Haiti, Aristide, and the War on Memory

The United States government has always hated Haiti—not for its poverty, but for its history. In 1804, Black slaves rose up and broke their chains, defeating Napoleon’s army and founding the first Black republic. That event—the Haitian Revolution—forever terrified the Western powers. And they’ve never forgiven it.

Haiti has lived under siege ever since. Washington occupied it in 1915, installed puppet governments, crushed peasant uprisings, and institutionalized a form of foreign governance that persists to this day. But there was a moment—fleeting, but unforgettable—when the Haitian people tried to break free.

Jean-Bertrand Aristide was that moment. A liberation theologian, a priest, a radical populist democrat. Elected by the poor in 1990, Aristide was the embodiment of Haitian self-determination. He raised the minimum wage, resisted the IMF, and called for reparations from France. He was not perfect—but he was ours, not theirs.

And for that, the U.S. destroyed him.

Twice overthrown with American support—first in 1991, then again in 2004—Aristide’s presidencies were drowned under a tidal wave of NGO colonialism, U.N. occupation, and Western media lies. They told us he was authoritarian, unstable, divisive. But they never explained why tens of thousands still risked their lives to stand by him. They couldn’t. Because that would require acknowledging a deeper truth: that democracy is only legitimate to the empire when it serves the empire.

Today, Haiti is in collapse. Washington’s hands are all over it. Gangs rule Port-au-Prince. The police are armed with U.S. weapons. And still, we are told this chaos is Haiti’s fault— but the people remember. They remember Aristide. They remember sovereignty. And that memory is dangerous.

Empire always demands amnesia. It asks us to forget Iraq, Libya, Vietnam, Haiti. To forget the names of our martyrs and the dreams they carried. To forget that another world was tried. To forget that another world is being born. We must remember.