The title of this essay comes from the text of a telegram sent by the illustrious general and former president of France, Charles de Gaulle, to U.S. counterpart John F. Kennedy in 1963, when some U.S. Navy ships were sailing in the Haitian Republic’s territorial waters with contemptible purposes in mind.
My goal in writing this is to help recover a sense of perspective. We need a sound understanding of the magnitude of the actions from what we are contemporanous, and we must also take, aware that they will shape our future and that we have the obligation to prepare them well.
In the middle of the 20th century, with the end of decolonization, a new bipolar order emerged and with it the Cold War. This also marked the beginning of the “Third World,” a term coined by French demographer Alfred Sauvy in 1952 and which was a political construction that responded to the considerations of that time and to a geo-strategic context. The concept ran its course with the end of the Cold War at the beginning of the 1990s. We would logically think that in that war one side won and the other lost, but nothing could be further from the truth because both entered into great economic instability that required a rapid solution.
What most interests us at this moment is the performance of the U.S. economy at that time. After productivity dropped by more than 3% at the end of 1990, it recovered quickly in 1992 before falling again in 1993 by more than 4%. Later it recovered before declining again in 1999. Magazine reports confirmed that this situation lasted for several years and, although the United States was already in a recession before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, it was on Nov. 26, 2001 that the National Bureau of Economic Research, or NBER, announced that the United States of America was officially in a recession. The world suffered from a domino effect and we saw that Japan, Mexico and Taiwan also slipped into a recession as a result of a reduction in exports to the United States.
Basing our reasoning on imperialist logic, we can see that when opposition to the Atlantic slave trade developed in Europe in the 18th century the Marquis of Condorcet suggested it would be much more profitable if everything they needed were produced in Africa by the same Africans.
Indeed, no concrete report or analysis of the results of the Cold War have been published that detail how that conflict ended. The only thing that is highlighted is the loss of privileges and strength that the Third World – in which we live – once enjoyed. It must be understood that the Cold War ended with an agreement between the protagonists to turn the cannons on that Third World to re-colonize it, albeit by modern means.
That accord gave birth to the G7, which later became what is now the G8, the union of the most advanced – or most industrialized – countries against the former Third World countries, which are very rich in natural and human resources. Knowing that the second of the two world wars was the result of a profound worldwide economic recession, we logically were expecting a third conventional world war like the two preceding ones and assumed that such a conflict would begin among the great powers. This was a big mistake because those countries, gathered in the G7, instead promoted a new cold war against the Third World.
Haiti was left exceedingly vulnerable at that time due to its deficient institutions, disoriented population, weak regional identity, fragmented society, stagnant economy and lack of ties to its immediate neighbors – in short, because it was a community without the necessary tools to withstand external provocations. All of this made the country “easy prey” and in this way we began to see how the United States imposed the defense of democracy on us without wanting to assume the cost. The Americans placed demands on us so that our security was delegated to them. They are artificial and unjust and forget that there are other values, other dialectics, that others also have their pride, though it may be different from theirs. The United States prevents Haiti from finding a new equilibrium. It seems that it also forgets that the great powers also have obligations.
All was done with deception, blackmail and pretense. In October 1991, after having encouraged and required a military coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, they inflicted an embargo on us that we characterize as genocide. Economic sanctions were imposed irregularly and illegally, contrary to the OAS and United Nations’ charters that prohibit the use of economic pressure for political ends. The United Nations Security Council violated its rules in the case of Haiti with resolution 864, prompting China to state it hopes that the Haitian case does not set a regrettable precedent. The United Nations and the Security Council had no right to interfere in the case of Haiti at that time, because Haiti was not in conflict with another country. The wife of the U.N. envoy to Haiti at that time, Mr. Dante Caputo, was a close friend of Mrs. Danielle Mitterrand, wife of the French president. The two attended the inauguration ceremony for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Feb. 7, 1991. In the international arena, it appears that friendship carries more weight than the law.
The USAID mission of the U.S. embassy said that the embargo had not caused suffering among the lower class and that malnutrition had not risen. But this was false because the Red Cross – along with other institutions attending a Food and Agriculture Organization meeting – reported that malnutrition among children rose 60% and, worse still, they said that 34% of these children reached the kwashiorkor level, which is catastrophic because never before had there been this level of malnutrition in Haiti. In summary, the embargo was a weapon of passive violence. It was cynical, hypocritical and affected the weakest – women, children and the elderly – and the environment. Millions of citizens were sacrificed and the country ruined to remove a single person from power or return him to power, depending on the case. All of that depravity so that 10 years later the same United States could remove that same person from power because he wasn’t a democrat.
