“Kreyol pale, kreyol komprann.”
Speak plainly, don’t try to deceive.
On January 12, 2010, the shifting tectonic plates beneath the Haitian peninsula snapped from centuries of built up tension, bringing earthquakes, pain and misery to this already impoverished island. The fault lines of poverty, starting with the already-a-mess health care system, followed by urban building construction practices, only exacerbated the suffering and loss. (See emergency relief sites following article.) According to the mayor of Port-au-Prince, 60% of the buildings in the city were shoddily constructed and unsafe in normal conditions, and they were only worsened by severe hurricanes in 2004 and 2008. There are no building codes in Port-au-Prince, built on the geological fault line, despite recent foreign investment that President René Préval has secured and that benefit some in Haiti. These free trade agreements heightened the rural exodus to the city that first began following the 1950s when Port-au-Prince was a small town of 50,000. The pressures to leave the countryside have brought the capital’s population to 2 million, many of whom come to work now in sweatshops.
The international response to the earthquake disaster has been heartening, though the U.S. media has given little credit to the first countries to arrive with food, water, and medical teams (Jamaica, Cuba, and Venezuela come to mind; even Iceland set up medical shop before the U.S. did). There is a fault line further revealed in U.S. media coverage of Haiti in crisis, beginning with overwrought headlines about survivors “looting” the food and supplies they need to survive. Additionally, an editorial the New York Times (1-14-10) bemoaned the “poverty, despair and dysfunction that would be a disaster anywhere else but in Haiti are the norm.” In a background article, the same paper referred to Haiti as a country “known for its many man-made woes—its dire poverty, political infighting and proclivity for insurrection.” (emphasis added)
This comment is salt in the wound of colonialism and is a sad echo of how the West views and still punishes Haiti for its successful 1804 slave revolt, led by Toussaint Louverture, against the French. It took the United States 60 years and a civil war against its own institutions of slavery before our government finally recognized the independence of Haiti. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said that America is on the wrong side of world revolution. He was talking about Viet Nam (in his speech at Riverside Church in New York City, April 4, 1967), but he could just as easily been talking about Haiti.
In this century the United States backed the 30 year dictatorship of the Duvaliers (1957-1986) to hold the line against the poor and any democratic uprisings. Tens of thousands of Haitians died at the hands of the military and the Tontons Macoute death squads. U.S. Marines were sent into Haiti twice in the past 20 years to back coups against the democratically-elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Aristide, a former Catholic priest, was the first Haitian president elected by popular vote without Washington’s approval. The coups of 1991 and 2004, taken together, cost at least 13,000 Haitian lives. U.S. operatives forcibly transported Aristide out of the country in 2004.
While former President Clinton has worked hard and put a compassionate face on the U.S. relief efforts, it is disconcerting to think he has another agenda, preceding and following the earthquake. The media has highlighted his economic development work in Haiti, but has not delved deeper nor has Clinton answered questions about the real effects upon the poor of “free trade” agreements around the world, pushed by Democrats and Republicans alike in the last few decades. “In particular, Clinton has orchestrated a plan for turning the north of Haiti into a tourist playground, as far away as possible from the teeming slums of Port-au-Prince. Clinton lured Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines into investing $55 million to build a pier along the coastline of Labadee, which it has leased until 2050. >From there, Haiti’s tourist industry hopes to lead expeditions to the mountaintop fortress Citadelle and the Palace of Sans Souci, both built by Henri Cristophe, one of the leaders of Haiti’s slave revolution.” (source: Wayne Madsen, Peninsula Peace and Justice website) Such tours would be like visiting Gettysburg and not understanding what liberty means.
The Peninsula Peace and Justice report continued: “Clinton celebrated the possibilities of sweatshop development during a whirlwind tour of a textile plant owned and operated by the infamous Cintas Corp. He announced that George Soros had offered $50 million for a new industrial park of sweatshops that could create 25,000 jobs in the garment industry. Clinton explained at a press conference that Haiti’s government could create ‘more jobs by lowering the cost of doing business, including the cost of rent.’” In what kind of buildings, one might ask now, with what protections and wages for citizens of Haiti?
As TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson told Democracy Now! “That isn’t the kind of investment that Haiti needs. It needs capital investment. It needs investment so that it can be self-sufficient. It needs investment so that it can feed itself.” To paraphrase Dr. King: True compassion in more than flinging aid to a disaster victim; compassion comes to see that a social edifice that produces poverty needs restructuring.
Relief aid to Haiti should be matched with an insistence that U.S. Marines and U.N. troops not be used for political purposes once relief efforts have stabilized. (In 1996 Brazilian-led U.N. troops terrorized the Bois Neuf and Drouillard districts of Cite Soleil in Port-au-Prince, killing Aristide supporters in the Lavalas Party.) Former President Aristide remains in exile in South Africa and even President Obama, heroic in his rhetoric against the selfishness of Wall St. and the health care industry, has signed onto the Clintons’/Bushes’ strategy of keeping Aristide and just economic reconstruction out of Haiti. I would add to Randall Robinson’s call for investments: solar power as an economic engine, just as Sun Ovens are an answer to deforestation caused by the desperate search for cooking fuel, even before the earthquake.
With food, water, and medical supplies still in short supply, and the Haitian government paralyzed, international aid efforts in the coming days and weeks will be critical to preventing more human suffering.
The following charities, along with many others are providing care. Please contribute if you can to this essential emergency relief:
* Partners in Health: Haiti
* Doctors Without Borders
* Oxfam America
* Yéle Haiti
Rick Whaley, independent Green (Milwaukee)
for theoggblog.com
January 2010