·wuu1u ,., .......... -r • _.

- -- --- V (J

ne,v heights in the 21st century.

A New Day for Democra,cy in Haiti

Ideology works i11 subtle \vays. It is often most powerful when it is trans-
mitted not by an authority figure or institution but people who may not
even beaware that they are reproducing that ideology. One summer even-
ing in Toronto I found n1yself in a movie theatre, and, as I waited for the
film to start, I sat through an advertisement for the MS Society of Canada.
The ad was innocuous on the surface, as it tried to convince people to
donate money for research on multiple sclerosis. One of my father's best
friends battled with MS, and I have no qualms with the work of the MS

421
Snckt)'. llut the p rem ise of the ad was that C anadians were i nhe re ntly
hdpful people and !iO we ~hould apply t hat help ful nature to those who
l>Uffcr from MS. 1 hc narra tor casua lly ~xplained that " as Canadia ns w e
lrnvc fo ut,tht for ol ht rs,'' just n~ it cut to an Image of d isa ster- ravaged Haiti,
where C im.,Jians wcr~ malung o heroic effort to help their neighbours in a
time of nc(·J . A sign was visible o n a rooftop that said "1l1ank you Canada."
lhc pcr,cptlon that Canada has b ee n a gene rous benefacto r to H aiti
is so per vnsiv~ in Canada t hat conservative commentators have ac tually
h~mo;mrJ it os u problcm .1.2° In main.st ream circles, there is a d e ep-rooted
hdicf thnt Canadn has tried, against a ll o d ds, to help H ai ti, a count ry
~uffcring under the weight of natural disasters . political immaturity
.md local incompetence and corru p tion. Thoug h Canada claime d no
respons ibility for these pro blems, its generous in te r vention to assist a
"backwards" people in setting tJ1em s elves o n the right path reflected the
best of Canadian idealism. P rime Minister Paul Martin explained in 2004
that Canada would "take a leadersh ip role in provid ing the international
support needed to produce a blueprint for Haitian society." 12 1
Quite the contrary, Canadian policy towards the small Caribbean coun.
try helped ensure that it remain among the p oorest and most exploited
places in the v\Testem Hemisphere, exploitation that was oft.en at the hands
of Canadian businesses and enforced by Canadian-trained police. That
"blueprint for Haitian society" included the overthrow Haiti's popular and
democraticalJy elected president, Jean -Bertrand Aristide. The Western
powers proclaimed it "a new day for democracy," but little good came
to Haiti as a result of the undermining of its d emocratic process and the
removal of a president who represented the wishes of the poor majority.122
During a dramatic visit to Haiti in 2004, Prim e Minister Martin spoke of
a Haitian child: "This little girl is so cute ... if she doesn't get an education
what is going to happen to her?" 123 Martin's crocodile tears shrouded the
fact that the chaos was an outcome of Canada's own policies, cooked up
with the United States and Fran ce.
Haiti had long been a spectre haunting the colonial imagination. Before
it was called Haiti it was a French slave colony known as Saint-Domingue.
Itwas Christopher Columbus himself who marked his arrival al that island
by writing that the Indigenous Tafno people he met were "fit to be ordered
about and made to work," which Kirkpatrick Sale described as the "birth
of American slavery:' 124 The colony became a source of massive wealth for
the French ruling class, and even as the principles of"liberty, equality and

