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Haitian Labor Group Confronts US Lavalas Backers
NEW YORK, Nov. 11
Long-standing differences in the Haitian left began to emerge as an issue among US progressives this fall as the well-known Haitian labor organizing group Batay Ouvriye ("Workers' Struggle") responded to what it called a "slander" from US supporters of the Lavalas movement of deposed Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
During an "International Tribunal on Haiti" in Washington, DC on
the weekend of Sept. 23, a panelist charged that Batay Ouvriye had been funded
by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as part of a program
for "creating a leftist opposition" in Haiti in the months leading
up to Aristide's overthrow in February 2004. The money came through the AFL-CIO's
Solidarity Center and was part of a $3 million package for subverting the Haitian
government, according to Jeb Sprague, an independent journalist and a graduate
student at California State University at Long Beach. Batay Ouvriye was "working
with co-conspirators overthrowing a democratically elected government," Sprague
said.
The tribunal was organized by several large left and solidarity groups,
including International ANSWER, the International Action Center and
the Latin America
Solidarity Coalition. Sprague's presentation was aired in New York
on Sept. 28 on WBAI-FM's popular morning program, "Wakeup Call."
Batay Ouvriye responded on Oct 1 [see below]. The group ridiculed the
idea that it had been paid to be part of "an unholy alliance fabricated by
the State Department." In fact, the statement said, Batay Ouvriye has
a long, very public record of opposition to "the Lavalas leaders, who
we certainly exposed to be reactionaries, swindlers, complete frauds, anti-popular
and fundamentally anti- worker." Sprague--who claimed to have conducted
30 interviews in his research--"never once contacted our organization
for information," Batay Ouvriye charged.
Batay Ouvriye has worked with a number of international solidarity
groups over the years, including the National Labor Committee and
the Campaign
for Labor
Rights. Among its best-known campaigns were unionization drives
at Grand Marnier and Cointreau plantations in northern Haitian and
the
recent unionization
of
a Dominican-owned factory in a "free trade zone" by the Dominican
border in Ouanaminthe. During the Ouanaminthe struggle Batay Ouvriye received
$3,500 from the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, in response to public appeals
for funds to help fired workers. This was apparently the funding Sprague
was referring
to.
Stressing that it focuses on grassroots struggles "against the bourgeoisie
concretely in the factories, sweatshops, plantations," Batay
Ouvriye asked why the International Tribunal had chosen to target
it rather than a number
of much less militant Haitian unions that "closely resemble...the
pro-imperialist and pro-bourgeois Confederation of Venezuelan
Labor (CTV)," a major
force in the 2002 US-backed effort to overthrow Venezuelan president
Hugo Chavez.
Batay Ouvriye noted that two of its supporters were killed in
northern Haiti in May 2002 by goons led by a local Lavalas
mayor. Aristide's
government responded
to the anti-union violence by arresting several Batay Ouvriye
organizers and two journalists; some were held in the National
Penitentiary
until December
2002, when they were released following an international campaign
to press the Lavalas government for their release.
The controversy between Batay Ouvriye and US supporters of
Lavalas comes at a time when many US progressives are beginning
to question
the picture
of the
Haitian situation presented here by both mainstream and alternative
media, including the well-known national radio and television
program "Democracy
Now!"
The image of Lavalas as a unified militant force on the left
has been shaken recently by disarray within the movement
over elections
scheduled
to be
held in December by a US-backed interim government. A number
of "grassroots
leaders" in Port-au-Prince neighborhoods are supporting the presidential
candidacy of former president Rene Preval, a personal friend of Aristide's.
Many former Lavalas office-holders, meanwhile, are backing former World Bank
official Marc Bazin, a cabinet minister in the government of deposed dictator
Jean-Claude Duvalier ("Baby Doc") and a longtime proponent of
US-backed neoliberal economic programs for Haiti. Meanwhile groups around
the New York-based
weekly Haiti Progres are calling for a boycott of the elections. All factions
are claiming the support of the Lavalas base.
------
A Batay Ouvriye organizer, Yanick Etienne, will be in New
York the week of Nov. 21. She will be speaking at a public
forum,
sponsored by the Grassroots
Haiti Solidarity Committee, on Friday, Nov. 25, at 6
pm, at the Church
of the
Evangel at 1950 Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. Etienne will
be available for interviews during the week. Grassroots
Haiti, a New York-based
group of
long-time Haitian
and North American activists, is also organizing a delegation
of activists and independent journalists to visit Haiti
in February to solidify
contacts with Batay Ouvriye and other grassroots organizations.
David Wilson
Nicaragua Solidarity Network and the Grassroots Haiti Solidarity Committee