00:00More than 2,000 Salvadoran soldiers are in Haiti today, more soldiers than Haiti's entire
00:05army.
00:07The official reason, to rescue four aviation technicians who went missing in an ambush.
00:12But there's a detail, the plane that carried the first troops was a United States C-130,
00:18and the green light came from Donald Trump over the phone.
00:21In 1802, another foreign army landed in Haiti promising freedom.
00:26Its commander, General Leclerc, served an empire on the other side of the ocean.
00:31Today the question is, is Bukele the new Leclerc, the enforcer for a power that prefers not to
00:37be seen?
00:40To understand Haiti, start in 1804, it was the only revolution of enslaved people that won
00:46and founded a country, the colonial world never forgave it.
00:50In 1825, France charged Haiti an indemnity of 150 million francs to compensate the former
00:57slave owners.
00:58The United States only recognized Haitian independence in 1862.
01:03From 1915 to 1934, U.S. Marines occupied the country, at the urging of New York banking interests.
01:11In 2004, elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was flown out of the country on an American plane.
01:17In 2022, the French ambassador at the time, Thierry Bourcar, admitted to the New York Times
01:22that it was, in effect, a coup engineered by Paris and Washington.
01:27Then came the UN mission, MINUSTAH, from 2004 to 2017.
01:31It was marked by sexual abuse and by the 2010 cholera epidemic, which killed about 10,000
01:37people.
01:37For example, the UN apologized in 2016.
01:40Today, Haiti has not held national elections since 2016.
01:44Since February 2026, Prime Minister Alix Didier Fisseme has governed alone, with no electoral
01:50mandate, and the election was postponed again, now to July 2027.
01:55Keep this pattern in mind, foreign tutelage, governments nobody voted for, and the same old
02:01argument that Haitians cannot govern themselves.
02:06El Salvador was already in Haiti before the crisis.
02:09It had more than a hundred soldiers in the Gang Suppression Force, the GSF, the mission
02:14the United States proposed at the UN in 2025.
02:17They handled medical evacuations.
02:20On September 29, after the UN extended the GSF, El Salvador's Legislative Assembly renewed
02:26that participation with Decree 679.
02:29It passed with 57 votes with the usual procedure waived, 12 months, renewable, and no cap on
02:35troop numbers.
02:36Remember this detail, the law covers participation in the UN mission, most of the troops sent later
02:42are outside it.
02:43On October 18, four Salvadoran aviation technicians are ambushed in Croix de Buque.
02:49Bukele promises to rescue them and warns the gangs, he will finish them off, the way he
02:54finished off the gangs in El Salvador.
02:56First a hundred Special Forces go in.
02:59By October 28, there are more than 2,000, with attack helicopters, drones, and armored vehicles.
03:05That is more than the 1,500 soldiers in the entire GSF.
03:09On November 2, the first major ground offensive begins, on the cul-de-sac plain, against the
03:14400 Mawozo and Shenmachan gangs.
03:17Haitian press cited by the FA News Agency reports at least a dozen gang members killed.
03:22On November 3, police find the technicians burned out truck.
03:26The four men, no, the leader of 400 Mawozo, Wilson Joseph, says they died in the original
03:32attack but offers no proof.
03:34In other words, the rescue mission has become a war.
03:40The Haitian government applauded.
03:43Fissime said the foreign forces came to support the state, not to replace it.
03:47The UN did the opposite, it washed its hands.
03:51Spokesman Stéphane Dujeric said only about 200 Salvadorans are under the GSF, the rest is,
03:57in his words, a bilateral matter.
03:59According to the Miami Herald, these soldiers answer to a Salvadoran commander, and arrived
04:04without the human rights training the UN requires, and without a signed agreement with Haiti.
04:10On the ground, Doctors Without Borders counted 30 people wounded by gunfire and drone explosions
04:15in the eight days after October 18, including women and children, and a Haitian NGO reported
04:21civilian deaths from bombings.
04:23Bukele called the NGO a lobby for criminals.
04:26On November 2, hundreds of people marched in Canaan against the operation.
04:30A word of honesty here, Canaan is the stronghold of a gang leader sanctioned by the UN, and
04:36there are reports that residents were coerced into marching.
04:39But the fear of civilian deaths is real, and history backs it up.
04:45Officially, this is a sovereign decision by El Salvador, but look at who put the operation
04:50together.
04:51Bukele called Trump before sending reinforcements, and Trump confirmed he gave his blessing.
04:56According to the Miami Herald, the C-130 that carried the first troops was provided by the
05:01Pentagon, at the State Department's request.
