Dear list members,
Haiti isn't a specific area of research for me, but (apart of course from the enormity of the tragedy) I have been fascinated by the mix between security responses and disaster relief in the news commentaries and international responses. Hilary Beckles' article placed it in a welcome historical context, but the article below was sent around a critical geography website this weekend, and I thought the list members might also be interested in this analysis, which looks at the push towards securitisation in relation to domestic elites as well as international responses.
All the best,
Pat Noxolo
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html
Securing Disaster in
Haiti<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110.html>
by Peter Hallward
Nine days after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January
2010, it's now clear that the initial phase of the U.S.-led relief operation
has conformed to the three fundamental tendencies that have shaped the more
general course of the island's recent history. It has adopted military
priorities and strategies. It has sidelined Haiti's own leaders and
government, and ignored the needs of the majority of its people. And it has
proceeded in ways that reinforce the already harrowing gap between rich and
poor. All three tendencies aren't just connected, they are mutually
reinforcing. These same tendencies will continue to govern the imminent
reconstruction effort as well, unless determined political action is taken
to counteract them.
*I*
Haiti is not only one of the poorest countries in the world, it is also one
of the most polarised and unequal in its disparities in wealth and access to
political power.1<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn1>
A
small clique of rich and well-connected families continues to dominate the
country and its economy while more than half the population, according to
the IMF, survive on a household income of around 44 US pennies per
day.2<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn2>
Mass destitution has grown far more severe in recent decades. Starting in
the 1970s, internationally imposed neo-liberal 'adjustments' and austerity
measures finally succeeded in doing what no Haitian government had managed
to do since winning independence in 1804: in order to set the country on the
road towards 'economic development', they have driven large numbers of small
farmers off their land and into densely crowded urban slums. A small
minority of these internal refugees may be lucky enough to find sweatshop
jobs that pay the lowest wages in the region. These wages currently average
$2 or $3 a day; in real terms they are worth less than a quarter of their
1980 value.
Haiti's tiny elite owes its privileges to exclusion, exploitation and
violence, and it is only violence that allows it to retain them. For much
of the last century, Haiti's military and paramilitary forces (with
substantial amounts of US support) were able to preserve these privileges on
their own. Over the course of the 1980s, however, it started to look as if
local military repression might no longer be up to the job. A massive and
courageous popular mobilisation (known as Lavalas) culminated in 1990 with
the landslide election of the liberation theologian Jean-Bertrand Aristide
as president. Large numbers of ordinary people began to participate in the
political system for the first time, and as political scientist Robert
Fatton remembers, 'panic seized the dominant class. It dreaded living in
close proximity to la populace and barricaded itself against
Lavalas.'3<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn3>
Nine months later, the army dealt with this popular threat in the
time-honoured way, with a coup d'état. Over the next three years, around
4,000 Aristide supporters were killed.
However, when the US eventually allowed Aristide to return in October 1994,
he took a surprising and unprecedented step: he abolished the army that had
deposed him. As human rights lawyer Brian Concannon (director of the
Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti) observed a few years later,
'it is impossible to overestimate the impact of this accomplishment. It has
been called the greatest human rights development in Haiti since
emancipation, and is wildly
popular.'4<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn4>
In
2000, the Haitian electorate gave Aristide a second overwhelming mandate
when his party (Fanmi Lavalas) won more than 90% of the seats in parliament.
*II*
More than anything else, what has happened in Haiti since 1990 should be
understood as the progressive clarification of this basic dichotomy --
democracy or the army. Unadulterated democracy might one day allow the
interests of the numerical majority to prevail, and thereby challenge the
privileges of the elite. In 2000, such a challenge became a genuine
possibility: the overwhelming victory of Fanmi Lavalas, at all levels of
government, raised the prospect of genuine political change in a context in
which there was no obvious extra-political mechanism -- no army -- to
prevent it.
In order to avoid this outcome, the main strategy of Haiti's little ruling
class has been to redefine political questions in terms of 'stability' and
'security', and in particular the security of property and investments.
Mere numbers may well win an election or sustain a popular movement but as
everyone knows, only an army is equipped to deal with insecurity. The
well-armed 'friend of Haiti' that is the United States knows this better
than anyone else.
As soon as Aristide was re-elected, a systematic international campaign to
bankrupt and destabilise his second government set the stage for a
paramilitary insurrection and a further coup d'état, and in 2004, thousands
of US troops again invaded Haiti (just as they first did back in 1915) in
order to 'restore stability and security' to their 'troubled island
neighbour.' An expensive and long-term UN 'stabilisation mission' staffed
by 9,000 heavily armed troops soon took over the job of helping to pacify
the population and criminalise the resistance. By the end of 2006,
thousands more Aristide supporters had been killed.
