Haiti:
Toward a Popular Awakening Against the Dictatorship of the Gangs!

Mar 31, 2025

The following article is translated from La Voix des Travailleurs (Workers Voice), the newspaper of the Haitian group OTR (Organization of Revolutionary Workers), issue 325, March 28, 2025.

On Wednesday, March 27, an angry demonstration against gangs shook the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, which had been transformed into an open-air cemetery and a field of ruins. After Solino and Léogâne, it is the turn of the residents of Canapé-Vert, Débrosse, Christ-Roi and other neighboring neighborhoods to express their frustration. It is indeed through popular mobilization, autonomous, coordinated, rooted in the neighborhoods, that we will be able to break the backbone of the gangs, their sponsors and accomplices at the top of the state.

Thousands of residents, mostly young people, took to the streets, revolted by the daily barbarity of the gangs. Starting from the Débrosse district, the procession took several roads in the city, including Canapé-Vert and Bourdon, briefly paralyzing traffic. On the way, the demonstrators were joined by residents of several other working-class neighborhoods, but also by displaced people from makeshift camps. Like a river that swells as many rivers flow into it, the mobilization has grown at every crossroads, every alley, reinforcing the collective anger.

Placards in hand, slogans shouted at the top of their lungs, most of them carrying machetes, the street trembled under popular anger. The demonstrators strongly denounced the terror imposed by the armed gangs and directly accused the Temporary Presidential Council, the Prime Minister, and the Chief of Police as working in collusion with the gangs instead of seeking to dismantle them.

But faithful to its role as protector of the established order, the Haitian National Police chose, once again, repression by launching tear gas to disperse the demonstrators, triggering panic, jostling and one person killed.

This mobilization does not come out of nowhere. Residents of Solino, chased from their homes, have already organized two demonstrations with the blocking of the main arteries leading to Pétion-Ville, demonstrating their determination to return to their neighborhood. In Léogâne, residents stood up as one to counter an offensive by the bandits of Viv Ansanm to take control of the city. Several dozen of these bandits are said to be put out of harm’s way.

The inhabitants of Canapé-Vert, the origin of Bwa Kale, have been mobilized for more than a year to prevent reprisals from the gangs. From district to district, anger grows. These mobilizations, although little publicized, reveal a possible turning point: a collective awakening which, if it becomes widespread, could well lead to a takedown, a popular uprising to put out of action the criminal federation of Viv Ansanm gangs and their sponsors in power and in the private sector.

But for this to happen, a qualitative leap is necessary. It is not enough to protest one day and return to indifference the next. This mobilization must go further than the Bwa Kale, not only in intensity but also in duration. The existing vigilance brigades in several working-class neighborhoods must redouble their efforts to raise awareness among local residents, to organize the displaced people living in the unsanitary camps. These women, these children, these families abandoned by the state form a silent army. All they lack is morale and awareness of their own strength. It is this consciousness that must be awakened, and this force that must be set in motion!

The millions of displaced people in the West and the Artibonite, the unemployed workers, the young people without a future, the women alone to feed their families.... All of them together form a potential steamroller and the largest network of intelligence because they have eyes and ears everywhere. All that is needed is coordination, a clear watchword: no respite as long as the gangs occupy our neighborhoods and our homes. The vermin will only fall if the population decides to sweep them away.