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Our Role in Haiti's Plight
If we are serious about assisting this devastated land we must stop trying to control and exploit it
Any large city in the world would have suffered extensive damage from an earthquake on the scale of the one that ravaged Haiti's capital city on Tuesday afternoon, but it's no accident that so much of Port-au-Prince now looks like a war zone. Much of the devastation wreaked by this latest and most calamitous disaster to befall Haiti is best understood as another thoroughly manmade outcome of a long and ugly historical sequence.
The country has faced more than its fair share of catastrophes. Hundreds died in Port-au-Prince in an earthquake back in June 1770, and the huge earthquake of 7 May 1842 may have killed 10,000 in the northern city of Cap Haitien alone. Hurricanes batter the island on a regular basis, mostly recently in 2004 and again in 2008; the storms of September 2008 flooded the town of Gonaïves and swept away much of its flimsy infrastructure, killing more than a thousand people and destroying many thousands of homes. The full scale of the destruction resulting from this earthquake may not become clear for several weeks. Even minimal repairs will take years to complete, and the long-term impact is incalculable.
What is already all too clear, however, is the fact that this impact will be the result of an even longer-term history of deliberate impoverishment and disempowerment. Haiti is routinely described as the "poorest country in the western hemisphere". This poverty is the direct legacy of perhaps the most brutal system of colonial exploitation in world history, compounded by decades of systematic postcolonial oppression.
The noble "international community" which is currently scrambling to send its "humanitarian aid" to Haiti is largely responsible for the extent of the suffering it now aims to reduce. Ever since the US invaded and occupied the country in 1915, every serious political attempt to allow Haiti's people to move (in former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide's phrase) "from absolute misery to a dignified poverty" has been violently and deliberately blocked by the US government and some of its allies.
Aristide's own government (elected by some 75% of the electorate) was the latest victim of such interference, when it was overthrown by an internationally sponsored coup in 2004 that killed several thousand people and left much of the population smouldering in resentment. The UN has subsequently maintained a large and enormously expensive stabilisation and pacification force in the country.
Haiti is now a country where, according to the best available study, around 75% of the population "lives on less than $2 per day, and 56% - four and a half million people - live on less than $1 per day". Decades of neoliberal "adjustment" and neo-imperial intervention have robbed its government of any significant capacity to invest in its people or to regulate its economy. Punitive international trade and financial arrangements ensure that such destitution and impotence will remain a structural fact of Haitian life for the foreseeable future.
It is this poverty and powerlessness that account for the full scale of the horror in Port-au-Prince today. Since the late 1970s, relentless neoliberal assault on Haiti's agrarian economy has forced tens of thousands of small farmers into overcrowded urban slums. Although there are no reliable statistics, hundreds of thousands of Port-au-Prince residents now live in desperately sub-standard informal housing, often perched precariously on the side of deforested ravines. The selection of the people living in such places and conditions is itself no more "natural" or accidental than the extent of the injuries they have suffered.
As Brian Concannon, the director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, points out: "Those people got there because they or their parents were intentionally pushed out of the countryside by aid and trade policies specifically designed to create a large captive and therefore exploitable labour force in the cities; by definition they are people who would not be able to afford to build earthquake resistant houses." Meanwhile the city's basic infrastructure - running water, electricity, roads, etc - remains woefully inadequate, often non-existent. The government's ability to mobilise any sort of disaster relief is next to nil.
The international community has been effectively ruling Haiti since the 2004 coup. The same countries scrambling to send emergency help to Haiti now, however, have during the last five years consistently voted against any extension of the UN mission's mandate beyond its immediate military purpose. Proposals to divert some of this "investment" towards poverty reduction or agrarian development have been blocked, in keeping with the long-term patterns that continue to shape the distribution of international "aid".
The same storms that killed so many in 2008 hit Cuba just as hard but killed only four people. Cuba has escaped the worst effects of neoliberal "reform", and its government retains a capacity to defend its people from disaster. If we are serious about helping Haiti through this latest crisis then we should take this comparative point on board. Along with sending emergency relief, we should ask what we can do to facilitate the self-empowerment of Haiti's people and public institutions. If we are serious about helping we need to stop trying to control Haiti's government, to pacify its citizens, and to exploit its economy. And then we need to start paying for at least some of the damage we've already done.
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18 Comments so far
Show Allhttp://www.commondreams.org/views05/0725-20.htm
"We are from the US Government, and we are here to help...ourselves."
