By John Marion<\/p>\n
(WSWS<\/a>) – In his book The Black Jacobins,<\/em> a history of the Haitian revolution against France, C.L.R. James remarked that \u201ca great empire and honest minds go ill together.\u201d To match dishonest minds with empire in today\u2019s Haiti, one need look no further than French President Fran\u00c3\u00a7ois Hollande and the representatives of Washington and Wall Street, Bill and Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n Like his American counterparts, Hollande is a purveyor of \u201chuman rights\u201d imperialism, which he brought to the Caribbean last week. His stop in Haiti, the first official visit of a French head of state since the 1804 revolution, was an exercise in cynicism.<\/p>\n Hollande stopped first on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, still a French possession, for the inauguration of a museum dedicated to the history of the slave trade. This memorial, he said, will \u201ctell the whole world that the fight for human dignity is not over.\u201d The French president, whose government has spearheaded illegal wars in Libya and Syria while selling fighter jets to the murderous al-Sisi government in Egypt, is not in a position to lecture anyone about human dignity.<\/p>\n There were expectations that on his visit to Haiti, Hollande would address questions about French reparations for huge debt payments it imposed on Haiti after the 1804 revolution and for slavery itself\u2013which he shrugged off in 2013 by saying that France\u2019s \u201cbaneful role\u201d cannot be the \u201csubject of a transaction.\u201d Giving lip service to the right of Haitians to democracy, however, Hollande made it obvious that the purpose of his trip was to promote French business interests.<\/p>\n \u201cDevelopment is indispensable for democracy,\u201d he declared, after announcing the establishment of a committee that will discuss opportunities for French companies to make profits from the super-exploited workers of the poorest country in the western hemisphere. \u201cNothing will be ignored in this drive,\u201d he threatened.<\/p>\n The US and France see in Haiti not just cheap labor, but mineral wealth (despite the current lack of a functional mining law), a chance to wean the country off of Venezuelan petroleum, and an opportunity for cruise lines and resort operators to make profits. Before he was forced to resign in December, the government of Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe was involved in plans<\/a> for a resort with its own golf course and airport (thus ideal for jet-setting multi-millionaires who would never see the rest of the country). The 60 percent of Haitians living on $2 or less per day would be kept away from the rich by private security, UN troops, or the Haitian National Police.<\/p>\n In her book Hard Choices<\/em>, Hillary Clinton uses the same language as Hollande to describe the US government\u2019s approach to Haiti when she was secretary of state: \u201cIt made sense to refocus our approach to development so we can better harness market forces.\u201d<\/p>\n The Caracol Industrial park, built in the north of Haiti with USAID funds after the 2010 earthquake, is portrayed by Clinton as a monument to \u201csustainable economic growth.\u201d She boasts of its \u201cmodern waste water treatment facility, a new electric grid providing reliable power to surrounding towns for the first time, as well as new housing, schools, and health clinics.\u201d<\/p>\n In reality, the industrial park is being built on fertile farmland from which the government evicted local farmers, and it threatens to pollute nearby mangrove stands relied on by local fishermen.<\/p>\n On May 8, the Guardian<\/em> reported on protests caused by \u201canger that power from Caracol\u2019s 10-megawatt power plant has not been extended to some nearby towns.\u201d Two freight containers belonging to the Korean clothing manufacturer Sae-A Trading Co Ltd, \u201cwere hijacked,\u201d and \u201ca Chilean UN peacekeeper was shot dead,\u201d the newspaper reported.<\/p>\n Sae-A, the only corporate tenant in the industrial park so far, employs slightly less than 5,500 Haitians. Some 60,000 jobs were promised by the Clintons and the Haitian government at the beginning of the project. Jonathan Katz, a reporter who was instrumental in tracing the 2010 cholera outbreak to UN soldiers from Nepal, notes that the construction of Caracol has cost about $55,000 per job created so far, \u201cabout 30 times more per job than the average Sae-A worker makes per year.\u201d Sae-A moved its operation to Haiti from Guatemala because of a union dispute there, but was also promised \u201ctax exemptions, duty-free access to the United States, abundant cheap labor, factory sheds, a power plant, a new port,\u201d according to the New York Times.