Over the course of 2009, a suitably stabilised Haitian government agreed to
persevere with the privatisation of the country's remaining public
assets,5<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn5>
veto
a proposal to increase minimum wages to $5 a day, and to bar Fanmi Lavalas
(and several other political parties) from participating in the next round
of legislative elections.
When it comes to providing stability, today's UN troops are clearly a big
improvement over the old indigenous alternative. If things get so unstable
that even the ground begins to shake, however, there's still nothing that
can beat the world's leading provider of peace and security.
*III*
In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake that struck on 12 January 2010,
it might have seemed hard to counter arguments in favour of allowing the US
military, with its 'unrivalled logistical capability', to take de facto
control of such a massive relief operation. Weary of bad press in Iraq and
Afghanistan, US commanders also seemed glad of this unexpected opportunity
to rebrand their armed forces as angels of mercy. As usual, the Haitian
government was instructed to be grateful for whatever help it could get.
That was before US commanders actively began -- the day after the earthquake
struck -- to divert aid away from the disaster zone.
As soon as the US air force took control of Haitian airspace, on Wednesday
13 January, they explicitly prioritised military over humanitarian flights.
Although most reports from Port-au-Prince emphasised remarkable levels of
patience and solidarity on the streets, US commanders made fears of popular
unrest and insecurity their number one concern. Their first priority was to
avoid what the US Air Force Special Command Public Affairs spokesman (Ty
Foster) called another 'Somalia
effort'6<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn6>
--
which is to say, presumably, a situation in which a humiliated US army might
once again risk losing military control of a 'humanitarian' mission.
As many observers predicted, however, the determination of US commanders to
forestall this risk by privileging guns and soldiers over doctors and food
has only succeeded in helping to provoke a few occasional bursts of the very
unrest they set out to contain. In order to amass a sufficiently large
amount of soldiers and military equipment 'on the ground', the US Air Force
diverted plane after plane packed with emergency supplies away from
Port-au-Prince. Among many others, World Food Program flights were turned
away by US commanders on Thursday and Friday, the *New York Times* reported,
'so that the United States could land troops and equipment, and lift
Americans and other foreigners to
safety.'7<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn7>
Many similar flights met a similar fate, right through to the end of the
week. Médecins sans
Frontières<http://doctorswithoutborders.org/press/release.cfm?id=4165&cat=press-release>
(MSF)
alone has so far had to watch at least five planeloads of its medical
supplies be turned
away.8<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn8>
On
Saturday 16 January, for instance, 'despite guarantees given by the United
Nations and the US Defense Department, an MSF cargo plane carrying an
inflatable surgical hospital was blocked from landing in Port-au-Prince and
was re-routed to Samana, in Dominican Republic', delaying its arrival by an
additional 24 hours.9<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn9>
Late
on Monday 18 January,
MSF<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6994523.ece>
'complained
that one of its cargo planes carrying 12 tonnes of medical equipment had
been turned away three times from Port-au-Prince airport since Sunday,'
despite receiving 'repeated assurances they could land.' By that stage one
group of MSF doctors in Port-au-Prince had been 'forced to buy a saw in the
market to continue the
amputations'<http://alertnet.org/db/an_art/59877/2010/00/20-122115-1.htm>
upon
which the lives of their patients
depended.10<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn10>
While US commanders set about restoring security by assembling a force of
some 14,000 Marines, residents in some less secure parts of Port-au-Prince
soon started to run out of food and water. On 20 January people sleeping in
one of the largest and most easily accessed of the many temporary refugee
camps in central Port-au-Prince (in Champs Mars) told writer Tim Schwartz,
author of the 2008 book *Travesty in
Haiti<http://www.amazon.com/Travesty-Haiti-Christian-orphanages-trafficking/dp/1419698036>
*, that 'no relief has arrived; it is all being delivered on other side of
town, by the US
embassy.'11<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn11>
Telesur
reporter Reed Lindsay confirmed on 20 January, a full eight days after the
quake, that the impoverished south-western Port-au-Prince suburb closest to
the earthquake's epicentre, Carrefour, still hadn't received any food, aid
or medical help.12<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn12>
The BBC's Mark Doyle <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8463938.stm> found
the same thing in an eastern (and less badly affected) suburb. 'Their
houses are destroyed, they have no running water, food prices have doubled,
and they haven't seen a single government official or foreign aid worker
since the earthquake struck.' Overall, Doyle observed, 'the international
response has been quite pathetic. Some of the aid agencies are working very
hard, but there are two ways of reporting this kind of thing. One is to
hang around with the aid agencies and hang around with the American
spokespeople at the airport, and you'll hear all sorts of stories about
what's happening. Another way is to drive almost at random with ordinary
people and go and see what's happening in ordinary places. In virtually
every area I've driven to, ordinary people say that I was the first
foreigner that they'd
met.'13<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn13>
Only a full week after the earthquake did emergency food supplies even begin
the slow journey from the heavily guarded airport to fourteen 'secure
distribution points' in various parts of the
city.14<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn14>
By
that stage, tens of thousands of Port-au-Prince residents had finally come
to the conclusion that no aid would be forthcoming, and began to abandon the
capital for villages in the countryside.
