US Hegemony From Haiti to Honduras
Missing from corporate news coverage of the crises facing both nations is the role of US intervention that brought them to this point.
Haiti and Honduras have made headlines in the last few weeks. Honduras’
former president, Juan Orlando Hernández, was just convicted in a US
court of drug trafficking. He faces life in prison. Haiti is a nation
without a government, as armed groups have united against the US-backed,
unelected Prime Minister installed after the assassination of their
president in 2021. In both cases, what is missing from mainstream news
coverage is the role of US intervention that brought them to this point.
“The crisis in Haiti is a crisis of imperialism,” University of
British Columbia Professor Jemima Pierre, a Haitian American scholar,
explained on the Democracy Now! news hour. In her NACLA Report article headlined,
Haiti as Empire’s Laboratory, she describes her home country as “the site of the
longest and most brutal neocolonial experiment in the modern world.”Haiti
was the world’s first Black republic, founded in 1804 following a slave
revolt. France demanded Haiti pay reparations, for the loss of slave
labor when Haiti’s enslaved people freed themselves. For more than a
century, Haiti’s debt payments to France, then later to the US, hobbled
its economy.
The United States refused to recognize Haiti for decades,
until 1862, fearful that the example of a slave uprising would inspire
the same in the US.In 1915, the US invaded Haiti, occupying it
until 1934. The U.S. also backed the brutal Duvalier dictatorships from
1957 to 1986. Jean-Bertand Aristide became Haiti’s first
democratically-elected president in 1991, only to be ousted in a violent
coup eight months later. The coup was supported by President George
H.W. Bush and later by President Bill Clinton. Public pressure forced
Clinton to allow Aristide’s return in 1994, to finish his presidential
term in 1996. Aristide was reelected in 2001. “In 2004…the U.S., France and Canada got together and backed a coup d’état
against the country’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand
Aristide,” Jemima Pierre continued. “The U.S. Marines…put him on a plane
with his security officials, his wife and aide, and flew them to the
Central African Republic.”
Democracy Now! traveled to C.A.R. in 2004 covering a delegation led by Transafrica
founder Randall Robinson and U.S. Congressmember Maxine Waters who defied US
policy and escorted the Aristides back to the Western Hemisphere.
Aristide confirmed to Democracy Now! then that he had been ousted in a coup d’état
backed by the United States. Aristide then went to live in exile in South Africa
for the next seven years.In response to allegations that gangs
are currently controlling Haiti, Professor Pierre said, “The so-called
gang violence is actually not the main problem in Haiti. The main
problem in Haiti is the constant interference of the international
community, and the international community here is, very explicitly, the
U.S., France and Canada.”The Biden administration is reportedly
now considering the transfer of Haitian asylum seekers to the
controversial U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – a repeat of some
of the worst U.S. policies in its long history of exploitation of
Haitians.Honduras, meanwhile, currently has a
democratically-elected president, Xiomara Castro. Her husband, Manuel
“Mel” Zelaya, was elected president in 2006, then ousted in a US-backed
coup in 2009. In the following years, Honduras descended into a
narco-state, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee violence, seeking
asylum in the United States and elsewhere.In 2013, Juan Orlando
Hernández was elected president amidst allegations of campaign finance
violations, then again in 2017 in an election widely considered
fraudulent. Shortly thereafter, his brother Juan Antonio Hernández was
arrested in Miami for drug trafficking. Then, following Xiomara Castro’s
election, Juan Orlando Hernández himself was arrested and extradited to
the US for cocaine trafficking. On March 8th, he was convicted in US
federal court, and is currently awaiting sentencing.“The evidence was chilling,”
history professor Dana Frank, who was in the courtroom, said on Democracy Now!
“This litany of assassinations of prosecutors, assassinations of
journalists, corruption of the police, the military, politicians, the
president, his brother, you name it. And it was like the curtain was
drawn back, and you could see the day-to-day workings of this tremendous
violent, corrupt mechanism that was the Juan Orlando Hernández
administration…this was what happened after the 2009 coup that opened
the door for the destruction of the rule of law in Honduras.”US
intervention in Haiti, Honduras and other countries is one of the
principal drivers of people seeking asylum in the United States, as they
flee violence, poverty and persecution at home. This point is almost
never mentioned in the US press. To understand and ultimately solve the
“immigration crisis,” Americans need to understand what their government
has long done in their name, with their tax dollars–arming and propping
up brutal regimes abroad.