Haiti’s Colonial Overlord
by Ashley Smith / August 5th,
2010
Amid the hoopla over Chelsea Clinton’s wedding
at a posh estate
north of New York City, there were plenty of toasts in the media to Bill
Clinton and the good works he’s performed since leaving the White
House.
In particular, Clinton’s role in working with Haiti, both before and
after the catastrophic earthquake last January, was singled out.
To the U.S. media, Clinton is a compassionate statesmen, with only
the best interests of the Haitian people at heart. Particularly since
this year’s quake, he has been viewed as a decisive leader who can “get
things done,” in contrast to the country’s ineffective government.
Because of his role as co-chair of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction
Commission (IHRC), Esquire magazine called Clinton “CEO of a leaderless
nation,” the Miami Herald repeatedly refers to him as the “czar of the recovery
effort.”
Ordinary Haitians have a different view. They remember Clinton as the
man who, while president, demanded Haiti follow the “Plan of Death”–the
neoliberal prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank that “structurally
adjusted” the Haitian economy in the interests of U.S. business, at the
expense of the country’s peasants and poor.
Today, Haitians know Clinton as a man who wields immense power over the
country’s future. Esquire’s
description of him as the “CEO of a leaderless nation.” can only be
called a political Freudian slip–a CEO, after all, is concerned with
profitable investments for shareholders, not meeting people’s needs.
It isn’t even true that Clinton can “get things done.” According to the
Washington Post,
only 2 percent of the more than $5 billion in aid promised by the U.S.
and other countries at a UN donor conference for the first 18 months of
reconstruction has materialized. Clinton’s IHRC has dispensed just over
$500 million so far–a drop in the bucket compared to the need.
Clinton has promised to “burn up the phone lines” to get world
governments to fulfill their pledges. But if and when he manages to get
funds for the IHRC, no one should be under any illusion that the
reconstruction aid will be used in the interests of Haitian peasants and
poor.
The IHRC is a colonial body that will implement the same old
neoliberal measures. The U.S. spearheaded setting up the IHRC at an
international conference in June. In its original design, the 26-member
executive body had a majority of foreigners representing various
countries and international financial institutions. Faced with protests
from Haitians, the executive was reorganized so that there is now 13
Haitians and 13 foreigners. Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Max
Bellerive were selected as co-chairs.
But lest anyone mistakenly think Bellerive and the other 13 Haitians
have any control over the commission, the World Bank was chosen as the
trustee of the funds. On top of that, Haitian President René Préval was
compelled to extend his decree of emergency powers to prevent any
Haitians from overruling the IHRC’s power in Haiti.
“Haiti’s true government,” wrote Berthony Depont, editor of the weekly
left-wing paper Haiti Liberté,
“has just been installed on June 17 with 26 members, all handsomely
paid, at the Karibe Convention Center. There are 13 junior Haitians, all
too happy to be nominated, but who have no credibility with the Haitian
people. Then there are the real members of the Interim Haitian
Reconstruction Commission: the foreigners.”
Clinton, whatever his penchant for professing to feel Haitians’ pain,
will makes sure that the IHRC serves the interests of the U.S. and
other powerful governments, in alliance with its allies in Haiti, the
wealthy.
As the U.S. Agency for International Development proclaims
unapologetically on its Web site: “U.S. foreign assistance has always
had the twofold purpose of furthering America’s foreign policy interests
in expanding democracy and free market, while improving the lives of
the citizens of the developing world.”
In fact, the whole history of Haiti proves that “free-market
economics” benefits U.S. multinationals and the Haitian elite, while
impoverishing the masses–and that “expanding democracy” is restricted by
who the U.S. government thinks should hold power.
Of course, not even Bill Clinton will claim that Haiti–the poorest
country in the Western Hemisphere–has thrived in the neoliberal era.
He’s even admitted that U.S. demands during the 1990s that Haiti end
trade restrictions against U.S. agricultural products had a devastating
effect on the economy. “We made this devil’s bargain on rice,” Clinton
said in March. “And it wasn’t the right thing to do. We should have
continued to work to help them be self-sufficient in agriculture.”
