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It was 1 a.m. on Wednesday. Who was at the time the President of HaitiJovenel Moïse, he had a few minutes to live, but he did not know it. Maybe he was in his bed next to his wife. His residence was located in Pélérin, a district of Port Prince which is full of luxurious homes and surveillance. He did not have the intuition that people moved among the shadows riddled with 12 shots and leave your partner seriously injured.
“The president had a guard inside and outside the house, and also on the road. To approach it, it was necessary to pass controls ”, explained the Haitian journalist. Milo Milfort in dialogue with MDZ Radio.
Milo serves a Site status It will last two weeks and you have a feeling that the next few days will be crucial. “Scenes were lived like in the movies and obviously it was a very well prepared action, “he said.
“People are stuck at home, listening to the radio”
The rooms of the presidential residence were ransacked. The first lady was taken to hospital and later transferred to Miami, where he would be stable. And the country was in the middle of a uncertainty without brake, between armed bands which dominate much of the territory and foreign powers which again consider the possibility of a intervention.
The city of Port-au-Prince and its surroundings attract around 6 million people. “And now we have this apparent calm. The streets are almost empty people stay in the houses and the schools did not function normally during the week. The hours that follow can be decisive. We are all watch out for the radio to find out what’s going on, “says the interviewee.
Zombie status
On page 876 of the manual Oxford Illustrated Companion to Medicine (Oxford University Press, 2001) it is indicated that Haitian legislation – in article 246 of its Penal Code – established penalties for the offense of “zombification” to a human being. The tradition of turning someone into a moving corpse has its origin in this small Caribbean country, where the line that separates life from death it can become so thin that it is indistinguishable.
There are dozens of armed mafias who challenge state power
The Haitian state, in fact, could be described as nail zombie institution. It does not have a monopoly on violence and is not in a position to be the synthesis of a stable hegemonic situation. Various sources indicate that there are dozens of mafias. It would be more than 70, although for the journalist Milfort are more: at least 100.
“They have weapons of war and they make money from kidnappings. Imagine that it was not until June that there was more than 200 kidnappings and about 150 murders. Added to this is the presence of mercenaries other countries, which have been here for a long time, ”adds Milo.
Kidnappings are almost random, not necessarily rich people. Sometimes they take a street vendor, a teenage girl playing in the street, a child. Criminals demand ransoms and families are doing what they can to pay. Murders, on the other hand, obey intergangs or political affairs. On June 30, for example, 19 people were reportedly killed in a massacre, including a feminist activist.
The gang (band) the greater the G9, which is the alliance between nine organizations that have strengthened their power and are led by the old police Jimmy cherizier, nicknamed Barbecue (roast). In June, the group called for a “revolution” against economic and political elites. However, many civilians they doubt the real intentions behind this slogan.
Either way, the United Nations warned months ago that the Caribbean Republic was recording “unprecedented” levels of violence due, in part, to the large number of weapons – around 500,000 – in circulation.
There aren’t that many companies supplying guns to gangs in Haiti.. If you wanted to, they might be detected and penalized. But it is possible that no one mentions this data because the selling countries –The United States among them– They are the ones who have the greatest lobbying capacity in the major information networks.
Unpredictable end
Oscar Cordoba He is Argentinian and has been in Haiti for a little over a year and a half, in an internationalist solidarity brigade made up of leaders from Latin America. His work focuses in particular on help peasant communities.
Oscar claims that Moses was a de facto government. “On February 7, his mandate was constitutionally fulfilled. He decided to stay in power with the consent of the security forces. He tried to legitimize this state of affairs through two calls for constitutional referendums which were repelled by huge mobilizations in April and June, which led the government to call for elections that -in theory- they were going to be in September, ”he explains.
In these elections, a president, deputies, senators and local authorities were to be elected. Córdoba says the vote was expected because “since 2018 the Congress has been closed and not functioning”. “But now – he observes – everything is under the cover of doubt. No one knows if there will be free and democratic elections. In the middle, the growth of gangs, it only feeds the idea of foreign intervention on the island.
Threat
According to government sources, witnesses to the assassination of Moses claimed that the mercenaries who killed the president they spoke spanish and english. Over the hours, some detainees were shown to be responsible for the action: these suspects are not Haitians.
It is at least 15 Colombians and 2 Americans. However, the thesis of external interventionism is only mentioned whisper in television chronicles. It would be different from singing if the accused had come from other parts of the continent.
However, there is another possibility. The alternate version states that the captured aliens fell into a trap, that they were hired as security personnel, and that the real killers of Moses they were their own guards. The prosecutor of Port-au-Prince, Claude bedford, argued this theory: “I did not see any injured policeman, only the president and his wife. If they are responsible for presidential security, where were they? What did they do to prevent this from happening?”.
Meanwhile, the best of the best Haitian – including the Prime Minister, Claude joseph– asks the United States to send troops “stabilize the situation”.
Will the United States intervene? Haitians know how this “humanitarian aid” usually ends. In 1915, in the midst of another wave of political crimes, the Marines landed. This is how the inhabitants they lost control of their country for decades. The last American soldiers -of this batch: there would be more- they did not leave until 1934.
Beyond moralistic readings, there are concrete vectors; balance of power within the ruling bloc. If the panorama is evaluated from Political economicsIt seems that the Haitian elites are not able to articulate a viable project, not only to allow them to maintain the profits of always, but to prevent everything from getting out of hand. They just have a hard time getting the masses excited for a purpose.
And this lack of project can be linked to one of the most poisoned legacies of colonialism: the inability to think of one’s own society outside the mold of others. This is why the risk of interventionism and therefore of endless violence in sight.
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