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Toward Freedom has 69 years of experience publishing independent reports and analyses that document the struggles for liberation of the majority of the world’s people. Now, with a new editor, Julie Varughese, at its helm, what does the future look like for Toward Freedom and for independent media? Join Toward Freedom’s board of directors to formally welcome Julie as the new editor. She will be reporting back on her time covering Nicaragua’s critical presidential election. New contributors Danny Shaw and Jacqueline Luqman also will speak on their work for Toward Freedom as it relates to the value of independent media. Danny will touch on the rising Pink Tide in Latin America while Jacqueline will discuss an increase in films that have documented the Black struggle in the United States.
Toward Freedom tiene 69 años de experiencia en la publicación de informes y análisis independientes que documentan las luchas por la liberación de la mayoría de la población mundial. Ahora, con una nueva editora, Julie Varughese, a la cabeza, ¿cómo se ve el futuro para Toward Freedom y para los medios independientes? Únase a la junta directiva de Toward Freedom para darle la bienvenida formal a Julie como nueva editora. Ella informará sobre su tiempo cubriendo las elecciones presidenciales críticas de Nicaragua para Toward Freedom. Los nuevos colaboradores Danny Shaw y Jacqueline Luqman también hablarán sobre su trabajo para Toward Freedom en lo que se refiere al valor de los medios independientes. Danny tocará sobre la creciente Marea Rosa en América Latina, mientras que Jacqueline hablará sobre un aumento en las películas que han documentado la lucha negra en los EEUU.
MOLEGHAF, a grassroots anti-imperialist organization in Haiti, held a day of activities on April 4 in the capital of Port-au-Prince, as part of a multi-country launch of the Black Alliance for Peace’s Zone of Peace campaign. Above is part of the result of the graffiti and sign-making session that took place / credit: MOLEGHAF
The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), along with partner organizations, held events April 4 in three countries across the Americas to launch an effort to activate popular movements in the region in support of a call for a “Zone of Peace.”
The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) declared the Americas region a “Zone of Peace” in 2014. This came in response to centuries of oppression at the hands of Europe and, later, the United States. U.S. policy has related to Latin America and the Caribbean as the United States’ “backyard” ever since the Monroe Doctrine was announced in 1823.
“The U.S. declared the European states must stay out of the hemisphere, which meant the United States was claiming the entire region as its own,” said Margaret Kimberley, a BAP Coordinating Committee member, who spoke at a BAP press conference held April 4 in Washington, D.C. She added CELAC exists to counter the Organization of American States (OAS), a multilateral organization based in Washington, D.C., and known for backing U.S. policies in Latin America and the Caribbean.
After years of struggle and U.S. sanctions that have been linked to the deaths of 40,000 people in 2018, socialist-led Venezuela completed its withdrawal from the OAS in 2020. Meanwhile, another socialist country, Nicaragua, announced it was exiting in 2021.
“Biden says it is the ‘front yard’ in a clumsy attempt to be somewhat progressive,” Ajamu Baraka, chairperson of BAP’s Coordinating Committee, told Jacqueline Luqman and Sean Blackmon on the day after the launch, April 5, on “By Any Means Necessary,” an afternoon talk show on Radio Sputnik.
Launch events were held in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Washington, D.C., USA; and in Havana, Cuba, where the call for a Zone of Peace was initially made in 2014. The event in Port-au-Prince involved eight hours of activities, ranging from performances, talks, exchanges, and graffiti and sign-making.
The launch took place on BAP’s 6th anniversary, which is the 55th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Exactly one year prior to his murder, King had publicly denounced the U.S. war on Vietnam, as well as what he identified as the three pillars of U.S. society: Materialism, militarism and racism.
“This campaign will be informed by the Black Radical Peace Tradition,” reads BAP’s press release. “With its focus on the structures and interests that generate war and state violence—colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism and all forms of imperialism—the fight for a Zone of Peace is an attempt to expel all of these nefarious forces from our region.”