422
 Co11udo's Wor 011 l('rror

r. 1ernity" were proclaimed

. .by Robespierre in Paris in 1790, l'ttl h
1 e c ange
d
,r<I slaves in Samt-Dornmgue. But the ideas of freed <l b
r. , the k om expresse y
,o
hCJaco ·
bins were ta en. up across
. the Allantic •and a slave revoIt began m .
1 1
l
1that would reac 1 tts u tlrnate, successful conclusion in 1804.
179 .118 that time, the Haitian revolutionaries led b rr .
pun , y i oussamt
ture would have to defeat not just the local slave O • . b
couver ' . . . · wnmg e11tc ut
aiso InVasion forces from Spam and Bntam _ motivated by the destre .
o revent any example of a successful rebellion - and a force of more
I p 35,000 French troops sent by Napoleon Bonaparte. That these "Black
thaJlbins" _ so described by the historian C.L.R. James _ were able to
Ja~o t the colonial powers and assert their freedom stands as one of the
df,ea . . h h'
rnost r
emarkable stones mlht e . 1story
. of the modern world•12s Incleed,
ok the confidence of e nch m Europe and America _ the latter
1I shO d H .., 1 .
. ularly alarme at a1tI s we commg of marginalized African former
•~s .. .
parllC from the US - and there is a strong argument to be made that the
, ry of the Haitian Revolullon heralded the end of the trans-Atlantic
victo f 126
..
5
I ve system itsel .
aIt did not, however, translate into the kind of freedom Haitians hoped
it would. France accepted its defeat but only after demanding reparations;
.1 considered the liberated slaves "stolen property" worth 1so million
~rancs, a sum so great that it took Haiti more than a century to pay off
the debt. To do so, Haiti was forced to borrow from British, American
and other European banks, locking Haitians into a form of dependence,
even as British and other merchants moved in to try to take advantage of
Haiti's fragile position. Meanwhile, the Spanish and Americans fomented
arebeUion on the eastern side of the island, which had previously been a
Spanish colony, eventually carving out a separate Dominican Republic,
from which the colonial powers tried ceaselessly to undermine Haitian
independence. Throughout the first century of Haiti's existence, it was
forced to play a dangerous game with the colonial powers, exploiting
Lhelr own rivalries to maintain a delicate hold on its own sovereignty. 127
It maintained this bafance until the early 20th century, when the
United States seized imperial control over Haiti, occupying the country
between 1915 and 1934 to ensure that its constitution was favourable to
US interests. In the pattern that was typical for American semi-colonies,
asuccession of military dictatorships ruled over a poor majority, to the
benefit of foreign capital and a small local elite, which in Haiti was notable
for its conspicuous whiteness. While the majority of the country were

423
 Conoda In the- World

dcscendunts of black slaves and spoke a range of Creole languages, the

wealthy ruling class was dmninated by a French-speaking e lite whose
nncestors had more likely owned slaves than been lhem.
In 1957 a US-trained doctor, Fran~ois Duvalier, tapped into the black
nntionalism of poor Haitians and presented himself as an alternative to the
traditional elite. His appropriation of the language of Negritude covered
up the fact that he was an admirer of both the model of military dictator-
ship introduced by the United States during its occupation and also the
economic status quo that had Jong kept black Haitians impoverished. 128
Duvalier established a dictatorship that would be inherited by his son
and, between them, would last nearly 30 years. To keep the angry masses
at bay, the Duvaliers estabHshed violent death squads called the Tontons
Macoutes, who, alongside regular Haitian military and police, killed up
to 30,000 people during the d ictatorsh ip. 129
The Duvaliers lived in ostentatious luxury, but by the mid- l 980s,
popular anger could no longer be contained. Even the US backers of the
Duvalier family recognjzed that it would not survive a wave of major
social upheaval, and in 1.986. Jean-Claude HBaby Doc" Duvalier was
forced into exile. Initially, the US-trained military refused to cede power,
but in the hopes of smoothing the transition into neoliberal democracy,
it supported an electoral process in 1990. The outcome appalled them.
In the waning years of the Duvalier dictatorship, an outspoken liberation
theologist named Jean-Bertrand Aristide worked in one of the poorest
parishes of Port-au-Prince and drew attention for h is fiery speeches which
denounced Duvalier, his US backers and the ruling elite that kept most
Haitians poor. Speaking to the poor but addressing the colonial powers,
he demanded reparations:
We are asking that you acknowledge that you h ave stolen - that
your countrymen have stolen - during the process of coloniza-
tion. Ifyou truly want to call yourseJves developed countries, you
need to acknowledge what you have done to us. But we are not
asking for your pity, no, but for you to acknowledge that we have
the right to recuperate a part of what has been stolen from us. 130