In a recent Esquire article, he waxed lyrical about what he
hoped to accomplish in Haiti. “Haitians…need the organizational
structure and the support to get things done,” he told the magazine.
“That’s what I’m trying to do: move things along. I want them to
consider all their big alternatives. I want them to consider becoming a
wireless country, consider becoming an energy-independent country. I
want them to close their landfills, recycle everything and use the rest
for energy. Wouldn’t it be great if they became the first wireless
nation in the world? They could, I’m telling you, they really could.”
Clearly concerned that such projects could be easily dismissed as
fantasies about a society where more than 10 percent of the population
lives in refugee camps, he retreated later in the interview. “I don’t
want to be naïve,” he told Esquire. “It’s going to be a
stretch. It’ll be hard, but I’m excited about it. Enough so that after a
couple of heart incidents and being sixty-three years old, I am
prepared to spend three years on it. They want the right things for
their country.”
However, when you look behind Clinton’s fantasizing and his
dilettantish commitment of three whole years to Haiti’s future, the IHRC
plan is, in fact, the same old plan–with some public relations bells
and whistles–that Clinton and his friend Paul Collier, an Oxford
professor and former World Bank official, came up with in 2009.
Collier’s blueprint for Haiti is standard neoliberalism–with emphases
on pushing sweatshop industries, reorienting Haiti’s desperate peasants
toward producing export crops, developing the country’s beaches and
historical sites for tourism, and investing in infrastructure to service
all these projects, none of which will benefit workers and the poor.
Clinton’s neoliberal plans for Haiti will work out nicely for the
vulture capitalists who have descended on Haiti to exploit the
earthquake catastrophe. “Haiti has become the new El Dorado in terms of
people seeking opportunities to make a quick buck,” Jean-Robert
Lafortune, president of the Haitian American Grassroots Coalition, told The
Miami Herald.
In March, the International Peace Operations Association held a
conference for private security firms like Triple Canopy to contract
their services to Haiti’s corporate elite. As Patrick Elie, former
minister of defense in Haiti, told the Inter Press Service: “[T]hese
guys are like vultures coming to grab the loot over this
disaster…[M]oney that might have been injected into the Haitian economy
is just going to be grabbed by these companies, and I’m sure they’re not
the only mercenary companies.”
Meanwhile, textile manufacturers are lining up to take advantage of
IHRC’s commitment to sweatshop labor–and palm off the exploitation of
impoverished workers as humanitarianism.
As Time magazine reported, “Gap is planning to roll out its
own made-in-Haiti line. The company, which owns Old Navy and is already
responsible for 4,000 Haitian textile jobs, may even set up special
Haiti sections in some stores. ‘Customers generally don’t care about
country of origins,’ says Art Peck, a senior Gap executive. ‘We think
they will with Haiti.’”
In the agricultural sector, USAID and Monsanto are collaborating on
the misnamed project WINNER–a “benevolent” program that will, in fact,
further erode Haiti’s food sovereignty.
Monsanto–in what one of their executives calls a “fabulous Easter
gift”–donated 475 tons of hybrid seeds at a cost to itself of $4
million. The seeds are supposed to be distributed to Haitian peasant
farmers, but the country’s social movements have long opposed the use of
Monsanto’s genetically modified products. Farmers are vowing to burn
the Monsanto seeds, which are coated with pesticides and likely not
adapted to Haitian diverse soil conditions.
In protest against WINNER, thousands of peasants marched in Hinche on
July 4 and burned Monsanto seeds. “With friends like Monsanto and its
governmental allies, who needs enemies,” said Benoit Griouard of Union
Paysanne. “This so-called donation is an attack on Haitian farmers and
the future of their local seeds.” Another leader, Chavannes
Jean-Baptiste from the Mouvman Peyizan Papay declared Monsanto’s seeds
“a gift of death. It’s an attack on peasant agriculture, on the farmers,
on biodiversity, on native seeds, on what remains of our environment in
Haiti.”
