Peace Talk — Autumn 2006
The Quarterly Newsletter of Peace Action MaineI want to take you to a beautiful Caribbean island, with tall green mountains and pristine white beaches, where mangoes and avocados grow in abundance, parakeets and great blue lizards roam freely, with music and art to inspire the gods. There are fertile valleys and fresh springs, and people raise chickens, goats and pigs, just as they do in the rest of the Caribbean. This island was the Pearl of the Antilles and has the capacity to be again, though hundreds of years of misrule have left the population with almost no trust in its government and even less trust in those who would come ‘help.’ Yet, the people retain their dignity, born of the only successful slave revolution ever, a revolution that produced a constitution which granted universal human rights almost 150 years before the UN did so.
This is Haïti Ayiti, as the people call it. If I said this name from the first sentence, your preconceptions would have blocked the beauty I tried to convey, as you probably know it only for its turmoil and deforestation. Everyone has seen the National Geographic photo of the border between the Dominican Republic and Haïti, with Haïti looking very brown and treeless and the Dominican Republic looking lush with trees. Some parts of Haïti can be this brown and dry but most of it is not, though most of the large trees are gone. What covers Haïti in green are smaller bushes and trees, and many, many gardens. Where I have a house, about 45 minutes outside of Port au Prince, we have trees, gardens, fresh breezes, few bugs and clean spring water. There are actually many places in Haïti like this but they never get into the news. Devastation and disaster are much more interesting and sell more papers.
It is true the government of Haïti did little to improve the lives of the masses, and, in fact, seemed to ignore them for the most part up until Presidents Aristide’s and Préval’s terms of office. However, the powers that be—the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other international investors—did not support President Aristide and blocked financial aid to Haiti during his last term, so he was able to do only a little of what he promised, even on a budget that wouldn’t have run a small US city for a day. People who had held such hopes for him were severely disappointed. The politics of Haïti are complex, within and outside the country, and this article is not really about the political machinations of the West upon Haïti, though it will be about some of the effects of the neo-liberal policies imposed through SAPs (Structural Adjustment Programs) and the like.
My mother-in-law raised four of her own children, and more than a couple of others, on the income from her gardens. She sent them to school through primary and up through most of secondary by selling her vegetables and the occasional pig. Her four sons also made money as they could, selling birds they caught, some chickens—often for cock fighting, which is big in Haïti—or a goat. More recently, one of my younger brothers-in- law made some charcoal from a tree he cut down, and my mother-in-law beat him fiercely. “You KNOW you shouldn’t cut down trees!” “But Manman, I want to buy a pair of jeans,” he tried to explain.
The last time my mother-in-law had a garden, in the winter of 1999-2000, she lost $300 because the prices for Haïtian produce had fallen and could not compete with produce from the Dominican Republic. Recently, a Haïtian friend who was visiting family in the north of the country told me that even coconuts were being imported! This is kind of crazy, as there are coconut palms almost everywhere. Even plantains, a staple of their diet, are imported from the Dominican Republic. This is the concrete reality of free trade—people cannot afford to buy their own produce. These are the direct results of the World Trade Organization, a body which exists to benefit the large, rich countries.
When I am in Haïti, I like to buy Haïtian rice, which is organic for the most part and tastes much better than “Miami rice,” the tasteless white rice dumped on Haïti by the USA. The USA has a huge rice surplus due to the subsidies it pays its farmers. I think it is no coincidence that, for many years, one of the higher ups at USAID in Port au Prince, in the agricultural division, was a Texan, Mike Harvey. Texas is where much of this Miami rice comes from. He once told me that Haïti would never be self-sufficient again, though it had been so less than 30 years ago. Of course, he, and other USAID types are quite invested in seeing that Haïti DOES NOT become self-sufficient, as the USA makes too much money on what they dump there. My mother-in-law reminisced about all the different varieties of rice there used to be in Haïti. Now there is only a fraction of that abundance. Haïtians cannot afford to buy this rice, as it is about four times more expensive than the Miami paste variety.
Under Structural Adjustment Policies, the country is forced to open its borders and to accept whatever the donor country lends in return for crippling debt. The Haïtian economist Webster Pierre conservatively estimates that a minimum of 80% of all loans go directly back to the donor country in the form of salaries for consultants, equipment and materials that are bought from the donor country. In this way, the US government can privatize public funds and still have Haïti pay back its debt into the public coffers. Let me give you a synopsis of the IMF’s recent statement on Haiti in regard to the new aid being promised. This comes from Przenek Gajdeczka, of IMF’s Western Hemisphere Department.
“We at the IMF have been pleased to be part of the effort thus far to stabilize the economy and look forward to continued and intensified involvement.” If you know their strategies, this comes off as more of a threat! At least they admit their complicity and involvement in the previous two years of the coup government, being pleased to have been involved! “The main objective of our engagement will be to enable higher economic growth through a series of reforms. The Poverty Reduction and Growth Reform [PRGF] program will focus on sustaining macroeconomic stability through fiscal discipline and prudent monetary policy.” Here they will require that Haiti take their technical assistance, basically consultants who will advise Haitians in public sector financial management, financial sector reform, monetary policy and central bank recapitalization. In addition, the IMF and World Bank are planning to conduct a comprehensive Financial Sector Assessment in early 2007, though all the information is known. Haiti will be stuck with the bill.
The PGRF has as its goal “...strengthening revenues which will be necessary to underpin increases in social spending and public investment. Structural reforms will aim at strengthening economic governance, enhancing the efficiency of the financial system and creating conditions for private-sector- led growth.” This last part, my emphasis, is their true aim, as all SAPs are intent on turning state-controlled resources, minerals, utilities, central bank, etc. over to private hands. We all know how well the marketplace governs! In addition, the IMF is tying increased revenues to social spending, so that if revenues should fall short—in Haiti?—then social spending would be put on hold.
What are the options for the majority of Haitians? They cannot borrow money at a bank in Haiti—I have heard from middle class people who want to open up a business that they have to go to Florida to get financing, as Haitian banks will not lend to them. If you are among the majority of people, who live on a dollar a day, financing is not even a dream. Living at this subsistence level, your most pressing thoughts are how to feed your family that day, trying to divide your few pennies so you have a measure of rice or corn, a measure of charcoal to cook on and maybe a few vegetables. How can anyone plan long range?