30663: From LeGrace Benson RE:"Sleeping Rough in Port-au-Prince" (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Legrace Benson <legrace@twcny.rr.com>

Reading the thread concerning violence in Haiti, especially in
Port-au-Prince, prompts me to mention a book I have just reviewed for a
Caribbean paper.  J. Christopher Kovats-Bernat's book, subtitled an
Ethnography of Street Children & Violence in Haiti,  would be a good place
to learn about the particulars. The author was a true participant observer
over a period of several years and has also brought to bear the information
and statistics available from various government offices and the UN. The
situation he describes, which from my more limited perspective certainly
rings true, is the most desperate and most structurally violent possible.

Like many contributing to this thread, I have been in Haiti in periods both
of relative calm and of great turbulence and danger. There were times when I
could walk about in severely poor districts to see craftspeople and knew
that I was entirely safe. There were times when I felt that it was the
non-violent who were in jail, restricted as we were to our dwelling place
with fires burning on the other side of yhe wall.  I also live in a "safe"
historic district in a university town with an excellent police service and
have been robbed 9 times. I've  lived in New York City at times and in
places where fear was constant.  None of that comes close to what is
happening to the street children of Haiti.  A comparison with a Brazilian
favela, often thought to be comparable to the Haitian bidonvilles, throws an
even sharper light on the situation. The particular favela I was in was the
same one you may have seen in last week's news where there was a five-hour
battle between police and drug dealers, with the drug dealers --some at
least--hauled off to the jail.  The favelas are wretched in many ways and
yet are significantly less violent to children.  (I was told, but have no
data, that the situation for women may be more similar to that in Haiti.)

Yet, violence may not be the issue at hand.  Instead of describing the
violence prevalent in Haiti at this time, perhaps we should identify and
describe to ourselves some of the  root causes that are visited upon the
country from outside.  We all have potential for dastardly acts, and every
locale on earth from the stone age to the present yields evidence of our
capacity for brutality (an insult to animals by the way).  There is blame
enough to go around inside Haiti itself. There is more than blame enough to
go around outside.  Let's see Haiti in the real context of our own daily
lives, whether we are from Haiti or Iceland.

For example, I am aware that my job as a university professor and the
pension funds invested on my behalf are my solution for being able to live
independently in old age. At the same time the funds are part of the problem
related to the structural adjustment plans worked out for Haiti. These plans
have led to the impoverishment of the families whose kids go to the streets.
Some of the kids send money earned on the streets back home, even if home
was abusive. Some even have someone they hope can be trusted buy them a pig:
maybe they can go back home at some point and sell it for enough to go to
school.  Meanwhile my pension investments --which I would be insane to give
up -- in part grow on the backs of these kids and their counterparts in
Bangladesh or some remote place in China. Is there a parallel with some
philosopher writing about the need for social contract/social solidarity
living comfortably in Paris or Nantes in 1800?

Sleeping Rough in Port-au-Prince is respectable ethnography and at the same
time an instrument for consciousness raising.  I hope many will read it. I
hope many will begin to ask together, "What should we do about this."