16585: Racine125@aol.com re: 16572: Karshan: How the U.S. impoverished Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Racine125@aol.com

I certainly believe that <<...nearly 80 percent of the current debt was accumulated by the regimes of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier, Doc and Baby Doc.>>

So if that is true, then logically it can not be true that <<... the primary source of Haiti’s chronic impoverishment is the reparations it was forced to pay to the former plantation owners who left following the 1804 revolution.>>

That's like saying the New York Stock Exchange bottomed in October 2002 because the British blockaded the port of New York City during the War of 1812!  Give it a rest.

What has to change is Haitian culture, and the only people who can do it are Haitians - but most don't want to!  Each Haitian believes that his fists are bigger than the other guy's fists, and that "equal rights for all" will work against him, not for him.  No matter who is in power, power corrupts, especially in Haiti.  Look what high hopes we all had when Aristide returned, and look what we got.

I was a member of the UN/OAS Joint Civilian Mission in Haiti, responsible for human rights education in the Port-au-Prince area.  I gave seminars for literally hundreds of groups, and let me tell you, the same "pro-human rights activists" who came in there toting Creole-language copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were the same ones gleefully trampling on their political opponents once they got the slightest bit of power.

Even at the most individual level, people in rural communities do all they can to cross and impede and drag each other down, instead of working together or at least just leaving each other in peace.  Sure, the USA killed the pigs, and that was awful, but what do Haitians do now?  They steal each other's animals, that's what!  They raid each other's fruit trees and gardens, they backstab and backbite and work wanga like mad!  (I'm a Mambo, I know!)

If one Haitian man has a taxi, and the other does not, the one without the taxi does not say to himself, "I will work hard just like he did, and take good care of my cows, and in two years I will sell my cows and all their grown calves and buy a car, and then I will drive a taxi too."  Instead he hates the man with the taxi and goes to the bokor to poison the poor guy!  THAT kind of behavior is what makes Haitians poor - I think in the USA it's been referred to as the "crabs in a bucket" syndrome.

How come there is no coup d'etat in Jamaica, for instance?  I lived there for years, and I can tell you that no one could make the Jamaican armed forces shoot thousands of unarmed Jamaican citizens.  Why are Haitians willing to do it?  Stealing, cheating, lying and aggression are the paths to wealth and power here, and until Haitians face up to their own problems and get their act together, they are never going to be able to stop the IMF or the USA or whoever from taking advantage of the situation.

Peace and love,

Bon Mambo Racine Sans Bout Sa Te La Daginen

"Se bon ki ra" - Good is rare
     Haitian Proverb

The VODOU Page - http://members.aol.com/racine125/index.html

(Posting from Jacmel, Haiti)