On Sunday 17 January, Al-Jazeera's correspondent summarised what many other
journalists had been saying all week. 'Most Haitians have seen little
humanitarian aid so far. What they have seen is guns, and lots of them.
Armoured personnel carriers cruise the streets' and 'inside the
well-guarded perimeter [of the airport], the US has taken control. It looks
more like the Green Zone in Baghdad than a centre for aid
distribution.'15<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn15>
Late
on the same day, the World Food Programme's air logistics officer Jarry
Emmanuel confirmed that most of the 200 flights going in and out of the
airport each day were still being reserved for the US military: 'their
priorities are to secure the country. Ours are to
feed.'16<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn16>
By
Monday 18 January, no matter how many US embassy or military spokesman
insisted that 'we are here to help' rather than invade, governments as
different as those of
France<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/7020908/US-accused-of-occupying-Haiti-as-troops-flood-in.html>
and Venezuela <http://aporrea.org/tiburon/n148981.html> had begun to accuse
the US of effectively 'occupying' the
country.17<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn17>
*IV*
The US decision to privilege military over humanitarian traffic at the
airport sealed the fate of many thousands of people abandoned in the rubble
of lower Port-au-Prince and Léogane. In countries all over the world,
search and rescue teams were ready to leave for Haiti within 12 hours of the
disaster. Only a few were able to arrive without fatal delays -- mainly
teams, like those from Venezuela, Iceland and China, who managed to land
while Haitian staff still retained control of their airport. Some
subsequent arrivals, including a team from the UK, were prevented from
landing with their heavy lending equipment. Others, like Canada's several
Heavy Urban Search Rescue Teams, were immediately readied but never sent --
the teams were told to stand down, the Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister
Lawrence Cannon eventually explained, because 'the government had opted to
send Canadian Armed Forces
instead.'18<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn18>
USAID announced on 19 January that international search and rescue teams,
over the course of the first full week after the disaster, had managed to
save a grand total of 70
people.19<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn19>
The
majority of these people were rescued in quite specific locations and
circumstances. 'Search-and-rescue operations', observed the *Washington
Post* on 18 January, 'have been intensely focused on buildings with
international aid workers, such as the crushed U.N. headquarters, and on
large hotels with international
clientele.'20<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn20>
Tim
Schwartz spent much of the first post-quake week as a translator with rescue
workers, and was struck by the fact that most of their work was confined to
places -- the UN's hotel Christophe, the Montana Hotel, the Caribe
supermarket -- that were not only frequented by foreigners but that could be
snugly enclosed within 'secure perimeters.' Elsewhere, he observed, UN
'peacekeepers' did their best to make sure that rescue workers treated
onlooking crowds as a source of potential danger rather than
assistance.21<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn21>
Until the residents of devastated places like Léogane and Carrefour are
somehow able to reassure foreign troops that they will feel 'secure' when
visiting their neighbourhoods, UN and US commanders clearly prefer to let
them die on their own.
Exactly the same logic has condemned yet more people to death in and around
Port-au-Prince's hospitals. In one of the most illuminating reports yet
filed from the city, on 20 January *Democracy Now*'s Amy Goodman spoke with
Dr. Evan Lyon<http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/19/doctor_misinformation_and_racism_have_frozen>
of Partners in Health/Zanmi
Lasante<http://www.pih.org/where/Haiti/Haiti.html> from
the General Hospital, the most important medical centre in the whole
country. Lyon acknowledged there was a need for 'crowd control, so that the
patients are not kept from having access', but insisted that 'there's no
insecurity [. . . ]. I don't know if you guys were out late last night, but
you can hear a pin drop in this city. It's a peaceful place. There is no
war. There is no crisis except the suffering that's ongoing [. . . ]. The
first thing that [your] listeners need to understand is that there is no
insecurity here. There has not been, and I expect there will not be.' On
the contrary, Lyon explained, 'this question of security and the rumours of
security and the racism behind the idea of security has been our major block
to getting aid in. The US military has promised us for several days to
bring in machinery, but they've been listening to this idea that things are
insecure, and so we don't have supplies.' As of 20 January, the hospital
still hadn't received the supplies and medicines needed to treat many
hundreds of dying patients. 'In terms of aid relief the response has been
incredibly slow. There are teams of surgeons that have been sent to places
that were, quote, "more secure," that have ten or twenty doctors and ten
patients. We have a thousand people on this campus who are triaged and
ready for surgery, but we only have four working operating rooms, without
anaesthesia and without pain
medications.'22<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn22>
Almost by definition, in post-quake Haiti it seems that anyone or anything
that cannot be enclosed in a 'secure perimeter' isn't worth saving.
