Why Secretary of State Antony Blinken went to Haiti

Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Sept. 5 and 6, the first visit by a high level U.S. official in nearly 10 years. That means Blinken made a special visit to Haiti, a country that is the most exploited and poorest in the Western Hemisphere.

Anti-U.S. protest, Gonaives, Haiti, 2022 (Photo:dominicantoday.com)

It’s not like Washington lacks major diplomatic challenges elsewhere. For example: The proxy war between the U.S.-NATO and Russia in Ukraine, which is producing big strains on NATO; the Israeli genocide in Gaza, which potentially could instigate a broader conflict in West Asia and Washington’s arrogant intervention in the elections in Venezuela.

And of course, there is the ongoing U.S. hostility to People’s China shown by Washington’s implementation of 100% tariffs on China’s electric vehicles and U.S. military diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region. It is legitimate to ask, then, why did Blinken visit Haiti?

The Washington Post and the New York Times each published articles Sept. 5 giving one reason for the visit. If the Haitian state falls apart, they wrote, there will be a flood of asylum-seeking refugees from among the 11 million Haitians that will overwhelm U.S. facilities.

In 1915 U.S. imperialism began an occupation of Haiti that lasted until 1934. Washington still tries to control Haiti’s land and people.

A look at the State Department archives from the 1940s about the 1915-1934 U.S. occupation of Haiti gives a more basic reason for Blinken’s attention: “The United States Government had been interested in Haiti for decades prior to its occupation. As a potential naval base for the United States and other imperialist powers, Haiti’s stability was of great interest to U.S. diplomatic and defense officials who feared instability might result in foreign rule of Haiti.” (tinyurl.com/yc62sbms)

This report also contains the following phrase: “Following the successful [U.S.] manipulation of the 1915 elections …” It is unusual for the United States to openly admit election manipulation, which is a very serious crime under U.S. law as written, a law often flouted by U.S. agencies operating worldwide.

How Prime Minister Garry Conille was chosen

The last national election for president in Haiti was held in 2016, and the mandates of every elected official in Haiti expired in early 2023. Garry Conille, whose father was a minister in the Duvalier government, had been prime minister from 2011-2012 under President Michael Martelly, but Conille’s main area has been in the United Nations as a public health administrator. Conille was elected by six votes out of the seven voting members of Haiti’s Transitional Presidential Council (TPC), which was established at a meeting of CARICOM in March.

CARICOM is short for the Caribbean Community, an intergovernmental organization that is a political and economic union of 15 member states, mostly islands in the Caribbean Sea. Neither the United States nor Canada are members, nor are the islands of the French Antilles — St-Martin/Sint Maarten, St-Barthélemy, Guadeloupe and Martinique — which are legally part of France.

The Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) is a temporary body that was officially constituted in Haiti on April 12 and sworn in on April 24 this year to exercise the powers and duties of the president of Haiti either until an elected president is inaugurated or until Feb. 7, 2026, whichever comes first. It has nine members, seven with a vote.

Blinken had several meetings with Prime Minister Conille and Foreign Minister Dominique Dupuy in early July at the State Department in Washington. Blinken went to Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, for two days in early September, taking an extraordinary risk, to make sure that the world would know that the U.S. was supporting the presence of Kenyan cops in Haiti.

The U.S. government believes it can ignore the votes of millions of Venezuelans for Nicolás Maduro as their president but welcome a prime minister of Haiti who was elected with six votes.

What hypocrisy!