rich lands of Saint-Domingue back under the direct political control or indirect financial control of Western, Euro-American capital.

Haiti was forced to pay enormous war indemnities by the international capitalist order for the “theft” of property from France — the “theft” of the bodies of freed Black slaves and the land stolen from the Taino people by the European invaders. The U.S. Empire has considered Haiti a U.S. protectorate since its early days as a settler-republic, dictating terms to the Haitian government and repeatedly invading the island-nation whenever it takes a step toward independence.

From 1915 to 1934, the United States Empire ruled Haiti directly through an invasion force of U.S. Marines that seized the island by order of then-president Woodrow Wilson. The invasion of 1915 was engineered by U.S. capital. The National City Bank of New York, for instance,  funded rebels to destabilize the government on the island. After invading, the U.S. installed pliant puppet regimes and created a police force, called the gendarmerie, to protect the property and interests of American capital on the island. With U.S. direction, the gendarmerie and Marines put down rebellions, tortured thousands, murdered thousands more in summary executions, and built infrastructure on the island through forced slave-labor.

In 1991, Jean-Bertrand Aristide was elected president of Haiti. He was a former priest and a liberation theologist, and he worked to normalize Afro-Caribbean culture in Haiti. He took office in February of that year and by September he was removed by a right wing coup regime that immediately began a campaign of terror against Aristide’s supporters. We now have evidence that one of the junta’s members and the leader of the right-wing death squads, Emmanual Constant, was paid by the CIA.

Nevertheless, opinion turned against the counter-revolutionary regime both on the world stage and in the U.S. After all, the USSR had been forcibly dissolved and the specter of Communism was supposedly on the wane. Enthusiasm for Cold War-era policies was at a low ebb. Aristide had strong support among the Congressional Black Caucus and the emigree communities of the U.S. and, as a former priest and liberation theologian, also had the implicit blessing of Pope John Paul II. On September 19, 1994, 25,000 U.S. military personnel were once again on the island and marching into Haiti. President Aristide was restored to his democratically-elected office. 

In 2004, fed up with Aristide’s pro-Caribbean policies and leftward leanings, the U.S. once again intervened and funded right-wing paramilitaries, removing Aristide from his position for a second time. Aristide’s replacement, René Garcia Préval, launched a series of privatizations of the Haitian public sector. One of the coup plotters, Michael Joseph Martelly, would go on to sit as Haiti’s president from 2011 to 2016 with the support of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Martelly reconstituted the most dangerous elements of the Haitian military and created a government council of businessmen and bankers (which counted Bill Clinton among its members) to “manage” the Haitian economy. Haiti’s most recent president, Jovenel Moïse, presided over further instability; he was assassinated in 2021 by gunmen who have been publicly associated by the New York Times with the CIA — for trying to curb narcotics trafficking on the island.

Today, the United States Empire once again stands poised to launch an invasion with the blessing of the United Nations and warmongering liberals the world over. Acting president Ariel Henry, suspected of “masterminding” the assassination of his predecessor Moïse, has refused to step down in compliance with the many and various Haitian government organs and agencies that have declared his retention of power long after the assassination illegal. He has been in power since 20 July 2021, but no vote has ever been held to confirm him in office, despite his promise that “his administration will be a brief stage in a series of transitions to genuine democracy.”

Current Haitian Political Economy

In 1957 François Duvalier (known in Western culture as “Papa Doc”) became President of Haiti and would remain President for the rest of his life. The U.S. Empire viewed him as a counterbalance to Cuba and Castro, and thus helped him suppress the traditional Haitian mercantile elite through the creation of a paramilitary police force (the Tonton Makout). Under the presidency of his son Jean-Claude, clergy and local leaders began to organize the country’s poor communities into self-help organizations and peasant organizations. As the power of the repressed classes grew through organization, Jean-Claude slowly lost control of the country and, in 1986, he fled.

President Aristide was elected on 7 February 1991 as a result of this growing peasant power. Although the U.S. had acquiesced to his presidency as a matter of fact, Aristide’s attempts to reform the corrupt Haitian army and suppress the power of traditional Haitian business and mercantile elites in the led to the coup of September 1991. Aristide said of the coup, “The bourgeoisie should have been able to understand that its own interest demanded some concessions. We had recreated 1789. Did they want, by their passive resistance, to push the hungry to demand more radical measures? Pep la wonfle jodi-a li kapab gwonde demen! [‘the people who are snoring today may roar tomorrow!’]” .

By 2018, the ruling class in Haiti had consolidated its power and established a new, loyal, Haitian army. A handful of extremely rich and powerful families and individuals have a monopoly on the distribution of staple commodities. Gregory Brandt, president of the French-Haitian Chamber of Commerce controls soap and oil production. Clifford Apaid owns textile factories employing nearly 10,000 Haitians and subcontracts for U.S. garment production — his family controls 1/3rd of all Haitian the textile industry. Marc-Antoine Acra and his family are Haiti’s biggest importers or rice and sugar, and control the sheet metal, paper, and plastics industries of Haiti. Rueven Bigio runs GB Group, which is the dominant financier of the country.

Before the murder of President Moïse, Haiti operated as a semi-presidential republic, with a President, who is head of state, elected by popular vote to a five-year term and a Prime Minister, who is head of government, appointed by the president and selected from the members of the majority party in the National Assembly.

As one might expect from an imperialized colony, the Haitian state is essentially absent. Ordinary Haitians refer to the apparatus as the “phantom state.” NGOs provide around 50% of all health services and 80% of primary and secondary schools. Since the catastrophic 2010 earthquake, parasitic capitalist enterprises in the guise of NGOs and “aid” have spread through the Haitian economy. The World Bank runs the Haitian Reconstruction Fund and other NGOs and capitalist aid programs essentially run their “services” directly.

Mass Outrage and Imperialist Interference

In an economy dominated by foreign capital leeching resources to the U.S. and Europe, and in a political environment in which the last elected president was assassinated and usurped by his own Prime Minister — who now sits in his dead predecessors office, refusing to hold elections or submit to the authority of popular assemblies, a stand-off between the poorest segments of the population and the military terror-regime supporting the ruling class is threatening to descend into open civil war. The capitalist media, of course, casts the poor and laboring classes as “gangs” and the unrest as “political instability,” but knowing the history of Haiti and its current political crisis, we can see through this flimsy claim.

After decades of illegitimate government by the ruling classes, plundering of the public wealth, and the installation of U.S.-backed terror regimes, the criminal un-elected “Interim” President Henry has called for U.S. intervention. Rising energy prices (fallout from the Russo-Ukraine war), an outbreak of cholera, acute famine conditions, and the failure of the Haitian government to take any steps toward alleviating the multiple crises, have devastated the country. Opposition groups, many with substantial bases in the peasantry and poor working classes, are demanding that President Henry step down. Rather than relinquishing his grip on the country’s political system, President Henry announced the end of all fuel subsidies from the government in September.

Overnight, petroleum fuel prices doubled. The already-soaring cost of living threatened the lives of many of the country’s impoverished working class. Protests broke out in Port-au-Prince on 11 September, 2022, the day Henry announced the end of the subsidies. On 12 September, the so-called “G9 Family and Allies,” a paramilitary organization led by an ex-police officer that worked to keep the peace for President Moïse, dug a trench around the largest oil terminal in Haiti. This trench now encircles a critical depot of Port-au-Prince, in which 70% of the country’s oil reserve is held.

The demands published by the G9 and its ex-cop leader are that Henry immediately resign and that the government take steps to reduce prices of fuel and basic staple goods required to survive. On 11 October, Henry begged the U.S. capitalists to prop up his government. On 15 October, the U.S. Empire and its junior partner, Canada, sent the first armored cars and military equipment while their puppet-secretary in the U.N. called for “armed action” to remove the fuel blockade. On 17 October, the U.S. Empire and Mexico called for a non-UN force to occupy the island. On 21 October, the UN Security Council froze Haiti’s assets, instated travel bans, and imposed an arms embargo. Most foreign embassies in Haiti have closed.

