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
Mar 3, 2025
This article is translated from the February issue, #323 of La Voix des Travailleurs (Workers Voice), the paper of Organisation des Travailleurs Revolutionaires (Organization of Revolutionary Workers), a Trotskyist group active in Haiti.
While the gangs continue to attack the population, relentlessly massacring the inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods, some politicians and media commentators propose an amnesty or a negotiation with these criminals. These speeches, under the guise of pragmatism, are nothing but a dangerous illusion aimed at morally disarming the masses and legitimizing the grip of the gangs on the country.
Those who advocate reconciliation with the gangs ignore or pretend to ignore an indisputable reality: the bandits have never paused in their abuses. The massacres continue, ever more bloody and systematic. In Kenscoff, dozens of people were massacred by armed gangs, forcing hundreds of families to flee their homes. In Grepin (Gros Morne), in Wharf Jérémie, and in Savien in the Artibonite, the same scenario is repeated: mass executions, looting, arson, gang rapes.
Asking the population to negotiate with these murderers is like asking the sheep to forgive the wolves or to live peacefully in the same sheepfold. Since when have executioners been negotiating with their victims? Since when has reconciliation been achieved between the oppressors and the oppressed?
The gangs of Viv Ansanm (“Live Together”) know that they have the balance of power in their favor. They control more than 80% of the capital, possess an arsenal of war, and enjoy the complicity of the country’s economic and political elites. Under these conditions, why would they agree to negotiate? What interest would they have in giving up their privileges and their fortunes?
If the gangs had, even for a moment, shown signs of truce, one might be tempted to justify the idea of a negotiation or an amnesty. If they had lifted the blockades on the national roads, stopped kidnapping passengers, opened public markets and put an end to illegal toll booths, then some might have seen a desire for dialogue. But this is not the case. On the contrary! They are accelerating their criminal enterprise. Their grip on the country is expanding day by day, they are multiplying attacks on the population, expanding their areas of control and perfecting their methods of terror. They are warlords, not repentants.
By advocating amnesty and dialogue, these politicians and commentators are trying to put the masses to sleep, to disarm them psychologically in the face of their executioners. This propaganda aims to keep the population in submission and to legitimize the impunity of criminals.
What these illusion-makers forget is that the working classes have already proven that they can turn the tide. In April 2023, exasperated by the gangs’ atrocities, thousands of residents rose up and neutralized hundreds of bandits in a wave of spontaneous popular revolt. The only force that the gangs fear is the mobilization of the masses.
The inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods are in the majority. They know the terrain, they know where these criminals are hiding. It is through mass organization, a generalized response, that the gangs will be defeated. They will not leave with speeches, but under the pressure of a determined popular uprising.