Extreme Poverty in Haiti

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Extreme Poverty in Haiti
Historical Background and Causes
Ms. Simon June, 2006
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Credits http//www.bmz.de/en/service/infothek/unt
erricht/folienjpge.html
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The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
3 out of every 4 people (6.1 million)
live below the poverty line. ?
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(No Transcript)
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History of Haiti

• Significant Events in Haitis History that caused
  Haiti to be so poor
  
• Colonialism and Slavery
• Exploitation
• Involvement from Other Countries
• Corrupt Government Leaders

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Credit http//www.newsday.com/news/specials/ny-wo
prec014571056jan01,0,3197449.story?collny-news-sp
ecialreports Newsday.com - HAITI, A legacy of Neg
lect, By Letta Tayler,Staff Correspondent,
January 1, 2006
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Colonialism and Slavery
THE FRENCH COLONIAL CONTRIBUTION
One of the primary reasons that Haiti was such a
productively rich land was because of slave
labor. Not only did the slaves work long days
under tremendously unsafe conditions, but Haiti's
slave system was the most brutal in the
Caribbean. Many documents of Western slavery
explain that the ultimate threat to a slave
located else where was that he or she would be
sold to Haiti. Unfortunately for the masses of Ha
itians, slavery did not die with French rule.
Rather, the basic concept of forced cheap labor
was passed on to the emerging native Haitian
elite. The French system allowed for some slaves
to earn their freedom by exceptional work. This
system worked well to get more productivity from
the slaves, and the system was tough enough that
very few slaves were able to earn their freedom.
Thus slave owners got increased productivity with
little loss of slaves through freedom.
A second group of slaves who became free were the
mulattos, the children of white masters and slave
women. These children were in a middle ground,
uncomfortable to both slaves and whites. The
slaves never knew how the white man would respond
to his child, but often the slave owner didn't
want to be reminded of his paternity. Thus
mulattos were not welcomed in either community.
Many mulattos received their freedom and formed a
special middle class in the colonial period.
A special class of freed slaves emerged. About
1/2 of them were freed black slaves and about 1/2
of them were mulattos. They could receive some
education, operate businesses, own property and
in general imitate the French.
This imitation of the French became the hallmark
of these freedmen. They wanted a clear separation
from their slave backgrounds. Thus they imitated
the whites. They adopted their religion,
language, dress, culture, education and ways.
But, most importantly for this story, they
learned the value of slave labor. The colonial
French heritage carried on in the Haitian elite's
imitation of the French labor system. This is an
important factor in Haiti's later misery.
Credits Bob Corbett, Why is Haiti so Poor?
Fall, 1986 Director, PEOPLE TO PEOPLE
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Exploitation
INTERNATIONAL BOYCOTT OF THE NEW HAITI
After the revolution which concluded in January,
1804, Haiti became the second free country in the
Western World (after the United States), and the
first black republic. However, the United States
was still a slave nation, as was England. While
France had freed the Haitian slaves during the
revolution, France and other European nations had
slaves in Africa and Asia. The international
community decided that Haiti's model of a nation
of freed slaves was a dangerous precedent. An
international boycott of Haitian goods and
commerce plunged the Haitian economy into chaos.
The international boycott of Haitian products at
this time was devastating for Haiti's long-term
economic development. THE FRENCH DEBT OF 1838
The Haitian governments were extremely anxious to
be recognized by France and the Europeans. But
France would not recognize Haiti unless
indemnities were paid for lands of former slave
owners taken over after the revolution. Finally,
in 1838 President Boyer of Haiti accepted a 150
million franc debt to pay this indemnity. This
debt plagued the economy of Haiti for over 80
years and was not finally paid until 1922. In the
meantime Haiti paid many times over 150 million
francs in interest on this debt. It is difficult
to measure the incredible harm which this did to
the Haitian economy, but by the most conservative
measures it was extremely significant.
Credits Bob Corbett, Why is Haiti so Poor?
Fall, 1986 Director, PEOPLE TO PEOPLE
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Exploitation
Happening Now
The backbone of the Haitian economy consists of
plantations, sweatshops and export processing
plants owned largely by U.S., French and Canadian
firms and a handful of their Haitian friends -
the 1 per cent who own 50 per cent of the
country's wealth. As pointed out earlier, Haiti
has by far the lowest paid work force in the
Western hemisphere, and every U.S. intervention
since early 19th century, including the present
one, is designed to keep it that way. The main
anti-Aristide group in Haiti, Convergence for
Democracy', is, for example, financed and
otherwise supported by the ruling Republican
Party of the U.S. through the National Endowment
for Democracy and the International Republican
Institute, two well-funded U.S.-based
organizations that openly fund and assist a
variety of rightwing forces around the world.
