How the US Treated the Three Central American & Caribbean States that Experienced Grassroots Revolutions

Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua: The US Oligarchy Never Gives Up

The Gramscian term “passive revolution” refers to a top-down set of social, political and economic transformations driven by societal elites rather than bottom-up by the masses of the population. The American Revolution, that simply replaced the ruling class of Britain with the local colonial ruling class, is a good example. The vast majority of “revolutions” are passive in nature. When a real grassroots revolution occurs, as in Haiti, Cuba and Nicaragua it will be steadfastly and forever resisted by the dominant capitalist nations so as to stop it spreading as a “good example” to those nations’ own masses. With respect to Haiti, that resistance has lasted for over two centuries, for Cuba is has lasted 66 years, for Nicaragua 46 years.

Haiti

Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola in 1492, and in just over a decade the mixture of Western diseases and the brutality of colonial exploitation wiped out the local population. French colonists settled on the western side of the island, and that part of Hispaniola became the French colony of Saint-Domingue from 1659 to 1803; a status that was formalized with Spain in 1697. With no real domestic population available to exploit, the French imported huge numbers of African slaves to work on their plantations; producing vast amounts of sugar and coffee with about 450,000 slaves and 30,000 ex-slaves, together with 30,000 Creoles (mixed race predominantly African and European). Overseen by a white population of about 45,000. The slave death rate was so high that the population had to be continuously renewed with new slaves from Africa. For France the colony was the “Pearl of the Antilles” producing 40% of the sugar and 60% of the coffee consumed in Europe. Of course none of that wealth found its way to the slaves who were worked to death, nor the land which was slowly destroyed by the intensive agriculture and cutting down of its forests to expand the plantations.

With the French Revolution of 1789, the local elites that included Creole aristocrats, saw the chance to wrest control from the imperial centre, very much like the British colonial elite had achieved with the US War of Independence. They incited several slave revolts to take control away from the royal government, and successfully defeated the Bourbon royalists, but then lost control of the revolution that they had started.

A planter and Jacobin, Toussaint Louverture and his field slave General Jean-Jacques Dessalines took charge of the slave revolt and together with a 7,000 strong Republican army sent from France that had arrived in 1792 defeated the Bourbon and Creole forces (while also slaughtering previously allied Spanish forces). By 1795 Louverture was the sole ruler of northern Saint-Domingue. In 1791 he started a victorious civil war with the southern part of the territory, and then in 1801 invaded the Spanish territory of Santo Domingo on the eastern part of the island; becoming ruler of all of Hispaniola. To maintain the economy, he established forced plantation labour by both Blacks and lower class whites while also working with the parts of the white community that were critical to the commercial operations of the island. In essence, the Creole ruling class (which was exempt from forced labour) worked with the white ruling class. Very Animal Farm.

In 1802, with the French Revolution taken under control and Napoleon appointed as ruler of France, a French expeditionary force of 31,000 was sent to take back the island. After Dessalines defected to the French forces, Louverture was captured and taken to France. When it became evident that the French wanted to reinstate slavery, Dessalines switched sides again and defeated the French forces in 1803 with the help of a British naval blockade. The utter brutality of the fighting had reduced the French force to only 7,000, with 20 French generals dying. In 1804, Dessalines ordered the massacre of the remaining white French people in Saint-Domingue along with others declared as traitors. He ruled as the Emperor of Haiti from 1804 to 1806, ruling over a feudal society until his assassination.

From 1806 to 1820 the island was split into two, before being unified in 1821 under Boyer. Under threat of invasion from a French fleet sent by the French monarch, Boyer agreed to pay France 150 million francs (US$560 million in today’s money) in exchange for the recognition of independence. The payments were a massive load upon the local economy, especially with the hostility of the US and other governments to a state that had beaten and massacred its European overlords. Even by 1900, 80% of Haiti’s government spending was debt repayment and the reparations were not fully repaid until 1947. France had enslaved Haiti once more through the enforced debt. Nationalist forces in Santo Domingo regained their separate independence in 1844, with the island once again being split in two as it continues to be to this day. With Haiti located on the western side of the island.

In1889 the US had attempted to force Haiti to allow for a US naval base, and in 1897 used gunboat diplomacy to humiliate the Haitian government. Then the US occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934 and imposed a new constitution upon the nation.