On Jun. 20, 2025, thousands of Haitians marched peacefully through the dusty streets of southwestern Port-au-Prince to demand schools, hospitals, roads, water, and electricity for their neighborhoods, the removal of the Washington-installed nine-member Transitional Presidential Council (CPT) along with Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aimé, whom it appointed, an end to the police force’s explosive drone attacks, and for the U.S., France, and Canada to stop meddling in Haiti.
With marchers coming from Bizoton, Ti Bois, and Fontamara, the giant demonstration poured down the main road of Carrefour, a dilapidated seaside neighborhood which receives no government services and is under siege by the Haitian National Police (PNH).
This blockade is because that flank of the capital is governed by the Viv Ansanm (Let’s Live Together) political party, whose local leader, Caïd Christ-Roi Chéry, known as “Krisla,” called the demonstration to which the thousands of protestors loudly turned out.
“This country has to see change,” said one elderly woman demonstrator. “We are not living well.”
“Haiti is the mother of liberty,” said Krisla, sitting atop a sound-truck, in his speech for the occasion. “Today Haiti is in danger. We have to unite to save this country. We are under the thieving CPT, thieving ministers, those kidnappers, those bourgeois, they buy drones to kill the popular masses… But we are the nation’s children, Dessalines’ children. My friends! Rise up for us to struggle against the corrupt bourgeoisie, the thieving politicians, the foreigners’ lackeys, the U.S.’s lackeys, their servants!”
In a long interview after the demonstration with the YouTube program Live Tanbou Verite a, hosted by journalist and commentator Ralph Laurent, Krisla explained the reasons behind and goals of the mobilization.
“Many people are becoming conscious of the critical state of our nation,” he said. “We have a country to save. Today, we have to not only fight our own corrupt government, but we have to watch out for the [neighboring] Dominican Republic too. We think there is a plot hatched by the United States, Canada, and France to have the Dominicans militarily occupy us.”
This suspicion may be stoked by the project of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to convince the Organization of American States (OAS) – what Cuba calls Washington’s Ministry of Colonial Affairs – to deploy a “peace-keeping” force (as it did in the Dominican Republic in 1965) to Haiti, given the disastrous performance of the Washington-financed Multinational Security Support mission (MSS), led by Kenya.
“We have a prime minister, who is a shareholder of an airline [the Haitian company Sunrise Airways], and his government gave [the airline] $11 million,” Krisla continued. “They’re paying mercenaries to come to the country to kill people and attack them with drones. Meanwhile, there are many people, many children, sleeping in the streets. What have they done for them? Giving them a little plate of rice is of no use to them. Today, we are saying to the Haitian people, rise up, these people are doing nothing for you.”
Krisla then took up the themes often articulated by Viv Ansanm’s principal leader and spokesman, Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier.
“Today, we have to save Haiti, and to save it, we need to struggle against this stinking rotten system. Because this system is the servant of the foreigners [U.S., France, Canada]. It’s doing nothing for us. We have to struggle against this system to overthrow it. Today, these people have a problem with us in the ghetto because they see we are not afraid of them.”
Although many in Haiti and its diaspora were amazed at the many thousands who turned out, Krisla claimed that it could have been larger because “remember, they are terrorizing the people with drones, and many people are afraid; there would have been a lot more people if they weren’t scared” of the drone attacks.
Calling it “a demonstration against the CPT, the Prime Minister, and the entire power structure,” Krisla explained that “my comrades in Viv Ansanm proposed this demonstration to me” and “this movement is going to grow widely. Soon you will see the people of every Viv Ansanm neighborhood and area rise up.”
As the fourth anniversary of President Jovenel Moïse’s assassination approaches on Jul. 7, disgust with the CPT, which is dominated by his opponents, is growing.
“Who are making Haiti’s decisions?” Krisla asked rhetorically. “A bunch of slaves, tools of the foreigners. Imagine, we have a country where mercenaries came in and killed the president because the U.S. gave them the green-light… Today you tell me you’re going to send more mercenaries to fire on the people?”
He predicted that “soon Viv Ansanm will put two million people in the street. For Haiti, there’s no sacrifice we won’t make.”
In the march, there were many signs with Viv Ansanm slogans. “Aba enjerans blan!” (Down with foreign meddling), “Viv Ansanm. Yon lòt Ayiti posib” (Let’s live together. Another Haiti is possible.), and “Liberasyon esklavaj mantal” (Freedom from ideological slavery).
“We want to live like humans,” said one woman demonstrator. “Instead they treat us like cattle without any owner. If it rains for two hours, we’ll pass two hours in misery. We can’t sleep, can’t eat. We get sick, but there are no doctors or hospitals. Help!”In closing, Krisla expressed a widespread sentiment in many of Haiti’s poor neighborhoods. “Haiti is rich. These foreign mercenaries and powers are coming after our gas and mineral wealth, our gold.”
He expressed in very personal and concrete terms the class struggle that now engulfs Haiti.
“We are of the people,” he said. “We come from the popular quarters. They say that people from our neighborhoods are not people. When Viv Ansanm comes to power, we will arrest many guys. Both politicians and bourgeois… They sell drugs, ammunition, guns, body organs. Then they put out the lie that it’s Viv Ansamn selling organs? The hospitals these things come from are not in our neighborhoods!… THEY are trafficking in organs. Everything they accuse us of doing, it’s THEY who are doing it…. One day, Haiti will change.”