Overthrow of the Aristide government has been a
prime objective of the Bush administration ever
since it came into office, just about the time
Aristide was re-elected. While the U.S.
successfully pressured the Inter-American
Development Bank to cancel the more than 650
million that had been contracted already in
development assistance and approved loans, it got
the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the
World Bank to tighten the screws of their
"structural adjustment" diktats. All this led to
much suffering in Haiti, just as the sanctions
did in Iraq. However, there was no appreciable
decline in support for Aristide.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a Catholic priest deeply
committed to liberation theology, was the first
elected President in 200 years of Haitian
history. He had been re-elected in 2000 with over
90 per cent of the vote in a voter turnout
estimated at around 65 per cent in the
countryside and close to 100 per cent in the
capital Port au Prince.
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Exploitation
Controversy
What happened on that fateful night of February
28 and the morning of the next day? The American
version is that Aristide called the U.S.
Ambassador in Haiti, James Foley, and asked for
more security. In turn, Foley told him that
"rebels" were going to enter the capital within
hours and a "bloodbath" would ensue in which
thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, shall be
killed, unless Aristide resigned immediately and
agreed to leave the country. U.S. authorities say
that Aristide eventually agreed, that a civilian
group from the U.S. Embassy was then sent to his
residence which took him to the airport where
Aristide handed in his resignation and he, along
with his wife and three aides, was put on a plane
for safe passage to the Republic of Central
Africa across the Atlantic. The State Department
also claimed that Aristide had wanted to seek
asylum in South Africa but the latter refused
the South African government has denied that it
received any such request. It is quite clear even
from this account that Aristide resigned under
U.S. pressure, that his own Prime Minster was not
part of any such negotiations and that the
resignation was submitted directly to the U.S.
Embassy and not to any Haitian authority, such as
the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who was
constitutionally the successor in case the
President were to suddenly die or otherwise
relinquish office. It is also known that when
that Chief Justice was sworn in as provisional
head of state by the Americans the popularly
elected President had already been put on a plane
by them and the Prime Minister was not even
invited to the ceremony. Thus, even by U.S.
account, the coup was carried out not by any
Haitian force but by the U.S. Embassy itself.
The problem for the U.S., by hindsight, is that
it did not kill Aristide and its African clients
have been unable to shut him up. It is a problem
for the U.S. because, unlike Saddam Hussein,
Aristide has not been charged even by the U.S. of
any crimes, sponsorship of terrorism and so on.
Its self-proclaimed right to oust him rests
solely on the claim that it - and the so-called
"international community, that is, Western powers
- has the right to decide whether or not a
popularly elected Third World leader has the
right to rule his country in accordance with the
mandate given to him by his people. This claim
has no basis in international law and no moral
authority outside the discourses of Western
racism. This problem is compounded for the U.S.
by the fact that Aristide is a man of unusual
courage and eloquence, and has been able to speak
on his own behalf. President Aristide's account
is of course quite different from that of the
U.S. authorities. He says that a large number of
armed men - "white" as well as Haitian - came to
the Presidential Palace in the dark of the night,
kidnapped him, extracted a resignation from him
with threats of death and bloodbath, whisked him
off to the airport and put him on the plane
without disclosing his destination, and that when
he arrived on African soil he had no idea where
he was, whether in a hotel, a prison or a palace.
His account has been confirmed, in the meanwhile,
by the security guards of the Presidential Palace
who witnessed the event, spoke to trusted foreign
journalists and are now in hiding, fearful of the
terror squads.
The legal team for Aristide in Paris as he files
suit against the US for kidnapping him
Credits http//www.tribalmessenger.org/haiti/hait
i-images.htm
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Involvement from Other Countries
THE UNITED STATES OCCUPATION OF 1915-1938.
Perhaps the most serious blow Haiti ever had to
her independence and self-image was the
occupation of the United States Marines in 1915.
The marines took over control of the collection
of revenues, the banks, and forced through a new
"Haitian" constitution which repealed the 1804
provision that foreigners could never own land in
Haiti. The U.S. decided who would and would not
be government servants. The only factor of
Haitian life which seemed to escape U.S.
domination was education. The elite's
identification with French culture was too strong
for even the marines to overcome and the schools
remained French in language and structure.
POST WORLD WAR II UNITED STATES DOMINATION The
occupation ended in 1934. However, the U.S.
presence in both the economy and internal
government affairs was well established. Ever
since the occupation and increasingly since 1946,
the United States, through the power of its aid
packages, has played a central role in Haitian
politics. In this way the U.S. has contributed to
the misery of Haiti since it has given oppressive
governments comfortable aid packages which kept
these rulers in power. The United States was not
interested in furthering Haitian misery itself,
rather this is the price the U.S. has had to pay
to keep friendly governments in power so that
American military, propaganda and economic
interests could be served. The result may well
have served the interests of U.S. control in the
region, but the issue here is the cause of
Haitian misery. U.S. backed governments have
certainly been a major factor in this suffering.
