Hot, Hot Haiti

How Haiti’s Spontaneous Uprising is Connected to Venezuelan Solidarity

by TRNN (1/2)

February 15, 2019

Haitians are in revolt. For the last six days, thousands of Haitians have taken to the streets, demanding the ouster of Jovenel Moise and his government. Some say the revolt is about opposition to raising gas prices, like the Yellow [Vests] in France. But it’s not a mimic, nor a mirror image of that revolt.

The roots of this revolt in Haiti are in Moise’s election that many saw as tainted, maybe stolen. It’s wrapped up in the United States efforts to oust Venezuela’s government, pushing the Haitian president to denounce him and support that ouster.

It’s about the $4 billion loan given to the Haitian government to develop the country via Venezuela’s Petrocaribe program, and the double digit inflation making some of the world’s most impoverished people even poorer.

And it’s about the 228-year-old U.S. effort to control Haiti and Haitians’s resistance to that. Could this be the beginning of a another revolution like the one 33 years ago that ousted Claude Baby Doc Duvalier? Maybe. We’ll see.

February 15, 2019 Kim Ives of Haiti Liberté unravels how the new Haitian revolt entangles Duvalier style corruption of money stolen from Venezuela’s PetroCaribe program and subtle US intervention.