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
Sep 29, 2025
This article is translated from the September 16, issue #1355 of Combat Ouvrier (Workers Fight), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in Guadeloupe and Martinique, two islands that are French overseas departments in the Caribbean.
Haitian gang coalition leader Jimmy “Barbecue” Chérisier claimed in late August to have liberated the neighborhoods occupied for over a year by gangs. He invited the population to return to their homes.
After a year spent in tent camps, schoolyards, shacks, and makeshift shelters, the displaced longed to see the homes they had been forced to flee. For a few days, the so-called liberated neighborhoods bustled with residents searching for some sign of their former homes. They searched in vain. They found devastated neighborhoods, fields of ruins in a war zone. Houses were gutted, mostly burned, their walls ripped open, the tin roofs gone.
Streets are littered with wrecked cars, piles of garbage, rubble, and barricades erected by gangs. The streets are as devastated as bombing sites.
Gangs have retreated to other neighborhoods where they have solid bases. Various gang leaders meet to negotiate in the palace of one of their leaders. They show themselves off and celebrate in a sumptuous swimming pool. In a town near the capital, one of these criminals filmed himself in a room stuffed with cash. The gangs have not stopped their attacks. Kidnapping and racketeering continue. They charge tolls on the roads.
Although the gangs have withdrawn with their weapons from the so-called “liberated” neighborhoods, they have not been defeated. They can choose to come back whenever they want. Attempts to repatriate people at the beginning of the year failed when gangs attacked and claimed new victims.
In the neighborhoods gangs have razed and emptied of residents, the gangsters are more exposed, more visible. The returning population will serve as a screen against possible police attack. The gangs have never given the population anything free.
The residents cannot trust the fine words of the gangsters, who have already deceived and massacred them. Nor can they count on the intervention forces announced by the government. Only revolts by the masses can force back the murderers by imposing defeats on them, by taking back what they have stolen. Struggles by the exploited masses must aim to shift the balance of power.