[News] Haiti: Disaster Capitalism on Steroids
Anti-Imperialist News
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Wed Mar 10 17:39:56 EST 2010
March 10, 2010:
<http://www.caar-web.org/caar-news/news-single-view/datum////haiti-disaster-capitalism-on-steroids-7.html>http://www.caar-web.org/caar-news/news-single-view/datum////haiti-disaster-capitalism-on-steroids-7.html
Haiti: Disaster Capitalism on Steroids
By: Johnny Van Hove
Two months after the devastating earthquake, the
situation in Haiti is downright criminal, says
Robert Roth. According to the spokesperson of the
activist network Haiti Action Committee, major
western players such as the US are more
interested in defending their own geopolitical
interests in Haiti than truly helping the hard hit Caribbean country.
An interview.
DeWereldMorgen: Haiti has disappeared almost
completely from the front pages. Since you are in
close contact with a number of Haitian grassroots
organizations via the Haiti Action Committee,
could you describe how the situation down there is at the moment?
Robert Roth: The situation is a catastrophe. At
this point about 230,000 people have died and
3,000,000 people are still left homeless.
Hundreds of thousands of people have no shelter
whatsoever and are literally sleeping outside.
Under sheets, not in tents. In many, many areas
there is no water, no tents, no health care. One
to two million people are in internal refugee
camps that are now dotting Port-au-Prince. They
were set up by international aid agencies, but they are in terrible shape.
The lack of housing is truly astounding. We have
been getting numerous requests from the poorest
communities in Haiti for funds for tents. With
the rainy season coming, there is a very grave
danger of the spread of typhoid, measles, and
dysentery. It could be one these situations in
which the aftermath of a disaster is even worse
than the disaster itself. The situation was and is truly criminal.
Considering the hundreds of international aid
organizations working in Haiti, how could it have come to this situation?
The total amount of financial support that has
gone through aid groups is close to one billion
dollars. Haiti is truly flooded with aid
organizations and yet very few aid goods have
been distributed. Most goods have been sitting at
the airport or in big warehouses. People who were
pulled out under the rubble by Haitians could not
receive medical aid because it was not distributed efficiently.
You have to distinguish among the aid groups, of
course. Two groups which have been very
consistent in distributing aid goods are Partners
in Health and Doctors Without Borders. On the
other hand, the Red Cross has been mostly
invisible in the poorest communities in Haiti.
There have been protests directly at the Red
Cross warehouses and offices, demanding that the
aid be distributed. The effectiveness of a number
of the aid agencies has been astonishingly weak.
And when a country has been occupied, when its
democratic organizations have been repressed, and
when community-based organizations are
marginalized, earthquake relief just will not
immediately get into the hands of the people.
What is the role of the UN and the US which
have been major players in Haitian history in the current catastrophe?
The UN and the US have looked at their role as a
security measure. Their concept of aid has been
militarized, which means that they have not been
diligent in handing out aid to communities. The
US military has eleven thousand soldiers down
there, the UN nine thousand. Six thousand UN
troops have been there since the coup against the
democratically elected president Aristide in 2004
and they have been a repressive force, an
occupying army in Haiti. In the wake of the
earthquake, the US and UN armies have been
essentially patrolling Haiti. I am not saying
that there has been no help. They have started to
distribute food, tents, health supplies. But it
has been much more limited than you would expect.
There have been many reports from various
communities about how armed vehicles just drove
by their communities without helping them.
What were the effects of the militarization of
the relief aid by the US, amongst other countries
Canada and Japan sent hundreds of troops too,
for instance? The American/Haitian activist
Marguerite Laurent suggested on her blog that
humanitarian aid was blocked in favor of military
equipment after the US took over the Haitian
airports in the first few days after the earth quake.
The militarization of the relief aid really
delayed the distribution of food, water, and
particularly medical aid. One of the effects was
that in the first few days after the earthquake,
five cargo planes of Doctors Without Borders were
turned away and rerouted to the Dominican
Republic. Partners In Help estimated that about
20,000 people died each day that aid was delayed.
Is the lack of security in Haiti an explanation
for the heavy emphasis on sending in forces?
Numerous media reports after the earthquake
suggested that insecurity, rapes, and violence
erupting during foreign aid handouts were mounting.
The images of insecurity in the media are not
accurate at all. There are always security issues
in any country. But what is remarkable is the
discipline, the non-violence, the resilience, the
creativity, and the cooperation that Haitians
have exhibited in the face of this catastrophe.
Even days and days and days after not receiving
aid, the US and UN could not point to any major security issues.
If Haiti has not been as insecure as hinted at in
the media, how can the massive military response of the US be explained?
The primary fear of the US was popular, political
unrest. Haiti truly has a very politically
conscious population which has never gone down
easily. After the coup in 2004, thousands of
people were killed and thousands more imprisoned
and held without charges. Every member of the
Lavalas government from high level ministers to
local officials were removed from office. Others were forced into exile.
Still, there has never been an end to grass roots
organizing. Labor unions protested the price of
gas and the privatizing of the phone company.
There were major demonstrations demanding
Aristides return. Just recently, there was a
very successful electoral boycott because the
Haitian government denied Lavalas the right to
participate in the election, even though it is
the most popular political party in Haiti.