Jean-Bertrand Aristide won the 1990 election easily, garnering 67%

of the vote, well ahead of the candidate put for ward by the United States.
But before Aristide could make any serious effort to tackle the problems
he inherited, his government was overthrown by the Haitian military at

424
 Conado's War on -r,.
H.rror

the behest of thehCIA. What ensued was ch aos,. the maJonty,

. . who backed
~
Aristide, fill edh'lt e hstreets
. . and demanded ,·ust·ice and the restoration of
democracy, w I et e military unleashed viole t
. 'd b I nee o try to quell the pro-
tests. Anst1 e are. y hescaped the country with h'1s 111e, ., and up to 5000
eople were killed m t e street battles between 1991 d 19
P l .d h an 94. As many as
40,000 p_eo~ e tne to escape t e vi~lence by sailing to the United States,
and the mflux of refugees.- comb med with a remarkable mternat1onal. .
S
well of support for Aristide - prompted the us government to brmg .
ack the president they . had already overthrown·1J1 Restored to power .m
b
1994, Aristide was given strict orders from the World Bank: «The reno-
vated ~t~te_must ~o~us o~ an econ~mic strategy centred on the energy
and init1at1ve of c1vtl society, especially the private sector, both foreign
and national:' 132 What the West wanted was an unambiguously capitalist
Haiti, ideally ruled by someone who could convince the masses to quietly
accept their lot.
Aristide presided over a new round of elections, peacefully transferred
power to the winner and planned to campaign again in 2000. His party
won handily in the 2000 elections and Aristide began a new term in office,
on the promise that he would reform Haiti's economic system, bringing
relief to the poor. On the spurious claim of election irregularities, the
George W Bush administration in Washington withheld aid and imposed
sanctions on Aristide's government. In spite of that pressure, Aristide was
able to take measures to alleviate poverty: he raised taxes on the rich and
used the money to introduce literacy programs, to build new schools,
hospitals and clinics, to create new public sector jobs, to subsidize the
133
cost of essential goods and to raise the country's minimum wage. Even
these minor reforms were enough to make a substantial difference in the
lives of the poorest Haitians, and Aristide's efforts were praised by the
Food and Agricultural Organization, which awarded him a gold medal
for providing food security. 1·"' Indeed, according to Peter Hallward, it was
precisely Aristide's capacity to effect real change in Haiti that made him
so dangerous to Western interests:
Aristide w;.1s a threat because he proposed modest but practi-
cal steps toward popular political empowerment, because he
proposed widely shared popular demands in terms that made
immediate and compelling sense to most of the Haitian pop~la-
tion, because he formulated these demands within the constramts
of the existing constitutional structure, because he helped to

425
-►--"

Ca1111da In t lie:- World

orgm1ize a relatively united and effective political party that

quickly came to dominate that structure - and in particular
bec.mse he did aU this after eliminating the main mechanism
that the elite had relied upon to squash all previous attempts at
political change: the army. 135

In addition to dramatically reducing the power and size of the armed

forces, Aristide further set himself apart with his willingness to name
colonialism, racism and capitalism as the source of the problems in
the country. The French had banned all variations of the Haitian Vodu
religion, but Aristide - the Catholic priest - gave them official recog-
nition in the country. 13<> Aristide also removed restrictions on the use of
the Haitian Creole language and, indeed, to the masses he spoke Creole,
not French, asserting the dignity, creativity and wisdom of Haiti's masses
against colonial claims of superioi:ity. 137 And he directly criticized capital
and colonialism: "The exploiters justify and legalize the exploitation of
the majority by a minority:' he argued, and his new party, Lavalas, was
built upon the Creole slogan, "Yon sel nou feb; ansanm nou fo; ansanm,
se
ansamn nou Lava/as" (Alone we are weak; united we are strong; all
together we are a cleansing torrent). 138
This kind of language was never going to go over well in Ottawa. A
state that was built on colonialism and had replicated its dynamics for
over a century around the world was not predisposed to welcome such a
critical position to the table of "civilized" nations. In the l 990s, Canada's
direct involvement in Haiti was minimal and indirect. But by the early
2000s, Canada was anxious to take on a greater role in the maintenance of
a capitalist workshop in Haiti, having increasingly invested itself both in
the US imperial machine in general and in Haitian exploitation specifically.

