Haiti:
From a Counterpunch to a General Mobilization?

Jan 6, 2025

This article is translated from the December 7 issue, #1339, of Combat Ouvrier (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in Guadeloupe and Martinique.

“There will be no truce or celebration this year,” the criminal gangs’ spokesman said, when announcing the thugs’ assault to conquer the neighborhoods of Pétion-Ville, Haut-Delmas, Canapé-vert and Bourdon, the last territories in the West department that they didn’t control. But the residents of those areas inflicted a rout on the criminal groups on November 19, halting the thugs’ onward march, at least temporarily. For the exploited masses to halt the spiral of violence, they will have to figure out how to turn this single blow into the beginning of a conscious struggle.

On Tuesday, November 19, the popular masses once again gave a glimpse of what they can do when mobilized. The police intercepted a goods truck and two buses carrying dozens of bandits and combat equipment to Pétion-Ville. The bandits’ exchange of fire with the police immediately attracted the attention of people in several neighborhoods who were keeping watch in surveillance brigades at around 2 a.m. Panic-stricken and in disarray, the bandits fled, throwing themselves and their weapons into the midst of the local population. Angry, exasperated locals caught most of them, between 80 and 100, and put them out of action. Four days later, the population is still hunting down some of these thugs, who have taken refuge in bushes or empty houses.

If the population can be proud of having shaken the bandits, it would be pretentious to claim victory. The hardest part begins now. Residents of the Canapé-vert, Bourdon, Delmas and Pétion-Ville neighborhoods must maintain constant vigilance to ward off any attempt at revenge by the armed gangs.

But better still, since the best defense is an attack, they need to organize and step up their mobilization to enable displaced families to return to their neighborhoods. They need to manage to open up a few gang-held roads to give the popular masses a breather, and they need to impose further defeats on the gangs to make them back down.

The popular masses are fed up with being forced from pillar to post in their own country, living in camps, being slaughtered by bands of bloodthirsty barbarians. They’re tired of weeping and wailing. Recent events have shown that they are the strongest force, when determined and determined to fight for their lives and their dignity.

Bandits only feel strong when the population is apathetic and doesn’t decide to fight. The popular masses can make themselves feared by organizing to oppose the thugs. And they can.