Masses of Haitians are outraged about shortages of oil and oil products – cooking oil, kerosene, and gasoline – and about U.S. interference and their government’s dealings with Venezuela. Their government serves the country’s elite. Now popular outrage is showing signs, tiny ones, of political struggle heading in a new direction, toward fundamental change.

What happens in Haiti usually passes unnoticed in the wider world, or is forgotten. Maybe that’s no accident. After all, Haitians achieved their independence in spectacular fashion, in ways bound to disturb minders of the status quo in any era. Reports of repression and great suffering in Haiti or hints at changing power relationships seem to touch sensitive nerves.

To begin: from 2006 on, Venezuela provided Haitians with inexpensive oil through its Petrocaribe program, a flagship project of the ALBA solidarity alliance founded by Venezuela and Cuba. Such was Venezuela’s generosity that oil shipments continued at a time when Haiti was $2 billion in arrears to Petrocaribe.

Venezuela allowed Haiti a 25-year delay in paying back on 40 percent of Petrocaribe oil revenues. Thus monies were liberated to be assigned to a fund that theoretically would pay for social needs. The fund constituted the most meaningful foreign aid reaching Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, according to a government critic.

In 2017 the Haitian government, acquiescing to U.S. anti-Venezuela sanctions, stopped paying on debt owed Venezuela. The Petrocaribe connection ended. Haiti’s government henceforth would be paying market prices for Venezuelan oil before re-selling it to distributers.

A financial crisis ensued. Haitians at once faced shortages of supplies and services, including oil. Demonstrators called the new budget a “criminal budget.” They condemned the United States for trashing ALBA, hitting at Venezuela, and worsening their troubles.

In 2018 the Moïse government obeyed an order from the International Monetary Fund to cut fuel subsidies. Haitians soon faced skyrocketing fuel prices and protesters filled the streets.

From the beginning, but more so from 2018 on, protesters charged government officials with corruption, in particular stealing from the PetroCaribe fund. Accusations centered on ex-President Michel Martelly and members of his political party. Moïse himself stole $700,000 from the fund. The other thieves took what remained of $4 billion in PetroCaribe monies, according to reports issued by the Haitian Senate.

Increasingly, protesters focused on U.S. efforts to install a corrupt, right wing government and protect Moïse. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in 2010, intent upon hurting Petrocaribe and ALBA, pressured Haitian President René Préval to insert entertainer Michel Martelly into second-round presidential voting. Martelly won a fraudulent election and later would name Moïse as his successor.

U.S. manipulation of Haiti shows up at the Organization of American States (OAS). In January 2019 the corrupt Haitian government hypocritically voted to designate Venezuela’s government as “illegitimate.” No other Caribbean nation joined Haiti.

On September 11, Haiti, alone among Caribbean nations, voted to approve a U.S.- inspired measure subjecting Venezuela to the 1947 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, an instrument for cooperative military action and a cold war relic.

“This was treason,” stated academician and political organizer Camille Chalmers, referring to Haiti’s recent vote. “North American imperialism values Haiti for its use in sabotaging regional unity,” he added.

The United States set the stage for the massive demonstrations beginning in early September. The U.S. Navy was blockading Venezuelan ports and oil tankers weren’t moving. In Haiti oil and oil products all but disappeared, and protesters filled the streets.

Now, foreign powers are again taking steps. In February a few former U.S. soldiers were detained while entering the country with high-caliber arms and high-tech military supplies. And representatives of the United Nations, OAS, the European Union, and the U.S., Canadian, French, and Brazilian ambassadors, among others, have been meeting as a “Core Group.” In a statement, the Group urged the Haitian government to “foster a conducive investment climate to stimulate the development of productive sectors (sic).”

Now sectors of Haiti’s resistance movement are looking to the future. The first “Patriotic Forum” took place in Papaye in late August. On hand were “diverse sectors of the working class” and “a broad spectrum of political forces” including “the radical left.” After deliberating for three days, 263 representatives of 62 organizations arrived at a program setting out “the beginnings of structures and plans for common action.”

The Forum established a monitoring committee to implement recommendations for a transitional government. There would be a three-person governing council and a “control agency” (órgano de control) with representatives from each department. Goals include “constitutional change” and “fixing the electoral system.”

Camille Chalmers is encouraged by the size of the demonstrations, the diversity among various social groupings, and “the great presence of youth.” Learning, he says, is taking place on two levels: political consciousness – mainly anti-imperialism – and building capacities. He points to demonstrations targeting the Core Group, “which is the visible arm of imperialism here.”

Chalmers describes the “Charlemagne Peralta Political School” as a space where activists of five left-leaning political groupings are seeking to become a “unified force of the revolutionary left.” Guerrilla leader Charlemagne Péralte was martyred by U.S. soldiers in 1919.

Furthermore, “construction of a socialist project in Haiti is based on … giving the lie to all the pernicious myths about the country. Imperialism has created kind of a media fence, a quarantine that keeps the peoples of Latin America who struggle for the same causes we do from knowing about what happens in Haiti.” (People’s World — IPA Service)