Venezuela and Haiti vs. U.S. Imperialism: Same Struggle, One Fight

When cornered, a wild animal reacts viciously, out of fear and desperation, and this can take very unexpected forms. No longer able to blame communism as the enemy it seeks to destroy, U.S. imperialism now attacks any nation seeking sovereignty. It has revealed itself to be the sworn enemy of all oppressed peoples struggling for peace, happiness, and freedom.

​Today, the Trump administration has resurrected Washington’s discredited “war on drugs” as a pretext to violate international law. Everything it says is nothing but deceit, intrigue, and lies to achieve its primary objective: the plundering of others nations’ resources.

​Frankly, we are not entirely surprised by what happened on Jan. 3, 2026, in Venezuela. The brazen criminality and arrogance displayed by humanity’s greatest and most implacable enemy cannot be overstated. This outrageous act has deeply affected all those who fight against imperialism, reminding them and confirming for them U.S. imperialism’s cynicism.​

The Pentagon’s “Operation Absolute Resolve” confirms more than ever that the imperialist monster has only one real objective: to prevent the economic and social development of any nations that are not its vassals. This U.S. military attack against the Venezuelan people is part of a global imperialist offensive against progressive, defiant countries, and first and foremost, against those possessing enormous mineral and oil resources.

​It is a pity that the U.S. was able to accomplish this mission without casualties or other losses. That said, the battle is far from over. The game has only just begun. With the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, imperialism has scored a goal, but it will lose this match even if it is prepared to cheat, lie, and even send its own citizens to their death. In fact, this coup may well dig imperialism’s grave in the world, especially in Latin America. This region’s people will not stand by idly, having acquired the necessary experience, unity, and indignation to act.

​Maduro has become a living symbol! His arrest replicates when the Spanish invaders captured the Taino chieftain Caonabo in 1494 during Haiti’s colonization or when Napoleon’s French legion kidnapped Toussaint Louverture, the precursor of Haiti’s independence, in 1802 during our revolutionary struggle.​

Honor also to Maduro’s Cuban security team who died heroically fighting the Yankee Delta Force invaders. Their revolutionary sacrifice and internationalist bravery echoes the example of the thousands of Cubans who fell fighting to defend Angola against South African and U.S. imperialist aggression.

​No matter what happens to him while he is a prisoner persecuted by the American kangaroo court system, President Nicolas Maduro will soon be victorious along with his people, a victory that will belong to the international working class and all those struggling to rid themselves of the U.S. empire’s impunity, interference, and domination. Trump has proven to be the worst president the United States has ever had; he has learned nothing from history.

​One thing must now be clear for all those who still had doubts: the United States can no longer hide its true intentions. There is no longer any pretense of a “rules based order.”

​It is no longer a secret that the world’s greatest terrorists are the U.S. leaders who kidnap heads of state and, more often than not, assassinate them. Today, the entire world has caught the U.S. leaders red-handed; they, whose country is the breeding ground for terrorism in all its forms, are nevertheless always the first to label other countries “terrorist states.” The Maduro case will be difficult for empire to manage. Unlike Panama’s Manuel Noriega in 1989, Maduro has a dedicated social movement behind him, not just in Venezuela, but across Latin America and around the world. Every arrow that the empire’s archers shoot at him only brings him greater strength and prestige.​

It’s worth remembering that, in 1914, U.S. Marines first landed in Haiti to steal what remained of our gold bar reserves from the National Bank of the Republic of Haiti and then transport them to the City Bank in Manhattan. The same gold theft began in 1492 when Christopher Columbus landed, and he even stole and replaced the Taino’s name for the island, Haiti, with the name Hispaniola, to honor his Spanish royal underwriters, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Other Europeans followed to steal and plunder all the region’s wealth, then renaming it also “America” in 1507, in honor of the Italian navigator, Amerigo Vespucci.

​This history explains why no European country (with the exception of Russia) has  denounced the United States’ crime against Venezuela: because this is how they enrich themselves, by plundering what does not belong to them.

​But in the eyes of the rest of the planet, the United States has lost all credibility and is reviled.

