20580: Simidor: How the lamb ate its own children

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

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

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Simidor: How the lamb ate its own children

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Haitian state made a living from taxation on the import-export sector and on the country’s domestic and agricultural markets.  Following the US occupation of 1915-1934, the needs of the state grew dramatically as its revenue base was shrinking.  The Lescot government introduced joint capital ventures with US investment firms and strengthening agricultural production as a remedy.  Estimé and Magloire opened up the country to tourism.  The Duvaliers tried various gimmicks, including a national lottery that was mandatory for state employees and the private sector.  By the 1970s, the tax base was entirely too weak to cover the state’s minimum expanses.  The government relied more and more on the revenue from various state enterprises to buttress its payroll: the Compagnie du tabac et des allumettes, Ciment d’Haiti, the oils extraction industry, the state flourmill, the Telecommunication industry, among them.

The withering away of the state and Haiti’s dramatic loss of sovereignty during the Aristide years coincided with a campaign by the international financial institutions to privatize the public sector in Haiti.  The blunt challenge to Haiti’s atavistic rulers was: if you want to stay in power, you’d better do what we say.  Too weak to protect the country’s assets, the Little Lamb of God, now the Lamb of the State, hastened to cannibalize them.  Out with the cement company, the flourmill and the oils extraction operation.  Teleco’s thriving long distance business, mostly calls from the diaspora, was divided among partners and friends: the president and his wife, the Kennedy family and Fusion International got the lion’s share.

Once this allotment was over, the Haitian state was like a baby that cannot feed itself without help.  Aristide eliminated the Haitian military, freeing 40% of the budget, but still couldn’t meet the state’s basic expenditures.  Just like Haiti can no longer feed itself without food aid, the state could no longer balance its budget without Washington’s handouts.  Aristide depended on the $500 million loan package withheld by Washington to make himself look good, with a semblance of economic activity and the creation of a few hundreds non-sustainable jobs.  But even if the loans had come through, Aristide would still need Washington’s help year after year to balance the budget.  Under these conditions, political independence and national sovereignty are just an illusion.

Hastened by the Lavalas anti-institution virus, the predatory and dependent state in Haiti had entered a third stage in its 200-year evolution, a stage I call “Leta Degraba,” the decomposed state.  The Reagan ideologues talk a lot about failed states, but they never explain exactly how those failures come about.  Their attitude is, for those who weren’t paying attention around Argentina: you stumble and you are prey.  Haiti has stumbled big time, and the birds of prey have all rushed in to help.

The gentle reader who didn’t skip to the end will agree that the crisis of Aristide’s presidency is relatively nothing, compared to the crisis of the Haitian state and the nation in general.  Yet Aristide, true to the Haitian atavistic model, wants to cling to the presidency at whatever cost to the nation, although he doesn’t have a clue how to solve the problems he helped create.  This is the kind of leadership Haiti has suffered for 200 years.  Isn’t time for a real change?

Daniel Simidor