As the people battle their corrupt government for economic relief, the imperialists prepare their invasion forces as they have so many times in the past. Despite the words of the Haitian anti-corruption organization Nou Pap Domi (“Historically, no U.S. or U.N. intervention has really addressed Haiti’s problem,” which is the “social and economic apartheid”), the U.S. capitalists continue to drum up energy for a direct attack. In Washington, the Biden government salivates over the potential this crisis will have on the November midterm elections in the U.S. and stalwart “progressives” like Elizabeth Warren have been sounding the trumpet for invasion. 

No to Intervention!

It is the duty of Communists within the imperialist West — the U.S. Empire and its junior partners — to oppose intervention in Haiti either through direct means or through a client state like Brazil. The problems of Haiti’s economy and politics come from the U.S. and Europe; its internal structure has been rearranged and reorganized for the benefit of international capital and the local Haitian ruling class since Jean-Jacques Dessalines helped free the island.

To the extent that the ruling powers of the U.S. Empire sit up and take note, we must make it politically untenable for them to launch their invasion. If they do launch it, we must combat it at home by increasing war friction and fatigue, through ceaseless agitation, and through the support of the Haitians and their self-determination in international solidarity.

The “crimes” against property committed in the Port-au-Prince uprising of 11 September and the unrest across the country are merely the crimes of the empire coming to fruition; they were grown from the seed of U.S. deposition or acquiescence to the deposition of the popular President Aristide, from CIA intervention and drug-smuggling, and from the support of the U.S. Empire for the comprador ruling class of Haiti, which ruthlessly exploits its people on behalf of the World Bank and U.S. monopoly capital.

This report, written by Cde. Cristophe Simpson of the Jamaica Left Alliance for National Democracy and Socialism (LANDS), details his experiences during his Summer 2019 visit to Venezuela, as a guest of the 25th São Paulo Forum, hosted by the International People’s Assembly. Simpson’s first-hand account of the Bolivarian Revolution is rich with valuable insights, particularly regarding the Venezuelan masses and their relationship to the Bolivarian Revolution. Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution has successfully resisted Yankee imperialism for 23 years (and counting) and is a beacon of revolutionary optimism. Simpson’s report is long (some 65 pages), so we plan to publish it in the Red Clarion as a five-part series.

The full report (all five parts) can be found here.

Characteristics of Political Mobilization

Political mobilisation in Venezuela is very different from in Jamaica.

In Jamaica, there are 2 main political parties and they have their own branches like women, youth, young professionals, and labour unions. There is a sense of cohesion and the parties’ branches fall totally under the party, with the exception of the unions which have a greater degree of an independent identity88. You either support one party or the other; the parties don’t have coalitions with other organisations that aren’t subordinate to them or seen as one of their branches. Also, we don’t really have social movements in Jamaica; the activist space is dominated by NGOs.

In Venezuela, things are different. The Bolivarian Revolution is supported by a broad base of political parties, unions, social movements, communes, and collectives. Some political parties that support the Venezuelan government have existed from before Hugo Chavez or Nicolas Maduro started their political careers. There are many people and organisations in Venezuela who don’t support or aren’t aligned with the ruling party but still support Nicolas Maduro.

Caracas

In Caracas, the pro-government political mobilisations are massive. I can never see where they start or end, as they are always and endless sea of people. You can see multiple flags of different political movements and parties, like the PCV and ORA.

Mérida

We were told that Mérida is an opposition state and that we should take extra measures with our security because it was one of the opposition strongholds during the Guarimba riots in 2017. You could see cracked windows and bullet holes in buses.

Nevertheless, we never really encountered any problems apart from some minor jeering when we visited Pico Bolívar. The jeering usually seems to be only playful, though we were warned of the risk of escalation into violence.

While we had a demonstration in the streets against some newly-announced sanctions, random persons on the street cheered along, some joined us, some waved from their windows with their pro-government flags and banners, and I vividly remember a truck driver smiling and cheering along even though it meant he was in traffic. Someone even took a photo with some of us. We got a few bad stares, but all of the persons who gave us bad stares were white.

Lara

Lara has a strong presence of communes and communal bodies. The PPT, a pro-government party which is distinct from the PSUV, has very strong support in Lara. When we had a meeting with the Governor of Lara, she was wearing a PPT jacket instead of a PSUV jacket even though she is from the PSUV. The PPT is one of the parties that existed before the Bolivarian Revolution or before the political careers of either Hugo Chavez or Nicolas Maduro. The PPT is stronger in some municipalities in Lara than the PSUV is.

We saw persons of all ages involved in activities held by the commune that we visited in Lara. A sense of unity and collective pride existed there. We had some difficult conversations there about some internal issues in the Bolivarian Revolution, but unity was still able to be maintained through necessary compromises.

The Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV)

It’s important to note that the Communist Party of Venezuela openly supports Maduro and the government. They had supported Hugo Chavez, they have endorsed Maduro in the last 2 presidential elections, and they have maintained a coalition with the PSUV, the party of Maduro and Chavez, during legislative elections.

I don’t know how popular the PCV is, but I have met more persons – both young and old – who are from the PCV than from any other party, including the ruling party. I know more than a handful of PCV supporters who I met in Jamaica, and even more that I’ve met in Venezuela.

The PCV isn’t uncritical of the government, and their analysis of the situation is very different from the PSUV’s analysis of the situation, despite the fact that they’re allies. Of course, different persons or organisations don’t need to agree with each other on everything to be allies; the point of noting this all is that the people and organisations who support Maduro don’t do so blindly or without reason, and Maduro’s supporters are sensible people who can think for themselves. I knew this before visiting Venezuela, but I needed to point it out to others who ignore the support that Maduro has and only focuses on the expressions of the opposition. In the West, common discourse will find every reason to explain why some people support the opposition in Venezuela, but their discussions always omit reasons that people support the government; sometimes they make silly assumptions that the people only support the government because of welfare, but even this is false as I witnessed for myself that self-governed communes and community-based initiatives that don’t benefit from the government are still ardent supporters of the government.

There are grievances which are negative sides of the PSUV’s relationship with the PCV, but those specific things are typical in any multi-party democracy where a dominant coalition partner takes pride in its ‘majority’ within the coalition and feels no need to make concessions to their minor allies. These things are issues with the PSUV as a party and many of its functionaries, not specifically Maduro; I know this well because I’ve encountered issues with some of them myself and heard of some things from others, but these others are still people who support Maduro and the government. Criticism of the PSUV is distinct from criticism of Maduro.

Maduro is not a perfect leader; no-one is. This doesn’t mean that the PCV only supports him because he is the ‘lesser evil’ – it means that disagreements and criticism can exist among different forces which are aiming for the same general long term goals, especially about the path to take to get there and the pace of following that path. Criticism of the government doesn’t have to mean that persons want to change their government; many organisations and people want changes but push the government to make the changes rather than to try to overthrow the government, and that is the approach that the PCV and many other organisations and movements take. They see progress as a process, and they understand themselves to be a part of that process. rather than finding themselves antagonistic towards the government’s efforts.

It’s also important to note that the PCV takes a more hardline position on some issues. They opted not to re-join the National Assembly when the PSUV made peace with some sectors of the opposition, because they still see it as a body that it is contempt; they see the current assembly as “the key tool of imperialist aggression” – they support the Constituent National Assembly instead, and believe that it “should have taken forceful action” against Juan Guaidó when he proclaimed himself to be president. Outside of Venezuela, the Constituent National Assembly is painted as a body that was solely created to increase the PSUV’s power, but this is clearly not the case if a party that is critical of the PSUV has endorsed the body and has even complained that it doesn’t go far enough in making moves against the opposition.