75% of Haitian are small-scale subsistence farmers so of course they are poor. Haiti's political woes are certainly a large part of the problem, but simple economics are also to blame.
Give to Haiti at http://haitirelieffund.org/
For the Fawning Corporate Media good coverage at: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2010/haiti.quake/
Gary
The Democrats are just as responsible as the Republicans for what has been done and is still being being done to Haiti by the US government. When are liberals going to wake up and take responsibility for what their votes help buy?
Will it happen in my life time? I am beginning to doubt so, as the country looks more and more like it has encapsulated Rip Van Winkle into its national political character. Without a break away from the Democratic Party nothing is ever going to CHANGE and we will never have any HOPE about it. Meanwhile the world suffering keeps just getting worse, too.
The slave labor for americas corporations is at stake here. lets help the Hatians get back on their knees and rake in that hefty hourly wage that we so generously bestow on them. Also ,send more missionaries to save them from the pact they made with the devil.
Here's a real killer! Our sainted current 'president' is donating all of $100 million dollars to 'help' Haiti out after an earthquake that the international Red Cross says has now killed at least 50,000 people there. That comes after the US has arranged for billions to be spent on military occupation of the country in the last few years after the Made in USA coup that removed Aristide from the Haitian presidency. Our American liberal community must be just overwhelmed in gratitude for Barack's supposed generosity.
Is there anything bad happening in the world where someone does not blame the US?
By the way. Give it at least a few days until most of the survivors have been pulled from the rubble before politicizing this disaster and it to promote your agendas.
America is blamed because it is responsible. Haiti could feed itself before US mandated IMF loans destroyed it's agrarian economy that was feeding itself and forced millions into poverty and over-crowded cities. Ask ANY ordinary Haitian who their legitimate president is and they will say Aristide. If the US is really interested in disaster aide why are they sending soldiers instead of doctors?? And why do they have US special forces controlling the airport with THEIR ATC (Air Traffic Controllers). They are doing these things to first and foremost control who comes in to the country and to protect the coup that keeps their puppet government in place. It has little to do with humanitarian aid. Protect the crime of colonialism first and make sure the Haitian people can't rally around their legitimate leaders and reverse the 2004 CIA coup that removed him from power..
I kinda agree with you. The US should not be intervening everywhere in the world.
That being said, the correct answer to my question would have been that blaming America is a favourite sport of countries who can't get their sh!t together and need an excuse to keep doing what they are doing.
That was my first thought, but history bears repeating: its well known that Haiti couldn't be 'left to itself' since it was in our hemisphere and thus important for trade and communism-fighting reasons. But, the history of 'good intentions' that led the USAID to promote Haiti's urban development at the expense of its rural areas reads like a bad omen of forcing a group of people to 'Globalize' their economy.
Hence, don't be so sure Haiti's present isn't in our future. American's have also recently been forced to globalize, and the WallStreet bailout is largely if not entirely to ensure the entire system of global finance (based on worthless derivatives) initiated and promoted by WallStreet doesn't collapse. It seems pretty plain WHO will benefit from propping up this globalized system of finance (Asia, etc) and WHO will pay for it (ordinary Americans).
Chameleon: "Is there anything bad happening in the world where someone does not blame the US?"
Response: Do you question that the US hasn't been involved in the coup of Aristede with a US military plane and crew? Are you questioning the US involvement in selection of Haiti leaders in the past? The US has troops deployed in more than 150 countries around the world. The US accounts for 25% of the worlds energy consumption but only has a 5% share of the worlds population. The U.S. is the biggest per capita major producer of man-made greenhouse gases, spewing about 20 tons of carbon dioxide per person per year. The world average is 5.3 tons and China is at 5.8 tons.... The US is the dominant player in the worlds stage; therefore, it puts itself out there as a target of criticism.
Get closer to the root cause of Haiti being dirt poor, which is that huge international corporations want everything set up according to exactly what they need for their profit making convenience in countries such as Haiti. Huge corporations don't want to have to "get their hands dirty" by competing in a free market with indigenous industries in countries like Haiti. They want those indigenous industries hammered and brought to heel if they are going to set up factories and other operations in countries such as Haiti.
Only on the surface have international trade and financial policies kept Haiti dirt poor. But those policies are dictated by the huge international corporations to the World Bank and the like and to the governments of wealthy countries. These corporations, in turn, are dictatorially run by obscenely compensated executives. So actually, the real, primary root cause of Haiti being dirt poor is the out of control greed of corporate executives of huge corporations with international reach and that of large shareholders of those corporations.
