Haiti’s peasantry key to reconstruction

Haiti’s peasantry key to reconstruction

By Michael Deibert

AlterNet

(Read the original article here)

When US First Lady Michelle Obama paid a surprise visit to Haiti this week to survey reconstruction efforts after that country’s devastating January earthquake, she set foot in a nation that has been transformed as profoundly as at any time since its 1804 revolution defeated Napoleon's army and abolished slavery.

In the tremor three months ago, Haiti’s Direction de la Protection Civile estimated that 222,517 people lost their lives, while at least 250,000 were injured. Of the nearly 1.2 million displaced persons, nearly 600,000 are thought to have migrated from the capital Port-au-Prince and its environs back to Haiti’s countryside. This reverse migration, after years of peasants flowing into the Haitian capital from desperately poor agricultural areas in search of jobs that did not await them, will likely have a significant affect on Haiti’s political and economic trajectory going forward.

Haiti’s peasantry, which makes up a majority of the country’s 9 million people, were suffering grievously even before the earthquake, the victims of both the short-sighted policies of the international community and the venality and brutality of Haiti’s homegrown political leaders. With a recent meeting on Haiti held at the United Nations concluding with nations and organizations pledging nearly $10 billion to Haiti, it is important that Haiti’s peasantry not be forgotten, and that the international community remember the ways in which it has failed them, and Haitians in general, in the past. It is a litany that would be written as farce had the results not been so tragic.

In the 1940s, the United States sponsored the Société Haitiano-Américaine de Dévelopment Agricole in an ill-fated, half-baked attempted to cultivate rubber in Haiti, an effort that ended up harming the very farmers it was designed to help.

Between 1980 and 1983, when tests showed nearly a quarter of Haiti’s pigs were infected with African Swine Fever, the U.S- Canadian funded Program for the Eradication of Porcine Swine Fever and Development of Pig-Raising destroyed 1.2 million Kreyol pigs, pigs that formed one of the backbones of the peasant economy. Of the replacement pigs that were delivered, many soon died, unable to adjust to the rough world the Kreyol swine had grown so accustomed to, and an already difficult rural economy suffered another blow.

Further undermining Haiti’s ability to feed itself, in typically duplicitous fashion then-Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, implementing an economic adjustment plan mandated by the International Monetary Fund and further turning the screws on a political bloc that he could never win over, cut tariffs on rice imports to the country from 35 percent to 3 percent in 1995. This further undermined the peasant economy despite the fact that Haiti for many years had produced low-cost, inexpensive rice for domestic consumption. After 1995, that is, after implementing the economic policies of the international community, it effectively lost the ability to do so.

Former President Bill Clinton, still deeply involved in Haiti, has since expressed regret for his role in this, of a piece with his regret for failing to lift a finger to stop Rwanda's 1994 genocide, a “regret” that led him - at best - to turn a blind eye to vicious ethnic cleansing by Rwandan soldiers and Congolese rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo throughout the 1990s. But this day late, dollar short approach to international affairs will do little good if not followed up with concrete action.

The Haitian government’s Preliminary Damage and Needs Assessment, a document said to have been largely drafted by Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, was put forth in March and advocated an ambitious re-envisioning and decentralizing of Haiti, looking to “decongest,” rather than rebuild as before, the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area while advocating a “refounding” of the Haitian state.

In a country with a long history of an often violently abusive imperial presidency (a tradition that, despite his other faults, current President René Préval has not adhered to), decentralization may be an important tool to break the hold a traditionally corrupt executive branch and dysfunctional political class based in the capital exercise over the rest of the country, active as they have been in filtering out any money that may come into the country while granting precious little in return.

With the mass migration from Port-au-Prince back to Haiti’s countryside, it is essential than any rebuilding effort take into account, along with programs for Haiti’s urban centres, a sustained effort to aid Haiti’s peasantry, who have been in an economic tailspin for decades now and whose migration to Port-au-Prince, where they lived on top of one another in woefully substandard housing, at least in part led to the death toll in January’s earthquake being as high as it was.