"Friends of Haiti"
Most notable among Canadian investors in Haiti was Gildan Activewear,
a sweatshop clothing manufacturer that had extensive operations in the
two poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti and Honduras.
In addition to its own exploitative factories, Gildan also subcontracted in
Haiti to a company owned by Andy Apaid, a member of the old elite and
a violent opponent ofAristide. Apaid led a business council that opposed
Aristide, had financially supported the first coup against him and forced

426
 Canada's Wor on Terror

his workers to atten~ anti-Aristide protests. He also had a lengthy record

of wage theft.and fi~•~g workers f~r complaining about it.139 Not surpris-
ingly, Canadian mm~ng c~mpames like KWG Resources, Ste-Genevieve
Resources and Eurasian Minerals also had their eyes on Haiti and would
ain major concessions after the 2004 coup.
g Foil owing the election of Aristide in 2000, Canada began stepping up
its efforts to undermine the Haitian president. In addition to cutting off
all aid, Secretary of State Denis Paradis hosted the "Ottawa Initiative on
Haiti:' wherein leaders from Canada, the US and France met in a beau-
tiful house in Meech Lake, Quebec, to discuss the future of Haiti. This
zo03 gathering called itself the "Friends of Haiti" and, needless to say, no
Haitians were present. 140 Paradis explained later that "the international
community wouldn't wait for the five-year mandate of President Aristide
to run its course through to 2oos:• Instead, said Paradis, "Aristide should
go:•1 41 Haiti's "friends" claimed to be acting in the spirit of democracy pro-
motion, claiming that a set oflegislative elections in 2003 were illegitimate
and proved that Aristide was establishing a dictatorship. That more than
60% of the Haitian population had participated in the elections, which
were deemed free and fair by independent monitors, was a detail that did
little to blunt Canada's edge. In fact, Aristide had, on several occasions
after his re-election in 2000, offered to hold another round of elections to
satisfy the complaints of the capitalist powers, knowing that his Lavalas
Party would easily win. 142
Canada's commitment to defying Haitian democracy was such that it
sent officials to meet on several occasions with Haitian opposition groups.
Many of these groups had links to the old Tonton Macoutes and other
violent paramilitaries, but they received generous funding from Canada
to support their project of overthrowing Aristide. 143 That funding was
1
used to foment chaos and violence to undermine Aristide s project; bas-
ing themselves in the Dominican Republic, armed groups would attack
government offices and police stations - and in one case the Presidential
Palace itself- and kidnap and torture Aristide supporters. As this violence
escalated, the fact that Aristide had dismantled much of the armed forces
made it difficult for him to re-assert control. In fact, many of the insur-
gents attacking his government were former members of the military that
had been reduced by Aristide.144 As this opposition waged low-intensity
civil war, occupying cities and killing those who resisted, the Canadian
embassy reported it as "liberation:'145