The West spreads the idea that Maduro is an authoritarian dictator; however, inside Venezuela, some people complain that he isn’t authoritarian enough. Those who support or empathise with the opposition should be somewhat relieved that it is Maduro and the PSUV who are in power, and not someone from the PCV or the average supporter of the government who impatiently wait on the government to make certain moves and wish that the government would brutally crackdown on the big Capitalists and some opposition leaders.

Internationally, those who bash Maduro and the Venezuelan government don’t only do so from the right-wing; many self-labelled Socialists in the West also bash Venezuela because it still has a market economy, or other things that give them reasons to say that Venezuela doesn’t have ‘real’ or ‘pure’ Socialism. Ironically, these clowns are not anywhere close to building Socialism in their own countries, and they make excuses for compromising and supporting weak Capitalist candidates all the time. I prefer to listen to the PCV than to some Western chauvinists.

The PCV leader says that the party openly discusses Venezuela’s internal contradictions with international allies but specify that their struggle with the PSUV is an internal one and that they unite with the PSUV against the opposition locally and against the US internationally. It’s not the place of outsiders to get involved in the internal struggles of Venezuela’s Left; Comrades will of course offer their opinions and share them with each other, but that is not the same as bashing and discrediting. There is a responsible way in which Comrades and allied organisations can offer advice to each other or even to engage in critique with each other; it can be harsh, but these things should be done with discretion and in specific spaces.

Perception of Police

My friends and Comrades from different parts of Venezuela have very different views/opinions on police. My Comrades in Caracas and Petare have very negative views of the police, despite being hardline supporters of the government. This shows that their opinions of the police and of the government don’t impact each other much, if at all.

I attended a memorial service for 6 Comrades who were murdered in Barinas; there was a sense that the police were not doing enough to address the incident. Despite their negative views on police, the Comrades who mourned their deaths were hardline supporters of Maduro and the government; the murdered activists and the Comrades who mourned them were Chavistas after all, and the movement that they were from also strongly supports the government. They have held demonstrations, but they are not of the same nature as the opposition demonstrations.

When we stayed in the apartment complex in Carora, there was an interaction with police that made me and some other Comrades uncomfortable, because of our general feelings about the police in the places that we are from; a Comrade from Brazil explained how police in Brazil are reactionary, and Comrades from Caracas and Petare showed some slight discomfort. The police were there for our own protection and offered to escort us, and they interacted mainly with an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who was with us as security; a Comrade was telling me that the police officers’ intentions were good but that people would look at it in a negative light. However, the people in Lara who were hosting us said otherwise; she told us not to worry and that “the police here are different” as the Comrade from Brazil explained how bad the police in Brazil are.

I felt more comfortable after this, i.e. after our hosts in Carora told me that the police actually have decent relations with the people, even though the police in Caracas seem to be less successful with that. At another point, a Comrade from Mérida told us that the police in Mérida aren’t very aggressive or violent. A friend from Petare told me that the police in different parts of Venezuela are different, that police in Caracas and Petare are awful and don’t respect human rights but that I can trust what I’m told by Comrades from other parts of Venezuela.

We sometimes hear of how brutal police in Venezuela are, and the point of this section is to show that their character is not reflective of the character of the Bolivarian Revolution. After all, supporters of the government are open and honest about their negative views on police, and some of the police themselves are involved in the attempts to discredit or unseat the government.

On Peaceful Coexistence

I had a conversation with a Comrade about the topic of China and its role in countering the US’ hegemony and said that I would one day consider writing to the Communist Party of China on the matter. Like Khrushchev and the revisionist leaders who came after him in the USSR, China has been pursuing a policy of peaceful coexistence with the West; the idea is to maintain global peace and stability and prevent war. I have also engaged a Comrade from Cuba on this topic.

What exists in the world right now is not peaceful, and what they are trying to prevent is not violence; violence is already happening everyday as a result of US hegemony. Economic warfare continues against Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, the DPRK, and other countries. The world has watched while the US and its allies attempt to destroy Iraq, Libya, and Yemen. The peace that we are trying to preserve is an illusion, while people in particular countries experience violence daily.

While progressive governments have good intentions in reconciliation with the West, they are attempting to avoid war and the most overt forms of violence while leaving themselves vulnerable to continued strategies by the imperialists to weaken them and strike again later. We saw this with the Cuban government attempting reconciliation with the US, as it has been doing for decades, with the intention of ending the brutal blockade; however, we saw that the US was intending to replace an old regime change strategy to one that they considered smarter and more effective.

While making it clear to the world that they are allies, certain countries have still negotiated with the US on an individual basis instead of forming a strong united front. Cuba, the DPRK, and Iran have all negotiated to improve their own standing – and this is understandable and expected that each country will put itself first and that such negotiations are conventionally bilateral, but conventions have all been based on existing practice rather than things set in stone. The problem is that the US will negotiate with one country while attacking 3 of its allies, and the country that it’s negotiating with is backed into a corner to be nice and maintain a smiley face with the US because it’s backed into a corner about its own conditions.

But peace between the US and other countries is a fantasy. Even during peace time, the US won’t respect other nations’ sovereignty; it was built by the destruction of many other nations as it expanded its borders Westward under a “Manifest Destiny” doctrine. As we pretend that a peaceful world under the current conditions is possible, we weaken ourselves every day; at what point do we say that enough is enough? When will we challenge and overthrow the hegemony?

How many more countries will be invaded or bombed? How many more people need to suffer the brutal effects of blockades and economic warfare? We condemn these things, but we allow them to happen. Why do we aim for peace with an entity that commits so many acts of evil? Why does it satisfy us to have peace with a government that is bombing and destroying another country at the very same time?

Where do we draw the line? It wasn’t drawn after the wars in Viet Nam or Korea, it wasn’t drawn after the invasion of Grenada, it wasn’t drawn more recently after the invasion of Iraq which killed hundreds of thousands, it wasn’t drawn after the destruction of Libya, it hasn’t been drawn after decades of a genocidal economic policy towards Cuba, and it hasn’t been drawn after the US decided to engage in economic warfare against the peoples of Venezuela and Iran.

At the end of the Sao Paulo Forum, Maduro spoke of one day going on the counter-offensive against imperialism; true anti-imperialists are eager for the conditions to be right to do this and for it to be done. One could argue that it is already being done by the people’s movements resisting neoliberal policies and puppet governments in Haiti, Honduras, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Chile, and other countries.

Still, I want to know; when do we move, from just surviving despite imperialism, to overthrowing imperialism? We will have no room to construct Socialism if we always have to worry about the imperialists intervening and violently re-imposing Capitalism on our peoples.

This idea that we must try to aim for peaceful coexistence and resist confrontation at all cost is not working, considering that the cost is that people are suffering and even dying in the violent conditions that the hegemony has imposed on them. The times of ‘peace’ that we have are not peace in the real sense, and the balance of power isn’t shifting; imperialism continues to grow stronger while countries that are resisting imperialism are focusing on their own survival. We are not buying time when we accept the imaginary peace; we are weakening ourselves with delusion as we let our guard down. Peace does give us some time to manoeuvre, but we often get too complacent in these times rather than reminding ourselves that we are in a constant struggle.

This is not a rejection of peace. We want peace, but we can’t keep letting our guard down in these times of nominal peace. This is also not a call for war; war is already being waged by imperialists so anti-imperialists wouldn’t be starting one. This is also not a call to take any sudden reckless actions to intensify war, but it is a call to recognise the reality we live in and that our efforts towards peace may not actually be bringing about peace for our peoples. This is something to bear in mind, going forward. Our final goal can’t be coexisting with imperialists who don’t value our lives.