05:04Columbia lent another Hercules, the helicopters came in through Dominican territory.
05:09And there's more, on October 26 and 27, Santo Domingo hosted, together with U.S. Southern
05:15Command, the meeting of the anti-cartel coalition Washington created, with 19 countries.
05:20That same week, Trump gave Bukele the green light.
05:23And notice the legal detail, most of the force is outside the UN.
05:28Outside the UN means outside the reports, outside the mission's rules of engagement,
05:33outside accountability.
05:34Washington gets the result without having to sign for it.
05:37Why outsource?
05:39Because the official mission never took off.
05:41The UN authorized 5,500 personnel for the GSF.
05:44On August 31, there were 1,213, from six countries.
05:49The United States wanted the force, but did not want to send its own soldiers or pay the
05:54bill.
05:54And who is paying this one?
05:56Bukele says El Salvador covers 90% of the costs.
06:00It's not just foreign troops.
06:02Since 2025, the Haitian government has had a contract with Vectis Global, the company of
06:06Eric Prince, founder of Blackwater and a Trump ally.
06:09Prince himself told Reuters the contract runs 10 years and includes setting up tax collection
06:14on the border with the Dominican Republic.
06:16According to CNN, the company keeps 10% of the new customs revenue.
06:21Human Rights Watch documented 1,243 people killed in 141 drone strikes by this task force
06:28between March 2025 and January 2026.
06:31Among them were at least 17 children with no links to gangs.
06:35And Human Rights Watch recorded that Prince hired Salvadoran operators to fly the drones.
06:39The picture is this, Washington sets the policy, private contractors and allied armies do the
06:45dirty work, and Haitians pay the human cost.
06:48For all this to look legal, you need a Haitian government that says yes, it exists.
06:54Fisseme is a businessman who chaired the Chamber of Commerce under the Martelli government.
06:59On January 23, 2026, a majority of the Transitional Council voted to dismiss him.
07:05The day before, the State Department had already declared that keeping him in office was essential.
07:11On the day of the vote, Marco Rubio called to reaffirm his support.
07:14Two days later, Washington revoked the visas of two council members, accused of links to
07:19gangs.
07:20The dismissal never went anywhere, and on February 7, the council handed power to Fisseme, a prime
07:26minister nobody elected, kept in place by Washington, inviting in foreign troops, that is the operation's
07:33legal cover.
07:34Bukele gains projection.
07:36He stops being a national leader, and becomes the regional sheriff, the hemisphere's official
07:40supplier of the iron fist.
07:42He exports his model and makes himself indispensable to Trump.
07:46Washington gets order in its backyard, without coffins draped in the American flag.
07:51It's a kind of Operation Condor 2.0, using the region's most repressive regimes as proxies.
07:57The difference from the 1970s is that now it all happens in broad daylight.
08:01And what doesn't change?
08:03Nobody touches the Haitian elites who fund and use the gangs.
08:06Nobody talks about the weapons, largely of American origin.
08:10Nobody sets an election date.
08:12Violence is treated as a policing problem, never as a political one.
08:16The result is a haiti that never gets to govern itself.
08:19Every crisis justifies a new tutelage, and every tutelage sets up the next crisis.
08:25Bukele posted that he will help Haitians take their country back from the traitors to
08:29Dessalines legacy, but the moment recalls another figure, General Leclerc, who in 1802 landed
08:34with 30,000 of Napoleon's soldiers.
08:37He too promised freedom and equality.
08:39Around the same time, France reinstated slavery in Guadeloupe.
08:43This is where the parallel comes full circle.
08:45A poor country of the global south sending its soldiers to discipline another poor people,
08:50on behalf of a power that doesn't need to appear in the picture.
08:56An honest caveat, because this channel doesn't sell certainty it doesn't have, there is no
09:01document proving that Washington ordered the operation.
09:04Bukele has his own reasons to be there, and many Haitians living under gang terror welcomed
09:09the soldiers.
09:10But geopolitical analysis doesn't depend on a signed order.
09:14It depends on patterns, who pays, who transports, and who benefits.
09:17And the pattern is the same as a hundred years ago, Haiti as a laboratory for intervention,
09:22always managed from outside, never by Haitians.
09:25Since 1804, Haiti has paid the price for making the revolution nobody expected.
09:31Now, whoever collects the bill no longer needs to come in person.
09:35And you, is Bukele saving Haiti, or serving Washington, tell us in the comments.
09:41And don't forget, like the video and subscribe to the channel, to keep thinking about the
09:46world how it really is.
