>From the United States to the Dominican Republic to the Bahamas, the collective scapegoating and mass deportation of Haitians for political gain lays bare a particular kind of anti-Blackness.
Late last week in Haiti’s Artibonite agricultural region, a paramilitary group invaded the small town of Pont-Sondé <https://default.salsalabs.org/Tba702e8a-4099-46fd-9378-142ab5fd5931/af4e2951-3a34-4821-9484-b2c17d1c86c4> and began setting houses on fire. As residents rushed out of their homes, they were shot in a brutal massacre that killed at least 115 people, including women and children. Some 6,000 survivors have been displaced, most of whom have sought shelter in the nearby coastal city of Saint-Marc and surrounding areas. Local residents and human rights groups have criticized authorities for not responding quickly enough to the attack, and for not acting on rumors of the incursion that had been circulating in the area for weeks. The massacre has also raised questions <https://default.salsalabs.org/T385a0d62-a0e6-401f-8af9-b50937ef0028/af4e2951-3a34-4821-9484-b2c17d1c86c4> about the effectiveness of the Kenyan-led force that was deployed to Haiti in June to address the country’s enduring security crisis. As international headlines once again broadcast alarming news of violence in Haiti <https://default.salsalabs.org/T315c4dbc-79f7-4906-a811-c554b4aa020b/af4e2951-3a34-4821-9484-b2c17d1c86c4>, we are looking at the surge of anti-Haitianism in the United States and in the wider region, and calls for a hemispheric response to anti-Blackness and U.S. imperialism. Last week, NACLA launched a mini series on organizing against anti-Haitianism with a piece by Darlène Dubuisson and Mark Schuller <https://default.salsalabs.org/T8fce7d35-f940-4c52-82d2-2cff7757edd6/af4e2951-3a34-4821-9484-b2c17d1c86c4> on the linkages between anti-Black racism and anti-immigrant sentiment. These “twin hatreds” prompted the Republican party to vilify and dehumanize Haitians living and working legally in Springfield, Ohio for political means. “This anti-Haitianism has a long history <https://default.salsalabs.org/T45c4acbc-b9e1-4134-a282-828f5a990fde/af4e2951-3a34-4821-9484-b2c17d1c86c4> in the United States and is rooted in U.S. imperialism in Haiti and throughout Latin America,” write Dubuisson <https://default.salsalabs.org/Tec10e88b-776b-4e87-9047-09ff7e8189aa/af4e2951-3a34-4821-9484-b2c17d1c86c4> and Schuller. “Anti-Haitianism is more than xenophobia, and more than anti-Blackness. As Elie Mystal writes in The Nation <https://default.salsalabs.org/Tb21b4052-013c-4bd6-ad39-22db45b2e790/af4e2951-3a34-4821-9484-b2c17d1c86c4>, white people have never forgiven Haitians for their freedom.” Dubuisson and Schuller note that while this phenomenon is not new, Haitians arriving to fill labor shortages in the Midwest today face unique challenges. They classify these challenges in three ways: “the temporariness of immigration statuses; the externalization <https://default.salsalabs.org/Td7164ee2-a58c-4387-9a82-9c654534f1a4/af4e2951-3a34-4821-9484-b2c17d1c86c4> of U.S. borders in Latin America; and the geographical distance of these new locations from Haitian immigrant destination hubs.” These dynamics call for new forms of organizing that extend beyond national borders. This week, Bertin M. Louis, Jr. maps anti-Haitianism <https://default.salsalabs.org/Te5fc5a2d-695a-49aa-a870-dfb78aefe250/af4e2951-3a34-4821-9484-b2c17d1c86c4> as a regional and hemispheric phenomenon. From the Dominican Republic to Brazil and the Bahamas, anti-Haitian policies, actions, and beliefs have shaped a deep-seated pattern of racist treatment and degradation grounded in “the rejection of a certain kind of Black <https://default.salsalabs.org/T2e259d0c-f86b-4cc5-a23a-60d87981b929/af4e2951-3a34-4821-9484-b2c17d1c86c4> .” “When majority Black nations assert their sovereignty through anti-Haitianism, they extend the spirit of white supremacy and anti-Blackness, traditions previously exerted on the ancestors of Bahamians and Dominicans through slavery,” writes Louis. “These cycles also expose the cyclical nature of white supremacy and the durability of anti-Blackness.” Both were on full display this week when the Dominican Republic initiated a cycle of mass deportations <https://default.salsalabs.org/T6d8ba8ee-80ce-4522-8d5b-15abb34d6a00/af4e2951-3a34-4821-9484-b2c17d1c86c4> by expelling nearly 11,000 Haitians in one week. Gandy Thomas, the Haitian permanent representative of the Organization of American states, called the deportations “a strategy of ethnic cleansing” and “a discriminatory campaign against Haitians due to their nationality and color of their skin.” In the coming weeks, NACLA will continue to release articles leading up to the U.S. election that provide context and nuance on the ways the Haitian community continues to serve as a tool for the evolving machinery of U.S. imperialism in the Americas—a continuation of, in the words of Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “the longest neocolonial experiment in the history of the West.” >From Springfield to the Artibonite Valley, novel politics of containment shape who’s lives matter. A hemispheric rejection of that imaginary is the only way forward. https://nacla.org/anti-haitianism-hemispheric-rejection-revolutionary-blackness Organizing Against Anti-Haitianism Beyond Borders https://nacla.org/organizing-against-anti-haitianism-beyond-borders -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#32827): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/32827 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/108953989/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