The actions of the most advanced or industrialized countries against the smallest nations do not respect the norms and principles established in the U.N. and OAS charters. They have a common goal, which is to create the conditions – through slanderous, subversive and defamatory actions – for discrediting countries at a time when the intention is to take advantage of them. This leads to destruction at all levels and all spheres: social, economic, political and environmental. For example, they destroy family ties and the sources of foreign currency income. They use NGOs as instruments to rob citizens of the nationalism necessary to sustain community unity, a condition sine qua non for prevailing in this cold war. They keep their supporters in these small nations focused on the arduous task of searching for and preparing projects to be approved and executed by them. In this way, the citizen becomes detached from his or her government and sustains himself or herself in an exogenous economy, creating a profound individualism that leads to disintegration. With the pretext of attending to family responsibilities, the citizen turns his or her back on civic duties; for personal ambition he or she sacrifices National Unity.
They demonize the countries with problems when what they deserve is analysis and understanding in order to solve them. Using ill-intentioned agents who work underground, they finance articles in newspapers, make false declarations, create film setups to mislead the public and misinform governments so they don’t react on time and thus cannot counteract the effects of these actions. They also use citizens of other countries to create social friction, giving them a political importance that they otherwise wouldn’t have.
This Caribbean island, the only one we have, today is going through a critical moment that is perhaps similar to an earlier era when the native Indians disappeared. While the most advanced and industrialized countries are manufacturing the expedients to justify applicable sanctions against the Dominican Republic, the latter remains seated alongside its executioner while he sharpens his ax, apparently convinced that it will not be the next victim or simply thinking that what happened in Haiti occurred by chance. The Dominicans don’t realize that the conditions have been created so that the next step will be their country’s designation as a narco-state. For with this new way of waging war, although things appear to occur naturally in reality they have been planned beforehand.
Traditionally, faced with any type of danger from other countries or unpredictable actions that might signal an imminent attack, a country – already under a state of alert – would sound a siren as a signal to take cover. But because wars now are fought in a different way and aggression is hidden and disguised, we Haitians – faced now with this threat posed by the external and internal actions of the region’s enemies – by virtue of example and taking into consideration these ancient customs must now act as brothers of the Dominicans, as responsible protagonists of recent history, armed with our experience and conscious of our duties and obligations in the region, and sound the emergency bell so those responsible awaken and confront the danger with the courage that characterizes our race, once and for all putting an end to this situation of uncertainty and anxiety that looms over the people of this enviable terrestrial paradise. “Woe is he who, in the moment of common danger, does not awaken. (Caonabo)”
Meanwhile, we Haitians and Dominicans say to you with one voice: Leave us Alone!
My goal in writing this is to help recover a sense of perspective. We need a sound understanding of the magnitude of the actions from what we are contemporanous, and we must also take, aware that they will shape our future and that we have the obligation to prepare them well.
In the middle of the 20th century, with the end of decolonization, a new bipolar order emerged and with it the Cold War. This also marked the beginning of the “Third World,” a term coined by French demographer Alfred Sauvy in 1952 and which was a political construction that responded to the considerations of that time and to a geo-strategic context. The concept ran its course with the end of the Cold War at the beginning of the 1990s. We would logically think that in that war one side won and the other lost, but nothing could be further from the truth because both entered into great economic instability that required a rapid solution.
What most interests us at this moment is the performance of the U.S. economy at that time. After productivity dropped by more than 3% at the end of 1990, it recovered quickly in 1992 before falling again in 1993 by more than 4%. Later it recovered before declining again in 1999. Magazine reports confirmed that this situation lasted for several years and, although the United States was already in a recession before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, it was on Nov. 26, 2001 that the National Bureau of Economic Research, or NBER, announced that the United States of America was officially in a recession. The world suffered from a domino effect and we saw that Japan, Mexico and Taiwan also slipped into a recession as a result of a reduction in exports to the United States.
Basing our reasoning on imperialist logic, we can see that when opposition to the Atlantic slave trade developed in Europe in the 18th century the Marquis of Condorcet suggested it would be much more profitable if everything they needed were produced in Africa by the same Africans.
Indeed, no concrete report or analysis of the results of the Cold War have been published that detail how that conflict ended. The only thing that is highlighted is the loss of privileges and strength that the Third World – in which we live – once enjoyed. It must be understood that the Cold War ended with an agreement between the protagonists to turn the cannons on that Third World to re-colonize it, albeit by modern means.
That accord gave birth to the G7, which later became what is now the G8, the union of the most advanced – or most industrialized – countries against the former Third World countries, which are very rich in natural and human resources. Knowing that the second of the two world wars was the result of a profound worldwide economic recession, we logically were expecting a third conventional world war like the two preceding ones and assumed that such a conflict would begin among the great powers. This was a big mistake because those countries, gathered in the G7, instead promoted a new cold war against the Third World.