<\/em><\/p>\n The Times<\/em> reported that Hillary Clinton and her chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, \u201csummoned\u201d Sae-A executives to the American Embassy in Seoul during an official visit in the spring of 2010. Woong-ki Kim, Sae-A\u2019s chairman, had been considering a factory in Haiti for years, but balked because of a planned increase in the country\u2019s minimum wage from $3.75 to $5 per day.<\/p>\n Although Caracol was touted as a means of recovery from the 2010 earthquake\u2013its location was chosen in part to move workers away from the center of devastation in the south of the country\u2013the exploitation of cheap Haitian labor for textile manufacturing is not new. The US Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act (HOPE I) and its extension under HOPE II\u2013both passed while Hillary Clinton was in the Senate\u2013allowed for duty-free imports from Haiti.<\/p>\n After Clinton became secretary of state, an April 2009 cable from the US Embassy preparing her for a visit stressed that \u201canother key message will be to underscore the importance of ensuring that industrial space and infrastructure for investors be made available and that<\/p>\n the overall business and investment climate improve so that more investors will take advantage of the opportunity of HOPE 2.\u201d<\/p>\n Clinton, of course, was not alone in this effort. A February 2010 State Department cable leaked by WikiLeaks reported on a post-earthquake visit by 12 US senators and representatives, all but one of whom were Democrats. Then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi disguised her meaning, but in a threat worthy of the mafia, told Haitian President Ren\u00c3\u00a9 Pr\u00c3\u00a9val that \u201cwe would like to hear that Haiti is going toward a different place. If so, you would receive even more<\/p>\n support, and we see this as an opportunity to be even more helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n A trusteeship for foreign donations was discussed on this same trip, and not long afterward Bill Clinton was appointed as co-chair of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission.<\/p>\n At the beginning of this month, Jonathan Katz wrote a long account<\/a> in Politico<\/em> of the complexity and secretiveness of the Clintons\u2019 involvement in Haiti. He wrote: \u201cthere\u2019s the Clinton Foundation, which has directed $36 million to Haiti since 2010, but also the $55 million spent through the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund, and the $500 million in commitments made through the Clinton Global Initiative\u2019s Haiti Action Network. On Hillary\u2019s side, there\u2019s her own diplomacy, the State Department\u2019s Office of the Haiti Special Coordinator, and the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince, as well as the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose administrator reported to her.\u201d<\/p>\n Some of the Clintons\u2019 activities have been purely venal, such as Bill\u2019s involvement in a luxury Marriott in Port-au-Prince, for which he recruited Digicel CEO Denis O\u2019Brien as an investor.<\/p>\n There has been plenty of reactionary political maneuvering. Katz summarizes Hillary\u2019s role in aiding Michel Martelly\u2013a former supporter of the brutal Duvalier dictatorship who is now ruling by decree because of his refusal to agree on an elections law with the Haitian Senate\u2013in the 2010 presidential race. In the first round of voting Martelly had placed third and did not qualify for the runoff. Katz describes how Secretary of State Clinton met with the three top candidates and then \u201cconfronted a recalcitrant Pr\u00c3\u00a9val.\u201d Second place candidate Jude Celestin then dropped out of the race, and Martelly won the second round<\/a> of an election with only 23 percent participation.<\/p>\n In his essay Katz notes that \u201cfor the past century, it\u2019s been the Americans, not the French, who repeatedly reshaped the political landscape\u201d of Haiti. Hollande\u2019s intervention marks a turning point in that history, with the French ruling elite returning to the scene of some of their foulest crimes. In Hard Choices,<\/em> Clinton writes of Hollande\u2019s predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, that he \u201cwas intent on reasserting France\u2019s place as a top world power and eager to shoulder more of an international burden, which I saw in action in Libya.\u201d<\/p>\n While US and French imperialism may well have conflicting interests and agendas in Haiti, both are implacable enemies of the Haitian workers and peasants.
\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n