​Following this shameful event, the Haitian bourgeois press, unscrupulous as it is, must cease its indecent penchant for interviewing U.S., Canadian, and French ambassadors. These barbarians have no credibility, no morality, no wisdom, and certainly no trust. They are nothing but sweet-talking diplomats in the service of thieves, kidnappers, pirates, and buccaneers who plunder nations in broad daylight.

​Donald Trump may insult Haiti by calling it a “shit-hole,” even though all the mineral wealth, agricultural output, and labor power of this “poor” country, like that of other neocolonies, has helped make him and his nation rich. And the leaders that the U.S. empire imposes on us are just as stupid and reactionary as their masters. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have had Haitian authorities who would strongly and roundly denounce Washington’s repulsive, criminal action and demand the unconditional release of the Venezuelan president? But alas! We have 10 servile, sniveling puppets.​

Shame on you, United States! Where is your victory, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio? Your orchestrated campaign against the Venezuelan people will fail and will fool no one with a shred of decency and intelligence.
​The U.S. has also committed a most serious and costly error in thinking it can dictate Venezuela’s destiny as it did Haiti’s. This diktat, which creates exploitation, misery, and humiliation in all its forms, will not be tolerated by the Venezuelan people after 27 years of self-determination. They will overcome these new Conquistadors very quickly, just as the Haitian people continue to fight for their second independence and national liberation. May this incredible violation of Venezuelan sovereignty not go unanswered and be severely condemned so that such acts may never again be perpetrated anywhere in the world.

​Outrage and disgust at the arrest of Toussaint Louverture transformed the struggle against slavery into Latin America’s first victorious independence revolution in 1804 against a European empire, creating a nation that supported Bolivar with printing presses, boats, guns, and soldiers. Similarly in Venezuela, faced with this imperialist aggression, there is only one response: patriotic and revolutionary mobilization.

​This bitter experience can only stoke the revolutionary passion of the Venezuelan people, conscious and determined to learn all the lessons from it in order to dismantle this insane capitalist system and strengthen the Bolivarian socialist revolution, as well as ensure the unconditional return of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, to their country. Cursed be U.S. imperialism! Long live the Venezuelan people! Long live the struggle of the Haitian people! Long live socialism!

Source: https://haitiliberte.com/venezuela-and-haiti-vs-u-s-imperialism-same-struggle-one-fight/

222 Years of Haiti’s Victory at Vertiéres

This year marks the 222nd anniversary of the Battle of Vertières. It took place on November 18, south of Le Cap, in what was then known as Saint Domingue. In that battle, which lasted five hours, Napoleon Bonaparte’s elite troops were defeated by battalions of former slaves led by Jean Jacques Dessalines, who consolidated the independence of what would henceforth be called Ayti or Haiti.

Haiti is always mentioned in the media in connection with misfortune. The poorest nation in the hemisphere, famine, cholera, violence. What is not mentioned is the cause of poverty or famine or the cholera epidemic or violence, consequences of centuries of colonial and neocolonial domination. At this moment, the situation is particularly serious, especially in the capital Port-au-Prince and in the Artibonite Department. In fact, a series of heavily armed gangs have taken control of large areas, unleashing unprecedented violence that has claimed more than 5,000 lives this year and caused the internal displacement of more than 1.3 million Haitians to safer areas of the country. The situation of children is particularly alarming. According to reports from UNICEF, 680,000 children have been displaced from their homes, 300,000 have interrupted their studies, either because schools have been destroyed or are being used as shelters, and 288,544 children under the age of 5 are at risk of malnutrition. It is important to note that displacement places children in a vulnerable situation, including health risks due to poor hygiene in shelters, malnutrition, and even forced recruitment by armed gangs. A recent report by Catherine Russell, Executive Director of UNICEF, estimated that 30 to 50% of gang members were minors, who are used as messengers, kitchen workers, sex slaves, and even forced to participate in acts of armed violence.

It is important to note that these gangs have destroyed vital infrastructure, including 38 hospitals, six universities, and libraries, and have forced more than 1,000 schools to close. All of this, and the resulting demobilization of the population that this violence entails, calls into question the idea that these are simply conflicts between criminal gangs. These gangs regularly receive weapons and ammunition from the United States, and this action indicates a project that seeks to make the functioning of a nation unviable. But this attack on the Haitian nation is not recent. Haiti has been under siege by imperial powers since its independence.