In perhaps the most bizarre example of disaster capitalism, the
Vietnamese Army’s telecommunications company Viettel bought Haiti’s last
state-owned company, Teleco, for $59 million.
Before he sold it, Préval fired hundreds of workers and invested
precious funds that could have been used for the benefit of Haitians in
projects that would make Teleco fit for privatization.
Meanwhile, forces that claim to be a voice for the Haitian people
against business and governments are getting a piece of the pie in the
aftermath of the quake.
With the exception of a few, like Partners in Health,
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have used the Haitian tragedy to
accumulate vast sums of money that they haven’t spent to aid the Haitian
masses. And when they have, their efforts have been haphazard,
uncoordinated and unaccountable to the Haitian people or government.
The Philanthropy News Digest reported in May that “roughly
$14.9 billion, or $37,000 per displaced family, has been donated for
Haiti earthquake relief efforts to date, much of it raised by the
American Red Cross, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, the Clinton Bush
Haiti Fund and the Clinton Foundation Haiti Fund.
“The Red Cross, for example, has raised $444 million and spent about
25% of that amount; CARE has raised $34.4 million and spent about 16
percent of that; CRS has raised $165 million and spent 8 percent; and
the Clinton Bush Fund and the Clinton Foundation have raised $52 million
combined, of which 13% has been spent.”
Not only have many NGOs and charities spent only a fraction of what
they raised off Haiti, but they also display what the Disaster
Accountability Project calls a “shocking lack of transparency.”
According to the project’s study of 197 organization that received
donations for Haiti, only six provided factual situation reports, while
128 others, had no reports but only emotional appeals and anecdotes.
The Red Cross has come under particular fire. Outraged after a
fact-finding trip to Haiti, Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman
Schultz attacked the Red Cross, saying, “We were actually pretty struck
by the fact that we didn’t see the Red Cross anywhere at all.”
After hearing the Red Cross’ claim that it was holding onto the bulk
of donations around Haiti for long-term projects, Wasserman Schultz
later softened her criticisms. But the truth is that NGOs like the Red
Cross shouldn’t be rationing funds in such an emergency; Haitians need
money for reconstruction right now.
The stinginess of the NGOs has angered Haitians. Ruth Derilus, who
worked for an NGO with a multimillion-dollar budget after the 2008
floods in Gonaïves, told the Nation magazine she would never
work for one again because “of all the money they send here, only 10
percent actually makes it to the ground. The rest is spent on foreign
experts, hotels, car rentals and hotel conferences.”
Instead of helping to solve the crisis, the NGOs are making money off
Haiti and restricting aid. Meanwhile, the U.S. and other powerful
governments use the NGOs to effectively bypass the Haitian state,
further weakening its role in the country. Thus, the IHRC will only
spend 6.6 percent of its budget through the Haitian state–the rest will
go to private corporations and NGOs.
This is why many Haitians, as well as others in the Caribbean who
have had similar experiences, have denounced the NGOs for undermining
Haitian democracy.
After a meeting of the Caribbean Community, Roosevelt Skerrit, the
prime minister of Dominica, stated, “With respect to the NGOs operating
out of Haiti, we called on the UN secretary general to do all that he
can to bring some level of order to the situation, because while we
speak about maintaining democracy in Haiti, we can’t at the same time be
affording NGOs to undermine the democratic institutions in Haiti…We
call on the international institutions and government to cease and
desist from putting resources into the NGOs.
>From celebrity political figures like Bill Clinton, to the U.S. and
other powerful governments, to corporations and NGOs, the forces and
institutions that could make a difference in the lives of poor Haitians
are putting other interests first. Haitians endured the disaster of the
earthquake. Now they are facing the man-made disaster of neoliberalism.
Ashley Smith is a writer and activist from Burlington, Vermont. He writes
frequently for Socialist Worker and the International Socialist Review. He can
be reached at [email protected]. Read other articles by Ashley.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/08/haitis-colonial-overlord/#more-20362
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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