16806: Vire: Paul Farmer article (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: pala vire <palavire@yahoo.com>

Haitian Refugees, Sovereignty and Globalization

By: Paul Farmer

America,  9/15/2003, Vol. 189, Issue 7

ON OCT. 29, 2002, Haitians jumped off their grounded
boat near Miami and floundered ashore, seeking a level
of economic security that has been historically
available only to a tiny minority of the population in
their home country. These refugees were soon deported
from the United States, as have been almost all
Haitian boat people who arrived in the last 25 years.
The ostensible reason for sending them back to Haiti
was that they are not genuine political refugees--a
status automatically awarded to all Cubans arriving on
our soil. But to the informed observer, the Haitian
boat people really are political refugees: refugees
from political and economic violence perpetrated by
the very country they seek to reach.

Haiti is the poorest country in the Western
Hemisphere. Over 80 percent of the population lives in
poverty. Seven out of every 10 Haitians are
unemployed. There are profound inadequacies in health
care, education and housing. Haiti's infant and
maternal mortality rates are the highest in the
hemisphere, and life expectancy at birth has dropped
to below 50 years. More than a third of all children
who live to see their first birthday show signs of
severely stunted growth, a result of malnutrition and
infectious diseases. A research center based in the
United Kingdom recently developed what it calls a
water poverty index, and ranked Haiti 147th out of 147
countries surveyed. Contaminated water is probably the
number one killer of Haitian children.

This level of poverty is not the result of chance; it
has been shaped by historical forces stemming from
Haiti's past as a French slave colony. When, after a
successful revolution initiated in 1791 by the slaves,
Haiti achieved independence in 1804, the world was
hostile to the idea of a black republic. The French
straightaway orchestrated an international commercial
embargo against Haiti, which ended only in 1825, after
the former slaves paid 150 million francs--about 5500
million in today's currency--to the government of King
Charles X as "indemnity" for having freed themselves.
The United States also actively contributed to the
political and economic isolation of Haiti during the
19th century, blocking Haiti's invitation to the
famous Western Hemisphere Panama Conference of I 82 5
and refusing to recognize Haitian independence until
1862. From 1915 to 1934, Haiti was occupied by the
U.S. military. During the Duvalier dictatorships
(1959-86) and the junta regimes that followed, the
Haitian military, created by an act of the U.S.
Congress--and that has known no other enemy than its
own people--was used to control and terrorize the
population into submission.

Despite what appeared to be insurmountable obstacles,
grass-roots organizing and innumerable sacrifices by
dedicated groups and individuals led to Haiti's first
democratic elections in 1990. In a field of a dozen
candidates, the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide received
67 percent of the vote in the first round, making him
the most popular standing president in all of the
Americas. But that did not prevent his overthrow in a
bloody coup after only seven months in office. Under
the junta government that followed, refugees streamed
out of Haiti. One of the chief reasons that die U.S.
government led a U.N. force to Haiti was to reinstate
Aristide. But aid to rebuild a devastated Haiti was
conditioned on concessions from Aristide.

In order to receive the promised $500 million in
humanitarian and development aid, Aristide was asked
to sign on to a program that included a number of
concessions that were unattractive to those who
elected him. Although Aristide became the first
Haitian president ever to pass on power to a
democratically elected successor, he left office
without having succeeded in bringing much-needed aid
to the country. His successor, René Préval, became the
first Haitian president to serve out his complete
term, not a day more or less, and then pass the baton
to another democratically elected president. This
time, Jean-Bertrand Aristide won more than 90 percent
of the popular vote. Could a man so popular in Haiti,
but so unpopular in Washington, really lead such a
fragile county? The answer to this question has yet to
he heard. Overlooking apparent problems in its own
presidential elections at the time, the United States
once again used a double standard and chose to isolate
Haiti, on the pretext of protesting voting
irregularities in some local and parliamentary
elections (this at the very time when more serious
voting irregularities were registered in Florida
during the 15.5. presidential vote). The United States
used its veto power to block loan agreements between
the InterAmerican Development Bank and the Haitian
government.