Credits Bob Corbett, Why is Haiti so Poor?
Fall, 1986 Director, PEOPLE TO PEOPLE
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Involvement from Other Countries
Péligre Dam
1956 -?The village of Cange, on Haiti's Central
Plateau, is submerged by a dam on the Artibonite
River. Designed and funded by international
development agencies, the dam is intended to
supply electrical power to the capital city of
Port-au-Prince, many hours distant. Residents of
Cange, all subsistence farmers, receive little
compensation for their homes and land, moving up
to the barren hillside as squatters.
They were growing their crops and then, as they
tell it, one day the water ate our gardens.
Literally, in the middle of the day the water
rose and the farmers left. The first time I heard
this story I thought it highly improbable. After
hearing it for a second, third, fourth, and fifth
time, I realized they really meant it. There was
never a proper resettlement plan, and the farmers
just went up into the barren hills, a place where
they couldn't grow food for their families, much
less sell any surplus at regional markets.
Kay, a community of fewer than fifteen hundred
people, stretches along an unpaved road that cuts
north and east into Haiti?s Central Plateau.
Striking out from Port-au-Prince, the capital, it
can take several hours to reach Kay. The journey
gives one an impression of isolation, insularity.
The impression is misleading, as the village owes
its existence to a project conceived in the
Haitian capital and drafted in Washington, D.C.
Kay is a settlement of refugees, substantially
composed of peasant farmers displaced more than
thirty years ago by Haitis largest dam.Before
1956, the village of Kay was situated in a
fertile valley, and through it ran the Riviere
Artibonite. For generations, thousands of
families had farmed the broad and gently sloping
banks of the river, selling rice, bananas,
millet, corn, and sugarcane in regional markets.
Harvests were, by all reports, bountiful life
there is now recalled as idyllic. When the valley
was flooded with the building of the dam, the
majority of the local population was forced up
into the stony hills on either side of the new
reservoir. By all the standard measures, the
water refugees became exceedingly poor the older
people often blame their poverty on the massive
buttress dam a few miles away, and bitterly note
that it brought them neither electricity nor
water. The litany begins, usually, down in the v
alley hidden under the still surface of the lake.
Aciphies parents came from families making a
decent living by farming fertile tracts of land
their ancestors gardens and selling much of their
produce. M. Joseph tilled the soil, and his wife,
a tall and wearily elegant woman not nearly as
old as she looked, was a Madame Sarah, a market
woman. If it werent for the dam, M. Joseph
assured me, wed be just fine now. Acephie, too.
The Josephs home was drowned along with most of
their belongings, their crops, and the graves of
their ancestors.Refugees from the rising water,
the Josephs built a miserable lean-to on a knoll
of high land jutting into the new reservoir. They
remained poised on their knoll for some years
AcCphie and her twin brother were born there. I
asked them what induced them to move up to Kay,
to build a house on the hard stone embankment of
a dusty road. Our hut was too near the water,
replied M. Joseph. I was afraid one of the
children would fall into the lake and drown.
Their mother had to be away selling I was trying
to make a garden in this terrible soil. There was
no one to keep an eye on them.
Credits On suffering and structural violenceA
view from below, by Farmer, Paul, 1995.11.3 and
http//www.pih.org/whoweare/history.html
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Involvement from Other Countries
Creole Pig
The Creole Pig was a breed of pig indigenous to
the Caribbean nation of Haiti. Creole pigs were
well adapted to the rugged terrain and sparse
vegetation of Haiti. The pigs resilience allowed
Haitian peasants to raise these pigs with little
resources. The peasants characterized their pigs
as never getting sick. Creole Pigs served as a
type of savings account for the Haitian peasant.
They were sold or slaughtered to pay for
marriages, medical emergencies, schooling, seeds
for crops, or a voodoo ceremony.
Creole pigs, although well adapted to local
conditions (feed, management) and popular with
the Haitian population, were almost all killed
off in the 1970s and 1980s apparently in order to
prevent the spread of African swine fever virus,
which had spread from Spain to the Dominican
Republic and then to Haiti via the Artibonite
River. According to the United States, by 1982
African swine fever had infected almost one-third
of Haiti's Creole pig population. Concerned about
the spread of the disease into the US, the US put
political pressure on the Haitian government to
slaughter all the pigs in their country. This
reasoning was subsequently questioned by the
government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, as well as
numerous academic reports, including a report
published in a 1990 edition of "Stretch",
available here. The eradication of the Creole pig
had gone further to impoverish the already
struggling peasants. It forced many children to
quit school. Small farmers were forced to
mortgage their land. Many Haitians cut down trees
for cash income from charcoal. This contributed
to the desertification of the Haitian landscape,
already begun by overpopulation.In the Haitian
peasant community, the government's eradication
and repopulation program was highly criticized.
