The National Palace following the 2010 earthquake. Photograph Source: Logan Abassi / UNDP Global – CC BY 2.0

Haiti is best understood in the contexts of the modern world as an American neocolonial protectorate. Besides US policy in Cuba, which includes a genocidal blockade depriving the Cuban people of precious resources needed to function society, it’s hard to find another case of such an ongoing and sustained assault from the largest empire in the world on a tiny island country like Haiti, which has been dominated by foreign rulers for well over five centuries at this point. It’s being exploited, looted, and destroyed for a few simple and extremely perverse purposes.

• Haiti is rich in resources and minerals. Western corporations will need the rare earth minerals, natural gas, and oil reserves as they’ve lost Russian resources. Western power is also declining in Africa—rich in oil, gas, minerals, etc—and the American empire seeks to compete with the Chinese on pioneering future technologies that use tons of rare earth minerals.

• Like Cuba, Haiti suffers from its strategic location to the US. If a tiny country located just off its coast can exercise proper self determination, then other countries suffering under the weight of American neocolonialism, who are bigger and stronger than Haiti, may get ideas of their own.

• Haiti was the only country established via slave rebellion—therefore an example needed to be made at the time. The roots of punishing those who dared to question their colonial rulers still lives with Haiti to this day.

As fascist Republicans spouted anti-immigrant rhetoric directed at Haitians and other migrants while gearing up for their mass deportation plan, the neoliberal Biden administration deported more people back to Haiti, as well as other Latin American and Caribbean countries, using COVID-era immigration policies, than even during Trump’s rule. The dehumanization of migrants (especially........

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