“The poorest country in the hemisphere, a failed state, controlled by violent gangs.”
That is what we hear about Haiti in the news today—that is, when we hear about Haiti at all.

Long-time Global Exchange Board Member, Pierre LaBoissiere, is the co-founder of the Haiti Action Committee and the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund. In this interview, he responds to persistent and erroneous notions about Haiti and turns assumptions about the need for foreign intervention on their head. He calls for increased communication and solidarity with Haiti’s grassroots movements.

How is it possible that Haiti—a country rich in natural resources, including oil, bauxite, silver, gold, iridium, and beautiful Caribbean beaches—is considered the poorest country in the world?

Haiti’s “poverty” is rooted in a history of racist repression that continues today. Haiti’s troubles started in 1492 when Christopher Columbus landed on Ayiti, “the land of high mountains,” the island Haiti shares with the Dominican Republic today.

Spanish colonists first decimated the Indigenous Taino people and then quickly imported kidnapped and enslaved Africans to work their gold mines and sugar plantations. Then came the French, who, in 1697, took over the western part of the newly named Hispaniola Island (where Haiti is today). With the labor of one-third of all kidnapped and enslaved Africans of that era, the French turned Haiti into their richest colony, cultivating half of all the sugar and coffee consumed in Europe. Enslaved people produced all that wealth but did not share in it.

When France’s dispossessed rebelled against the aristocracy in 1789, it is little wonder that the enslaved masses in Haiti also rebelled and organized their own revolution that swept the French from the island. But when Haiti fought against slavery and won its independence from France, it then faced French sanctions that isolated the country economically until it agreed that its population, which had just emancipated itself from slavery, would pay “reparations” to compensate France for its loss of “assets.” During the next 122 years, Haitians were forced to pay an “Independence Tax,” totaling tens of billions in today’s dollars, while local elites with connections to colonial powers consolidated their grip on Haiti.

But Haiti is not only missing what was stolen then; the theft continues today. In the 1990s, the Lavalas movement came to power, and people’s movements around the country demanded long-overdue land redistribution. They fought to redirect their tax payments toward social development, like schools and healthcare. During the Lavalas government, rich people in the business sector were taxed—fairly but like never before—to pay for literacy programs, rural health clinics, and clean water projects.

The U.S. found Aristide and the Lavalas movement (which translates to “an unstoppable flood of water”) to be too much and removed him from office in a coup d’etat in 2004. After that, the U.S., France, and Canada supported one repressive regime after another, and the country remained poor.

We hear about a gang takeover, but you say we should call them death squads or paramilitary groups?

We call them death squads because of how they are organized and operate. Criminal gangs tend to go after individuals with resources or each other for turf, or they shake people down. They don’t move through an area systematically in its entirety—firing into people’s homes, invading homes of people who are disabled or elderly. There was an 82-year-old grandma who was thrown off a balcony and dragged through the street. What would the gangs get out of that?

The most well-known leader, Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, was a former elite police officer who uses his connections to protect other members. Even with warrants for gang members’ arrest, they have received police escorts and have even worked together with the police to “provide protection for a fee.” When you see this collusion between the police and these organized structures, you have to assume that it is organized at the highest level. They target particular neighborhoods, especially those known to support Lavalas or where people have demonstrated against the government. The gangs have declared they will not allow any kind of demonstrations in those areas. They shoot and kill demonstrators. Neither “Barbecue” nor “Izo,” the other major leader, has grassroots support to establish a government, but having a lot of guns can get you a fair amount of cooperation.

Haiti doesn’t manufacture weapons; how are they getting into the hands of these death squads?

According to a United Nations report, the weapons are coming in from South Florida. Some are purchased from straw buyers or from states with lax gun laws. The weapons are coming in containers through various ports of entry. They even brag about the weapons and show off brand-new ones direct from the factory, still in their wrappings.

In July 2022, the hierarchy of the Episcopal Church was caught red-handed when authorities in Haiti seized a haul of 17 semi-automatic weapons, a 12-gauge shotgun, four pistols, and 15,000 rounds of ammunition stuffed in a shipment from Florida bound for a Haitian Episcopal Church. Several high-ranking church members were imprisoned because of this scandal.

Who benefits from all this killing and chaos?

I translated a document revealing that some candidates for parliamentary office have been courted by foreign enterprises interested in Haiti’s mineral wealth. They would help finance electoral campaigns in exchange for votes approving projects giving access to the country’s mineral resources, specifically gypsum, oil, gold, and bauxite/aluminum.

Several of these areas are now controlled by gangs. Haitian grassroots organizations feel this is part of a larger plan that does not include the well-being of the people but destabilizes communities, forcing residents to leave. The people’s movement has mobilized against the push by the “international community” to impose changes in the Haitian Constitution, allowing full multinational access to Haiti’s minerals, including uranium and iridium. In the opinion of many, the gangs are guarding these areas for powerful economic interests. Many Haitians view the policies of post-coup governments to encourage mass legal migration as part of a plan to depopulate coastal Port-au-Prince neighborhoods and turn them into tourist resorts.