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The most radical thing we can do, then, is to reshape our international relations in light of this reality. Again, this doesn’t mean supporting any sort of violence. It can be something as simple as radically changing our trade relations to decentre the West and give it less power. Our dependence on trade with the powerful Western countries gives them the power to coerce and control us. They have hegemony over the global economy, and demanding to remain assimilated in this current economy will always have us on our knees.

Individually, progressive Nationalist governments in the Third World have been doing this. They have tried to take control of natural resources from the hands of multinational entities, and they have faced sabotage and intervention; this is not a critique of these countries. This is a critique of the other nations which sit and watch this happen, offering nice-sounding critique after the fact but not doing anything concrete.

We cannot live like this. We cannot be smiling with the West while it strangles Cuba and other nations that we care about. The international community must draw a line and take concrete action, something more than just verbally denouncing the blockade at UN sessions each year, or more than throwing shade with vague language to criticise the US. If this spineless faux-clever approach that we take to the world’s problems now was the same one that we had applied to the problem of Nazi Germany and other fascist regimes in the 1930s, the Nazis would have dominated the world at the time.

Other Things

There are good things that happened that don’t have detailed notes, like a meeting with someone who will soon be sent to head Venezuela’s diplomatic mission to Jamaica, an Afro-descendants’ meeting in November that we got invited to, public canteens where people who don’t have food can eat for free, a visit to a potato farm, a visit to an archaeological museum that focuses on the history of indigenous peoples in Western Venezuela, our visit to the national pantheon, things I learned about veterinary services in Venezuela, and some other things.

Conclusion

My experiences in Venezuela are anecdotal, as anyone’s experience would be if they spent a considerable amount of time there and wrote a report. This does not mean that I spent time to talk to more than 30 million Venezuelans or that I know everything about Venezuela, but I know enough to say the things that I have said.

Despite the limitations of my observations and analyses, I think they are important experiences that depart from the narratives that are actively pushed by Western media. The things that I witnessed and experienced were not 100% positive; nonetheless, they have reaffirmed my confidence in the Bolivarian Revolution and in people’s movements in other countries – including my own – in general.

This report doesn’t have a particular central/single aim beyond documenting the things that I witnessed and experienced so that they are not lost in memory. Where some things are highlighted, the reasons that they’re being highlighted are explicitly stated. Things in this document may be cited as a reference for the organisation’s positions on issues in the future.

The Cuban Revolution has undeniably taken a monumental step forward toward the total emancipation of the oppressed. As this paper reported, Cuba’s new Family Code “is, in no uncertain terms, the most progressive and comprehensive law in history, anywhere on Earth, with regard to the emancipation of women, LGBT people, children, the elderly, and disabled people.”

But not everyone is celebrating. The Western capitalist press, serving as the propaganda arm of U.S. imperialism, is desperately sputtering and stumbling over itself to drown out any celebration of revolutionary Cuba’s historic victory. To this end, the capitalist press is peddling a multifaceted, deeply incoherent narrative — a cacophony of anti-Communist propaganda, joined by such vaunted outfits as the Associated Press, The New York Times, and Reuters. Various anti-Communist NGOs funded by the imperialists — the usual suspects, like CIVICUS and the NED — have also crawled out of the woodworks.

Most have focused on dampening Cuba’s world-historic victory by oversimpliyfing the new Family Code as “legalizing gay marriage.” At the same time, any hint of faint praise for revolutionary Cuba is carefully qualified by attacking the revolution for a “slow” pace of progress, despite the fact that revolutionary Cuba has already outpaced every country in the Americas, and most countries in the world, in the struggle for LGBT emancipation.

As we reported in the Red Clarion, Cuba’s new Family Code does, in fact, enshrine marriage equality as law — but it does so much more than “just” that.

The new Family Code is a comprehensive legal code, laying out the legal dimensions of families, children and the elderly, women, LGBT people, and disabled people. It is uniquely progressive in the world on every front. We could go on, but we will instead encourage readers to read our full summary of the new Family Code.

Yet, the Family Code has been oversimplified in the capitalist press of the United States and other Western countries as something resembling the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which tenuously legalized same-sex marriage in the U.S. — and which is now on the verge of being overturned by the current Court, dominated by far-right fascist Trump-appointees.

So, why the oversimplifications?

The capitalist press has been forced to acknowledge the most widely known and reported aspect of the Family Code: marriage equality. But the capitalists can still subtly manipulate public perceptions by “failing” to thoroughly report the facts surrounding the popular referendum — to “tell the whole truth.”

The more rabidly anti-Communist outlets accuse the Cuban government of forcing an “unwanted” Code on the people, despite the fact that the Code was passed in a popular referendum. Hardly a single capitalist news outlet, even the “moderates,” can admit that the popular referendum expressed the political will of the people. Instead, the capitalist press explains away the new Family Code’s popularity by denying the political agency of Cuba’s people.

One of the news agencies most obviously guilty of this is Reuters. “Cubans Split over Liberal Family Code as Referendum Nears” — this was the headline of an article, published by Reuters in March 2022, in the lead-up to the popular referendum. The article baselessly asserts that, “Tepid support for the reforms … threatens to hand state-backed supporters a defeat,” citing as its source three so-called “experts.” One of these “experts,” who works for a German state-sponsored think-tank, falsely claimed that the Family Code had been, “compiled by state authorities, rather than being a grassroots movement.” In fact, the Family Code underwent multiple, significant alterations in accordance with suggestions voiced by the public at the nearly 80,000 grassroots community meetings held during the four-month-long public consultation process leading up to the referendum.

We hardly need to point out now that the predictions of Reuters and its “experts,” that the new Family Code would be rejected, were predictably and embarrassingly wrong: The Code was instead ratified by a two-thirds supermajority.

The more conspiracy theory-minded are coping and seething with the assertion that the popular referendum was really a sham effort by the Communist Party of Cuba to “stabilize the regime.” For instance, the Miami Herald cites nameless (likely fictitious) sources to paint the popular referendum as “a smokescreen for a government that is in desperate need of … legitimacy.” The truth, of course, is that the Cuban government enjoys the support of the overwhelming majority of Cubans, and therefore already has “legitimacy” by any truly democratic standard; this is not changed by the fact that an insignificant minority of Cubans oppose the revolution and the Communist Party.

Reuters also indulges in its share of conspiracy theories. In an article headlined “Cuba Uses Media Blitz to Promote ‘Yes’ on New LGBT-Friendly Laws,” published a few days before the vote, Reuters accused the Communist Party of “flooding state-run media with stories and celebratory images” of LGBT people and putting up “roadside billboards touting diversity,” all in order to convince the Cuban public to support the new Family Code’s historically unprecedented expansion of LGBT rights. (How truly evil, those Communists!) The conspiracy theorists at Reuters claimed that the Communist Party’s mass public education campaign on LGBT rights, launched in the months leading up to the referendum vote, was an underhanded effort to dupe the Cuban public and cover up “anger” and “widespread protests” — demonstrations which, in actuality, have at most attracted a few hundred paid activists in Havana.

Reuters only cites “analysts consulted by Reuters” to justify its conspiracy theories. One of these “analysts” is the same German sham “expert” Reuters consulted in the previous article, who makes the truly bizarre claim that, “many people will vote [out of] loyalty to the government, much more than on content” — as if Cubans were incapable of independent thought; as if the Cuban electorate wouldn’t vote “Yes” on the Family Code for the simple and obvious reason that the majority supports the rights of LGBT people, women, children, the elderly, and the disabled. This “expert” assertion that citizens of revolutionary socialist states are mindless robots is a classic anti-Communist smear. Another of these so-called “analysts” is a right-wing fascist “dissident” — the sort who are broadly ignored as irrelevant extremists by the Cuban public, but are beloved by the rabidly anti-Communist Western capitalist press as “pro-democracy activists.” Reuters quotes this “dissident” (who lives not in Cuba, but in Madrid, Spain) as actually advocating against the Family Code — against the expansion of LGBT and other rights — for no other reason than to “punish the regime.” The “dissident” takes off the “pro-democracy” mask and admits that anti-Communists are, in truth, against democracy and emancipation. 