The island of Haiti was invaded by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage in 1492, establishing the first European settlement in Our America. The entire island became a colony of the Castilian, then Spanish, empire. In 1697, the Treaty of Ryswick between France and Spain granted the western part of the island to France, henceforth to be called Saint Domingue. The island was rich in resources, and Europeans, in need of labor, brought in millions of Africans who were kidnapped and enslaved to work in mines, plantations, and estates. It would not be an exaggeration to say that it was this wealth that provided the economic basis for the development of imperial France. In 1789, the year of the Storming of the Bastille in Paris, the colony had 793 sugar plantations, 3,150 indigo plantations, 3,117 coffee plantations, 789 cotton-producing units, and 182 rum distilleries. With a population of 40,000 whites and 28,000 free mulattoes, production was sustained by the slave labor of 452,000 Africans and their descendants, who made up 86% of the total population.

Control of the colony was characterized by unimaginable cruelty. Rebellions took place from the very beginning of the conquest of the territory. I highlight here the ceremony of Boïs Caiman in 1791, when Dutty Boukman and the voodoo priestess Cécile Fatiman managed to gather 200 slaves and, in a ceremonial cry, swore to fight for their freedom. That same year, a massive uprising began with the burning of plantations and the killing of settlers. It was Toussaint L’Overture who managed to organize an army and defeat the occupiers, declaring freedom for all. L’Overture trusted revolutionary France with its ideals of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, but that same revolution betrayed him, and he ended up dying in a cold prison in eastern France.

France decided to send an expeditionary force of 84 ships with 25,000 soldiers to regain control of its most precious colony and placed a sinister character in command: Donatien Marie Joseph de Vimeur, Count of Rochambeau. In his novel Estela, Emeric Bergeaud describes him as follows: “his small stature, his angular features, his haughty gaze, which complement the approximate portrait of his moral ugliness.” Rochambeau committed atrocities from the moment he landed in Saint Domingue, including the use of dogs trained to hunt and kill. In a letter to his commander Ramel dated May 6, 1803, he writes: “I am sending you, my dear commander, a detachment of 50 men from the Cape National Guard, commanded by M. Bari; they are bringing 28 mastiffs. These reinforcements will also enable you to complete your operations. I will not let you ignore that you will not be paid any rations or expenses for feeding these dogs. You must give them blacks to eat.”

Rochambeau did not count on the determination of a people fighting for their freedom. L’Overture did not die in vain, and the flags he waved were taken up by Jean Jacques Dessalines, who led the resistance and heroically defeated the most powerful army in Europe at Vertières 222 years ago.

Dessalines assumed power as emperor, as Napoleon Bonaparte would do that same year. But unlike Napoleon, Dessalines promoted a constitution for a nation of free men and women. Slavery was abolished forever, freedom of worship was established, and divorce was permitted. Likewise, respect for the self-determination of peoples was established, without this preventing Dessalines from supporting revolutionaries such as Francisco de Miranda or, later, Alexandre Pétion and Simón Bolívar. The latter not only obtained ships, weapons, ammunition, and combatants. Bolívar obtained a political project from the Haitian revolution, and from there the Liberation Army would become a popular army that would end Spanish colonial rule from the Caribbean coast to the Andean highlands. Haiti was a beacon of light on the continent.

Today, when US imperial arrogance threatens the entire continent with its military power, we must remember that powerful imperial armies have been defeated time and again by the Caribbean peoples. The Battle of Vertières is a historical milestone that has been rendered invisible by hegemonic historiography. The Haitian feat must be studied, discussed, and understood. Haiti was a beacon of light that today succumbs to the interests of the Global North but carries within it the seed of rebellion, just as the Caribbean peoples who inherited that seed. Today, in the face of the military threat from the United States in the Caribbean, we remember the Battle of Vertières and what peoples are capable of when they are determined to decide their own destiny.

From: People’s Dispatch

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/?p=24655

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