What will be helpful? Why doesn’t the people’s movement want foreign intervention?

The problem with foreign intervention is that foreigners only work with the Haitian elite, the business class, which doesn’t benefit ordinary people. The Haitian people remember the cholera epidemic brought by the last UN intervention. They remember the massacres, the sexual violence, and the commitment of foreign forces to keep corrupt governments in power. Many believe the uptick in violence was created to justify foreign intervention.

What is Lavalas proposing as a solution?

Lavalas has been presenting plans since 2018 to resolve the crisis. They have called for the resignation of the current leadership and the formation of a new government by a coalition representing various sectors of society. This coalition would select honest, competent individuals to form a government of public safety, called a Sali Piblik, focused on restoring the functionality of ministries such as justice/security, health, education, environment, and agriculture, and eliminating corruption. The Haitian police have enough equipment and enough honest officers to fight the death squads if they aren’t sabotaged by corrupt leaders and smuggled U.S. weapons of war.

Learn more at haitisolidarity.net.

Cuba takes a zero-tolerance stance on illicit drugs, vowing even to “fight drugs with blood and fire.” The drug policy appears to have been successful. Cuba has one of the lowest homicide rates in the western hemisphere, along with some of the lowest reported rates of illicit drug use, production, and transit. These accomplishments are unique in a region greatly affected by drug-related violence. They are also confusing.

Evidence increasingly shows that zero-tolerance approaches towards drugs like prohibition and punitive sanctions have contributed significantly to insecurity, violence, corruption, displacement, and a host of public health issues in Latin America and the Caribbean. Why hasn’t Cuba’s hard-line on illicit drugs yielded the same results? Will Cuba remain insulated from the costs of prohibition as it continues to open its doors to the international community?

Isabella Bellezza-Smull, the new Latin America & World Reality Tours Coordinator at Global Exchange, previously lived in Rio de Janeiro where she worked with the Igarapé Institute on drug policy reform. Her report Will Cuba update its drug policy for the twenty-first century? traces the country’s policy towards illicit drugs from the 1959 revolution to present. It discusses emerging challenges the island faces as it undergoes domestic reforms that allow for increased access to illicit substances. Isabella notes that Cuba has a unique opportunity to avoid the mistakes other countries have made in past decades by preventatively exploring alternative, proven approaches to drugs like harm-reduction, the decriminalization of use and possession, alternatives to arrest for low-level dealers and producers, and even the legal regulation of certain drugs like marijuana.

Her work was picked up by the Brazilian newspaper O Globo. Here is the transcribed interview:

Can we say that Cuba has been spared from the drug war and its harmful effects that we see in several countries around the world? How reliable are the Cuban government’s claims that the country does not have a drug problem?

In general term, yes, Cuba has been spared from the drug war. From the metrics available, we see that Cuba has one of the lowest homicide rates in the region, as well as very low rates of drug use, production and trafficking. These indicators have been corroborated by the US State Department over the past decades in INCSR reports [International Narcotics Control Strategy Reports]. And State has not easily bestowed praise onto Cuba given the historically fraught relationship, which helps confirm the reliability of these figures.

What has made Cuba such a unique case in the region, perhaps in the world? What have been the factors protecting the country from the plague of drugs, and how can Cuba’s progressive political and economic openings make them a problem?

Cuba has a very unique national context. State-sponsored universal access to education and health services are rightly considered to be crown jewels of the revolution. They’ve produced enviable results. Achievements like universal literacy, the dramatic reduction of certain diseases like HIV/AIDS, universal access to safe drinking water and basic public sanitation. Cuba also has one of the region’s lowest infant mortality rates and longest life expectancies. So Cuba has very successfully built a culture of health.

But the country has also been very isolated in economic terms — it has had limited engagement in international markets, which has hindered the entry of drugs and recreational drug cultures. And domestically, the conditions for drug sales have been poor given very low disposable incomes, largely due to the US economic embargo, but also because of the virtual absence of a private sector. But these conditions are gradually changing. Cuba has opened to the world slowly but surely since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. And we see that with every opening, the Cuban government has been increasingly concerned about drugs. The drug issue is still relatively benign in Cuba, especially in comparison to neighboring countries, but it’s important to see how the situation develops.

Given Cuba’s current drug situation and the recent move towards more progressive approaches elsewhere that move beyond simple prohibition and repression, could Cuba become a laboratory of what might have happened — or can still happen — in other countries if they had adopted policies such as decriminalization, legalization or regulation of the drug market and harm reduction?

Certainly Cuba has the opportunity to get it right by moving away from prohibition and punitive sanctions, towards proven public-health-driven alternatives. So, the question is how the country will deal with the expected increased consumption, production, and drug trafficking. As is common, the Cuban government has publicly adopted a hard-line. The Cuban National Drug Commission in June of this year reaffirmed its commitment to fighting illicit drugs, but there is an important debate within the public health sector about how to approach increasing illicit drug use. And this is very encouraging because they’re questioning the traditional model of abstinence and “just-say-no” (to drugs). They are realizing that there are people who do not, or cannot, stop using drugs outright and that demanding abstinence should not be a precondition for treating or consulting them. This is in line with a harm reduction approach to drug use — focusing on the prevention of harm, rather than on the prevention of drug use, itself.

