23256: This Week in Haiti 22:28 09/23/2004 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

"This Week in Haiti" is the English section of HAITI PROGRES
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                           HAITI PROGRES
              "Le journal qui offre une alternative"

                      * THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

                        September 22 - 28, 2004
                            Vol. 22, No. 28

UNNATURAL DISASTER RAVAGES HAITI

Floods and mudslides killed over 1000 people this past weekend in
North and Northwest Haiti as Tropical Storm Jeanne brushed by the
nation on September 18. Tens of thousands are left homeless and
destitute, their shops, livestock and crops swept away.

The cities of Gonaïves and Port-de-Paix, as well as smaller towns
like Gros Morne and Chansolme, were particularly hard hit when
rivers overflowed their banks. The death toll is sure to rise by
hundreds in coming days as authorities begin to count those
killed in the teeming countryside's hamlets, where medical and
rescue crews have yet to arrive.

And the worst is yet to come. As the muddy, stagnant flood waters
recede, they will leave behind sewage, corpses and a host of
diseases such as cholera, malaria and dengue fever. These after-
effects will be less noticed but more lethal.

Floods washed away entire towns and killed some 3000 in
southeastern Haiti last May, capturing world attention and
sympathy. Today, many can only wring their hands and shake their
heads at what they think is Nature's wrath and Haiti's bad luck.

But, in reality, the devastation wrought on Haiti is anything but
natural and chance. It is the inevitable result of the policies
set down by Haiti's local and international ruling groups over
the past 200 years.

Mistaking a symptom for the cause, mainstream analysts have
pointed to deforestation of Haiti's mountains as the culprit,
saying implicitly or explicitly that ignorant peasants are to
blame for cutting down trees to make charbon, the cooking
charcoal used in the cities. This facile simplification distorts
historical and current realities.

First, the primeval forests that once carpeted the island and
prompted Columbus to name it Hispaniola   Little Spain   were
razed in the 17th and 18th centuries by French colonists to fuel
their booming sugar mills. Then during the 19th and 20th
centuries, thousands of acres of precious wood, principally
mahogany, were cut down to satisfy foreign appetites for
furniture and tourist carvings.

But in the past 30 years, Haiti's deforestation has accelerated
at the same rate that hundreds of thousands of Haitian peasants
have been forced into the cities. Most were ruined because Port-
au-Prince governments followed two neoliberal dictates from
Washington. One, to lower tariff barriers to allow cheaper
foreign products, like agribusiness-produced U.S. rice or
Dominican plantains, to muscle out Haitian farmers growing those
foods. And, two, to grow cash crops like coffee, sugar and cocoa.
The same advice was being given to every other Third World
country, resulting in a worldwide glut and price collapse for
such crops.

In some countries, peasants remaining on the land have turned to
growing more profitable crops like drug-producing coca or
poppies. In Haiti, they have turned to charbon.

Peasants use wood to cook. The refugees in Haiti's sprawling
slums, devoid of any services or infrastructure, rely on lighter-
weight charbon. But charcoal provides about half the energy of
wood. So what a rural family cooks with one tree requires two in
the mushrooming cities.

Haiti's bourgeoisie, in concert with the U.S. State Department,
has capitalized on the giant urban labor pool to set up
industrial parks of sweatshops paying pennies a day to assemble
everything from baseballs and brassieres to high-heels and
calculators for export. They have appropriated Haiti's principal
dam at Peligre, to produce hydroelectric power for their
factories rather than to provide irrigation and flood control
(its original purpose) to the now flooded Artibonite Valley.

The February 29th kidnapping and exile of President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide by U.S. Marines has only made matters worse. The
government of de facto Prime Minister Gérard Latortue has proven
unable to provide any concrete response to this week's flooding,
just as it provided none to the floods in May. All it has done is
decree three days of mourning and that flags be flown at half
mast.... and begged for foreign aid. At the 57th U.N. General
Assembly in New York, de facto President Boniface Alexandre
appealed for the "solidarity of the international community"
saying the country faced the "grave situation of a humanitarian
catastrophe."

The European Union is sending $1.8 million in aid, while
Venezuela is sending $1 million along with food, water, tents and
rescue workers. Washington has anted up a mere $60,000.

One has only to look at the preventive measures taken by
neighboring Cuba to see what difference a political system makes.
In late 2002 in the space of 11 days, Cuba was directly hit by
two hurricanes   Isidore and Lili. Although there was great
property damage, only one person died as the result of a
landslide. Over a million people were evacuated during the
storms, with 77,000 housed in shelters.

Although Haiti was not directly hit by any of the monstrous
storms crisscrossing the Caribbean during this greenhouse-gas
fueled hurricane season, it has had the region's highest death
toll. While it might not have matched Cuba's pro-active
preparations, Haiti's constitutional government surely would have
been better able to respond to this year's disasters, if only
because it enjoyed popular support, participation and enthusiasm.

After Hurricane Gordon in November 1994 and in May of this year,
U.S. occupation troops only grudgingly and briefly used their
helicopters to airlift food and medical supplies to flood
victims. Brazilian, Chilean and Argentinian surrogates have
largely replaced them now, but the foreign occupiers' primary
mission remains to prop up the de facto regime rather than
provide flood relief.

Haiti's rain-induced floods are devastating because the country
has been already ravaged by a flood of cheap imports, weakened by
coups and despair, and neglected by a greedy bourgeoisie intent
only on its own enrichment, not its compatriots' welfare.

Democracy is a prerequisite for the development that can result
in better infrastructure, housing, irrigation, reforestation, and
governmental disaster preparation and relief. By overthrowing the
popularly elected government, Washington, Paris and the Haitian
ruling class made this year's disasters worse. The government
chosen by and answerable to the Haitian people was removed, and
in its place is one chosen by and answerable to Washington. This
prevents the Haitian people from not only protecting their
interests but also their lives against Nature's onslaughts.

All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Progres.

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