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In Eric Hobsbawm’s book Bandits he examined how outlaws such as Salvatore Giuliano, Robin Hood, and Pancho Villa, transform themselves into social revolutionaries. The filmmakers Dan Cohen and Kim Ives have done the same in their three-part film “Another Vision: Inside Haiti’s Uprising.” They tell the story of Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Cherizier, who has united half of Port au Prince’s slums, and the Revolutionary Forces of the G9 Family and Allies. The armed neighborhood federation is in the crosshairs of the U.S. empire which seeks to discredit it and blame it for the chaos and violence that plagues the country. The filmmakers chronicle Cherizier’s transformation from a member of the city’s corrupt and brutal police force into a revolutionary leader, the disinformation campaign waged against him by the US government and Haitian oligarchy, and how his neighborhood is punished for its effective resistance. The story they tell is one more chapter in the over two centuries of Haitian resistance to outside domination following the only successful slave revolt in human history, which overthrew the French slave-holding class in 1804. Haiti has been paying for this revolt ever since. Literally. France only recognized Haiti’s independence on the condition that it repay the slaveholders for their lost “property,” payments that were still being made to France in the 20th century. The country has been economically crippled since its independence. The western powers have installed a series of pliant and corrupt governments. The U.S. repeatedly carried out military interventions, including its invasion and occupation of the country from 1915 through 1934. The U.S. formed and trained the Haitian Army and police, used to crush liberation movements. It propped up the father-son dictatorship of François “Papa Doc” and Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier as a counter-weight to Fidel Castro’s Cuba. It armed the country’s notorious death squads known as the “Tontons Macoutes,” which killed as many as 60,000 Haitians It turned Haiti into a planation and sweatshop for U.S. corporations, leaving the country the poorest in the western hemisphere. When a left-wing former Catholic priest Jean Bertrand Aristide was elected president 1990. He was overthrown in a 1991 military coup. He regained the presidency from 1994 to 1996 and from 2001 to 2004, ousted in another coup by right-wing ex-army paramilitary units that invaded the country from across the Dominican border. UN troops, which occupied the country from 2004 until 2019, oversaw the suppression of popular movements, exploited impoverished women in the sex trade, sanctioned the privatization of state industries and social services and introduced cholera—a disease previously unknown in the country—killing an estimated 10,000 people. Haiti has been left without a functioning government or infrastructure, including a health care system ever since. Nearly 60 percent of the population live in poverty, 30 percent are food insecure, and 50 percent lack access to clean water. Waves of Haitians have fled the country. Gang violence has turned whole parts of the island into lawless enclaves. The western powers, which should pay Haiti at least $ 21 billion in reparations, is determined to once again thwart the aspirations of the Haitian people, who, despite it all keep resisting. Joining me to discuss “Another Vision: Inside Haiti’s Uprising,” which you can watch on YouTube, and popular resistance in Haiti is Dan Cohen and Kim Ives.
Jimmy "Barbecue" Cherizier, spokesperson for a gang confederation called "G9 Family and Allies." July 30 2020, Delmas 6, Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Photo by Pierre Michel Jean for The Washington Post via Getty Images
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