Why the baseless pessimism toward the people of Cuba? Why the sham “experts” stating easily disprovable falsehoods? Why the indulgence in conspiracy theories?

Doesn’t Reuters brand itself as a respected, trustworthy, “value-neutral,” and “objective” news agency?

Among other distortions appearing in the capitalist press is the widely-repeated line that the recent popular referendum was “rare” and “unusual” in Cuba — another easily disprovable falsehood. The Associated Press, for instance, released an article headlined, “Cuba Holds Unusual Vote on Law Allowing Same-Sex Marriage,” in which it characterized the referendum as a “rare” event. In fact, popular referenda are a normal feature of Cuba’s robust participatory democracy, and have been held many times in the past. The most recent such popular referendum was held in 2019, only 3 years ago, when an overwhelming 90.6% (with a voter turnout of 90.15%) of the electorate ratified Cuba’s new Constitution. The only “exceptional” aspect of this year’s popular referendum on Cuba’s new Family Code was the unprecedented level of public grassroots participation: The public consultation leading up to the referendum involved nearly 80,000 mass community meetings across Cuba and among Cubans living abroad, attended by a total of over 6.5 million Cubans (75.93% of the electorate).

Again, why the distortions? Isn’t the Associated Press one of the largest news agencies in the world, and isn’t it meant to be an “objective” source?

The fact is, the capitalist press cannot afford to admit the truth about Cuba. A two-sided pressure compels these agencies and outlets to manipulate, distort, falsify, and lie.

On the one hand, to tell the truth about revolutionary Cuba would force the capitalist press to acknowledge the progressive, democratic, and emancipatory nature of the Cuban Revolution — and, by extension, Communism. The mass media monopolists in the West will never allow this. The capitalists invest untold billions of dollars in their propaganda machines, because demonizing Communism is a crucial pillar of the capitalist class dictatorship. They must, at all costs, convince the oppressed that another world, free of exploitation, war, and all oppression, is impossible.

On the other hand, acknowledging the progressive, democratic, and emancipatory nature of the socialist revolution would expose a sharp contrast between the advancements of revolutionary Cuba and the reactionary backslides of the fascist U.S. Empire.

Let’s look specifically at the rights of LGBT people in the U.S. Empire today, and compare this abysmal situation with the progress of LGBT emancipation in Cuba.

So far this year, nearly 240 anti-LGBT bills have been filed in state governments across the U.S. Empire. In February 2022, Texas instituted a program denying life-saving medical care to transgender children, while threatening parents who accept and affirm their transgender children with prison sentences. Texas has been joined, to greater or lesser degrees, by the states of Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, Utah, Idaho, and California — yes, even “liberal” California — all of which have passed (or are considering) laws banning medical care for transgender children in particular and transgender people generally. The states of Alabama, Minnesota, and Oklahoma are considering or have passed restrictions on the rights of same-sex families. In recent years, many of the same states have instituted laws that prohibit public school teachers from even discussing the existence of LGBT people. Across the country, we’ve seen LGBT pride parades and other events get attacked by cops and civilian-fascist demonstrators. At the center of it all, the current far-right Supreme Court, having overturned Roe v. Wade (the right to an abortion), is threatening to put marriage equality next on the chopping block. And it doesn’t stop there: In addition to entertaining challenges to the Obergefell decision, the far-right fascist wing of the Court has threatened to overturn the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision, which legalized homosexual intimate contact, and the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision, which legalized inter-racial marriages.

This is the awful state of LGBT rights in the U.S. Empire. Meanwhile, only 90 miles away from U.S. shores, Cuba’s electorate has ratified the most progressive, comprehensive law regarding the rights of LGBT people — as well as women, children, the elderly, disabled people — and the nature of the family in world history.

The capitalists can’t allow this hypocrisy to be exposed, but it will be exposed, one defiant voice at a time, all the same. No anti-Communist cacophony can drown out the fact that Cuba is thriving, while the U.S. Empire continues to descend into fascism.

We must proclaim “Death!” to this fascist settler-colonial empire, and, in the same breath, proclaim, “Long live the revolution!”

Viva Cuba! Viva la revolución! Hasta la victoria siempre!

“PEOPLE HERE ARE DRUNK WITH LIBERTY…. The peril is great and it is imminent…. ARREST SUSPICIOUS PERSONS. SEIZE WRITINGS IN WHICH EVEN THE WORD FREEDOM APPEARS. Redouble your guard over your plantations, towns, and villages. Everywhere win over the free people of color. BE SUSPICIOUS OF THOSE WHO ARRIVE FROM EUROPE.”

—Letter of 12 August 1789 from Paris, by Saint-Domingue’s deputies

“[T]hey are inexcusable in my eyes for having wanted to set themselves up as despotic masters of the mulattoes, and as tyrannical masters of the blacks…. To shake off the cruel and shameful yoke under which they groan, they are authorized to employ all possible means, even death, even if they are reduced to slaughtering their oppressors to the last.”

—Jean-Paul Marat, L’Amis du peuple, No. 624 (12 Dec. 1791)

On the 22 of August in 1791, after months of planning and secret Sunday meetings, a slave named Boukman led a revolt through the North Province of Saint-Domingue. The rebels, armed with torches, guns, sabers, and makeshift weapons, set fire to the plantations and burned the fields. They freed slaves as they marched. Their army grew with ready-made revolutionaries. Black slaves flocked to their cause. Although Boukman would not survive the revolution, what he and others had begun would be the first and only successful slave-revolution of the new world.

“Your houses, Monsieur le Marquis, are nothing but ashes, your belongings have disappeared, your administrator is no more. The insurrection has spread its devastation and carnage onto your properties,” wrote the plantation owner Millot in a letter to his neighbor, the absentee landlord the marquis de Gallifet.

The bourgeoisie of newly-revolutionary France had won political rights from the ancien regime. The free colored men of the French colony tried to enforce a law passed in France that would grant them the same. Despite the fact that the National Assembly of France had issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man in 1789—and despite powerful progressive forces in France who championed them—the rights it guaranteed were not extended to women or free Black men. The Declaration of the Rights of Women was stillborn in the National Assembly and a 1790 uprising of “free colored persons” (gens de couleur) to secure their rights  in the French colony of Saint-Domingue had been crushed. Its leader, Vincent Ogé, executed by the Colonial Assembly of Saint-Domingue.

At the beginning of the French Revolution, the planters of Saint-Domingue allied with their one-time foes, the merchants of Nantes and Bordeaux in France. Though the planters typically found themselves at the mercy of the merchants (due to the royal licenses, called the exclusif, which gave the merchants and merchant-houses monopolies on the importation of goods from the French colonies), they suddenly shared a common interest: the protection of the slave trade. The colonial production of coffee, indigo, and above all else sugar was reliant on the importation of Afrikan slaves. Slaves were worked to death on Saint-Domingue, and they made both planters and merchants rich. With the outbreak of the Revolution, that trade was suddenly threatened by French “radical Republicanism” which promised freedom and equality for all men. The planters and merchants formed the Club Massaic, a political club with the express purpose of  maintaining the racialized class system of Saint-Domingue.