In their occasional forays outside such perimeters, meanwhile, some Western
journalists seemed able to find plenty of reasons for retreating behind
them. Lurid stories of looting and gangs soon began to lend 'security
experts' like the London-based Stuart
Page23<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn23>
an
aura of apparent authority, when he explained to the BBC's gullible
'security correspondent' Frank Gardner that 'all the security gains made in
Haiti in the last few years could now be reversed [. . . ]. The criminal
gangs, totalling some 3,000, are going to exploit the current humanitarian
crisis, to the maximum
degree.'24<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn24>
Another seasoned BBC correspondent, Matt
Frei<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8466698.stm>,
had a similar story to tell on 18 January, when he found a few scavengers
sifting through the remains of a central shopping district. 'Looting is now
the only industry here. Anything will do as a weapon. Everything is now
run by rival armed groups of thugs.' If Haiti is to avoid anarchy, Frei
concluded, 'what may be needed is a full scale military
occupation.'25<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn25>
Not even former US president (and former Haiti occupier) Bill Clinton was
prepared to go that far. 'Actually', Clinton told Frei, 'when you think
about people who have lost everything except what they're carrying on their
backs, who not only haven't eaten but probably haven't slept in four days,
and when the sun goes down it's totally dark and they spend all night long
tripping over bodies living and dead, well, I think they've behaved quite
well [. . . ]. They are astonishing people. How can they be so calm in the
face of such enormous loss of life and loved ones, and all the physical
damage?'26<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn26>
Reporters able to tell the difference between occasional and highly
localised bursts of foraging and a full-scale 'descent into anarchy' made
much the same point all week, as did dozens of indignant Haitian
correspondents. On 17 January, for instance, Ciné Institute director David
Belle<http://www.cineinstitute.com/news/2010/01/17/cine-institute-director-david-belle-reports-from-port-au-prince/>
tried
to counter international misrepresentation. 'I have been told that much US
media coverage paints Haiti as a tinderbox ready to explode. I'm told that
lead stories in major media are of looting, violence and chaos. There could
be nothing further from the truth. I have travelled the entire city daily
since my arrival. The extent of the damage is absolutely staggering [but. .
. ] NOT ONCE have we witnessed a single act of aggression or violence [. . .
]. A crippled city of two million awaits help, medicine, food and water.
Most haven't received any. Haiti can be proud of its survivors. Their
dignity and decency in the face of this tragedy is itself
staggering.'27<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn27>
As anyone can see, however, dignity and decency are no substitute for
security. No amount of weapons will ever suffice to reassure those
'fortunate few' whose fortunes isolate them from the people they exploit.
As far as the people themselves are concerned, 'security is not the issue',
explains Haiti Liberté's Kim Ives. 'We see throughout Haiti the population
themselves organizing themselves into popular committees to clean up, to
pull out the bodies from the rubble, to build refugee camps, to set up their
security for the refugee camps. This is a population which is
self-sufficient, and it has been self-sufficient for many
years.'28<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn28>
But
while the people who have lost what little they had have done their best to
cope and regroup, the soldiers sent to 'restore order' treat them as
potential combatants. 'It's just the same way they reacted after Katrina',
concludes Ives. 'The victims are what's scary. They're black people who,
you know, had the only successful slave revolution in history. What could
be more threatening?'