Over the past 50 years, 90 percent of Haiti's tree cover has been destroyed, with the resulting erosion destroying two-thirds of the country's arable farmland. With little left to hold the topsoil when the rains fall - often torrentially after prolonged spells with no precipitation at all - they rush in torrents down the mountains, carving gullies and carrying crops and seeds along with them, sweeping vital minerals into the country's rivers to be deposited, uselessly, in the sea. Storms that kill a handful of people in neighboring countries kill thousands when they reach Haiti because of this precise dynamic. I have stood many times with Haitian peasants under the unfurled Caribbean sky outside of villages with names like Fonds-Verettes, Papay and Maissade and listened to Haitian farmers, so powerless in the face of their own government and international interests, tell this sad tale.

But the Haitian peasantry do have their advocates. Grassroots peasant organizations such as the 200,000 member Mouvman Peyizan Nasyonal Kongrè Papay and Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan, the former led by 2005 Goldman Environmental Prize winner Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, have been advocating for decades for Haiti’s rural majority to be taken into account in the discussion of their fate by those politically powerful forces both inside and outside of Haiti.

The patience of Haitians - who have reacted to a terrible catastrophe with incredible dignity and restraint in the three months since the earthquake - is often remarked upon. But it is not, nor should it be be, perceived as endless. It was in Haiti’s countryside, among the peasantry, that leaders such as Charlemagne Péralte and Benoit Batraville led the strongest resistance to the 1915-1935 U.S. military occupation of Haiti and now, with the resources of rural families stretched to the breaking point by the influx of so many new mouths to feed, the international community must, at long last, take their needs into consideration among their glittering conferences and meetings.

Such an approach is not only the morally right thing to do, given the role the international community has had in helping to impoverish Haiti, but it is also the only way to guarantee long-term security and development, not only in Haiti but indeed across the island of Hispaniola as a whole.


Michael Deibert is the author of Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories Press) and a Visiting Fellow at the the Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies at Coventry University. His blog can be read at www.michaeldeibert.blogspot.com.

From rubble to recovery

From rubble to recovery

Published: February 13, 2010

Foreign Direct Investment

(Read the original article here)

A huge recovery challenge lies ahead for Haiti after its devastating earthquake, but could the rebuilding programmes bring about an essential economic restructuring? Michael Deibert reports from Port-au-Prince.

The incremental economic progress that Haiti, an impoverished Caribbean nation of 9 million people, had been experiencing over the past several years was brought to a cataclysmic halt late on the afternoon of January 12, when a 7.0 earthquake centred just south of the capital city sent the pillars of state and industry crashing to the ground in a heap of dust.

In a matter of seconds, Haiti’s Palais National, Palais de Justice, Parliament and many government ministries were either totally or partially destroyed. The top command of the UN mission, whose troops had been supporting the government of president René Préval since his 2006 election, lost their lives, along with an estimated 200,000 Haitians. Factories collapsed onto their owners and workers alike, and entire neighbourhoods tumbled down the brooding mountains that surround the capital city’s bay.

Further devastation

Haiti, already desperately poor but having experienced its first sustained period of political calm and stirrings of foreign investment interest in many decades, seemed as if it would be reduced to an even graver level than it had been before: mortally wounded, traumatised, ungovernable. In addition to the buildings destroyed, Haiti had also lost some of those best placed to aid its tenuous economic recovery, among them one of the country’s most respected economists, Philippe Rouzier, as well as Jean Frantz Richard and Murray Lustin Junior, the director-general and director of operations, respectively, at the Direction Générale des Impôts, the country’s main tax office in the capital.

According to the International Organisation for Migration, as of early February at least 460,000 people were still living in 315 spontaneous settlements throughout Port-au-Prince, while the World Food Programme said that more than 1.6 million people had received ­supplies since the start of the earthquake response.

Economic focus

But Haiti’s industrious population knows a little something about struggle and perseverance, even in the face of such a devastating tragedy. Within days of the earthquake, the country’s market women, taxi drivers and other labourers had returned to the streets, resuming commerce among the hundreds of thousands camped out between the shells of ruined buildings. Capital residents began to flow back into Haiti’s countryside, seeking family solace among the loss.

From a terrible misfortune, some hoped that Haiti might still have set in motion the seeds for a new beginning. Despite the ousting of a popular prime minister last autumn, Haiti’s modest economic engine, buoyed by an extended period of relative political tranquillity and an improved security situation, continued chugging along under a new prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, seemingly bearing out a December 2008 UN report asserting that it was striking “how modest are the impediments to competitiveness relative to the huge opportunities offered by the fundamentals” in the country.

