Chaos reigned in Haiti for a seventh straight day on February 13, as people continue to rise up against President Jovenel Mo茂se over his corruption, arrogance, false promises and straight-faced lies.
But the crisis will not be solved by Mo茂se鈥檚 departure, which appears imminent.
Today鈥檚 revolution shows all the signs of being as profound and unstoppable as the one that took place 33 years ago against dictator Jean-Claude 鈥淏aby Doc鈥 Duvalier and triggered five years of popular tumult.
Despite fierce repression, massacres, a bogus election and three coups d鈥櫭﹖at, the uprising culminated in the remarkable December 1990 landslide election of anti-imperialist liberation theologian Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
At a time when Nicaragua鈥檚 left-wing Sandinistas and the Soviet Union had just been vanquished, the Haitian people defeated Washington鈥檚 election engineering for the first time in Latin America since Salvador Allende鈥檚 victory in Chile two decades earlier.
Haiti鈥檚 example inspired a young Venezuelan army officer, Hugo Ch谩vez, to adopt the same playbook. Ch谩vez's election in 1998 helped kick off the 鈥減ink tide鈥 of left and centre-left governments across South America.
Just as Washington fomented a coup against Aristide on September 30, 1991, it carried out a similar one against Ch谩vez on April 11, 2002. But the latter was thwarted after two days by the Venezuelan people and the army鈥檚 rank-and-file.
Despite this victory, Ch谩vez understood that Venezuela鈥檚 political revolution could not survive alone and that Washington would use its vast subversion machinery and economic might to wear down his project to build 鈥21st century socialism鈥. Ch谩vez knew his revolution had to build bridges too, and set an example for, his Latin American neighbours, who were also under the US鈥檚 thumb.
Using Venezuela鈥檚 vast oil wealth, Ch谩vez began an unprecedented experiment in solidarity and capital seeding, the PetroCaribe Alliance, which was launched in 2005 and eventually spread to 17 nations across the Caribbean and Central America. It provided cheap oil products and favourable credit terms to member nations, throwing them an economic life-line when oil was selling for $100 a barrel.
By 2006, Washington had punished the Haitian people for twice electing Aristide (1990, 2000) with two coups d鈥櫭﹖at (1991, 2004) and two foreign military occupations carried out under the auspices of the United Nations. That year, the Haitian people managed to win a sort of stalemate by electing Ren茅 Pr茅val (an early Aristide ally) as president.
On the day of his May 14 inauguration, Pr茅val signed up for the PetroCaribe deal, greatly vexing Washington, as revealed by WikiLeaks-obtained聽secret US diplomatic cables. After two years of struggle, Pr茅val eventually got Venezuelan oil and credit, but Washington made sure to punish him too.
Following the January 12, 2010, earthquake, the Pentagon, State Department, and then-head of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission Bill Clinton, with some flunkies from the Haitian elite, virtually took over the Haitian government. In the lead up to the March 2011 election, they pushed out Pr茅val鈥檚 presidential candidate, Jude C茅lestin, and put in their own, Michel Martelly.
From 2011 to 2016, the Martelly group went on to embezzle, misspend and misplace the lion鈥檚 share of the capital account known as the PetroCaribe Fund, which since its creation in 2008 had basically kept Haiti afloat.
Martelly also used the money to help his prot茅g茅, Jovenel Mo茂se, come to power on February 7, 2017. Unfortunately for Mo茂se, having come to power just as Donald Trump did, he was about to become collateral damage in Washington鈥檚 escalating war against Venezuela.
Surrounded by a gaggle of anti-communist neo-cons, Trump immediately stepped up hostility against Venezuela, slapping far-ranging economic sanctions on Nicolas Maduro鈥檚 government.
Haiti was already in arrears in its payments to Venezuela, but the US sanctions now made it impossible to pay its PetroCaribe oil bill (or, at least, gave them a golden excuse not to). The Haiti PetroCaribe deal effectively ended in October 2017.
Life in Haiti, which was already extremely difficult, now became untenable.
With the Venezuelan crude spigot now closed, Washington鈥檚 enforcer, the International Monetary Fund, told Mo茂se he had to raise fuel prices, which he tried to do on July 6 last year.
The result was a three-day popular explosion which was the precursor to today鈥檚 revolt.
At about the same time, a mass movement began asking what had happened to the $4 billion in Venezuelan oil revenues that Haiti had received over the previous decade.
The PetroCaribe Fund was supposed to pay for hospitals, schools, roads and other social projects, but the people saw virtually nothing accomplished. Two 2017 Senate investigations confirmed that the money had been mostly diverted into other pockets.
So, what was the straw that broke the camel鈥檚 back? It was Mo茂se鈥檚 treachery against the Venezuelans after their exemplary solidarity.
On January 10, in a vote at the Organization of American States (OAS), Haiti voted in favour of a Washington-sponsored motion that said Maduro is 鈥渋llegitimate鈥 after he won more than two-thirds of the presidential vote last May.
Haitians were already angry about the unbridled corruption, hungry from skyrocketing inflation and unemployment, and frustrated from years of false promises and foreign military humiliation and violence.
But this spectacularly cynical betrayal by Mo茂se and his cronies, in an attempt to win Washington鈥檚 help to put out the growing fires beneath them, was the last straw.
Surprised and paralysed by its lack of options (and its own internal squabbles), Washington is now watching with horror at the not-so-sudden collapse of the rotten political and economic edifice it has built in Haiti over the past 28 years since its first coup d鈥櫭﹖at against Aristide.
The US Embassy is no doubt feverishly seeking to cobble together a stop-gap solution, using the UN, OAS, Brazil, Colombia and the Haitian elite as its helpers.
But the results are likely to be no more durable than they were in the late 1980s.
Ironically, it was Venezuelan solidarity that may have postponed for a decade the political hurricane now engulfing Haiti.
It is also fitting that US aggression against Venezuela鈥檚 Bolivarian Revolution has created a cascade of unintended consequences and blowback, fed by the Haitian people鈥檚 deep sense of gratitude and recognition for Venezuela鈥檚 contribution to them 鈥 just as Chavez and Maduro often said that PetroCaribe was given 鈥渢o repay the historic debt that Venezuela owes the Haitian people.鈥
[Abridged from .]