[News] Haiti is Not Tibet: The Miseries of a Two-Faced Discourse
Anti-Imperialist News
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Tue Apr 15 11:11:22 EDT 2008
Haiti is Not Tibet: The Miseries of a Two-Faced Discourse
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1220/1/
Written by Raúl Zibechi
Monday, 14 April 2008
Translated by Machetera
In recent weeks we've been able to see how the
mainstream media and the world's conservative
governments have launched a campaign against the
Olympic Games on the basis of Chinese government
repression in Tibet. At the same time we've seen
how Latin American leftists and progressive media
have energetically criticized Alvaro Uribe's
government for Colombia's military action against
a FARC camp on Ecuadoran soil.
In recent days, Haiti's population has taken to
the streets to protest against the scandalous
increase in food prices, which have tripled since
November, as well as against the presence of U.N.
troops (MINUSTAH - U.N. Mission for the
Stabilization of Haiti). The repression ordered
by the Mission's leaders has killed five and
wounded dozens so far. However, those who are
rending their clothing over repression in Tibet
and a good part of those who criticize the Uribe
government with complete justification, remain
silent before the crimes taking place in Haiti.
The double standards of the world's right-wing
are nothing new, nor surprising. Moreover, double
standards are part of right-wing culture. It
hurts, however, that the left lacks the courage
to be consistent when repression is carried out
by troops from countries governed by leftist
parties. Indeed, the bulk of MINUSTAH's troops
come from countries such as Brazil (1,211 troops)
which also leads the mission, Uruguay (1,147),
Argentina (562) and Chile (502). All these
countries are governed by people who call themselves left-wing or progressive.
This "progressive" military presence contrasts
with the health brigades which Cuba maintains on
the island. Compared with the four Southern Cone
countries that keep soldiers in Haiti, Cuba is a
poor country that in spite of that fact has
demonstrated that humanitarian aid can help
people without resorting to violence. According
to President René Preval, the 400 Cuban doctors
who have been in Cuba over more than five years
"have attended to 8 million cases, more than 100
thousand surgical operations, 50,000 of which
were high risk." Moreover, he emphasized the
cooperation given in agriculture, fisheries and
aquaculture, and the support of Cuban engineers
in the only Haitian sugar-producing plant. Cuba
took in 600 Haitian scholarship students who are
studying the university in Santiago de Cuba.
The Cuban doctors are dispersed all over the
country, including in the most remote regions. In
contrast, Haiti has only 2,000 doctors, of which
90% live in the capital, Port au Prince. In the
zones attended by Cuban doctors, infant mortality
fell from 80 to 28 out of every thousand live
births and it's estimated that more than 100,000
lives were saved by Cuban aid. According to
Preval, "the type of aid we need is the kind Cuba
offers," to the point of stating that "the Cuban
doctors are second only to God."
Why does Cuba send aid that saves lives and
Brazil and Uruguay, whose presidents claim to be
of the left, send bullets and death? The answer
is plain: Cuba is a country of solidarity which
fights capitalism, while the Southern Cone
countries encourage the same policies that are
bringing hunger to the Haitians, among them, the
expansion of crops grown for fuel, at the cost of
food sovereignty. As Serpaj America Latina said
in a communique, "For 20 years, Haiti produced
95% of the rice it consumed; now it imports 80%
of its rice from the United States."
Even the president of the World Bank, Robert
Zoellick, admitted the relationship between the
increase in the price of food and the production
of ethanol crops. Fidel Castro had already warned
of it in 2007, following George W. Bush's visit
to Brazil where an agreement was reached with
President Lula to expand ethanol production from sugarcane and corn.
Didier Dominique, leader of the union association
Batay Ouvriye, indicated: "Haiti is being
intentionally destroyed by those who would
gradually build a cheap labor force for their
capitalistic purposes. The state of severe social
destruction enables the argument for
international aid sourcing from hegemonic
parameters to overlap an exploitive project such
as the free trade zones and their associated
sweatshops." The leftists who govern South
America form part of this hegemony of capital.
It's doubly painful to see the complicity of
silence. It lifts the spirit to see the
initiative of the Peruvian sociologist Aníbal
Quijano [1] and the Mexican economist Ana Esther
Ceceña putting forth a manifesto demanding the
departure of the ill-named peace mission in Haiti
and an independent investigation into the murders
committed by MINUSTAH, to ensure punishment for
those responsible. But the political punishment
that our leaders deserve can only come from the
pressure of social movements, to force them away
from their neoliberal course and break once and
for all with the empire's functional policies.
Raúl Zibechi, a Uruguayan journalist, is a
teacher and researcher at the Franciscan
Multiversity of Latin America, and adviser to various social groups.
Note
[1] See: Emergency in Haiti: http://alainet.org/active/23400
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