Last year, billionaire George Soros’s Economic Development Fund announced plans to create a $45m industrial park in Cité Soleil, one of the capital’s poorest neighbourhoods, while two new hotels were set to open along the country’s lush south coast.

At the same time, the OTF Group, a competitiveness consulting firm credited with breathing new life into Rwanda’s tourism, coffee and agro-industry sectors following the country’s 1994 genocide, praised the business opportunities in Haiti. Focusing on several key “growth clusters” to drive economic development, it hoped to help create 500,000 jobs in Haiti within three years.

Following the earthquake, though reassessed, the group said its conclusions did not necessarily need to be shelved, just pushed back for six months to a year.

“The outmigration from [Port-au-Prince] is a huge opportunity to reverse the migration trends of the past two decades,” says OTF director Robert Henning. “If reconstruction can create opportunities and jobs outside of the capital, this will achieve an important goal of redistributing the influence and economic weight of Haiti.”

Trade possibilities

Though the country’s interior has been severely deforested over the past few decades, local groups, such as the Mouvman Peyizan Nasyonal Kongrè Papay, have worked for years on reforestation and irrigation projects and some areas, such as the Artibonite Valley, remain relatively fertile. With Port-au-Prince’s harbour severely damaged and the likelihood of recurrent large-scale earthquakes extremely high, according to the US Geological Survey, international attention has for the first time begun to look seriously at developing Haiti’s long-neglected interior with manufacturing and agricultural initiatives.

A long border with neighbouring Dominican Republic, which lends itself to the possibility of free-trade zones, and possible ports that might conceivably be expanded around the country – including Miragoâne (in the country’s west), Saint-Marc (in the middle region) and Cap-Haïtien (in the north) – would seem to support this possibility for future investment.

Following a decision last year by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Inter-American Development Bank to cancel $1.2bn of Haiti’s debt – with the latter institution approving an additional $120m in grants for investments in key sectors such as infrastructure, basic services and disaster prevention, the G-7 countries told Haiti after a post-earthquake meeting in Canada in February that the country’s debts to the body did not need to be repaid.

New beginning

None of this in any way minimises the grievous shock – physical, psychological and economic – that Haiti’s people and its government have suffered because of those terrible moments in January. But, day by day, it appears to be picking itself up, dusting itself off and trying to decide where it will head from here.

“The extent of this disaster is also due to the fact that this country has not been managed, or rather has been ill-managed, for the past 50 years,” says Michèle Pierre-Louis, a civil society leader and former prime minister of Haiti. “Maybe after mourning our dead and saving the lives of the survivors, we should start thinking about ways to put together our energies, our solidarity, our creativity to rebuild our capital under some kind of strong leadership… [which] could eventually lead to rebuilding the entire country. Now is the time.”

"Haiti Is Going From Catastrophe to Catastrophe"

"Haiti Is Going From Catastrophe to Catastrophe"

Michael Deibert interviews Chavannes Jean-Baptiste

Inter Press Service

NEW YORK, Sep 23, 2008 (IPS) - Peasant leader Chavannes Jean-Baptiste has been at the forefront of the struggles of Haiti's peasants for over 35 years. Born in the village of Papay in Haiti's Plateau Central, Jean-Baptiste helped found the Mouvman Peyizan Papay (MPP) peasant union as well as the Mouvman Peyizan Nasyonal Kongre Papay (MPNKP), the latter a 200,000-member national congress of peasant farmers and activists.Jean-Baptiste's role is an important one in a nation where, over the past 50 years, 90 percent of the tree cover has been destroyed for charcoal and to make room for farming, with resulting erosion destroying two-thirds of the country's arable farmland.

For his work on behalf of Haiti's peasantry, Chavannes Jean-Baptiste was awarded the 2005 Goldman Environmental Prize, sponsored by the Goldman Environmental Foundation, the world's largest prize for grassroots environmentalists.

In recent weeks, a series of hurricanes have struck Haiti, killing what is thought to be hundreds of people and devastating the country's already-decrepit infrastructure. The United Nations now estimates that 800,000 people are in need of emergency food aid. Haiti is currently the location of a U.N. peacekeeping force numbering over 9,000 uniformed personnel.

IPS correspondent Michael Deibert, who covered Haiti as a journalist from 2000 until 2006, sat down with Chavannes Jean-Baptiste during his recent visit to the United States. The interview was conducted in Haitian Kreyol in Brooklyn, New York, on Sep. 14, 2008.

Read the full interview here.