What You're Not Hearing about Haiti (But Should Be)

[arikara]

<snip>

It may startle news-hungry Americans to learn that these conditions the American media correctly attributes to magnifying the impact of this tremendous disaster were largely the product of American policies and an American-led development model.

From 1957-1971 Haitians lived under the dark shadow of "Papa Doc" Duvalier, a brutal dictator who enjoyed U.S. backing because he was seen by Americans as a reliable anti-Communist. After his death, Duvalier's son, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" became President-for-life at the age of 19 and he ruled Haiti until he was finally overthrown in 1986. It was in the 1970s and 1980s that Baby Doc and the United States government and business community worked together to put Haiti and Haiti's capitol city on track to become what it was on January 12, 2010.

After the coronation of Baby Doc, American planners inside and outside the U.S. government initiated their plan to transform Haiti into the "Taiwan of the Caribbean." This small, poor country situated conveniently close to the United States was instructed to abandon its agricultural past and develop a robust, export-oriented manufacturing sector. This, Duvalier and his allies were told, was the way toward modernization and economic development.

From the standpoint of the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Haiti was the perfect candidate for this neoliberal facelift. The entrenched poverty of the Haitian masses could be used to force them into low-paying jobs sewing baseballs and assembling other products.

But USAID had plans for the countryside too. Not only were Haiti's cities to become exporting bases but so was the countryside, with Haitian agriculture also reshaped along the lines of export-oriented, market-based production. To accomplish this USAID, along with urban industrialists and large landholders, worked to create agro-processing facilities, even while they increased their practice of dumping surplus agricultural products from the U.S. on the Haitian people.

This "aid" from the Americans, along with the structural changes in the countryside predictably forced Haitian peasants who could no longer survive to migrate to the cities, especially Port-au-Prince where the new manufacturing jobs were supposed to be. However, when they got there they found there weren't nearly enough manufacturing jobs go around. The city became more and more crowded. Slum areas expanded. And to meet the housing needs of the displaced peasants, quickly and cheaply constructed housing was put up, sometimes placing houses right "on top of each other."

<snip>

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/14-2

[gateley]

1. Is there a country on this planet that we haven't harmed? nt

[naaman fletcher]

6. Sure, the ones we saved from Fascism and Communism.

But that's a small point I guess.

Should we start counting?

Italy
Beligum
Norway
Denmark
The Netherlands
France
Poland
Lithuania
Latvia
Estonia
Romania
Bulgaria
Czech Republic
Slovakia
South Korea
Malaysia
Indonesia
And I guess you could say Germany, Japan, and Austria as well.

Sure, we've done various things to harm some of these countries, but at a tiny level compared to the degree that we helped them.

[gateley]

9. I stand corrected. It was just my frustration at our behind-the-scenes manipulation

of another country at the expense of its people, to further our aims. You're right -- we ain't all bad! :hi:

[naaman fletcher]

10. We are on the same page. nt.

[carla]

16. What a beautiful fantasy world

you live in. Revisionist zeal and jingoistic nationalism, what a combination. As if Russia sat by and watched Europe be freed by the Americans. As if America "won" the Cold War. I see that education in the US is as incomplete as many claim.

[winyanstaz]

17. Too bad we could save all of them...

but we don't seem to be able to save ourselves from fascism here at home.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Guess one thing we are reliable for is screwing up the economies of developing countries

for the best interests of American/International corporations.

[Igel]

13. It was already screwed up.

Moreover, the rural population had pretty much reached carrying capacity and had surplus population, so in-migration to the cities was a foregone conclusion. It's like Mexico in that respect.

Making it a bit worse was that deforestation in the '50s--not to clear land, but to produce wood and charcoal for local consumption--essentially finished the deforestation of the '30s and '40s. At which point the marginal land was subject to a lot of erosion and there was nothing to stop flood waters from hurricanes.

What do you do in that case? You try for manufacturing, because agriculture's a dead end and unless you increase yields you have to rely on imports. The rest sucked, but much of the suckiness that happened was going to happen.

Some places don't really need US help to be really, massively sucky. The US may have made it worse, but I'm not convinced.

[BrklynLiberal]

14. and the other 300 countries around the world that the USA has "helped"?

[WCGreen]

3. Christopher Hitchens got into a lot of trouble pointing out that Mother Teressa

was befriended by Baby Doc and that her community work with the poor was actually subsidizing the US Industrialists and Baby Doc's approach toward the Haitian people...

[pleah]

4. K&R

[theoldman]

5. You forgot to mention that the US government decides who gets elected in Haiti.

That is why Haiti is worse off than when the Duvaliers were in power. Don't forget our buddies in France where Baby Doc took his money.

[existentialist]

7. You mean, its not because

(as Pat Robertson stated) because they made a deal with the devil?

(How does one use that sarcasm key anyway?)

Andy Borowitz now has two choice essays on the point.


Or are you describing the particular details of the deal with the devil as you see it?

[blue97keet]

8. We sure know how to screw up everybody's economy including our own

Just another "offshoring" platform that flopped.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. The "Taiwan of the Caribbean"? They forgot a few details

Taiwan came out of WWII with a relatively modern infrastructure, thanks, ironically, to 50 years of Japanese occupation.

In 1949, much of the upper crust of China fled to Taiwan after the Communist takeover, bringing their money.

Although the Mainlanders were repressive, they were staunch Confucians who believed in the virtues of education and "benevolent dictatorships" that practiced good economic stewardship of their country.

Meanwhile, the U.S. stepped in and demanded land reform (yes, the same kind of land reform that we now criticize Chavez for) in Taiwan, so that the large estates were broken up and given to individual farmers.

The U.S. poured in a lot of foreign aid, because it wanted to turn Taiwan into an "alternative China," but since Chiang Kai-shek was a WWII ally, they didn't place too many restrictions on him.

Taiwan encouraged foreign businesses to come in for its then-cheap labor, but it didn't give them carte blanche. They were required to train Taiwanese for managerial and technical jobs and share their technology with the locals. At the same time, Taiwan sent its brightest young people overseas for graduate education in the sciences, engineering, medicine, and other practical fields.

Even though Taiwan has a subtropical climate, no one ever made it grow cash crops for export, and the U.S. never dumped surplus agricultural commodities there. It had always had a high level of literacy, unlike Haiti, where I remember reading that 90% of the people are illiterate.

"The Taiwan of the Caribbean" indeed!

[KoKo]

12. Thanks for the Background for this Post...something that's an "Eye Opener" for sure...

K&R!

[Vidar]

15. K&R.