Could this reiterated conservative view of the Cuban government on drugs lead the country to lose this opportunity to deal with the problem more effectively?

Yes, this is a risk and it is something to be seen.

Although some protective factors against the drug problem in the last decades are changing, such as disposable income and access to substances, others will probably continue the same, such as the high level of education of the population and a solid system of public health. Can this also help “guide” the country toward more progressive and efficient drug policies?

Definitely, but again it will be a question of how the Cuban government goes about educating a new generation of Cubans about drug use. Education and prevention campaign discourse continues to be rooted more in “say-no” and abstinence than on complete, honest information about the effects and impacts of the use of certain drugs, particularly currently illegal ones like marijuana. If this continues, a new generation of Cubans experimenting with drugs could find that they can be used recreationally, because not all drug use is problematic. And this would create a discrepancy between what the Ministry of Education is teaching and what Cubans are experiencing, undermining the abstinence prevention discourse.

Will we then see a kind of denial, a discourse that drugs and their consumption are counter revolutionary things, a problem of bourgeois capitalist societies?

Yes, there may be a continuity of the rhetoric that there are no illicit drugs in Cuba, which is not entirely true, and that drug use is antithetical to revolutionary consciousness building. If the government is realistic about the existence of drugs in open societies, it will preventatively adopt new approaches tested elsewhere as it opens its doors. These could include decriminalizing the possession of all drugs for personal use, adopting harm reduction strategies, and elaborating alternative sentencing procedures for nonviolent drug offenders, including low-level traffickers and producers.

mainFurthering the media frenzy following Jay-Z and Beyonce’s recent People-to-People cultural exchange to Cuba, a conversation has sprung up about travel to Cuba, through recorded and remixed lyrical songs.

Jay-Z started off with the first track “Open Letter.” In this freestyle rap, Jay-Z responds to some of the criticisms of the trip: “politicians never did sh-t for me/except lie to me, distort history.” In regards to the “legality” of traveling to Cuba he responds: “wanna give me jail time and a fine/Fine, let me commit a real crime.” Artist Common later contributed to a remix of the Jay-Z track, speaking to the political nature of discussion about Cuba, calling Cuba “a political triangle, Bermuda” and again states “it’s so political, I don’t trust figures.”

Cuban American artist Pitbull also crafted a response. While professing many sentiments common to the Miami anti-Castro establishment, such as hoping for a “free” Cuba, Pitbull also states: “I ain’t here to hold a grudge,” and tells Jay-Z and Beyonce not to worry about the trip, saying “it’s on me.”

Cuban Rap and R&B artist Danay Suarez

Cuban Rap and R&B artist Danay Suarez.

Importantly, Havana born Cuban artists Danay Suarez and Kokino also responded, speaking to their experiences as Cubans who have grown up on the island. Danay paints the Cuba she knows in complex terms where Cubans are “victimas de una libertad incompleta/victims of an incomplete liberty” and there are “millones de profesionales sin gloria/millions of professionals without glory.” She also sings that Havana is a very special place, “hay pocos sitios como la habana, se hace contacto directo con las personas/there are few places like Havana, where you make direct contact with the people,” and is “mi lugar preferido/my favorite place.”

Cuban rap artist Kokino. Photo by Tom Ehrlich.

Cuban rap artist Kokino. Photo by Tom Ehrlich.

Kokino takes on a fairly aggressive stance, criticizing Pitbull and by extension the Miami establishment, claiming “tu no has hecho nada para los cubanos/you haven’t done anything for Cubans.” He also expresses the sentiment that to understand Cuba, one must live the experience: “hay que estar presente/vivir donde vivimos/estar en la caliente/con apagones, con mas dolores,” translated as “one has to be present/live where we live/be in the heat/with the electricity blackouts, with the pain.” While acknowledging hardships in Cuba, Kokino expresses his own style of patriotism as well, saying “yo vine a comerme yuma/el yuma no me va a comer a mi,” translated as “I came to eat the U.S./the U.S. is not going to eat me.”

While the artists have different backgrounds and perspectives in regards to Cuba, common themes emerge. First, none of the artists, including the more conservative Pitbull, question the validity of traveling to Cuba or see it as an act that should be illegal as Miami hardliners would like to maintain. They also reference the role of politics in distorting U.S.-Cuba relations and in influencing representations of Cuba in the U.S. media. Ultimately, the media attention given to the trip and the commentary and questions raised by these artists allow the Cuba dialogue to move beyond the choir and to the general public. Together, we can amplify this conversation and make sure our voices are heard to demand a more sane and just policy towards Cuba! Will you help us spread the word?

Take-ActionTake Action!

Help us tell Beyonce, Jay-Z, and others with influence to join us, the people, in asking President Obama to end the embargo, lift the travel ban, and get Cuba off the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. Share this post widely in your community by email, Facebook, and Twitter.