An image of Erik Prince meeting with Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa shared on Noboa's official X account. Daniel Noboa/X
Accelerating crises of imperialism in Haiti, Ecuador, and beyond highlight the urgent need for regional Pan-Africanist, anti-imperialist unity and strategy.
Originally published in Black Alliance for Peace
The Haiti/Americas Team of the Black Alliance for Peace condemns the increasing militarist aggression by U.S. imperialists in Our Americas that targets Africans, indigenous peoples and poor communities and calls for regional pan Africanist strategy and anti imperialist unity to defeat the war on Africans and colonized people at home and abroad. The increase of violence in the region, whether in Haiti, Ecuador or the Caribbean, through armed paramilitary groups often with ties to neo colonial puppets and the US/West, is used as a justification to expand U.S./NATO militarism, economic domination, and interventionism in the region to guarantee full spectrum dominance.
African peoples, along with indigenous communities, across Our Americas bear the brunt of U.S.-led militarism, often with deadly interactions between state forces and armed groups in poor neighborhoods leading to fatal consequences for the masses, as part of a broader effort to expand militarism in the region. This must be framed as an escalation of war on Africans, colonized and poor communities at large by US imperialist forces to maintain its hegemony over the region, particularly against what it sees as threats to its interests from Russia and China.
The State Department’s recent designation of armed paramilitary groups in Haiti as both Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists to use as the justification to continue violating the sovereignty of the Haitian people, clear out and occupy land, and operate with even more impunity. The U.S.-orchestrated Multinational Security Service Mission (MSS) in Haiti that has only further degraded safety and violated national sovereignty has not slowed down any of this violence, in fact it has increased. Now, declaring Haitian armed paramilitary groups as terrorists will only serve as justification for further militarized assaults on the nation and its people, with little regard for their wellbeing. Amidst a three month long teachers strike, the Executive Board of National Union of Haitian Educators (UNNOH) wrote, “in the current context of cynically manufactured chaos—orchestrated by powerful international criminals and their local collaborators—” and call for international mobilization amid a “silent genocide.”
Looking at another assault on Africans in Our Americas, on April 13 in Ecuador, Daniel Noboa declared himself president in a still contested run off election amidst heavy militarization at the polls, which the Revolución Ciudadana opposing candidate Luisa Gonzalez has publicly denounced. Despite attempts to limit international observers, the North South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights, in partnership with Movimiento Afrodescendiente Nacional Ecuatoriano and Global Black, were able to observe intentional oppressive tactics by Ecuadorian state forces leading up to and throughout the electoral process that have not subsided post-election.
Furthermore, cases like the Guayaquil Four become all too normalized as the war on poor African communities in Ecuador intensifies through US-led militarism as President Noboa changes the constitution to allow foreign military bases, along with reaching a “strategic alliance” with private mercenary Blackwater’s Erik Prince to “fight organized crime.” Prince also negotiated contracts in Haiti last month to provide attack drones and training for an anti-gang unit. The increase in violence in the region also means profits for the private mercenaries, not to actually address violence against African peoples throughout the region, including in the United States, but to use as a proxy to intervene and support their geopolitical and imperialist interests.
The expanding role of SOUTHCOM not just in Haiti, Ecuador or the Caribbean but throughout the region, particularly through joint military exercises such as Operation Tradewinds with militaries in the region under the command of the US and NATO and increased military bases, from the Panama Canal down the Pacific Coast, is not unrelated to this expanding crisis of violence throughout the region. The war on crime, war on drugs and war on terror have exposed the parallels behind the use of state violence as a trojan horse for resource extraction whether in West Asia, including the genocidal onslaught in Palestine, violence against Yemen, Lebanon and the people of Syria, or the expanding use of violence in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana or Suriname for resource extraction of fossil fuels. US imperialism is using the same playbook to justify its presence, expansion and full spectrum dominance.
While member states of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) have condemned the intervention in Haiti, they do so while also upholding the Kingston Declaration, continuing a historic trend in the region of supporting neocolonialism in Haiti led by Brazil. Whether officially sanctioned as a UN mission or not, Western interventions have never been the answer for the Haitian people. More importantly, the lack of solidarity with Haiti undermines the sovereignty of all nations as Haiti is used as a laboratory for the rest of the region. It was precisely the lack of solidarity with Haiti that Nicaragua highlighted as to why they did not sign the Tegucigalpa Declaration - “[the text must] reject the extortions against and express unequivocal solidarity with the brotherly people of Haiti without external interventions.”
BAP invites organizations and individuals to join the U.S./NATO Out of Our Americas Network as a platform to collectively develop regional Pan-Africanist strategy to oppose intervention in Haiti, a core demand of the Zone of Peace campaign, through mass based popular struggle. As Haitian Flag Day approaches on May 18th, we call for renewed and strengthened solidarity with the people of Haiti, in connection with all African peoples, oppressed peoples, and popular movements of Our Americas struggling to free our region of US military and economic dictates.
The Black Alliance for Peace asserts the right of African/Black peoples across Our Americas to self defense and organized resistance in response to this escalating imperialist war against the masses of our people, whether in Port au Prince, Guayaquil, or Los Angeles. No compromise, no retreat!
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