Caribbean Women Denounce the US-backed coup in Haiti

Caribbean Women Denounce the US-backed coup in Haiti


Contact Caribbean: Andaiye, 0115922 277010 andaiye [at] solutions2000.net

Jacqueline Burgess email jacquie.cafra [at] wow.net

Contact US: Margaret Prescod 323-221-1698 margaretprescod [at] crossroadswomen.net



We, the undersigned women of the Caribbean and of Caribbean descent, denounce the US-backed coup, which culminated in President Aristide’s removal from Haitian soil by US forces on Sunday, February 29, 2004.



The majority of the Western media, functioning as an arm of the coup-makers, pretends that the issue is President Aristide’s faults and weaknesses, and his loss of support among the people. While we recognize that there are likely to be legitimate criticisms of the Aristide government, that is not the issue. The issue is that there was a democratically-elected government which had not completed its term, and an opposition which included armed gangs, purported drug dealers and mercenaries led by former leaders of the FRAPH death squad and Duvalierists. One of Haiti’s current liberators – Chamblain – was leader of the death squads responsible for the mayhem which led a U.N. envoy to Haiti in 1993 to declare, "the Haitian people are living under the most ferocious repression in their entire history". These terrorists have had the backing of what has been called Haiti’s “permanent government” - the merchants, elite mulattos, Black former military, intelligence and bureaucratic establishment, and without doubt, drug lords - a permanent government that had financial and other support from the US. The people of Haiti have tried for decades to get them off their backs and may well have succeeded if the US had not undermined their movement, which threw out Baby Doc and put Aristide in power.



The coup is the latest action in the 200-year effort by the colonial powers, including the US, to defeat the struggle for freedom of Black people of Haiti and to prevent them from serving as an inspiration to others– which the colonial powers first acknowledged with the words of Napoleon: “The freedom of the Negroes, if recognized in St. Domingue (Haiti’s name then) and legalized by France, would at all times be a rallying point for freedom-seekers of the New World.” Napoleon sent in the largest force ever to cross the Atlantic up to then, but he was defeated. The Haitian people also inflicted military defeat on Britain and Spain.



Haiti was also a source of direct aid to other freedom-seekers. Under siege itself, Haiti supplied Simon Bolivar, the Liberator of Venezuela and other South American countries, who sought refuge there, with two ships and supplies to overthrow Spanish colonial rule; they also helped to train some of Bolivar’s soldiers. Its only request was that in return, Bolivar fight to free the slaves in Latin America.



The Haitian people achieved the first successful slave revolution in history, abolishing slavery over 60 years before the US with its Civil War. But they have never been allowed the conditions in which they could build their future without premeditated outside interference. The imperial powers, especially France and the US, furious at what Black people, "their property", accomplished against them, have made the Haitian people pay. Backed by the United States, France ordered Haiti to pay 150 million francs in gold as “reparations” to former plantation and slave owners as well as for the costs of the war, in return for international recognition. It has been estimated that French bankers and big business alone owe Haiti at least $21 billion in reparations for the forced debt that took Haiti 120 years to pay off.



For sixty years following the revolution, the U.S. government refused to recognize the Haitian Republic. The U.S. threatened Haiti twenty-six times by anchoring warships in its harbors to protect U.S. business interests. It invaded Haiti in 1915 and stayed until 1934 – nineteen years of occupation. U.S. marines robbed $500,000 from its National Bank in 1915 and deposited it in the National City Bank-- now part of the Citibank octopus. In the 200 years since Haiti’s independence, it endured thirteen coups before the coup of February 29, 2004. The bloody Duvalier dictatorships (father and son) were backed by both the US and France. Cedras, appointed by Aristide during his first term to head the army, later led a coup against Aristide, which was the joint work of the Haitian business elite, and the CIA.



Under the Bush administration the US stepped up its campaign to force “regime change” in Haiti. It pressured the Inter-American Development Bank and other agencies to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in development assistance to Haiti – earmarked for safe drinking water, literacy programs and health services. It instructed the IMF and the World Bank to place Haiti under a financial embargo. This is the administration which now asks us to believe that it is acting in the interests of “peace” and “democracy” in Haiti – as in Iraq.



And as is true everywhere, it is women and children who pay the highest price for the violence, including the violence of poverty, corruption and greed. Grassroots women and their children in Haiti, particularly those who are darker-skinned, are the poorest of the poor and have had to struggle to keep their loved ones safe and fed in the midst of violence and misery. It is the poorest sectors of the population who supported President Aristide. Children have also been drawn into the struggle: images coming out of Haiti show children placing burning tires on the streets and participating in so-called “looting”.