Haiti was left exceedingly vulnerable at that time due to its deficient institutions, disoriented population, weak regional identity, fragmented society, stagnant economy and lack of ties to its immediate neighbors – in short, because it was a community without the necessary tools to withstand external provocations. All of this made the country “easy prey” and in this way we began to see how the United States imposed the defense of democracy on us without wanting to assume the cost. The Americans placed demands on us so that our security was delegated to them. They are artificial and unjust and forget that there are other values, other dialectics, that others also have their pride, though it may be different from theirs. The United States prevents Haiti from finding a new equilibrium. It seems that it also forgets that the great powers also have obligations.
All was done with deception, blackmail and pretense. In October 1991, after having encouraged and required a military coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, they inflicted an embargo on us that we characterize as genocide. Economic sanctions were imposed irregularly and illegally, contrary to the OAS and United Nations’ charters that prohibit the use of economic pressure for political ends. The United Nations Security Council violated its rules in the case of Haiti with resolution 864, prompting China to state it hopes that the Haitian case does not set a regrettable precedent. The United Nations and the Security Council had no right to interfere in the case of Haiti at that time, because Haiti was not in conflict with another country. The wife of the U.N. envoy to Haiti at that time, Mr. Dante Caputo, was a close friend of Mrs. Danielle Mitterrand, wife of the French president. The two attended the inauguration ceremony for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on Feb. 7, 1991. In the international arena, it appears that friendship carries more weight than the law.
The USAID mission of the U.S. embassy said that the embargo had not caused suffering among the lower class and that malnutrition had not risen. But this was false because the Red Cross – along with other institutions attending a Food and Agriculture Organization meeting – reported that malnutrition among children rose 60% and, worse still, they said that 34% of these children reached the kwashiorkor level, which is catastrophic because never before had there been this level of malnutrition in Haiti. In summary, the embargo was a weapon of passive violence. It was cynical, hypocritical and affected the weakest – women, children and the elderly – and the environment. Millions of citizens were sacrificed and the country ruined to remove a single person from power or return him to power, depending on the case. All of that depravity so that 10 years later the same United States could remove that same person from power because he wasn’t a democrat.
The actions of the most advanced or industrialized countries against the smallest nations do not respect the norms and principles established in the U.N. and OAS charters. They have a common goal, which is to create the conditions – through slanderous, subversive and defamatory actions – for discrediting countries at a time when the intention is to take advantage of them. This leads to destruction at all levels and all spheres: social, economic, political and environmental. For example, they destroy family ties and the sources of foreign currency income. They use NGOs as instruments to rob citizens of the nationalism necessary to sustain community unity, a condition sine qua non for prevailing in this cold war. They keep their supporters in these small nations focused on the arduous task of searching for and preparing projects to be approved and executed by them. In this way, the citizen becomes detached from his or her government and sustains himself or herself in an exogenous economy, creating a profound individualism that leads to disintegration. With the pretext of attending to family responsibilities, the citizen turns his or her back on civic duties; for personal ambition he or she sacrifices National Unity.
They demonize the countries with problems when what they deserve is analysis and understanding in order to solve them. Using ill-intentioned agents who work underground, they finance articles in newspapers, make false declarations, create film setups to mislead the public and misinform governments so they don’t react on time and thus cannot counteract the effects of these actions. They also use citizens of other countries to create social friction, giving them a political importance that they otherwise wouldn’t have.
This Caribbean island, the only one we have, today is going through a critical moment that is perhaps similar to an earlier era when the native Indians disappeared. While the most advanced and industrialized countries are manufacturing the expedients to justify applicable sanctions against the Dominican Republic, the latter remains seated alongside its executioner while he sharpens his ax, apparently convinced that it will not be the next victim or simply thinking that what happened in Haiti occurred by chance. The Dominicans don’t realize that the conditions have been created so that the next step will be their country’s designation as a narco-state. For with this new way of waging war, although things appear to occur naturally in reality they have been planned beforehand.
Traditionally, faced with any type of danger from other countries or unpredictable actions that might signal an imminent attack, a country – already under a state of alert – would sound a siren as a signal to take cover. But because wars now are fought in a different way and aggression is hidden and disguised, we Haitians – faced now with this threat posed by the external and internal actions of the region’s enemies – by virtue of example and taking into consideration these ancient customs must now act as brothers of the Dominicans, as responsible protagonists of recent history, armed with our experience and conscious of our duties and obligations in the region, and sound the emergency bell so those responsible awaken and confront the danger with the courage that characterizes our race, once and for all putting an end to this situation of uncertainty and anxiety that looms over the people of this enviable terrestrial paradise. “Woe is he who, in the moment of common danger, does not awaken. (Caonabo)”
Meanwhile, we Haitians and Dominicans say to you with one voice: Leave us Alone!
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