Opposing the Club Massaic in France was the Société de amis des Noirs, a group of radical abolitionists, who demanded the immediate freedom of all the kingdom’s slaves. Radical republicanism was the enemy of the King, of the nobility, of the colonial planters, and of the merchants of Bordeaux, Nantes, and La Rochelle.

In August of 1791, Black slaves held secret meetings near Gallifet plantation and swore to fight “a war to the death against the whites.” On August 22nd, rumors of a revolution terrorized the planters. They summoned a judge from the biggest city on the island, Le Cap Française, and when he arrived, the slaves rose up. Boukman, one of the early leaders of the rebellion, led nearly 2,000 slaves across the province.

On one plantation the rebels took “the refiner’s apprentice, dragged him to the front of the dwelling-house, and there hewed him into pieces with their cutlasses: his screams brought out the overseer, whom they instantly shot. The rebels now found their way to the apartment of the refiner and massacred him in his bed.” They then began attacking surrounding plantations. 

The slaves burned the hated cane fields. They torched the despised refineries and the sugar machinery that often crushed, mutilated, and mangled their arms. The conspiracy of revolt stretched across the entire northern plain of Saint-Domingue. Once the revolt was underway, the rebels destroyed “not only the cane fields, but also the manufacturing installations, sugar mills, tools and other farm equipment, storage bins, and slave quarters; in short, every material manifestation of their existence under slavery and its means of exploitation.”

By August 27, the insurgents were “reckoned 10,000 strong, divided into 3 armies, of whom 700 or 800 are on horseback, and tolerably well armed.” As in France, Saint-Domingue burned in the fire of revolution.

Class Composition of Saint-Domingue

Saint-Domingue had few members of the noble class; the French colonial nobility were absentee landlords who relied on agents and managers. Standing above the pre-revolutionary class hierarchy were the colonial secretaries, governors who were appointed by the king himself to oversee the island. The colonial secretaries had their seat in Le Cap Française, at Le Gouvernement, the house of the administration. Behind this was the military barracks, housing a thousand or more soldiers. The city was home to a large prison and several hospitals, twenty-five bakeries, and a slaughterhouse. It had its own municipal water system, fountains, and public squares. Le Cap’s 1,400 houses were built of stone and some had gardens. The city was called “the Paris of our island.”

The highest-ranked class on Saint-Domingue was that of the “grand blancs,” the big French planters who owned the majority of the land and the plantations. In 1700 there were 18 plantations in the whole colony, but by 1790 there were about 8,000 and Saint-Domingue produced roughly one half of all sugar consumed in Europe. Most of these plantations had been started by Frenchmen who took out loans from one of the merchant houses back in France. Those planters who prospered became members of the wealthy planter class, the grand blancs; those who failed turned over their plantations to the merchant houses in Bordeaux, Nantes, and La Rochell.

The plantation system was developed primarily for the export of sugar. Sugar production is labor-intensive. The mills were expensive and often deadly to their operators. When Saint-Domingue came into French hands in the 17th century, the plantations were worked by Afrikan slaves alongside white indentured laborers. In 1687, whites outnumbered Afrikan slaves on the island, 4,411 to 3,358. By 1700, the slave population was 9,082 and the white population had decreased by a few hundred. By the middle of the 18th century there were 150,000 slaves and fewer than 14,000 whites. In 1789 the official figures counted 465,000 slaves, 31,000 whites, and 28,000 free colored persons. At the end of the 18th century, more than 35,000 Afrikan slaves were brought to the island each year on the Middle Passage.

Later, the French built plantations for both indigo and coffee. Three-quarters of sugar and coffee sent to France was re-exported to other countries in Europe, with the difference in the price as it came into Bordeaux and Nantes and the price sold to Europe pocketed by the great merchant concerns in those cities. As many as 25 million French people depended on the Saint-Domingue trade. Nantes and Bordeaux flourished off of this trade. They became important centers of revolutionary activity and many of the bourgeoisie who fought for greater freedom for their class, for a political voice in the Kingdom of France, were only able to do so because they had grown fat on the trade of sugar and coffee.

On plantations with absentee landlords like those held by nobles or the merchant-houses, the chief agent was the procureur, who had power of attorney. These agents hired gérants, managers, but rarely visited the plantations themselves. The managers often exploited the slaves for their own gain, skimming commodities or money for themselves. The biggest plantations had économes, overseers, hired by managers and owners, who monitored the slaves in the fields and tracked the plantation’s slave population. These were all white or free colored men.

There was also a population of white urban craftsmen, and, increasingly as the 18th century went on, a growing class of poor or unemployed white persons who migrated into the colony with the hope that they might make themselves wealthy planters and plantation owners. Poor whites (petit blancs) were directed by the white planter class to vent much of their class-anger at the free colored people, many of whom were moderately wealthy or who owned slaves and small plantations of their own. This helped alleviate generalized class struggle in the colony.

Free colored persons (gens de couleur), were a legally recognized racial caste. Membership in this caste was initially small; in the early 18th century, many people of mixed Afrikan descent were legally classified as white, By the 1760s, new racial laws and measurements recategorized many of these persons and determined them to be “colored” — by blood quantum. In 1764, a royal decree forbade persons categorized in this fashion from practicing medicine, surgery, or pharmacy. The next year, another decree excluded them from working as lawyers or in the offices of notaries. A 1773 law made it illegal for them to take the names of their masters or white relatives. A 1779 regulation made it illegal for free people of color to “affect the dress, hairstyles, styles, or bearing of whites.” By the time of the Revolution, free colored people were subject to many laws discriminating against them on the basis of “race.” (There were many legal categories of “color” based on blood quantum.)

Still, wealthy free colored persons sent their children to be educated in France. White men married free colored women — however, in the 1750s and ‘60s some of those who had done so were removed as administrators and military officers. Poor whites or those arriving in the colony seeking to make their fortune were confronted with well-established free colored persons; in a naked maneuver designed to secure a cross-class alliance, the wealthy white planters assisted these poor whites by agitating for that legislation which deprived free colored persons of political, social, and economic rights.

Below the free colored people were the ranks of the Black slaves. The top of the slave hierarchy was marked by the slave driver. Drivers (or overseers) were in charge of the field slaves and often tasked with whipping those who where chosen for punishment. They had better food, clothes, and housing than field hands, and sometimes acted as collaborators with the masters and managers. Yet, a French manual for plantation masters advised them to watch their drivers carefully, as they were the most rebellious slaves on the plantation — and not without good reason. They had the most freedom out of all the slaves, and often gathered on Sundays to discuss matters with drivers from neighboring plantations. These men were the organizers of the revolt in 1791, doing most of the planning work at these Sunday meetings.

The horrors of the middle passage are well-documented. Over 100,000 slaves died during transport. 685,000 slaves were brought into Saint-Domingue from 1700-1793. Saint-Domingue accounted for between 8 and 11 million slaves overall, perhaps 10 percent of the entire Atlantic slave trade. Each year, 5 to 6 percent of the slaves died, an enormous fatality rate. Without a constant stream of new slaves from Afrika, the colony would exhaust its exploited Black workforce by literally working them to death in a matter of years.

The slaves on the sugar plantations were subject to the worst conditions on the entire island. Sugar refining was brutal and dangerous, and consumed the lives of the slaves on the plantations. Thus, the slave population was divided between the sugar slaves and the coffee and indigo slaves; these groups were further divided into drivers, artisans (barrel makers, sugarboilers, and so on), and field hands. Enslaved women were excluded from the high-status work. They worked as domestics or field-hands, and were also used as “breeding stock” — subject to rape, assault, and sexual exploitation by masters, managers, and overseers. Slaves were permitted to maintain personal garden plots, the produce of which they ate or sought permission to go to market on Sundays to sell.

