The United States directly controlled Haiti through the bayonets of its marines from 1915 until 1934, putting down numerous anti-colonial demonstrations and several rebellions with thousands killed.
‘Haiti, and the Struggle against U.S.A. Imperialism’ by Harry Gannes from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 10. No. 6. February 6, 1930.
Since 1915, U.S. imperialism has been sinking its fangs deeper into black Haiti. The conscious imperialists of Wall Street recognise in Haiti a strategic point in the future war plans of American capitalism. In a formal manner, Haiti’s relations to the United States is “regulated” under the treaty of 1915, which was literally forced down the throats of the Haitian masses by U.S. marine bayonets. More than 2,000 Haitian workers and peasants were killed in the revolution which greeted the “peaceful” penetration of U.S. imperialism in Haiti.
Major General Smedley D. Butler, of the United States Marine Corps, who has had experience in every colony of American imperialism, on Dec. 5, 1929, told an audience of manufacturers in Pittsburgh how the job was handled. Referring to Haiti the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports him as saying:
“Regarding Haiti, General Butler told how the marine- controlled President had dissolved the Congress to prevent the legislative body from passing a new constitution. He (Butler) aided the president in drawing up the edict that dissolved the Congress.”
Since then, U.S. imperialism has forged a ring of gold and steel around Haiti. In 1913 Wall Street investments in Haiti amounted to $ 4,000,000. With the subjugation of the masses and the establishment of a financial and military dictatorship over the island. Wall Street investments jumped to $ 30,743,000 in 1929. During the same time, U.S. commerce jumped 147 per cent; from $ 6,909,000 to about $ 17,000,000.
But the main reason for riveting the imperialist bonds tighter on this small island of 10,204 square miles, with a population of 2,300,200 is military. Haiti holds a strategic position with regard to the Panama canal, the key to U.S. war plans.
On more than one occasion the American bourgeois and their military and naval heads have declared that the Caribbean Sea must be locked upon as an American lake. That the American lake is reddened with the blood of the Haitian, Nicaraguan, Cuban and Mexican masses, Stimson very skillfully attempts to hide in his flimsy role as world agent of peace and advocate of the Kellogg pact.
The recent revolt in Haiti was based on the growing suppression of president Luis Borno and the Wall Street military dictator, Brig. Gen. John H. Russell, U.S.M.C., American High Commissioner, who rules Haiti with an iron hand on the orders of Hoover and Stimson. Also, economic conditions during the past year have become very bad. The price of coffee, the main agrarian product of Haiti, dropped sharply. The conditions of the peasants have worsened. There developed the spontaneous strike of the students which was backed by the militant mass of peasants who wanted to go much further than the petty bourgeois students. Then followed a strike of the dock workers at Port au Prince.
The Haitian masses have been systematically disarmed by the U.S. marines. The marines have organized the Garde Nationale, composed of mercenary Haitian troops loyal to Wall Street and the Borono regime. In reality, the Garde Nationale is an arm of the United States marine corps and directly under the domination of the High Commissioner. The Negro masses of Haiti have a long history of brilliant revolutionary struggle. Even with the overwhelming superiority of the armed forces of the American marines, backed by innumerable battleships and cruisers, the revolution in Haiti seethed for years. The revolutionary spirit of the masses was never broken.
Immediately after High Commissioner Russell announced that “all was quiet on the front” in Haiti following the general strike, on the occasion of a number of village and municipal elections the masses again expressed their revolutionary fervour and hatred of Borno and his imperialist supporters. In spite of the fact that the polling places were heavily protected by the Garde Nationale and marine troops, the peasants attacked them at many points.
The mass demonstrations in support of the Haitian uprisings that were held in New York, Washington, Philadelphia, and other parts of the United States, were by strict orders of the marine commander kept out of the Haitian press on the ground that the news would intensify the revolutionary struggles of the Haitian masses.
Meanwhile on the recommendation of president Hoover, Congress has appointed an “investigating” commission to go to Haiti and report back on a more “stable” form of relationship between the United States and its black colony. At no time have the American capitalists permitted a national election in Haiti. The usual procedure, as followed in Nicaragua, is for the United States to call for a “fair, free and open election”. In these elections, in the words of one of the chief participants. Major General Butler, “our candidates always win”. “The opposition candidates were declared bandits when it became necessary to elect a candidate.”
Yet with the assurance that its Wall Street candidate will win–thanks to the vigorous help of the marines–U.S. imperialism has not allowed an election in Haiti because it realises the revolutionary temper of the masses and the fact that even a marine-controlled election would be the signal for mass uprisings of a virulent nature.
The Haitian masses lack firm, revolutionary leadership. The struggles are usually led by students and petty bourgeois elements, who while opposed to American imperialism, do not offer a class programme for the masses, based on an anti-imperialist struggle together with the oppressed masses in other Latin American countries and in harmony with the revolutionary forces in the United States.
The Negro Haitian masses, though murdered, tortured, imprisoned and harassed have never submitted. They have pat op the most persistent and continued revolutionary battle against U.S. imperialism of any of the colonial peoples under the yoke of Wall Street.
International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.
PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1930/v10n06-feb-06-1930-inprecor-Virginia.pdf
