News Information
- NEWS_POSTED_BY: Haiti Place
- NEWS_POSTED_ON: Jan 04, 2015
- Views : 578
- Category : Diaspora News
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Description :
By Dady Chery
NEWS JUNKIE POSTDec 15, 2014 at 9:50 am. Photo: Ansel
Once more, we have tasted salt. We have mourned our dead from the earthquake and the cholera epidemic. The collective depression, the temporary zombification has lifted. It is time to evict the occupier and pursue the traitors and enemies of our independence. No exception.
Overview
This is not the first time the United States has occupied Haiti and been evicted from it. The first occupation began during the administration of the questionable Nobel Peace Prize laureate President Woodrow Wilson in 1915. It was countered by an armed insurrection that grew to include over 40,000 Haitian fighters who regularly engaged the US marines. Although this insurrection was ultimately crushed, it was followed by numerous popular strikes in Haiti as well as calls in the US by women’s groups and Black Americans to end the occupation. The return to sovereignty was relatively simple: a committee was assembled to organize legislative and presidential elections. The occupation formally ended in 1934, near the start of the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who personally came for a flag-raising ceremony in Haiti to recognize its independence.
Back in 1915, the Monroe Doctrine needed no cover of legitimacy or humanitarianism. The cowardly Sudre Dartiguenave was picked as Haiti’s President while US marines waited with bayonets at the ready for the correct choice to be made by the legislature. Two years later, the legislature was dissolved outright by Major General Smedley Butler when the Haitian parliament refused to ratify a US-drafted constitution.