427
 C onoJa in I h e W o rld

C anada's role in H.1iti gre w substan tially a r ound the e vent of Aristidls
O\'crthrow. Having taken a key place in the pla nni n g a nd prepara tion,
C a nada sent members of its Joint Ta s k Force 2 to Haiti's capital city on
Febr uary 29, 2004, to secure the ai rport for A ris tide's re movaJ. With the
US d oing the heavy Hft.in g, A ristide w as flown into exile for a second
lim~. The architec ts of the coup establis h ed a council of "wise p eople"
chose n by officials from C a n ada, t he U n ited State s and F ranc e and tha t
council appointed an interim government, c h oosing Ger a rd Latortue - a
ncoliberal economist who had lived in F lo rida for two d ecad es - to be
Hai ti's n ew rulcr. 1 • 11 Capital Hc ked its lips as the W o r1d Bank n o ted that
this reg ime provided ..a wind ow of opportunity for i mpleme nting eco-
no m ic governance refon ns . . . t h at n-iay b e hard for a future go ve rnment
to u ndo :' 14 7 Th~ measures taken to intensify n e olibe r al capitalism in Haiti
included : privatization of elect ricity, w a ter. te leco1nmunica tions and port
facilities; redu ctions to m inimu m wage and to s ubsidies for poor farmers;
a three-year tax holiday for big b u sin ess; and the d ismantling of many
existing social programs, including the ver y s u ccessful literacy programs
Aristide had fostered . us
H aiti was to be permanently rem a d e by the very powers that had never
forgiven it for rev olting in the first place. The irony w as palpable, and
Haitians reacted with under stand able a n g er. Pro tests r ocked the country
as people demanded the restoratio n of their legitimate government. It was
in this moment that Canad a stepped u p to the pla te to prove that it was
on e of the big boys in the delicate art o f subverting d emocracy, stifling
dissent and imposing pred atory capitalism on a poor country. 14"'
To strengthen l..atortue's hold o n p ower, Cana d a sent more than 500
troops to Haiti to smash t he uprising of A ris tide's supporters. The Haitian
National Police (H NP) was recon s t itu ted a nd filled with members of
the paramilitary group s, w h o n ow turned their guns on the protestors
deman ding Aristide's r e turn. As man y a s 100 0 p e ople were killed in the
first weeks following th e coup, and that num b er w o uld more than triple
within a few months. Not only did Canad ian troop s take part in the repres-
sion, but over 100 RC MP officers were sent to Haiti to train and provide
"op erational planning and implem e nta tio n » for the HN P, particularly
around crowd control and intelligen ce gathe ring. The H N P would receive
$20 million in Canad ian funding between 2004 and 2006, making Canada
a direct p artner an d particip ant in the m ost h o rrific period of bloodshed
Haiti had experienced sin ce the days of military r u le. 150

428
 Conodo's Wor on Terror

After the toppling of its democracy, life in Haiti became a full-fledged

. htmare. In addition to a steep decline into ever more extreme poverty
nag rnuch so t hat m . t ernat10na
' .
I Journa 1·1sts reguIarly reported people
_ so
sifting through rotting garb~ge piles to find something to eat - violence
, d impunity surged following the coup. Locals reported that names of
aneople targeted 1or
r assassmat · ·
ton were bemg· read over the radio, in an
Ph of the crisis in Rwanda:
ec 0
Every afternoon around 4 pm names are broadcast. Perhaps they
are on a list of those whom the new government wants to arrest,
or perhaps listeners call in with the name of so-and-so. All are
linked with Aristide in some way. Some of those named soon
disappear. 1s1

While much of the violence was carried out by the Canadian-led

HNP, the UN forces sent to support the new dictatorship also had blood

00
their hands; in just one incident in 2005, as many as 60 people were
killed by UN troops in a Port-au-Prince slum. Anthony Fenton and Yves
Engler detail it:
Residents of Cite Soleil said UN forces shot out electric transform-
ers in their neighbourhood. People were killed in their homes
and on the street as they went to work. According to journalists
and eyewitnesses, one man named Leon Cherry, age 46, was shot
and killed on his way to work for a flower company. Another
man, Mones Belizaire, was shot as he readied for work in a local
sweatshop and died later from an infection. An unidentified street
vendor was shot in the head and killed instantly. One man was shot
in his ribs while brushing his teeth. Another was shot in the jaw
as he left his house to make some money to pay his wife's medical
costs and endured a slow death. Yet another man named Mira
was shot and killed while urinating in his home. A mother, Sena
Romelus, and her two young children were killed in their home,
152
either by bullets or by an 83-CC grenade thrown by UN forces.