BAP describes the reason behind the use of “Our Americas” on its website:
Nuestra América is a term revolutionary forces in the Americas have used to assert themselves against colonialism and imperialism by claiming one contiguous land mass stretching from Canada to Chile for all of the historically oppressed peoples of the region. BAP has translated the singular Nuestra América (Our America) into the plural “Our Americas” to help bridge the gap between the U.S. usage, “America,” that describes the United States as the only “America” and the concept put forth by revolutionary forces.
However, Baraka distinguished the campaign’s target.
“We’re not talking about the people of the U.S.,” he told “By Any Means Necessary.” “We’re talking about this settler-colonial state. We know [the United States] cannot exist as a settler-colonial state if it gave up its militarism.”
The public and members of Haitian organization MOLEGHAF gathered for a day of activities to launch the Zone of Peace campaign on April 4 in Port-au-Prince / credit: MOLEGHAF
BAP also issued six “initial core demands”:
Dismantle SOUTHCOM. Shut down the 76 U.S. military bases in the region
End U.S./NATO military exercises. Close foreign military bases, installations and enclaves, as well as withdraw foreign occupation troops
Disband U.S.-sponsored state terrorist training facilities. Shutter the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation” (WHINSEC)—formerly the School of the Americas—in Fort Benning, Georgia, United States, and terminate U.S.—as well as foreign—training of police forces
Oppose military intervention into Haiti. Support the people(s)-centered movement for democracy and self-determination
Return Guantánamo to Cuba. The United States must give back to the Cuban people and their government the territory it illegally occupies
Sanctions are war. End illegal sanctions and blockades of regional states, including all economic warfare and lawfare, and recognize their sovereignty
The Zone of Peace campaign was launched in three cities, including in Havana, Cuba. Here, Black Alliance for Peace members pose with members of Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos (ICAP), an organization that encourages people-to-people exchanges / credit: Black Alliance for Peace
Yet, BAP is clear the method for going about this work must be different than what has emerged from predominantly-white organizations based in the United States.
“This work must be de-colonial, anti-imperialist, advance a People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHRs) framework, and be conducted across at least five languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Haitian Creole,” BAP states on its website.
Jemima Pierre, co-coordinator of BAP’s Haiti/Americas Team, said at the press conference that the United States uses multi-lateral organizations like the OAS to oppress the peoples of the Americas. And, so, of the initial approximately 25 organizations that had signed onto the campaign before it had been launched, more than half are based outside the United States and Canada. Some of the partner organizations that will help coordinate the effort include:
MOLEGHAF (Haiti)
REDH (Network In Defense of Humanity) (Cuba)
Caribbean Organisation for People’s Empowerment
African People’s Socialist Party (Bahamas, Jamaica, United States)
Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN) (Colombia)
Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (Nicaragua)
“Our homelands are not playgrounds for the U.S. to launch its wars of aggression,” said Nina Macapinlac, secretary general of BAYAN USA, an anti-imperialist alliance of 20 organizations dedicated to the liberation of the Philippines. Macapinlac spoke at the Washington, D.C., press conference as a member organization representative of the United National Antiwar Coalition, one of the organizations that BAP has partnered with for the Zone of Peace campaign.
BAP invites organizations and individuals to endorse the Zone of Peace campaign and activate the popular movement element in what they describe as a “multi-phase campaign that aims to build a united-front opposition to liberate our Americas from the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination.” A U.S./NATO Out of the Americas Network will be launched as the mass-based structure of this campaign.
Cover of Slave Revolt on Screen by Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall / credit: University of Mississippi Press
Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games by Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2021)
Chris Rock’s 2014 film “Top Five” is a scathing critique of Hollywood and its sometimes open, sometimes underhanded censorship of critical movies. Rock’s character, “Andre Allen,” emerges as a movie star because of his role as the ridiculous, crime fighting “Hammy the Bear.” Resentful of being known for only this goofy role, Allen produces a film called “Uprize,” playing the role of the Haitian rebel vodou priest, Dutty Boukman. However, “Top Five” grossed $25 million, while the animated film, “Madagascar,” in which Chris Rock played “Marty the Zebra,” netted $200 million. This shows the powers that be have no interest in amplifying the message of arguably the single most important event of the 19th century: The enslaved can rebel and they can win!
