16826: Saint-Vil Re: 16811: Simidor re Paul Farmer article (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Jean Saint-Vil <jafrikayiti@hotmail.com>


Konpatriyòt Simidor,
Upon reading your piece, the thought that came to me is this, in these very,
very, very sad times of our Nation's existence, I fail to understandhow my
fellow haitian progressives go about chosing their battles.
As we speak, a bloodbath of black on black violence is being fueled at home by
the most vicious historical enemies we've ever known as a people. And here we
are expending our energy criticizing Paul Farmer?
Come on man ! This I could take from someone who does know how the New Jewel
movement was destroyed in Grenada, how Congolese independance was stolen from
Patrice lumumba's Congo, how fratricidal violence was financed within the Black
Panther Party, Malcom's Nation of Islam, Move etc....This I can take from all
the naive folks who don't understand why Winnie Mandela is in jail today while
P.W.Botha and Frederick De Clerk are tanning on the beaches of South Africa.
But, I cannot for the life of me understand what motivates you my brother.
Frankly m' bwè pwa.
As I have been saying for many years now, it is not Jean-Bertrand Arisitide
that the right wing governments of Christendom want to topple. What they are
after is the creation of conditions that will ensure any Haitian leader or
movement, from now on, will enjoy at most 30% of popular support. That way, who
ever that leader is, he will be constantly vulnerable and in need of their
support to keep desenters in check. They don't care about Convergence anymore
than they do about Lavalas, MPP or anything else. In fact they have set in
motion the events to ensure the total destruction of all these movements
through strategic fratricide. They've done told us who their real allies are.
Brother Simidor, Paul Farmer is not the target. He is one of the very few
Americans we can truly count as a friend. There may be differences in the way
you, him, I and others read the situation in Haiti, but I'd rather worry about
Jesse Helms and his pupils Roger Noriega et al. working their magic in Haiti
today my brother. Really !
And, if I take the time to write this to you my brother, it is because I
believe you, I and the myriad of other Haitian progressives who have been
witness to the systematic killing of our dreams since the early 80's must do
all that is in our power to focus our energies on the real targets.
For, as we write these lines, another black man in Port-au-Prince, in Gonaives,
in Site Soley is using an AK47, an Uzi (made in and distributed by USA) to kill
his black brother. We have seen Rwanda, we saw Sierra Leone and Cote
d'Ivoire.... since we do not possess helicopers which we can send rescue our
own, shouldn't we work on prevention?
Yours brotherly,
Jafrikayiti
«Depi nan Ginen bon nèg ap ede nèg!»
http://www.i-port.net/sd-in-j/
----Original Message Follows----
From: Bob Corbett
To: Haiti mailing list
Subject: 16811: Simidor re Paul Farmer article (fwd)
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 13:16:37 -0500 (CDT)
From: Daniel Simidor
A letter to the Editor
September 19, 2003
Editor, America
106 West 56th Street
New York, NY 10019-3803
Dear Sir:
Last week’s issue of the national Catholic weekly magazine,
America, carried a front-page article by Paul Farmer entitled
“Haitian Refugees, Sovereignty and Globalization.” Mr. Farmer
enjoys a well-deserved reputation as a dedicated friend of the
sick and the poor in Haiti. His denunciation of colonialism,
neocolonialism and globalization, as root causes of the abysmal
conditions in Haiti, is right on target. But French and U.S.
imperialism is not the sole reason why Haiti is on the brink of
collapse today.
Haiti has been a perfect kleptocracy for much of its existence as
an independent nation. The truth is that the small parasitic
elite that replaced the French after independence has so
consistently used the state as an instrument of predation and
foreign domination, that the people underneath have not been able
to improve their means of production for nearly two centuries!
The grassroots revolt that toppled the Duvalier dynasty in 1986
was meant to rid the country of that predatory state. The people
who elected Aristide by a landslide in 1990 were led to believe
that he would do just that – operate a radical transformation of
the Haitian state. Sadly, this is not what happened.
Overthrown in 1991 for his alleged symbiosis with the Haitian
masses, Aristide was brought back to Haiti three years later a
changed man, eager to play the game and bent on perpetuating his
own rule. Today’s Haiti may be impoverished as never before, but
the kleptocratic state under Aristide is alive and well. Those
who serve his regime, leaders of Lavalas street gangs,
bureaucrats, police officials, etc., are rewarded with deluxe
SUV’s, and opulent mansions that mushroom absurdly out of the
general slump. There is little hope that feeding more loan money
to such a corrupt regime will result in more “health care, water
improvement, education and roads” for the people. Yes, Haiti
needs stronger institutions, and “drastic and timely economic and
administrative reforms,” if the $500 millions of coveted loans are
not to become another burden on a country already burdened by
previously stolen loans.
Mr. Farmer may not be at liberty to write any of the above without
jeopardizing his health projects on the ground in Haiti. But
nothing justifies his distortion of the facts to make the regime
he has aligned himself with look good. Mr. Farmer correctly
reminds his readers that Aristide “received 67% of the vote in the
first round” in the 1990 elections, but then he follows up with
the misleading claim that the same Aristide “won 90 percent of the
popular vote” ten years later. What the reader is not told is
that there was a huge turnout, estimated at 95% of eligible
voters, in 1990, whereas the people mostly stayed home in November
2000. The Haitian independent press and the international news
media put voter turnout in the 2000 presidential elections at
between 5% and 15%. An embarrassed Aristide tried to hide his
declining popularity with the foolish assertion that the Haitian
masses had learned a new way to go to the polls without standing
in lines!
Then follows a strange argument in Mr. Farmer’s narrative, about
“peasant cooperatives and the organized poor” not having to “build
clean water systems, a good public health network and public
schools,” and about peasant leaders “who have leapt into
international consciousness” while desiring “nothing less than
political office.” The Haitian people, who have waited in vain
for 200 years for any kind of service from the state, are
certainly not of that opinion. That’s why they began organizing
in the 1970s to provide some of the said services to themselves.
The process is called self-empowerment.
Part of the problem is that Haiti has become so impoverished that
the state itself is tottering on the brink of economic collapse.
This situation is aggravated by the stated policy of the US
government and European Union of starving the poorly elected
Lavalas government, and of channeling their assistance monies
directly to the Non-Governmental Organizations operating in Haiti.
So what good does it serve to discourage the grassroots movement
and the philanthropic institutions that finance it from abroad,
from providing a modicum of service to their constituents when the
state is clearly unable to do so? And why is Mr. Farmer selling
wolf tickets about unnamed peasants leaders he deems too
ambitious, while admonishing the solidarity community, almost in
the same breath, against “trying to identify ‘good’ popular
organizations in Haiti?”
Mr. Farmer would do well to stick to the charity and NGO work at
which he excels, and to stay out of Haitian politics. Haitian
progressives, whom he disparages as "self-proclaimed,” do not
need lessons about sovereignty from him. That which he calls “a
grudge against the elected government” is nothing but a principled
rejection of both Aristide and his Lavalas government for their
abject betrayal of the people.
Sincerely,
Daniel Simidor,
A progressive Haitian community organizer living in Brooklyn, NY.
email: karioka9@arczip.com

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