'According to everyone I spoke with in the centre of the city', wrote
Schwarz on 21 January, 'the violence and gang stuff is pure BS.' The
relentless obsession with security, agrees Andy Kershaw, is clear proof of
the fact that most foreign soldiers and NGO workers 'haven't a clue about
the country and its
people.'29<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn29>
True
to form, within hours of the earthquake most of the panicked staff in the US
embassy had already been evacuated, and at least one prominent foreign
contractor in the garment sector (the Canadian firm Gildan Activewear)
announced that it would be shifting production to alternative sewing
facilities in neighbouring
countries.30<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn30>
The
price to be paid for such priorities will not be evenly distributed. Up in
the higher, wealthier and mostly undamaged parts of Pétionville everyone
already knows that it's the local residents 'who through their government
connections, trading companies and interconnected family businesses' will
once again pocket the lion's share of international aid and reconstruction
money.31 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn31>
In order to help keep less well-connected families where they belong,
meanwhile, the US Department of Homeland Security has taken 'unprecedented'
emergency measures to secure the homeland this past week. Operation 'Vigilant
Sentry' <http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2414080320071024> will make
efficient use of the large naval flotilla the US has assembled around
Port-au-Prince. 'As well as providing emergency supplies and medical aid',
notes The *Daily Telegraph*, 'the USS Carl Vinson, along with a ring of
other navy and coast guard vessels, is acting as a deterrent to Haitians who
might be driven to make the 681 mile sea crossing to Miami.' While
Senegal's president Abdoulaye Wade offered 'voluntary repatriation to any
Haitian that wants to return to [the land of] their origin', American
officials confirmed that they would continue to apply their long-standing
(and thoroughly illegal) policy with respect to all Haitian refugees and
asylum seekers -- to intercept and repatriate them automatically, regardless
of the circumstances.32<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn32>
Ever since the quake struck, the US Air Force has taken the additional
precaution of flying a radio-transmitting cargo plane for five hours a day
over large parts of the country, so as to broadcast a recorded message from
Haiti's ambassador in Washington. 'Don't rush on boats to leave the
country', the message says. 'If you think you will reach the U. S. and all
the doors will be wide open to you, that's not at all the case. They will
intercept you right on the water and send you back home where you came from.
' Not even life-threatening injuries are enough to entitle Haitians to a
different sort of American reception. When the dean of medicine at the
University of Miami arrived to help set up a field hospital by the airport
in Port-au-Prince, he was outraged to find that most seriously injured
people in the city were being denied the visas they would need to be
transferred to Florida for surgery and treatment. As of 19 January the
State Department had authorised a total of 23 exceptions to its golden rule
of immigration. 'It's beyond insane,' O'Neill complained. 'It's
bureaucracy at its worst.
'33<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_edn33>
*V*
This is the fourth time the US has invaded Haiti since 1915. Although each
invasion has taken a different form and responded to a different pretext,
all four have been expressly designed to restore 'stability' and 'security'
to the island. Earthquake-prone Haiti must now be the most thoroughly
stabilised country in the world. Thousands more foreign security personnel
are already on their way, to guard the teams of foreign reconstruction and
privatisation consultants who in the coming months are likely to usurp what
remains of Haitian sovereignty.
Perhaps some of these guards and consultants will help their elite clients
achieve another long-cherished dream: the restoration of Haiti's own little
army. And perhaps then, for a short while at least, the inexhaustible
source of 'instability' in Haiti – the ever-nagging threat of popular
political participation and empowerment – may be securely buried in the
rubble of its history.
*Notes*
1 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref1> See
Pål Sletten and Willy Egset, *Poverty in
Haiti<http://www.fafo.no/pub/rapp/755/index.htm>
* (FAFO, 2004), 9.
2 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref2>
IMF, *Haiti: Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy
Paper<http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2006/cr06411.pdf>
* (November 2006), 7.
3 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref3>
Robert Fatton, *Haiti's Predatory
Republic<http://books.google.com/books?id=byny48N3qaQC&pg=PA86&dq=%22panic+seized+the+dominant+class%22>
* (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002), 86-87, 83.
4 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref4>
Brian Concannon, "Lave Men, Siye Atè: Taking Human Rights
Seriously,"<http://books.google.com/books?id=Z0AxgjmKYYsC&pg=PA92> in
Melinda Miles and Eugenia Charles, eds., *Let Haiti LIVE: Unjust U.S.
Policies Toward its Oldest Neighbor*(Coconut Creek FL: Educa Vision, 2004),
92.
5 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref5> See
for instance Jeb Sprague, "Haiti's
Classquake,"<http://www.haitianalysis.com/2010/1/19/haiti-s-classquake>
*HaitiAnalysis,* January 19, 2010.
6 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref6> BBC
Radio 4 News, January 16, 2010, 22:00GMT.
7 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref7>
Ginger Thompson and Damien Cave, "Officials Strain to Distribute Aid to
Haiti as Violence
Rises,"<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/17/world/americas/17haiti.html>
*New York Times*, January 17, 2010.
8 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref8>
"Médecins
Sans Frontières says its Plane Turned Away from U.S.-run
Airport,"<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/%207031203/Haiti-earthquake-Medecins-Sans-Frontieres-says-its-plane-turned-away-%20from-US-run-airport.html>
*Daily Telegraph*, January 19, 2010.
9 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref9>
"Doctors
Without Borders Cargo Plane with Full Hospital and Staff Blocked from
Landing in Port-au-Prince,"<http://doctorswithoutborders.org/press/release.cfm?id=4165&cat=press-release>
January
18, 2010.
10 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref10>
"America
Sends Paratroopers to Haiti to Help Secure Aid
Lines,"<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6994523.ece>
*The Times,* January 20, 2010.