“Top Five” was used as an example in the recently published book, Slave Revolt on Screen: The Haitian Revolution in Film and Video Games. In it, historian Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall explores how the 1804 Haitian Revolution has been misrepresented and censored on screen.
Poster for 2013 film, “Tula: The Revolt”
For example, funding was blocked for an epic film, “Tula: The Revolt,” which highlighted the mass revolt and its forward-thinking leadership, namely Toussaint L’ouverture, Jean Jacques Dessalines, Henry Christophe, Sanite Bélair and Capois La Mort. Starring actor Danny Glover, the film sought to answer the question: “Why has this monumental achievement been so erased from our history and from our consciousness?” Sepinwall writes the film aimed to suggest “enslaved people were capable of formulating their own resistance plans” (p. 53). However, Glover was unsuccessful in raising funds to produce the film at the level other Hollywood films have been produced.
It is here that Karl Marx’s 1848 quote-turned-maxim is more relevant than any other: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”
Beyond a Great White Hope
Sepinwall contrasts the different historiographies that guided both mainstream, underground, and unfinished and unfunded films.
Poster for 1948 film, “Lydia Bailey”
McCarthyism acted to dilute producers’ ability to convey a new image of Haiti and Black leadership in the 1948 film, “Lydia Bailey.” After years of censorship as well as calling key actors and producers, such as Michael Blankfort and William Marshall, to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, the film became a shadow of its former self when it finally hit the screen.
Poster for 1933 film, “Emperor Jones”
Paul Robeson’s role in “Emperor Jones” (1933) is severely curtailed by racism, causing one African-American critic to call Eugene O’Neill’s play “a travesty of the Negro race” (p. 29).
A major thread in this book is Hollywood’s insistence on having a “great white hope” character who paternalistically shows the enslaved how to fight. The professor cites “Burn” (1969) and the French miniseries, “Toussaint L’ouverture” (2012), as but two examples.
The elite of Hollywood always sent a clear message: They would never endorse a film depicting revolutionary violence against the white slave-owning class, lest this generation of Toussaints, Jean Jacques and Cecile Fatimans are inspired to emulate this historical example of reclaiming their own self-determination.
Poster for 2012 film, “Toussaint L’ouverture”
Chapter 7, “Haitian Reflections of the Revolution’s Legacy,” is perhaps the most politically problematic and imbalanced chapter in the book. The four films Sepinwall reviews are “Dimanche 4 Janvier (Sunday January 4th),” “Moloch Tropical,” “GNB v. Attila” and “Haiti, la fin des chimeres (Haiti, the End of the Thugs).” They all share an anti-Aristide bent. This is curious considering Roger Noriega, the Clintons, the Bushes, the U.S. State Department and U.S. intelligence services always shared this same worldview against Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide, twice orchestrating coups against his government and kidnapping him (See “Aristide: The Endless Revolution,” 2005).
The Role of Video Games
The California State professor’s final chapters make the case that what has been banned on the big screen has reached millions through a most unlikely medium: Video games. Sepinwell reviews “Playing History 2—Slave Trade” (2013) and “Freedom!” (1992) as examples of video games that are “callous approaches to the subject” of slavery and revolution (p. 186). She reviews “Assassin’s Creed: Freedom Cry” (2013) and the work of Muriel Tramis and Patrick Chamoiseau as “counterhegemonic commemorations of slavery” (p. 207).
Screenshot from video game “Assassin’s Creed” / credit: GameSpot
Haiti is again trending, for all of the wrong, stereotypical and racist reasons. The mainstream media incessantly using terms like “crisis-ridden,” “helpless,” “pitiful” and “poorest country in the Western Hemisphere” are nauseating for those who understand the only break Haiti needs is from U.S. imperialism. At this critical time, Sepinwall’s scholarly study has a great deal to teach us about those who have used cinema to challenge age-old white supremacist views on Haiti.
