30610: Gilles (reply) Re : Spinelli (reply) Jacmel Film Festival (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Emmanuelle Gilles <manugi28@yahoo.fr>

The poorest does not mean that everyone is poor even if the majority may be 
considered as such.  I would prefer the word "impoverished" as it was once the 
richest island in the caribbean. The country needs to be developed in all 
spheres not just economically and socially but also in art and music.  If you 
knew Haiti, you would also realize that music and art are an essential part of 
people's life. Talking about films and music is very much "a propos".

To reconstruct Haiti, first of all is to focus on building infrastructures and 
invest in social development. So far no foreign assistance has been focusing on 
infrastructures except in small insignificant projects.  What we need is to 
build housing for low income people and poorer communities and gradually 
eliminate the "bidonvilles" on the mountains and plant trees instead.

Build a Huge University with campus (one in the north, one in the south and one 
in Port-au-Prince)

Build Hotels with international standard (why not a sheraton, a Hilton etc... 
with conference facilities (bring the international meetings over)

Developing the infrastructures mean reviving tourism, increasing the service 
sector;

So far, Haiti reconstruction advocates, nothing of those magnitudes have been 
envisaged by foreigners - world bank loans or IMF do not allow any social 
investments from the part of the government. The loan has to be spent their 
way, not to feed the poorest.  This is the time for France to pay its debt to 
the Haitian  People.

It seems that foreigners enjoy starting their story with "the poorest of the 
caribbean" as an echo for the world to hear - Also according to some, Haitians 
should not be speaking french - they should be speaking creole.  they are too 
black.  The bottomline is that they are not given opportunities to be educated 
in the same manner as the middle class and the upper class.  Again, you would 
hear that there is no middle class - it does not end what others think of us. 
There is a Haitian context.  It cannot be linked to the US way of life. When I 
reminisce about my childhood in Haiti - the values with which I grew up - the 
great time that we will never have again - I would not trade that for anything 
in the first or second or third world since the Haiti advocates cannot figure 
in what world to classify Haiti.