11 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref11>
Email from Tim Schwartz, January 20, 2010.
12 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref12>
"No aid [in Carrefour]. In the morning at UN base they said they would
distribute there, but it didn't happen" (Reed Lindsay, *Honor and Respect
Foundation Newsletter*), January 20, 2010,
http://www.hrfhaiti.org/earthquake/). Cf. Luis Felipe Lopez, "Town at
Epicenter of Quake Stays in Isolation,"
<http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/1431239.html>
*The Miami Herald,* January 17, 2010.
13 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref13>
BBC Radio 4, News at Ten, January 18, 2010.
14 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref14>
Ed Pilkington, "We're Not Here to Fight, U.S. Troops
Insist,"<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/18/haiti-earthquake-us-soldiers-aid>
*The* *Guardian,* January 18, 2010.
15 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref15>
"Disputes Emerge over Haiti Aid Control," Al Jazeera, January 17, 2010.
16 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref16>
Ginger Thompson and Damien Cave, "Officials Strain to Distribute Aid to
Haiti as Violence Rises," *New York Times,* January 17, 2010.
17 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref17>
"Haiti
Aid Agencies Warn: Chaotic and Confusing Relief Effort is Costing
Lives,"<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/18/haiti-aid-distribution-confusion-warning>
*The Guardian*, January 18, 2010.
18 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref18>
Don Peat, "HUSAR Not up to Task, Feds Say: Search and Rescue Team Told to
Stand Down," <http://www.torontosun.com/news/haiti/2010/01/17/12504981.html>
*Toronto Sun*, January 17, 2010.
19 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref19>
USAID, http://www.usaid.gov/helphaiti/index.html, accessed on January 20,
2010.
20 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref20>
William Booth, "Haiti's Elite Spared from Much of the
Devastation,"<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/17/AR2010011702941.html>
*Washington Post*, January 18, 2010.
21 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref21>
Tim Schwarz, phone call with the author, January 18, 2010; cf. Tim
Schwartz, "Is this Anarchy? Outsiders Believe this Island Nation is a Land
of Bandits. Blame the NGOs for the
'Looting,'"<http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=173333>
*NOW Toronto*, January 21, 2010.
22 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref22>
"With
Foreign Aid Still at a Trickle, Devastated Port-au-Prince General Hospital
Struggles to Meet Overwhelming
Need,"<http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/20/devastated_port_au_prince_hospital_struggles>
*Democracy Now!* January 20, 2010.
23 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref23>
Stuart Page is chairman of Page Group,
http://www.pagegroupltd.com/aboutus.html.
24 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref24>
Gardner then explained that, with the police weakened by the quake,
"Thousands of escaped criminals have returned to areas they once terrorized,
like the slum district of Cité Soleil [. . .]. Unless the armed criminals
are re-arrested, Haiti's security problems risk being every bit as bad as
they were in 2004" (BBC <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8466698.stm> Radio
4, Six O'clock News, January 18, 2010). In fact, when some of these
ex-prisoners tried to re-establish themselves in Cité Soleil in the week
after the quake, local residents promptly chased them out of the district on
their own (see Ed Pilkington and Tom Phillips,"Haiti Escaped Prisoners
Chased Out of Notorious
Slum,"<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/20/haiti-escaped-prisoners-cite-soleil>
*The Guardian*, January 20, 2010; Tom Leonard, "Scenes of Devastation
Outside Port-au-Prince 'Even
Worse,'"<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/7039737/Haiti-earthquake-scenes-of-devastation-outside-Port-au-Prince-even-worse.html>
*Daily Telegraph*, January 21, 2010).
25 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref25>
BBC television, Ten O'clock News, January 18, 2010.
26 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref26>
BBC Radio 4, News at Ten, January 18, 2010. It sounds as if Clinton, in his
role as UN special envoy to Haiti, may be learning a few things from his
deputy -- Zanmi Lasante's Dr. Paul Farmer.
27 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref27>
David Belle, January 17, 2010.