Just as Chris Rock’s character, “Andre Allens,” seeks to emerge from under and from within white supremacy, so too does an entire history that culminated in 1804, a history that—more than ever—threatens to unlock answers for the future.
Danny Shaw is a professor of Caribbean and Latin American Studies at the City University of New York. He frequently travels to Haiti to stay with the mass anti-imperialist movement. A Senior Research Fellow at the Center on Hemispheric Affairs, Danny is fluent in Haitian Kreyol, Spanish, Portuguese and Cape Verdean Kriolu.
A protest took place November 25, 2021, denouncing violence against women in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. Dominican leftist, feminist, anti-racist and Haitian immigrant community organizations participated in the march under the slogan “Haitian Lives Matter” and confronted the government’s immigration policy / credit: Vladimir Fuentes
Correction: The definition of Haitians of Dominican descent has been clarified. The length of the constructed portion of the border fence has been corrected. The name that Dominican officials had given for a victim has been updated, based on newly obtained information.
Whenever Malena goes to work or heads out to study, she tries to leave her home very early and return after dark. The 33-year-old mother of five does so for fear of being detained by the Dominican Republic’s immigration agents, even though she is Dominican.
Born and raised in a batey, a settlement around a sugar mill in the San Pedro de Macorís province, Malena is the daughter of Haitian sugar cane workers who arrived in the Dominican Republic in the 1970s, during the U.S.-backed Dominican dictatorship of Joaquin Balaguer.
Malena now lives in La Romana, also in the eastern part of the country. She has three sisters, two of whom have an identification card, acquired through a regularization plan for foreigners. Meanwhile, she and her other sister don’t have any documents. Close encounters with immigration authorities are normal.
“On a trip to the capital, Migration [officers] stopped the bus,” Malena recounted. “They said to a young man: ‘Papers, moreno!’ And since he only had a Haitian ID card, they took him off the bus. They only look for Black people. Luckily, they didn’t look at me. Sometimes by WhatsApp, I’m warned not to pass through some place because Migration is there. It’s always a danger.”
Malena and her sisters are some of the more than 200,000 people affected in the last 10 years by Constitutional Court ruling 168-13, according to estimates of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. This ruling deprived Dominicans of Haitian descent who had been born after 1929 of their citizenship. As such, the impacts of statelessness are rampant.
“My children have no papers,” Malena said. “Without papers, you can’t have health insurance. You can’t have a good job. I had to repeat 8th grade because I couldn’t take the national test. The same thing happened to my son.”
A Dominican soldier stands by a border wall the Dominican Republic built to keep out Haitian migrants / credit: La Prensa Latina
Mass Deportations
Since 2021, the government of Luis Abinader has been promoting a campaign of mass deportations of the Haitian immigrant community. This also affects Dominicans of Haitian descent. Those are people who were born in the Dominican Republic, have Haitian parents or grandparents, and often are stateless, as in Malena’s case. The head of the General Directorate of Migration, Venancio Alcántara, declared recently that between August and April, more than 200,000 Haitians had been deported. “A record in the history of this institution.”
This statistic shows its true dimensions when contrasted with the size of the Haitian migrant community and the population of Dominicans of Haitian descent. Although no recent official figures exist, Dominican Ambassador to Spain Juan Bolívar wrote an opinion piece in June that estimated both populations, when counted together, at less than 900,000 people, or about 8 percent of the country’s population of 10.6 million. Bolívar’s estimation is based on the 2017 National Immigrant Survey, conducted by the National Statistics Office.
That means 22 percent of Haitians had been deported between August and April.
This is why Dominican and Haitian organizations have warned of the danger that the mass deportation campaign could turn into a process of open ethnic cleansing and consolidate an apartheid regime, as previously reported in Toward Freedom.
The red dot indicates the location of the border towns of Anse-A-Pitres in Haiti and Pedernales in the Dominican Republic / source: Google Maps
Extortions, Theft and Violence at the Border
One of the flagship projects of the Dominican government is the expansion of a border fence. Previous governments built the first 23 kilometers (14 miles). Now, fence construction is continuing, so it can cover 164 kilometers (101 miles). The Abinader government insists in forums, such as the United Nations, on the need for the “international community” to militarily occupy and “pacify” Haiti, complaining about the “burden” the neighboring country represents for the Dominican Republic.