The US is still not comfortable with the popular
movement in Haiti. You can see this in the
continued banishment of former President Aristide
from Haiti. While the Obama Administration has
called on former Presidents Clinton and Bush
who was responsible for the 2004 coup to help
coordinate aid, it opposes the return of a former
democratically elected president who wants to
return as a private citizen to aid in the reconstruction efforts.
Surely, there must be other reasons to justify
the militarization of the aid relief?
There is clearly a major geopolitical and
economic interest in Haiti, most prominently by
the US. There is a long history of US
intervention in the area, including a direct US
occupation from 1915-1934. This occupation
created the Haitian military and led eventually
to the Duvalier dictatorships. In 1991, the US
overthrew Aristide and then again in 2004. So the
US is clearly opposed to the social program of
Lavalas and to its example in the Caribbean.
Haiti is also strategically located close to both
Cuba and Venezuela. Haiti is rich in minerals,
such as marble, uranium, iridium, and oil. Big
corporations, such as the Royal Caribbean Lines,
are creating a tourist center in the north which
could have an enormous value for the tourist
industry in the Caribbean area. And Haiti is
looked at as a source of cheap labor. There is a
long history of garment assembly in Haiti.
Cherokee, Wal-Mart, Disney, and Major League
Baseball all had relationships with Haiti. If the
US plan for Haiti is implemented, the numbers of
sweatshops in Port-au-Prince will surely increase.
Naomi Klein suggested that disaster capitalism
is striking in Haiti. Would you agree?
Absolutely. This is disaster capitalism on
steroids. Number one, you have had an earthquake
that ravaged the infrastructure of a country
which has been made poor over the centuries.
Secondly, you have more than 20,000 troops and
massive amounts of capital circulating there.
Plus, the Haitian government has been a very
passive partner in the aftermath of the
earthquake. That is a perfect recipe. The
reconstruction conferences in Montreal and Miami
are indicating that Haiti will be rebuilt along
the lines of the organizations attending them:
the US, Canada, the World Bank, the Clinton
Foundation, the IMF, major business corporations
such as the Royal Caribbean Lines, the Soros
Foundation. Haiti is like a blank board in their
minds. It is going be a feeding frenzy soon.
The Haitian government was attending the
reconstruction meetings too, though. What is its role in the current crisis?
What was remarkable throughout the crisis was the
invisibility of the government. There are two
reasons for that. First of all, the government
really seems to have lost its connection to the
Haitian people. President Preval has been major
disappointment since he was elected in 2006. He
has basically been an arm of the occupation
forces of the UN. Secondly, the government of
Haiti has been starved for years and years by the
international lending organizations, including
USAID. Even now, the government does not receive
true support. It literally gets only one cent for
every dollar spent on Haiti. That really creates
a dependency on international aid agencies. When
a crisis such as this happens, the government is
underfunded and the aid agencies take over. All
in all, the invisibility and compliance of the
Haitian government is a token for the fact that
the US, the UN, and the NGOs have taken control of the country.
Since the relief agencies are not performing
efficiently, who has been providing aid at the grassroots level in Haiti?
What is happening in Haiti is that local
communities are helping themselves. The
mainstream image of Haitians is that they cannot
help themselves, that they are dysfunctional and
violent. The truth could not be more different.
Haiti is a very well organized country at the
grassroots level. There are community committees
in every one of the poor neighborhoods, which
have been organizing protests in order to get the
aid goods distributed. They have also been
contacting international organizations they know
they can trust and started distributing the aid
goods to their local communities.
An organization which has been very important is
the
<http://aristidefoundationfordemocracy.org/>Aristide
Foundation, which has been setting up aid
programs, especially in the refugee camps. They
have created mobile schools, they have developed
local health clinics, and they are also setting
up a big health center at the foundation's site.
Partners in Health has continued to provide
important support as well. And our organization
is funding community projects that are not
getting aided by the big relief organizations.
According to Marguerite Laurent in the current
issue of the American magazine The Progressive,
the people that could be saved were saved mostly
by Haitians frantically using their bare hands
to dig through the rubble and lift pulverized
concrete in the immediate forty-eight hours after
the earthquake. Does that give an accurate image
of how the digging and rescuing took place?
Laurent is absolutely right. The chair of the
Haiti Emergency Relief Fund, for instance, was in
Haiti with his family at the time of the quake,
and they saw first hand how Haitians were working
day and night to save their families and friends.
That was basically the story in Haiti: Haitians
saving themselves and bandaging and housing each
other. They waited for aid that never came and
that is why so many people have died unnecessarily.
Nevertheless, Haiti cannot rebuild itself without
external help. The Haitian diaspora will keep on
sending close to a billion dollars to their
homeland every year. But what role can
international aid agencies play? Who should be
supported in order to help Haiti?
You can't talk about disaster capitalism and then
donate to the big NGOs. If you donate to the Red
Cross, for instance, some help will go to Haiti.
At the same time, you are also donating to a
system which is not designed to empower Haitians.
So if you are progressive, if you want democracy
in Haiti, and if you have some faith in the
Haitian people, you should be looking for the
groups most closely related to, and working with,
the grassroots organizations.
(This interview from Johnny Van Hove with Robert
Roth was first published in DeWereldMorgen, March 9, 2010)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Links: Haiti Action Committee:
<http://www.haitisolidarity.net/index>www.haitisolidarity.net/index
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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