28 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref28>
"Journalist
Kim Ives on How Western Domination Has Undermined Haiti's Ability to Recover
from Natural Devastation,"<http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/20/journalist_kim_ives_on_how_decades>
*Democracy Now!* January 21, 2010. Ives illustrates the way such community
organizations work with an example from the Delmas 33 neighborhood where
he's staying. "A truckload of food came in in the middle of the night
unannounced. It could have been a melee. The local popular organization
was contacted. They immediately mobilized their members [. . .]. They
lined up about 600 people who were staying on the soccer field behind the
[Matthew 25] house, which is also a hospital, and they distributed the food
in an orderly, equitable fashion. They were totally sufficient. They
didn't need Marines. They didn't need the UN. [. . .] These are things
that people can do for themselves and are doing for themselves." Kershaw
makes the same point: "This self-imposed blockade by bureaucracy is a
scandal but could be easily overcome. The NGOs and the military should
recognize the hysteria over 'security' for what it is and make use of
Haiti's best resource and its most efficient distribution network: the
Haitians themselves. Stop treating them as children. Or worse. Hand over
to them immediately what they need at the airport. They will find the means
to collect it. Fill up their trucks and cars with free fuel. Any further
restriction on, and control of, the supply of aid is not only patronizing
but it is in that control and restriction where any 'security issues' will
really lurk. And it is the Haitians who best know where the aid is needed"
(Andy Kershaw, "Stop Treating these People Like
Savages,"<http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/andy-kershaw-stop-treating-these-people-like-savages-1874218.html>
*The Independent*, January 21, 2010).
29 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref29>
Andy Kershaw, "Stop Treating these People Like
Savages,"<http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/andy-kershaw-stop-treating-these-people-like-savages-1874218.html>
*The Independent*, January 21, 2010
30 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref30>
Ross Marowits, "Gildan Shifting T-shirt Production Outside Haiti to Ensure
Adequate Supply,"<http://www.canadianbusiness.com/markets/headline_news/article.jsp?content=b131693719>
The *Canadian Press*, January 13, 2010.
31 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref31>
William Booth, "Haiti's Elite Spared from Much of the Devastation," *Washington
Post*, January 18, 2010.
32 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref32>
Bruno Waterfield, "U.S. Ships Blockade Coast to Thwart Exodus to
America,"<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/haiti/7030237/Haiti-earthquake-US-ships-blockade-coast-to-thwart-exodus-to-America.html>
*Daily Telegraph*, January 19, 2010; "Senegal Offers Land to
Haitians,"<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8463921.stm> BBC
News January 17, 2010.
33 <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110p.html#_ednref33>
James C. McKinley Jr., "Homeless Haitians Told Not to Flee to United
States," <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/us/19refugee.html> *New York
Times*, January 19, 2010.
------------------------------
Peter Hallward <http://www.web.mdx.ac.uk/crmep/STAFF/PeterHallward.htm> is a
Canadian political philosopher. He is currently a professor of Modern
European Philosophy at Middlesex University. He is the author of *Damning
the Flood<http://www.amazon.com/Damming-Flood-Aristide-Politics-Containment/dp/1844671062>
.* This article was first published in *Americas Program
Report<http://americas.irc-online.org/am/6665>
* (under a Creative Commons license) and *Haiti
Analysis<http://haitianalysis.com/2010/1/22/securing-disaster-in-haiti>
* on 22 January 2010.
------------------------------
URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/hallward240110.html<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010//hallward240110.html>
------------------------------
> Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 21:35:31 -0400
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Sir Hilary Beckles on Haiti
> To: [log in to unmask]
>
> ---------
>
> Published on: 17th January 2010 by Sir Hilary Beckles
>
> THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES is in the process of conceiving how best
> to deliver a major conference on the theme Rethinking And Rebuilding Haiti.
>
> I am very keen to provide an input into this exercise because for too long
> there has been a popular perception that somehow the Haitian nation-building
> project, launched on January 1, 1804, has failed on account of
> mismanagement, ineptitude, corruption.
>
> Buried beneath the rubble of imperial propaganda, out of both Western Europe
> and the United States, is the evidence which shows that Haiti's independence
> was defeated by an aggressive North-Atlantic alliance that could not imagine
> their world inhabited by a free regime of Africans as representatives of the
> newly emerging democracy.
>
> The evidence is striking, especially in the context of France.
>
>
> The Haitians fought for their freedom and won, as did the Americans fifty
> years earlier. The Americans declared their independence and crafted an
> extraordinary constitution that set out a clear message about the value of
> humanity and the right to freedom, justice, and liberty.
>
> In the midst of this brilliant discourse, they chose to retain slavery as
> the basis of the new nation state. The founding fathers therefore could not
> see beyond race, as the free state was built on a slavery foundation.
>
> The water was poisoned in the well; the Americans went back to the
> battlefield a century later to resolve the fact that slavery and freedom
> could not comfortably co-exist in the same place.
>
> The French, also, declared freedom, fraternity and equality as the new
> philosophies of their national transformation and gave the modern world a
> tremendous progressive boost by so doing.
>
> They abolished slavery, but Napoleon Bonaparte could not imagine the
> republic without slavery and targeted the Haitians for a new, more intense
> regime of slavery. The British agreed, as did the Dutch, Spanish and
> Portuguese.
>
> All were linked in communion over the 500 000 Blacks in Haiti, the most
> populous and prosperous Caribbean colony.
