[News] Haiti is Not Tibet: The Miseries of a Two-Faced Discourse

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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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