This was not the end of Canada's imperial adventure in Haiti but, really,
its beginning. "We're building a really nice hotel:' explained Sgt. Maj.
Kirby Burgess, describing the construction of a massive military base
153
to house the mostly Canadian and US forces in Haiti. After the coup,
Canada began to establish a more permanent presence in the country,

429
 Co n odo In the World

establishing deeper trade networks, a new emb assy lo be built by C anadian

firm SNC- Lavalin an<l a n extensive a rrangement o f aid programs mostly
designed to maintain government depend en ce on C anada, rather than
support communities. Canada spent $35 m illion trying to manufacture
the outcome il wanted in the 2006 elections; th e preferred Lavalas can -
didate was th rown in jail to prevent his e ven runnin g a campaign, wh ile
the less-popular Lavalas candidate was allowed to run but faced a wide
range of m.lnipulations to try to prevent his victory. • ~◄
When a major earthquake hit the co untry in 2 0 I o . Can ad a seized the
opportunity to play the hero, sending over 2000 troop s to aid its neigh -
bour in a time of need. But most Haitians saw, i n t h e C anadian presence,
an intensely militarized operation that focused more o n rebuilding the
infrastructure of economic exploitation th an that of local communities.
The earthquake was, by all accounts,. disastrous, killing a quarter of a mil-
lion people and d isplacing six times that number. Nonetheless, the level
of devastation was, as Justin Podur n otes, a con sequ e n ce of "the q uality
of housing construction and the lack of en fo rcement of building codes,
dense populations living in these unsafe buildi ngs near the epicentre of
the earthquake, and the lack of in frast ructur e for response:•155 In short,
the dismantling of Haitian society, especially after 2004, is what made the
earthquake of 2010 so deadly.
Furthermore, the actual ear thquake aid and r econstr uct ion was widely
described as a "travesty.,; 156 The organization o f relief efforts was chaotic,
given that the Haitian state was effectively incapacitated and the work
was contracted o ut to various foreign gover nments and NGOs. More
importantly, most of th,e money that poured into Haiti was funnelled
right back into the pockets of Canad ian and US corporations and NGos,
and occasionally to wealthy Haitfans. Pro blems as basic as the cleanup
of rubble from the earthquake could have been solved by paying poor
Haitians to do the work, thus performin g a crucial task while pumping
resources into a society tha t need ed the m . Instead , t he work was given
to big capital - compan ies like DRC, A shBritt, DA I, C he monics - and
big NGOS, which used a huge portio n of the aid money the y received to
pay and support their own staff. 157 Even conservative estin1ates suggest
that billions of dollars went to the salar ies and am enities provided to NGO
workers and the spectacle ofluxury hotels springing up in a city literally
reduced to rubble did little to assure H aitians that the international com-
munity had come to h elp .

430
 Canada 's War on Terror

Given all of this, ~ow did Canad ians emerge with the perception that
_ asper the MS Socie ty- they had helped Haiti? In the most immediate
sense, it was because a massive infrast ructure of misinformation _ in
some cases full-fledged propag anda - had misled the Canadian public
about what was happe ning there. Justin Podur elaborates:

Many non-go vernm ental institu tions (NGos), especially those

that are well-fu nded, are an instrum ent of the foreign policy of
powerf ul countr ies. These countr ies use their foreign agencies
to fund NGOS in poor countr ies. These NGos can do "develop-
ment:' "demo cracy promo tion:' "huma n rights promotion;• or
any numbe r of very benevo lent-so unding activities. The logic of
their fundin g source s pushes their policies and public political
statements in the directi on of the foreign policy of their donors.
These statem ents are then picked up by the press, by official
spokespeople , and by progressives in the rich countries as being
158
the voices of the grassro ots of the poor countries.

