These articles featured in the Women Against Military Madness Newsletter this past spring provide some background for the situation in Haiti today, as well as historic and recent history of U.S./Western involvement.
An empire falls, an empires rises
Napoleon lost the wealth-producing French colony of Santa Domingue to the Haitian Revolution, a successful slave revolt. Seeking funding for wars in Europe, he then sold off another part of the French empire—a large swath of North American (Indigenous) land. President Thomas Jefferson, a slave plantation owner himself, “bought” the land in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 to expand the U.S.
Sugar cane plantation. Based on drawings by William Clark, during a residence of three years in the West Indies (London,1823)
DO HAITIAN BLACK LIVES MATTER TO US? BY MARY BEAUDOIN
“The policies of neoliberalism are accelerated with what economist Naomi Klein calls the “shock doctrine,” imposed on a country when it finds itself in dire straits and is forced to go into debt, which acts as a form of bondage to international institutions.”
Women Haitian Farmers
PEASANT FARMERS PROTEST: FREE TRADE ISN’T FREE FOR HAITIAN WOMEN AND HAITIAN WOMEN IN SOLIDARITY STATEMENT
The struggle of women is the struggle of the Haitian people!