Class Forces at Work

The tensions in the colony of Saint-Domingue on the eve of the Revolution ran thusly: 

1. White planters, “grand blancs”. By and large supporting the bourgeois Revolution in France, the planters generally joined with Club Massaic and the merchants of Bordeaux, Nantes, etc. They were opposed to the expansion of rights for free people of color, and violently opposed to any degree of liberation for the slaves. However, once the Revolution was underway, the planters would increasingly struggle against the current of radical republicanism that began to threaten the privileges of the big merchant houses.
2. White artisans and “petit blancs”. White artisans were positioned to become allies of the planters through their shared desire to maintain slavery, but they were less independence-minded and tended to be more loyal to France. Poor whites were non-revolutionary, but more or less allied with the white planters through a combined hatred of the racialized people of color, particularly those who had a higher class-status.
3. The free people of color. Opposed to the freeing of Black slaves, the free people of color also supported the Revolution in France and saw the position of Club Massaic as hypocritical while distancing themselves from the more radical abolitionist positions. Essentially, the free people of color on the island were agitating for expanded political rights and the right to assimilate into white French society. The free people of color were mostly concentrated in the west and the south; there they were armed and well-organized.
4. Black slaves. The enslaved population was divided into strata of its own: urban slaves, domestic slaves, drivers, and field slaves.
   1. Urban and domestic slaves. About 100,000 of the 500,000 slaves in Saint-Domingue were cooks, personal servants, artisans, etc. As a class, they were not inclined to join any movement, relying on the status of their masters to protect them.
   2. Drivers and field slaves. The 400,000 slaves who worked the fields or who directly administered the plantations were subject to the most brutal and inhumane treatment; these were the slaves that would become the engine of the revolution in Saint-Domingue, led by the drivers who organized the uprising.
5. The Maroons. There were a not-insignificant number of Afrikan slaves who escaped into the central mountains or the surrounding territories and became outlaws, raiders, and so forth. These so-called Maroons were often hardened warriors. There were also, among the slaves, those who had just recently been transported (stolen) from Afrika, many of whom had been taken in warfare. Regardless of their station or class as slaves, these slaves, “most of whom can barely say two words of French but in their country where accustomed to fighting wars,” taught the Saint-Domingue revolution tactics the French regulars were unable to match.

Setting the Stage for the Revolution

The initial conflict in Saint-Domingue was between the free people of color and the white population. As Revolution swept through France and the National Assembly became more radical, opening a split between the bourgeoisie and the French aristocracy, the upper strata of the free people of color in Saint-Domingue began to agitate for commensurate political rights as those that were being extended to the citizens of France.

Vincent Ogé, a free colored man who was in France when the Revolution broke out, appeared before the National Assembly with Julien Raimond to represent the free men of color on Saint-Domingue. They presented a petition which warned that “there still exists in one province of this Empire a race of men debased and degraded; a class of citizens consigned to contempt, to all the humiliation of slavery… [Though] born citizens and free” they were “slaves in the land of liberty.”

They tried to win over the planters at Club Massiac. They presented a plan for rights to be granted to “quadroons” (someone with one quarter Afrikan or Indigenous descent) born of legitimate parents with at least two generations of freedom. Ogé privately gave the club a separate plan — one which started by granting rights to free colored persons, but which would abolish slavery little by little. Club Massaic listened, but promised them nothing. As a result, they allied themselves with the Société des amis des Noirs. They presented a cahier des doléances to the National Assembly calling for “equality for all non-whites and freedom for mulatto slaves.”

Although many of the planters and merchants supported limited political rights for the free colored people, the call for full equality roused Club Massaic. The club took action against the delegates to protect the institution of slavery. The planter Tanguy de la Boissière published a pamphlet in 1789 arguing that the “pivot” of the “constitution, legislation, and regime of Saint-Domingue” must be “everything for the planter… There can be in Saint-Domingue only slaves and masters.” In March of 1790, the National Assembly proposed a law that the constitution of France would not be applied to the colonies. The law that was passed by the National Assembly stated that “all people” who were property owners over twenty-five would participate in the elections for the colonial assembly. The abolitionists in the National Assembly knew what was happening: the ambiguous language meant the French National Assembly at home was leaving the question for the colonial assembly of Saint-Domingue abroad — an assembly in which every representative was a planter and slave-owner.

That July, Ogé left France with a shipload of guns. In October of 1790, he landed in Saint-Domingue and armed hundreds of free colored men in the hope that he could enforce the law. He marched on and seized the town of Grande-Rivière, then sent letters to the Revolutionary Provincial Assembly in Le Cap demanding it apply the National Assembly decree granting all free citizens political rights. His uprising, however, was crushed by troops dispatched from Le Cap. He was tortured and executed.

By the following August, the North Province was in flames — not for the political rights of the free colored people, but for the freedom of the Black slaves. A rebel who was caught and executed was found to have “in one of his pockets pamphlets printed in France, filled with commonplaces about the Rights of Man and the Sacred Revolution; in his vest pocket was a large packet of tinder and phosphate and lime. On his chest he had a sack full of hair, herbs, and bits of bone, which they call a fetish.” The objective and subjective conditions for revolution had combined; the Black slaves of Saint-Domingue had developed a revolutionary consciousness.

In early August of 1791, before Boukman and the revolt marched through the cane, the free colored people organized a mass political assembly at Mirebalais. They selected delegates to the National Assembly of France, but were ordered by the governor to disband when the revolt broke out in the North Province. The angry free colored people took up arms. 

In the Western Province, the free colored people sought allies and took in a contingent of rebel slaves and dubbed them the Swiss — like the Swiss mercenaries in service to the King of France. The free colored rebels promised the Swiss they would be granted freedom for their service. By September 1791, the so-called Confederation of free colored people and Black slaves burned out and destroyed a contingent of troops from Port-au-Prince. A wealthy white planter proposed a solution: make peace with the free colored people. This betrayed the white class-alliance between planters and “petits blancs,” but it brought the free colored persons within the Confederate alliance to the table.

The Black “Swiss” rebels marched with their allies into Port-au-Prince. Behind closed doors, the white planters and free colored leadership agreed to deport the slaves rather than free them. An attempt was made to sell them in Belize, but when that failed they were simply abandoned on Jamaica. The British took them back to Saint-Domingue where they were executed by the French soldiery for their loyalty.

The attempted peace treaty also broke down. When a free colored soldier was insulted by a white soldier they began to fight. An angry white crowd lynched the Confederate, Scapin, and the free-colored soldiers opened fire on the white “patriots.” The outnumbered free-colored soldiers retreated from the town, but the whites followed them, murdering free-colored citizens in their homes or the street, and inadvertently setting fire to Port-au-Prince and reducing it to ashes.

The New France

In France, the Revolution was growing more radical. The King had been forced to sign the short-lived 1791 constitution, making the National Assembly the chief legislative body of the Kingdom and transforming France, with a pen stroke, into a constitutional monarchy. Civil commissioners were dispatched from the Assembly to Saint-Domingue, where they arrived in November; they carried a decree from the National Assembly stating that the “laws concerning the state of unfree persons and the political status of men of color and free blacks” would be established by the colonial assembly, overturning their previous promise for political rights.

The National Assembly had also declared a general amnesty for “acts of revolution.” Those who “returned to order” would not be charged with crimes for the violence or sedition they had committed.

Jean-François and Georges Biassou, the two victorious generals of the slave rebellion in the North Province, demanded the inclusion of the slaves in the amnesty. The planters refused, even as the commissioners realized there was no military solution that could destroy the growing power of the slave rebellion. Louis de Tousard, a veteran of the American Revolution, and a French officer, warned Jean-François and Biassou “Do not believe that the whites, and especially the members of an assembly of representatives from the colony, would lower themselves so far as to receive conditions dictated and demanded of them by their rebel slaves.”