The peasants protested that they were not fairly
compensated for their pigs and that the breed of
pigs imported from the United States to replace
the hardy Creole pigs was unsuitable for the
Haitian environment and economy. There is
controversy over whether the importation of these
pigs was encouraged by US agribusiness, as the
raising of these pigs was so heavily dependent on
imported products. Haitian peasants quickly named
the pigs "prince quatre pieds," (four-footed
princes). The repopulation program was a complete
failure.
In 1982, international agencies assured Haiti's
peasants their pigs were sick and had to be
killed (so that the illness would not spread to
countries to the north). Promises were made that
better pigs would replace the sick pigs. With an
efficiency not since seen among development
projects, all of the Creole pigs were killed over
a period of 13 months.Two years later, the new,
"better" pigs came from Iowa. They were so much
better they required clean drinking water
(unavailable to 80 percent of the population),
imported feed (90 a year when the per capita
income was about 130), and special roofed
pigpens. Haitian peasants quickly dubbed them
"prince a quatre pieds," (four-footed princes).
Adding insult to injury, the meat didn't taste as
good. Needless to say, the repopulution program
was a complete failure. One observer of the
process estimated that in monetary terms, Haitian
peasants lost 600 million. There was a 30
percent drop in enrollment in rural schools, a
dramatic decline in the protein consumption in
rural Haiti, a devastating decapitalization of
the peasant economy, and an incalculable negative
impact on Haiti's soil and agricultural
productivity. Haiti's peasantry has not recovered
to this day. (Written by JEAN-BERTRAND
ARISTIDE)
Credits http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creole_Pig
and http//www.towardfreedom.com/home/content/view
/345/55/
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Corrupt Government Leaders
HAITIAN CORRUPTION Corruption is common in all go
vernments, especially prominent in highly
authoritarian regimes, and practiced beyond
measure in Haiti. The elite have used their
positions in government ever since 1804 to gather
the wealth and power of Haiti for themselves.
What little wealth the country had has been
manipulated into the hands of this elite. Foreign
governments and humanitarian and religious
organizations have often attempted to aid the
suffering people of Haiti. Time and again, over
and over in the 182 years of so-called freedom,
the Haitian elite and government officials have
sidetracked much of this wealth for their own
purposes. Haiti faces the incredibly difficult
task of dealing with corruption that is so
established.
In 1956, Francois Duvalier (Papa Doc) took over
with firm U.S. backing and the dictator, in turn,
granted to the U.S. corporations such
"incentives" as no customs duties, a minimum wage
by far the lowest in the western hemisphere, the
suppression of labour unions, and the right to
repatriate their profits. This dictatorship was
then continued by the son, Baby Doc' Duvalier,
who was to be overthrown in 1986 by a massive
grassroots uprising and was flown out of Haiti to
Florida on a U.S. Air Force plane, with all his
dollars.
Former Haitian Dictator 'Baby Doc' Jean-Claude
Duvalier says he would like to return to Haiti.
One of the most vicious of the US backed
dictators in history.
Credits Bob Corbett, Why is Haiti so Poor?
Fall, 1986 Director, PEOPLE TO PEOPLE and
http//www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2106/stories/20040
326005613000.htm, Frontline - Volume 21 - Issue
06, March 13 - March 26, 2004
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Does Haiti have to live like this?
Is it really this bad?
Can we help?
Lets look at this young boy. He got help
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This Is Tiga ... ?Tiga Means "Little Boy" In
Haitian Creole ... ?It's The Only Name He Knows
... ?He Is About 5 Years Old ... ?No One Knows
For Sure ... Tiga Is Abandoned Homeless
Cite Soleil is a 27 square mile settlement area
on the east side of Port au Prince, Haiti. Almost
1 million of the poorest of the poor reside here
in conditions that can be aptly described as
deplorable, demoralizing and brutal.. ?No running
water, no electricity, no sanitation system or
services, open sewage. ?Due to the dehumanizing
conditions, it only follows that crime and abuse
are commonplace. ?This is an area where almost
one half of the children born do not live to see
their 4th birthday.
Credits http//quicksitemaker.com/members/immunen
ation/Tigas_Story.html
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This Is Tiga Today ... Only 4 Months Later, The
Empty, Lifeless Eyes Have Been Replaced By B
right Happy Smiles And A Love For Life With A
Happy Future That All Children Deserve.
Creditshttp//quicksitemaker.com/members/immunena
tion/Tigas_Story.html
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We have learned a little about the historical
background of Haiti, as well as some reasons it
has extreme poverty. Are you ready to learn mor
e?