Thus, the directives of Canad ian foreign policy were recast as though
they came from the voices of poor Haitians. So that even while actual
Haitians in Haiti were angry at the presence of militarized Canadian
"aid,, after the earthq uake, Canad ians were led to believe that Haitians
were desper ately clamo uring for Canada's benevolence. This assumption
was helped by the soothi ng public presen ce of Michaelle Jean, Haitian-
Canadi an Gover nor-Ge neral, who reassu red the public that Canada and
Haiti had a strong and mutua lly beneficial relationship. But for this to
work, the story needed to fit with what that public already thought it knew.
For Canad ians, the domin ant narrative remain ed rooted in the colonial
imagin ation. Canad ians believed that Haitians• struggles were a produc t
of their own "backw ardnes s:• their lack of moder n institutions, technol-
ogy and political structu res. Given that "backwardness:• it could only be
an act of genero sity for Canad a to have involved itself in that countr y at
all, and any proble ms that may have come from Canada's presence could
only have been a produ ct of Haiti's own failings. Thus, even when C~nada
10
overth rew a democ ratic govern ment, trained and supported a v lent
dictato rship and used the crisis as an opport unity to_ extra_ct further
wealth from a countr y alread y suffering, Canad ians still believed they
had gone there to help. f
0
In 2016, with Haitia n institu tions in turmoi l from so many years

431
 Cnuiulo 111 1hc \X'orlJ

• Cnnnclian officials ~colded the country fior the

I ,tcrfercm.:c, notably I k
nortlwrn 1 ~ Ja had cndeavoure<l to create,"mo~t . ' ac of
thJt cana
probIclll' , ...1hey nccJ some tough love, said one official • a,ter r.
• ,I dc111ocr,1C), NGos r th
hlll(llOm , C41,nda for Jona ting money to Canadian . a er
, · •crilie1zc< 1 dian ofhci als rcsi>o n- 1
Ilo1t1Jn.s government J irec1l y. Cana ued
tO the Ila 11t an .
h the)' could not give mone y to the l laitia n gover n.in
t illl •
b , clairntng t1u11
ent
> . , ,
"kki,tocrac y." F.van Dyer . . h 1-1 i . "
repor ting on the situa tion fi
d I I or
becau ~c tt ,,os o d that "everyone ha rn, 1t w11 .a t1, as if the cou t
· . n ry
11I c cue. exp 1u1nc drew an old quote fro
'I •d teenager. The article irom cally
h bl nt
were a spo1.c t J,,rn-llcrtrJnd Anst1 , .d
eon t e pro• ems with Hair1an
former prcs1c1en c.:, had Anstlde .overt hrow 1,, .in
• • if Canada had not twice ., , .
political part1e ~. a 5
for fail ·in
•er the ver)' 'ikleptocrats it was now chashsmg . g
order to empo \ ' . .
ro hold proper elections. The im~cna~ hubn ~ ~1/as stagg ering , as Cana da
. d f the Haitian eJite playtng poht1cal games on the donor's
compIame o
• .C." IS~
d1m

Otta wa and Empire: Can a da

and the Hon dura n Dic tato rshi p
ic
Canada's intervention in Haiti was brash, but if there was an emblemat
case of the new Canadian imperialism in the 21st century, it may actually
have been Canada's more subtle support for a military coup in Honduras
in 2009 and the dictatorship that followed. The coup interrupte
d a process
ofsocial reform that had only begun to gain momentum in the early 2000s
of
but which had mobilized millions of people around a range of issues
r
serious consequence to their lives. These included the need for bette
ss
jobs and higher wages, the recovery of campesino land from agribusine
and capitalist mega-projects, the protection of Indigenous and Garffuna
an
land and resources, reversal of the privatization of public services,
end to impunity for polke violence, confrontation of the patriarchal
st
institutions and patterns that led to discrimination and violence again
and
women and LGBTQ people, a reduction in the prevalence of criminal
to
street gangs and the insec urity that fostered, and ultimately the need
h
radica lly restructure society to facilitate a more equitable share of wealt
and power. 160
Honduras had been devastated by the US occupation in the l 980s dur-
,
ing the Contra Wars and the impo sition of neoliberalism in the 1990s
but by the 2000s people were ready to push back. What began as a series

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