the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Oct 25, 2021
The following text is translated from Workers Fight (Combat Ouvrière), the newspaper published by the revolutionary workers group in Guadeloupe and Martinique.
Since the assassination of the president, there has been an increase in emigration to neighboring countries.
Gang warfare has resumed in the area surrounding Haiti’s capital, after a pause following the earthquake in the south of the country. After having been subjected to the law of the army or the police under previous governments, the population of the neighborhoods is now under pressure from these armed bands.
When they occupy a neighborhood, the gangsters organize racketeering, and ransom the inhabitants according to what they think they can get. They demand a different amount from the merchant, the motorcycle driver or the shopkeeper, and threaten to seize everything or burn everything if the victim refuses. They dictate their law, and the inhabitants, watched, are forced to choose their side under penalty of reprisals.
This stranglehold expands, with the complicity of politicians—whether in power or in the opposition, and whatever they may say publicly.
To get out of this rotten situation there are many who hope to find elsewhere “a better way” and try their luck on frail boats to the United States. In the Caribbean region, in September, the Bahamian navy intercepted more than 1,000 Haitians on small boats; and the government of Cuba speaks of "an unknown number of Haitian migrants, hoping to get to the U.S. state of Florida, who recently arrived by boat on the coasts of the eastern and central provinces of Cuba."
Among those returning, some have traveled for years through Central America to Mexico before being stranded at the Texas border. They were exploited as agricultural workers, diggers, laborers.
The U.S. government blocked them at the Texas border and then organized the deportation of thousands of these migrants to Haiti. Some see no other way out than to leave, even if their emigration has not improved their situation.
More than 4,000 Haitians were repatriated from the USA to Port-au-Prince or Cape Town at the end of September. It is a cycle of mass deportations that has been initiated by the U.S. government.
More than 5,000 refugees were turned back by the military in the Dominican Republic in the space of three weeks.
The Bahamian government plans to return more than a thousand migrants. These migrants faced the same capitalist exploitation in other countries.
In Haiti, there are workers who come together to build a force capable of putting an end to this great misery and this inhuman fate. The future lies in engaging the exploited masses in order to change this barbaric society.