As dire poverty worsens
Haiti moves toward political crisis
By G. Dunkel
For the past 18 months, Haiti has been in the midst of a
political crisis, and the U.S. plays a central role in it.
Popular anger is boiling. Haitians are demanding jobs,
justice, water, electricity, health care and garbage
collection. They are overloaded with misery, grief and a
skyrocketing cost of living.
A struggle is raging over the current presidency, too.
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas (Lavalas
Family) party won the last election fair and square, according
to the accounts of international observers.
But the losing opposition--the "Democratic
Convergence"--wants to overturn the election results. The U.S.
is supporting the Convergence against Aristide.
The opposition is made up of forces that include followers
of the former Duvalier family dictatorship and the Macoutes--a
fascist group that has employed Klan-like terror to repress
Haitians.
How is the U.S. able to support this opposition to Aristide?
It used the electoral dispute to place a hold on $500 million
of social and humanitarian loans to Haiti from the
Inter-American Development Bank. Although the money has not
been released, Haiti still has to pay the interest, according
to the terms of the loan.
The Convergence has also received more than $7 million from
the International Republican Institute, the foreign policy arm
of the U.S. Republican Party, according to reports from Haitian
journalists. The IRI has a long history of meddling in Haiti's
internal affairs.
The Congressional Black Caucus is protesting the U.S. role
in Haiti. Caucus members sent President George W. Bush a letter
on Nov. 8 charging that U.S. policy is "contributing to the
continued attrition of the quality life of Haiti's people,
which, if left unchanged, could lead to horrendous outcomes."
The letter referred to the "humanitarian tragedy" that is
brewing in Haiti. It is the poorest country in the Western
hemisphere; 45 percent of the population is illiterate and
unemployment hovers around 70 percent.
Haiti needs the loans that the U.S. is blocking in order to
build roads and other facilities that would vastly improve its
ability to develop economically.
The money Haitians living in the U.S. had been sending home
was an important boost to the economy--$699 million last year,
according to the central bank in Haiti. September 11 changed
all that.
Money slashed from
Haitians in U.S.
Twenty hours after the attack on the World Trade Center, the
value of Haiti's currency in relation to the U.S. dollar fell
by more than 4 percent. It has continued to plummet as
inflation has soared to 17 percent.
The economic recession in the U.S., deepened by the Sept. 11
attacks and the imperialist war, has cut drastically into the
money Haitians send home.
By Sept. 29, the restaurant industry in Florida had laid off
70,000 workers. Hotels and motels cut 38,700 jobs, including
almost 8,500 housekeepers. Haitians had filled many of these
positions.
Throughout October, as the money drought became more severe,
its impact could be felt in reductions in basic municipal
services in Haiti: garbage collection, telephones and
electricity. Municipal governments didn't have the money for
what had already been difficult before the financial
crisis.
The national government stepped in and dissolved
Port-au-Prince's elected city government.
Trying to take advantage of the situation, the Democratic
Convergence, with the full backing of the United States, began
calling for local protests. According to the BBC Monitoring
Service (Nov. 14), Radio Signal in Port-au-Prince reported that
two protest movements had developed throughout the country.
One, representing the popular Lavalas movement, is "asking for
reforms within the public administration because there is too
much administrative mess." The other, connected to the
Convergence, is "demanding the departure of the current
government."
Both groups, according to Radio Signal, are militant. In
Petit-Goave, for example, they both burned tires and blocked
the main road. In Cap-Haitien, the second-largest city in
Haiti, both were in the streets, according to the Associated
Press, during a two-day general strike. Some 80 percent of the
people in Cap-Haitien supported this strike.
Ben Dupuy, secretary general of the progressive National
Popular Party of Haiti, told Haïti-Progrès (Nov.
7-13 issue):
"Clearly, the resolution of this crisis cannot be provided
by bargaining between the two rivals, Fanmi Lavalas and the
Convergence, which represent the interests of the local ruling
classes and of imperialism." The Convergence, he said, is
obviously thinking of a coup. Fanmi Lavalas can't be a truly
popular party, since its economic policies are neoliberal and
serve the interests of imperialism.
Dupuy sees the emergence of a truly people's movement in
Haiti as the way to solve its structural problems.
Reprinted from the Nov. 29, 2001, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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