One Cannot Assassinate Ideas or a Cause

(Français)

“Finally, the bandit has been killed!”

That was the headline of the newspaper Le Nouvelliste the day after the assassination, near Grande Rivière du Nord, of Charlemagne Péralte, the leader of the Caco guerrillas, on Nov. 1, 1919 by U.S. Marines Herman Hanneken and William Button during the first U.S. military occupation on Haiti from 1915-1934.

This murder did not prevent the fight against U.S. imperialist aggression in Haiti from continuing. Péralte’s name went down in history as he became the emblematic figure symbolizing anti-imperialist struggle in Haiti.

So, let us not be surprised if a similar headline reappears in a certain media to the extent that it constitutes the dream so coveted by a large number of servants of neocolonial imperialism.

The current Transitional Presidential Council (TPC) is neither a regime of dialogue nor a democratic regime, as the capitalists claim to have established. This is an executive body that is pulling out all the stops, not to solve the problem of insecurity, violence, and work to get the country out of its current state, but to eliminate certain troublesome individuals, or at least one of the most publicized figures of the moment, the former police officer, leader of the Viv Ansanm (Living Together) movement, Jimmy Cherizier.

This would hardly be a surprise. It is very obvious that his assassination has long been planned, or at least dreamt of. This project was relaunched following the failure on Nov. 20 of Haitian authorities at the United Nations to transform the ongoing Multinational Security Support (MSS) mission in Haiti into a UN Peace Keeping Operation (PKO). The proposal came up against the orderly and organized position of Russia and the People’s Republic of China, which both opposed it.

For the record, let us recall that the project to transform the MSS into a UN PKO is not an initiative of Haiti’s puppet leaders. These lackeys have only cynically repeated like parrots what their master, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, had dictated to them publicly during his last lightning visit to Port-au-Prince.

This failure was combined with a spectacular interview which Cherizier gave on Nov. 12 on Radio Mega’s program “Boukante Lapawòl,” hosted by Guerrier Henri, which flooded us with information, including the news that the TPC had sent emissaries, including the well-known activist Dickson Oreste, to negotiate with certain leaders of the neighborhood armed groups. Cherizier reported that he, along with two other armed group leaders, had conversations on Dickson’s phone with TPC member Louis Gérald Gilles, the former neo-Lavalas senator who has since joined the PHTK camp.

Whether an authentic leader is alive or dead, the noble causes he defends will remain lit like a flame until the cauldron fueled by the people explodes.

Indeed, it might have seemed like this was fake news, fabricated from whole cloth, in order to damage the regime which seems opposed to any dialogue for fundamental change and to get the country out of the impasse in which it is cornered. But, once the news was publicized, the TPC panicked and tried to paralyze the country with cleverly orchestrated intrigues, while threatening anyone who had contact with its own emissaries.

Indeed, the worst thing happened when Dickson was assassinated on Mon., Nov. 18, 2024 in Delmas 48, very close to the Altagrace Catholic Church. Many wondered why was he shot? Many others also wondered: why did the TPC say nothing and not even demand an investigation into the suspicious shooting of its special envoy?

The capitalists always committ gross stupidities trying to defend themselves. Thus the TPC’s first reaction was to move automatically to blind repression, ordering the closure of “Boukante Lapawòl” under the pretext that it was fueling hate speech peddled by the “bandits” and also by mounting a series of major military and police operations, with 14 tanks and two armored bulldozers, against the working-class neighborhood of Delmas 6 in an attempt to assassinate their main accuser, Jimmy Cherizier. Is the government really ready to gamble everything by playing this assassination card?

Of course, the oligarchy’s rule, that is to say the capitalist system’s survival, is always maintained through fierce, destructive repression, which also diverts attention and hides the truth, so that no insight is possible. We must continue to resist this government, these jackals clinging to power, who only reserve for us a future of misery.

We affirm: this corrupt bourgeois system that oppresses and exploits the underprivileged classes, our only way out of its grip is through its total destruction, to replace it with a dynamic, progressive state that rejects all foreign domination and allows the blossoming of a socialist revolution. A pretext is always found, use force to eliminate the symptom without really treating the disease. These reactionaries think that by resorting to terrible violence they can win the battle and continue to perpetuate this corrupt system. It is a miscalculation to think that this situation can be resolved by totalitarianism.

The political class and the bourgeoisie are mistaken, and their role is very clear. Far from being fighters for the people, they are patent agents of imperialism. They can kill or assassinate any fighter, but it will not get them anywhere, especially not to victory, since killing one or more leaders will not succeed in silencing their disciples, their companions, much less in killing the ideas and convictions that motivated them. So many leaders have been killed, but they have become martyrs, permanent symbols, more powerful dead than alive.

Whether an authentic leader is alive or dead, his ideals and the noble causes he defends or initiates will remain lit like a flame until the cauldron fueled by the people explodes once and for all.

As long as things remain unchanged, the page will not be turned. Ideas will be renewed among young fighters because they are immortal and, in a perspective of class struggle, these young people will become more seasoned fighters, more determined, profoundly more mature and truly more committed to the cause, their cause, the liberation of Haiti from the grip of this anti-patriotic political elite won over by and delivered to the Western imperialists.