>
>
> As the jewel of the Caribbean, they all wanted to get their hands on it.
> With a massive slave base, the English, French and Dutch salivated over
> owning it - and the people.
>
> The people won a ten-year war, the bloodiest in modern history, and declared
> their independence. Every other country in the Americas was based on
> slavery.
>
> Haiti was freedom, and proceeded to place in its 1805 Independence
> Constitution that any person of African descent who arrived on its shores
> would be declared free, and a citizen of the republic.
>
> For the first time since slavery had commenced, Blacks were the subjects of
> mass freedom and citizenship in a nation.
>
> The French refused to recognise Haiti's independence and declared it an
> illegal pariah state. The Americans, whom the Haitians looked to in
> solidarity as their mentor in independence, refused to recognise them, and
> offered solidarity instead to the French. The British, who were negotiating
> with the French to obtain the ownership title to Haiti, also moved in
> solidarity, as did every other nation-state the Western world.
>
> Haiti was isolated at birth - ostracised and denied access to world trade,
> finance, and institutional development. It was the most vicious example of
> national strangulation recorded in modern history.
>
> The Cubans, at least, have had Russia, China, and Vietnam. The Haitians were
> alone from inception. The crumbling began.
>
> Then came 1825; the moment of full truth. The republic is celebrating its
> 21st anniversary. There is national euphoria in the streets of
> Port-au-Prince.
>
> The economy is bankrupt; the political leadership isolated. The cabinet took
> the decision that the state of affairs could not continue.
>
>
> The country had to find a way to be inserted back into the world economy.
> The French government was invited to a summit.
>
> Officials arrived and told the Haitian government that they were willing to
> recognise the country as a sovereign nation but it would have to pay
> compensation and reparation in exchange. The Haitians, with backs to the
> wall, agreed to pay the French.
>
> The French government sent a team of accountants and actuaries into Haiti in
> order to place a value on all lands, all physical assets, the 500 000
> citizens were who formerly enslaved, animals, and all other commercial
> properties and services.
>
> The sums amounted to 150 million gold francs. Haiti was told to pay this
> reparation to France in return for national recognition.
>
> The Haitian government agreed; payments began immediately. Members of the
> Cabinet were also valued because they had been enslaved people before
> independence.
>
> Thus began the systematic destruction of the Republic of Haiti. The French
> government bled the nation and rendered it a failed state. It was a
> merciless exploitation that was designed and guaranteed to collapse the
> Haitian economy and society.
>
> Haiti was forced to pay this sum until 1922 when the last installment was
> made. During the long 19th century, the payment to France amounted to up to
> 70 per cent of the country's foreign exchange earnings.
>
> Jamaica today pays up to 70 per cent in order to service its international
> and domestic debt. Haiti was crushed by this debt payment. It descended into
> financial and social chaos.
>
> The republic did not stand a chance. France was enriched and it took
> pleasure from the fact that having been defeated by Haitians on the
> battlefield, it had won on the field of finance. In the years when the
> coffee crops failed, or the sugar yield was down, the Haitian government
> borrowed on the French money market at double the going interest rate in
> order to repay the French government.
>
> When the Americans invaded the country in the early 20th century, one of the
> reasons offered was to assist the French in collecting its reparations.
>
>
> The collapse of the Haitian nation resides at the feet of France and
> America, especially. These two nations betrayed, failed, and destroyed the
> dream that was Haiti; crushed to dust in an effort to destroy the flower of
> freedom and the seed of justice.
>
> Haiti did not fail. It was destroyed by two of the most powerful nations on
> earth, both of which continue to have a primary interest in its current
> condition.
>
> The sudden quake has come in the aftermath of summers of hate. In many ways
> the quake has been less destructive than the hate. Human life was snuffed
> out by the quake, while the hate has been a long and inhumane suffocation -
> a crime against humanity.
>
> During the 2001 UN Conference on Race in Durban, South Africa, strong
> representation was made to the French government to repay the 150 million
> francs.
>
> The value of this amount was estimated by financial actuaries as US$21
> billion. This sum of capital could rebuild Haiti and place it in a position
> to re-engage the modern world. It was illegally extracted from the Haitian
> people and should be repaid.
>
> It is stolen wealth. In so doing, France could discharge its moral
> obligation to the Haitian people.
>
>
> For a nation that prides itself in the celebration of modern diplomacy,
> France, in order to exist with the moral authority of this diplomacy in this
> post-modern world, should do the just and legal thing.
>
> Such an act at the outset of this century would open the door for a
> sophisticated interface of past and present, and set the Haitian nation free
> at last.
>
>
> l Sir Hilary Beckles is pro-vice-chancellor and Principal of the Cave Hill
> Campus, UWI.
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