16839: Simidor responds to Saint-Vil on Farmer (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Daniel Simidor <karioka9@mail.arczip.com>


Look here, Saint-Vil, no one is above criticism.  Paul Farmer's
America article reads like a fundraising piece and an apology for
Lavalas.  I advise you to read it again, twice.  The more
controversial stuff, and perhaps the real intent of the article,
is concentrated in the last four paragraphs.

Look how slyly the Great Benefactor tries to skip over the
destruction of the Maribahoux plain, this unusually fertile piece
of land that's being cemented over, courtesy of Lavalas and the
Grupo M cartel in the Dominican Republic.  "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," Farmer writes.  Bla,
bla, bla.  Just who are the "powerful" in this case, I ask you.
Do they reside outside of Haiti, or right there in a place called
Tabarre?

Then look how cleverly the New Schweitzer of the Caribbean
launches his attack on the Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP), without
ever naming any name.  There is nothing progressive or pretty
about it, I assure you.  MPP is an organization that has been
repressed by every government in power, Lavalas included, over the
last thirty years.  Yet it survives and thrives, and is
universally admired for its cooperative projects in the Central
Plateau.  But all that good work is somewhat misplaced, Farmer
assures us, because it shouldn't come from a peasant organization.
 Wow.

Now it's OK for the Great White Father to raise millions of
dollars for projects in Haiti, but it is somehow wrong for peasant
cooperatives "to build clean water systems, a good public health
network and public schools."  This he confides not to a gathering
of Haitians who would laugh in his face, but to a national
Catholic magazine whose readers are potential supporters of
development efforts in the Haitian countryside.  You dig?

What the great NGO King is telling his readers in effect is this:
"Look, all those peasant cooperatives and popular organizations
out there are playing politics.  You, the American reader, cannot
and should not try to figure who's who and what's what in a place
so far away.  Better leave that to me, and I will safely funnel
your charity dollars to the deserving ones."

But, ye of Corbettland, look what has happened here.  My cultural
nationalist brethren, Saint-Vil, went out and finally found
himself a good Blan, and this vilain (badass) Simidor had to spoil
it for him.  Another Lavalas gentleman wrote more directly to mark
me as "a traitor, a paid agent of the enemy of Haiti."  But little
ol' me, I'm jes' a poor "self-proclaimed progressive" trying not
to lose his head.  All your fancy talk about "strategic
fratricide," "real targets," "right wing governments of
Christendom," "helicopters" and "prevention" is truly wasted on
me.  It's like Mr. Farmer telling me that to oppose Aristide is to
be "against sovereignty," when the biggest threat to Haitian
sovereignty is Aristide himself.  (Psst, remember 1994?)

Daniel Simidor