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Led by Haitian, Cuban and Venezuelan flags and flanked by 50 police officers on bicycles, over 1000 demonstrators marched about two miles on Jun. 5 from a union hall to the Ft. Lauderdale Convention Center, where the 35th General Assembly of the Organization of American States was in its opening day.
The three-day General Assembly was a spectacle of U.S. arrogance, in which Cuba, Venezuela and Haiti were vilified and threatened. Protestors came to the defense of the targeted countries, denouncing Washington’s schemes against them.
Cuba is the only nation in the hemisphere which is excluded from the OAS, which Cubans call Washington’s “Ministry for Colonial Affairs.” Venezuela is battling a U.S. campaign to isolate and overthrow president Hugo Chavez. Haiti is hostage of a U.S.-installed illegal government after elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped by U.S. Special Forces soldiers and flown into exile on Feb. 29, 2004.
The protest was largely organized by the Miami-based Haiti Solidarity Committee (HSC) and Little Haiti’s long-standing popular organization, Veye Yo. Hundreds of Latin Americans and North Americans joined Haitians, who made up about one-third of the demonstrators and called primarily for Aristide’s return to power in Haiti. Groups like the Bolivarian Circle of Miami, the Committee to Free the Five Cuban Heroes, the Green Party, and the Broward Anti-War Coalition also helped organize the protest.
“We are here to demand that the OAS live up to its rhetoric and refuse to seat the criminals who are here claiming to represent Haiti,” said the HSC’s Jack Lieberman, referring to the Haitian de facto regime’s delegation.“These criminals were put in power by Tonton Macoutes. They kidnapped the democratically elected government of Haiti and they have no basis for being here and they should be in jail. They should be charged for crimes against humanity. Just yesterday in Belair [a neighborhood in the capital], twenty people were murdered by this terrorist regime. Condoleeza Rice goes around Latin America talking empty phrases about freedom and democracy while she supports terrorism in Haiti. We say to [Secretary of State] Condoleeza Rice and George Bush, you are hypocrites.”
Lieberman also denounced the “free trade” policies championed by Bush and Rice, both of whom spoke at the meeting. “These treaties promote slave labor, they attack the living standards of American working people, they threaten our environment and they threaten the independence of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean,” Lieberman said. “There’s no free trade. It’s trade for the big corporations which dominate and rip off the people of the Third World.”
Michael Martinez of the Miami Bolivarian Circle agreed. “I would like to tell all the ministers here at the OAS who are fighting for slavery, the contamination of the environment, and the complete loss of sovereignty of all lands, that they cannot do this to Latin America because the people will rise up to take back what’s theirs,” he said. “We saw the attempted coup d’état in Venezuela in April 2002 backed by the U.S. government. What did the OAS do for the people? Nothing. What has been the message of the OAS? Impunity towards U.S. imperialism. The people want progress, not slavery. The people want freedom, not colonization. We want Aristide. We want Chavez. We want Fidel.”
Martinez also demanded freedom for the five Cuban agents now imprisoned in the U.S. for infiltrating Miami-based anti-Cuban terrorist cells and the extradition from a Texas jail of Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carilles to Venezuela, where he is charged with blowing up a Cuban airliner on Oct. 6, 1976, killing 73 people.
The demonstrators were penned in by 10 foot iron grills behind which dozens of black-clad and helmeted riot police stood at the ready.
“We are not birds,” said singer activist Farah Juste of Veye Yo. “We are human beings. We are tax payers.” Demonstrators were kept about a half-mile from where the delegates were meeting.
Other speakers included Marlène Bastien of Haitian Women of Miami and Yves Alcindor of the Boston chapter of the Lavalas Family party.
Father Gérard Jean-Juste, a pro-democracy leader in Haiti who was jailed for seven weeks in 2004, also addressed the crowd. “We want Haiti to return to constitutional order as soon as possible,” Jean-Juste said. “We want President Aristide to return as quickly as possible. No member of the OAS is supposed to take part in the coup d’état.”
Meanwhile, in the Convention Center’s vast halls, Washington was orchestrating a show to promote