These loans are of great interest to a doctor working
in rural Haiti, because they are intended for health
care, water improvement, education and roads. Thus is
the richest and most powerful country in the
hemisphere blocking already approved humanitarian and
development assistance to the poorest. Although the
U.S. State Department denies this, such an allegation
is not a conspiracy theory, as the comments of U.S.
Senator Christopher Dodd, speaking in the Senate on
July 31, 2002, might suggest:

Ironically, it is the United States that has taken the
lead in preventing Haiti from receiving assistance
from the [Inter-American] Development Bank--the
institution that is supposed to be the premier
regional development agency. Proponents of withholding
crucial I.D.B. funding point to Haiti's weak
institutions, to the need for drastic and timely
economic and administrative reforms, as a prerequisite
to restarting assistance. True, Haiti is an
impoverished nation with weak institutions.

But that is not the real reason that assistance is
being withheld. The real reason funds are being
withheld is political--namely, as leverage in ongoing
O.A.S. negotiations to resolve issues related to the
May 2000 Haitian elections.

Shame on the Inter-American Development Bank for
allowing itself to be used in this manner. It does not
speak well of an institution that for the most part
has a very good reputation. Shame on the United States
for pressuring the I.D.B. to do so.

Strong words for a U.S. senator, but not strong
enough. This aid embargo, still in effect today, has
been the primary cause of the ongoing economic crisis.
And although the U.S. government now states that it
does not wish to block such assistance to Haiti, those
in Washington know that each day the amount Haiti is
said to owe in "arrears" will grow. Already at over
$20 million, such arrears would be difficult to pay.
By the end of the year Haiti will owe closer to $100
million.

When the U.S. government claims to premise its
international relations on "freedom and the
development of democratic institutions" and to
"promote freedom and support those who struggle
non-violently for it, ensuring that nations moving
toward democracy are rewarded for the steps they take"
(see The National Security Strategy of the United
States of America), perhaps nowhere do these fine
words ring more hollow than in Haiti. Compare Cuba and
Haitian in terms of health statistics, and decide what
freedoms the Haitian sick (the majority) enjoy. In
terms of responding to the current crisis, can a
Haitian act more effectively than by trying to buy
passage out of a country that the United States has
led on with false hopes and then abandoned?

Peasant cooperatives and the organized poor should not
be required to build clean water systems, a good
public health network and public schools. Why should
the poorest have to do this, when in affluent
countries such tasks are relegated to the public
sector? Those of us who grew up in Europe and North
America did not have to turn to popular organizations
for clean water, schools, vaccinations and
clinics--not in recent centuries. We were able to grow
up without even thinking of these basic social and
economic rights. Such rights were part of what society
owed its members, a minimum standard of well-being.

Consensus among classes is not going to he found in
Haiti, ally more than in any other society risen by
deep social inequalities. And the gap between peasant
leaders and the rural poor is growing, to say nothing
of the gap between the middle class/urban poor and the
rural poor. Many of these peasant leaders who have
leapt into international consciousness desired nothing
less than political office. Do we really want to
listen to them instead of the poor they allegedly
represent? This is a country in which factory and
maquiladora workers constitute an elite compared to
the rural poor major

As for our own community of solidarity with Haiti, I
sometimes doubt that even we are capable of consensus.
My pessimism is based in part on hearing from
self-proclaimed Haitian progressives--many of whom, in
fact, live in Canada, France or the United States--who
have some grudge against the elected government. My
pessimism is also based on observing a predominantly a
historical analysis of the current Haitian crisis. The
crisis has always been transnational, compounded by
the forces of globalization. As a result, comments on
local problems, whether in Gonaïves or a village near
the border to the Dominican Republic, are misleading
if they do not bring into relief the connections
between the actions of the powerful (few of whom live
in Haiti) and the lot of the poor.

I would argue that instead of trying to identify
"good" popular organizations in Haiti, people of good
will should instead spend some time attempting to
identify the powerful, malignant forces and actors
that have long sought to deny sovereignty to the
Haitian poor. Most of these actors are not going to be
found within Haiti's borders. Are progressive
political activists willing to stand up to them and
defend Haiti's right to govern its own affairs through
a democratically elected government? Are we for or
against sovereignty?

~~~~~~~~

By Paul Farmer

PAUL FARMER. M.D., is medical director of central
Haiti's largest charity hospital, Zanmi Lasante
(Partners In Health), and a professor at Harvard
Medical School. His most recent book is Pathologies of
Power (Univ. of California Press).


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