However, the violence of the Dominican state has crossed the border into Haiti.
On March 19, members of the Dominican military attacked the Haitian border village of Tilory in the north, killing two people—Guerrier Kiki and Joseph Irano—and wounding others in their attempt to suppress a protest. According to a statement signed by Dominican and Haitian organizations, the Dominican military regularly engages in extortion and theft, including the seizure of motorcycles and other property, which led to the protest.
This is not the only recent cross-border incident. On August 5, an agent of the Dominican Directorate General of Customs (DGA) shot and killed 23-year-old Haitian, Irmmcher Cherenfant, at the border crossing between Pedernales and Anse-A-Pitres, in the southern end of the north-to-south Dominican-Haitian border. Dominican officials identified Cherenfant as Georges Clairinoir. The DGA and the Dominican Ministry of Defense justified Cherenfant’s killing as an instance of self-defense. Dominican social organizations questioned this version, pointing out contradictions in the official communiqués.
A human rights defender from Anse-A-Pitres who spoke with witnesses said the conflict began when the victim refused to pay a customs guard to be allowed to transport a power generator purchased in the Dominican Republic. After Cherenfant was killed, a struggle ensued, in which the guard was disarmed by Haitians. Subsequently, the Dominican military fired weapons of war indiscriminately into Haitian territory, injuring two people. The human rights defender, who works for a local organization, asked not to be identified for security reasons.
The Dominican government paid a compensation of 400,000 pesos (approximately $7,200) to Cherenfant’s wife the following week. But when the community mobilized on August 12 against military violence and in memory of the victim, the Dominican military threatened some of the protest organizers that they would be prohibited from entering Dominican territory.
A protest held in 2022 Anse-A-Pitres, Haiti after a Dominican customs guard killed a Haitian / credit: Jean Aicard Pierre
‘A Vibrant Democracy’
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman visited Santo Domingo on April 12 and met with Abinader. According to State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel, they discussed their “deep ties” and “shared democratic values,” as well as regional security issues, including the “urgent situation in Haiti.”
During her visit, Sherman recorded a video message in the colonial zone of Santo Domingo, extolling the country as a tourist attraction and calling the political regime a “vibrant and energetic democracy… a strong and exceptional partner with the United States of America.”
In her tour of the colonial zone, Sherman can be seen escorted by the mayor of the National District, Carolina Mejia, a member of the ruling Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM), and by Kin Sánchez, a guide of the Tourism Cluster. Significantly, Sánchez was part of a mob led by the neo-fascist organization, Antigua Orden Dominicana, which attacked and shouted racist slogans against a cultural activity held on October 12 that was intended to commemorate Indigenous resistance. The complicity of the National Police caused nationwide repercussions.
After Sherman’s visit, Republican U.S. Congressmember Maria Elvira Salazar and Democratic U.S. Congressmember Adriano Espaillat, announced the U.S. State Department would withdraw a November 19 travel alert warning Black tourists of racial profiling by Dominican immigration authorities. The April 17 travel advisory only mentions risks related to criminality. Dominican Tourism Minister David Collado welcomed the move as a “very positive and appropriate” measure, describing the U.S. as a “strategic partner.”
Meanwhile, two days after Sherman’s visit, Haitian driver Louis Charleson was shot and killed by a military officer in the Dominican border town of Jimaní following a traffic altercation. A young Haitian man was wounded, too. The Haitian Support Group for Returnees and Refugees (GARR) denounced the impunity that covers the Dominican military and police in the border area. The agent who murdered Irmmcher Cherenfant last year in Pedernales continues to hold the same position at the Directorate General of Customs. He has not been dismissed or prosecuted.
“As always, Dominican officials present the simplistic argument of self-defense to comfort the offending soldiers with impunity,” GARR stated.
Vladimir Fuentes is the pen name of a freelance journalist based in the Dominican Republic.