Similarly, these parties are the primary root cause of the failure of the US employment market and of the failure of the US health system. It's a small world after all.
Prior comments, prior CD article links, and the Romney clown:
http://www.unity-progress.blogspot.com
Fred, Chameleon is just one other American who sadly enough does not want to take personal responsibility for the mess that US government makes of the world. I find that very sad. The US runs the planet and yet many Americans refuse to admit the mess their government makes of it.
Assuming you are American, what is it that *you* do to "take personal responsibility for the mess that US government makes of the world."? Thanks in advance.
Repcons and Demcons are responsible for Haiti's plight. Demlibs and progs are not. Breaking away from the Dems and leaving it to the cons is a bad idea.
Certainly there is little difference between Repcons and Demcons. But the Demcons are not the whole Dem Party. Dem libs could not compete with con oligarch's money, just as no third party could, so they've been marginalized.
Why should libs give in and give up instead of taking their party back? Why should libs hand over government to the cons that infiltrated, bought and coopted it? If con money can buy any party, the solution is to get money out of politics, not to abandon a party. Running off to a third party or not voting out of spite is a losing proposition.
Being the dominant party could be a great advantage for libs if they could take it back. And together, we can.
Is bamboo illegal in Haiti? It's not mentioned at the wiki site for agriculture by country.
I ask because in the TV pix of Port-au-Prince collapsed, all those shanty-town pods on the hillsides seem to be concrete, while in most impoverished places such residences seem slapped together out of found parts. The Haiti shanties look "modular."
Modular slums. Sort of reminds me of poison-gas post-Katrina FEMA trailers.
How's Haiti's concrete business? Who had the contract to build those modular slums? I'd have wanted a bamboo thatch roof. "Disaster Capitalism," and we're all becoming lab rats.
It is as if Gaia is trying to tell us something.
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I have long since concluded that U.S. policy below the border is governed by the insistence that no country put the interest of its people before our right to exploit its markets, labor, and/or resources.
In a visit here, Peter Hallward added the Haitian twist on that principle: Haiti has been ordained by Washington and its agencies, e.g. US AID, to serve as an offshore assembly station with the cheapest labor in the hemisphere. Why is Haiti of such concern to Washington? As long as Haiti's wages are half the next lowest, workers elsewhere dare not push for higher wages lest their jobs move to Haiti. It is called, variously, the Good Neighbor Policy and Empire.
It was not accidental that the moment President Aristide raised the minimum wage in 1991 that CIA operatives in Haiti, i.e. Gen. Cedras and Toto Constant, overthrew the government and Jesse Helms, Roger Noriega, and the CIA maneuvered to make him out to be violent and a looney. Bush I went through the motions of opposing the coup ("This will not stand"); Clinton, fearing a populist revolution, obliged Aristide to sell out his "poverty with dignity" program to end the bloodshed, and Bush II, appointed to office, conspired from day 1 to remove the duly elected Aristide, entering on his second presidency. Low intensity warfare failing, an insurgency that dared not enter Port au Prince became a pretext for kidnapping and removing him and licensing another bloodbath of democrats, assisted by UN forces. Aristide's effective exile and exclusion from upcoming elections of Fanmi Lavelas and other parties--the large part of the electorate--reflect a determination that Haiti not step out of line again.
You may be sure that the Obama-Clinton-Clinton relief efforts will not depart one millimeter from that design.
By allowing G H W Bush and Bubba Clinton in the rescue of Haiti, we are re-cycling the problems of yesterday. Both of these individuals teamed up to destroy our industrial base that was sent to China and left millions of Americans un-employed.
This action by both Bush Sr and Clinton has created a new
slave industry in this country and they will create the same problem in Haiti. Didn't Clinton accept money from the Red-Chinese? Who will tell the unemplyed?
Is bamboo illegal in Haiti? It's not mentioned at the wiki site for agriculture by country.
I ask because in the TV pix of Port-au-Prince collapsed, all those shanty-town pods on the hillsides seem to be concrete, while in most impoverished places such residences seem slapped together out of found parts. The Haiti shanties look "modular."
Modular slums. Sort of reminds me of poison-gas post-Katrina FEMA trailers.
How's Haiti's concrete business? Who had the contract to build those modular slums? I'd have wanted a bamboo thatch roof. "Disaster Capitalism," and we're all becoming lab rats.
It is as if Gaia is trying to tell us something.
-30-