All Caribbean people have a long experience of US economic, political and military domination and subversion in this region. We have always understood that what happens in Haiti reflects whether we are winning or losing our long struggle to be free. Haiti has been used as the whipping board, as the example of what would be done to the rest of us if we dared do what the Haitians did so brilliantly, defeat the colonial powers. It was CLR James, a Caribbean man born and bred in Trinidad and Tobago, who wrote in Black Jacobins, the great history of the Haitian revolution: “The transformation of slaves, trembling in hundreds before a single white man, into a people able to organize themselves and defeat the most powerful European nations of their day is one of the great epics of revolutionary struggle and achievement.” We have always felt deeply that we must defend Haiti because Haiti is ours. Now we must act.



We must act in defense of the other countries of the Americas where the US is also working to subvert a democratically elected government and bring about regime change to suit their interests against our interests. We must let the world know that we will not silently permit US destabilization in Venezuela, a Caribbean country, where massive public support in the streets, led by women, has twice saved the people’s President – Hugo Chavez, a man of African and Indigenous descent like most of the Venezuelan population – and the people’s anti-racist and anti-sexist constitution, the most advanced in the world.



We must act to prevent further massacres in Haiti by exposing the truth about US involvement. We must act to oppose another racist occupation of Haiti by US forces and their allies. We must act to oppose fraudulent elections or any other intervention in Venezuela.



The coup and kidnapping of President Aristide are threats to all of us, beginning with those of us in the Caribbean and Latin America regions.



We must call on Caribbean and Latin American governments to join with opposition voices in the US to:

Demand that President and First Lady Aristide be freed to travel where they want to and to speak freely so that the world can hear directly from them.
Condemn acts of violence against the people of Haiti, where as in any armed conflict, women and children bear the highest price, including in sexual violence.
Support the bringing to justice of those who are committing violence and other atrocities against the Haitian people, including by coup leaders; and call for the convicted criminals among the coup leaders to serve their terms;
Oppose the return by the US government of Haitian refugees who are fleeing violence, including the violence of poverty imposed on then by the US and who are bound to face even greater violence upon their return to Haiti.
Insist on the sovereignty of the people of both Haiti and Venezuela, who must be in charge of their own affairs without outside interference.


We call on the United Nations to ensure that the social, cultural and economic rights of the women o f Haiti are protected, especially during this period





Lastly, we call on CARICOM Heads of Government now meeting in Kingston, Jamaica:
1. To refuse to commit Caribbean troops to Haitian soil, in light of the fact that the circumstances of the removal from office of the constitutionally elected President remain unclear; and

2. To undertake its own public investigation into the circumstances which led to the removal of the constitutionally elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide from office.






Signed as of March 3, 2004 (signatures are still being collected)



Name Country



Andaiye Guyana

Sheila Rampersad Trinidad and Tobago

Peggy Antrobus Barbados

Honor Ford-Smith Jamaica

Julieta Alfonso Cuba

Ramabai Espinet Trinidad and Tobago

Margaret Prescod Barbados/USA

Hazel Brown Trinidad and Tobago

Donnette Francis Jamaica

Jacquie Burgess Trinidad and Tobago

Alissa Trotz Guyana/Canada

Zakia Uzoma Wadada Trinidad and Tobago

Linnette Vassell Jamaica

Merle Hodge Trinidad and Tobago

Karen de Souza Guyana

Ijahnya Christian Anguilla

Dylis L. McDonald Trinidad and Tobago

Margaret D. Gill Barbados

Patricia Bynoe Trinidad and Tobago

Josanne Leonard Trinidad and Tobago

Vanda Radzik Guyana

Diane Cummins Barbados

Carol Narcisse Jamaica

Amina Blackwood-Meeks Jamaica

Denise Boodie Guyana/UK

Pauline Melville Guyana/UK

Evette Burke-Douglas Guyana

Rhoda Reddock Trinidad and Tobago

Patricia Rodney Guyana/USA

Eudine Barriteau Barbados

Marjorie L. Morris Guyana/USA

Carol Persram Canada

Cecilia Green Dominica

Kamala Kempadoo Guyana/Canada

Rev. Patricia Sheerattan Bisnauth Guyana/Switzerland

Nalini Persram Ireland

Marie Therese Dimanow Haiti

Lisa Thompson Guyana

Malaika Scott Guyana

Chandra Budhu Guyana/Canada