Jean-François and Biassou replied to the commissioners, the planters, and Tousard, that “[o]ne hundred thousand men are in arms… Eighty percent of the population” of the north was rising. The leadership of this Black revolution was “entirely dependent on the general will” of the insurgents. Still, even Jean-François and Biassou, the rebel slave-generals, did not foresee abolition, merely reformed slavery. The rebel camps made it clear in no uncertain terms that they would not disband. There was no negotiation that would bring them back to the plantation. They would have general abolition of slavery, or they would, as Marat would say in December, be reduced to “slaughtering their oppressors to the last.”

After nearly a year of open rebellion, property damage, massacres of both Black slaves and white planters, on April 4, 1792, the National Assembly of France declared that “the hommes de couleur and the nègres libres must enjoy, along with the white colons, equality of political rights.” Did this free the slaves? No. It conscripted the free persons of color to fight the slaves. It reduced the complex racial hierarchy of Saint-Domingue to a simple one: on the one hand there were the free, and on the other the enslaved, and among the free there were no racial distinctions under the law.

In October 1792, news arrived in Saint-Domingue that the king had been suspended during an August uprising in Paris. The French Revolution entered yet another phase: one of radical republicanism in which a new assembly, based on universal male suffrage, was elected: the National Convention. France was now a republic. The colonial commissioners, Léger Félicité Sonthonax and Etienne Polverel were given extraordinary powers to suppress enemies of the republic by the National Convention.

In January of 1793, Louis XVI was executed. Spain and Britain joined Austria and declared war on France. As the other European powers threatened Saint-Domingue, the republic sent a new governor, François-Thomas Galbaud du Fort, who was a Port-au-Prince property owner. He immediately got into a dispute with the colonial commissioners; Sonthonax had him imprisoned. In response, the white sailors and French soldiers attacked Le Cap and the commissioners.

Sonthonax and Polverel issued a new decree: all “black warriors” who would “fight for the Republic” would be free. Any slave who fought in their defense would be “equal to all free men” and receive “all the rights belonging to French citizens.” But so, too, did the Spanish offer to free those who would fight on their behalf and capture the colony for the crown of Spain.

It was on August 29, 1793, that Sonthonax issued a decree abolishing slavery in the Northern Province. In the west and south, Polverel followed suit. Not only did the commissioners free them, the slaves were granted citizenship by the decrees.

From late 1793 until mid-1794, the British launched their invasion of Saint-Domingue. At the same time, the Spanish, from the Hispaniola side of the island, had recruited a number of free people of color, including the general Toussaint L’Ouverture. On 6 May 1794, after the Spanish crown refused to honor its promise to begin the abolition of slavery, L’Ouverture went over to the French and ambushed the Spanish as they emerged from attending mass at San Raphael. Toussaint’s Spanish-backed rebel army defected to Republican France and succeeded in pushing the Spanish out. The unifying colony now presented a threat to Britain in her rear: a slave revolt in Jamaica. L’Ouverture and the revolutionary general Rigaud together defeated the British and secured the island. An officer corps of free colored men was emerging, leading armies of liberated slaves.

Pan-Afrikanism and the Caribbean

The revolution flickered and was snuffed out in France, devolving in the Thermidorian Reaction, the execution of Robespierre and the radical Jacobins, the instatement of the White Terror, and ended in the creation of the Directorate, which was continually at war with all of Europe. After suffering abysmal military defeats, the Directorate was overthrown in the 18th Brumaire coup of Napoleon on 9 November 1799.

The revolutionary forces in Saint-Domingue, having secured the island and stilled the bloodletting among rival generals, declared their sovereignty from the French Consulate. In response, Napoleon dispatched an expeditionary force to Saint-Domingue to restore it to France, to profitability, and most of all, to slavery. Toussaint was defeated on 25 April 1802 and taken in chains to France. Rebel troops were executed by sulfur dioxide gas in the holds of General Rochambeau’s ships, shot en masse by firing squad, hanged, and drowned in bags.

The French troops, devastated by yellow fever and fighting, were reinforced by a Polish Legion who, seeing in the bravery of the slaves an echo of the plight of divided Poland, defected to join General Dessalines and would eventually be given citizenship and recognized as black under the Haitian constitution. The island revolted against the reimposition of slavery. The island revolts continued throughout 1802, and became a general war in October, when General Dessalines repudiated the peace and led the entire island once more against the forces of Consulate France toward independence.

Dessalines, in large part thanks to the British war on France preventing Napoleon from reinforcing the island, defeated the French armies and, on 1 January 1804, declared Saint-Domingue to be free and independent, rechristening it Haiti after its Arawak name.

In February of 1806 the young United States Congress adopted an embargo bill and continuously subject the Republic of Haiti to embargo until 1810 and did not trade with the republic until the 1820s. The U.S. did not recognize Haiti until 1862, after the southern states seceded. In 1825, the Haitian Republic was forced to pay 150 million francs to ex-slaveholders. Haiti eventually paid off its debt in 1947 — which bankrupted the country and forced it to take a loan from the imperialist French banks. In 1922, the U.S. seized all of Haiti’s customs houses, institutions, banks, and the national treasury.

This theft of wealth annihilated the productive capacity of the Haitian economy throughout the 19th and 20th century and has subjected the republic to a continuous cycle of debt, poverty, and invasion. In 2003, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was removed in a coup d’etat that was self-admittedly orchestrated by France because he called for reparations. The coup general who replaced him, Gerard Latortue, withdrew the demand. It remains one of the poorest countries in the Americas and nearly its entire government operating budget comes from the Venezuelan oil alliance Petrocaribe.

On 7 July 2021, the president of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, was assassinated in the wake of his effort to combat U.S.-backed drug smuggling and trafficking (with roots in the 1986 Service d’Intelligence National, a CIA cutout that moved drugs through Haiti). Since that date, Haiti has had no president.

The U.S. settler-republic refused to aid Haiti because of the slaves they harbored in their own bosom. Despite the shared Enlightenment roots of the U.S. war for independence, the French Revolution, and the Haitian Revolution, the U.S. sided with the Kingdom of France when it came to money and the fear of a slave uprising. The strength of the colonialist states in the west is such that if any of the imperialized nations attempts to break free from the U.S.-led capitalist world-market, if it attempts to shake the chains of imperialism and neo-colonialism, it marks itself out, just as the Republic of Haiti did, as a target.

However, each of these imperialized countries contains one or more New Afrikan nations; it is these descendents of the horrors of chattel slavery who have the power to shatter the imperialist chain. By banding together and rising all at once across the west, by threatening the monopoly capitalists not only in the peripheral colonies but also in the semi-colonies of the U.S. and Canada, the thinly-spread imperialist armies will be divided, unable to concentrate, unable to crush the rising state after state. It is through western Pan-Afrikanism that Haiti will be free of its debts and its status as a neocolony. It is through western Pan-Afrikanism that the Black Belt, the U.S. region of New Afrika, will throw off its capitalist, vampiric, rulers.

Walter Rodney wrote that, for “the vast majority of New World blacks, phrases such as ‘the reserve army of labour’, ‘labour reservoir’ and ‘last hired first fired’ adequately sum up the position. The reference to the black community in the US as an internal colony has many justifications, not least of which is the remarkable fact that black labour within America has virtually the same relation to whites in terms of skills as does continental African labour with regards to Europe and white America.”

“Imperialism,” he says, “has used racism in its own interest, but it turns out to be a double-edged blade, and that very unity that is engendered among black people — the unity of common conditions and common exploitation and oppression — is being turned around as a weapon to be used against imperialism.“

The lesson of Haiti is thus: we rise together when we rise, or we are cut down and crushed one by one, not only New Afrika, but the proletariat of the so-called New World.