22232: Esser: Haiti's disaster of the free market (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser torx@joimail.com

Socialist Worker
http://www.socialistworker.org

Haiti’s disaster of the free market

June 4, 2004 | Page 3

FLOODS, MUDSLIDES and an earthquake devastated Haiti and the
Dominican Republic in the last week of May, but the disaster had its
roots in not-so-natural causes.

Haiti was once known for its lush forests and rich soil, but
desperate poverty forced Haitians to cut down the trees--to sell on
the market or provide charcoal for cooking. Now, 99 percent of
Haiti’s forests are gone--along with the root structures that kept
rain from washing away the soil. That’s why last week’s rains caused
huge mudslides that instantly swept through villages, forcing many
residents to evacuate their houses by cutting holes in the roofs.

At least 2,000 people are confirmed dead, and more are still missing.
And the crisis isn’t over. Relief workers are scrambling to bury the
decomposing bodies before they spread even more death--and to deliver
water and food, a task made much more difficult since roads to the
affected areas have been washed out.

U.S. news accounts of the disaster claimed that the American soldiers
occupying Haiti leapt into action to provide humanitarian relief. The
truth is far less flattering.

Even as the scale of the crisis exceeded initial projections, the
U.S.-led multinational force in Haiti suspended airlifts of relief
supplies. "I thought the force was going to continue [its helicopter
flights]," said World Food Program official Guy Gavreau. But U.S.
officials in charge of military operations told Gavreau that "it’s
not their mandate."

Gavreau predicts that by summer, more than 100,000 displaced people
may require food, medicine and shelter. But the U.S. Agency for
International Development has allocated a total of $50,000--or 50
cents a person!

Not only has the U.S. failed to provide help on an adequate scale,
but it also bears primary responsibility for the poverty at the root
of the crisis.

Consider one small example. In the early 1990s, when U.S. demand for
chicken in left American poultry producers with surplus product, they
decided to sell the excess for cheap in Haiti, wiping out Haiti’s
budding domestic poultry industry. At the same time, Haiti’s debt
left it at the mercy of harsh loan terms set by the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund, which meant the country couldn’t impose
tariffs on U.S. goods. As a result, the market was flooded, and at
least 10,000 poultry workers in Haiti lost their jobs.

If you repeat this scenario over and over again, it’s easy to
understand how Haiti’s debt trap turned into the death trap of floods
and mudslides.

Washington has turned Haiti--which won its independence 200 years ago
as the first independent Black nation in the world--into the poorest
country in the Western Hemisphere, and it will do nothing to ease the
catastrophe that it created.
.