Chantal Laurent, The Haitian Blogger, published an informed article yesterday on her blog and in Salon, an article that underscores the irony of Obama’s appointment of Clinton and Bush to lead “an international campaign to help Haiti recover from the earthquake there.” America’s interventionism in Haiti’s affairs, deserves a closer look.
The noble “international community” which is currently scrambling to send its “humanitarian aid” to Haiti is largely responsible for the extent of the suffering it now aims to reduce. Ever since the US invaded and occupied the country in 1915, every serious political attempt to allow Haiti’s people to move (in former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s phrase) “from absolute misery to a dignified poverty” has been violently and deliberately blocked by the US government and some of its allies.
– Peter Hallward, The Guardian, January 13, 2024
According to Hallward, “Since the late 1970s, the relentless neoliberal assault on Haiti’s agrarian economy has forced tens of thousands of small farmers into overcrowded urban slums.” He says, “These people were intentionally pushed out of the countryside by aid and trade policies specifically designed to create a large captive and therefore exploitable labour force in the cities; by definition they are people who would not be able to afford to build earthquake resistant houses.” Around 75% of the population lives on less than $2 per day, and 56% – four and a half million people – live on less than $1 per day.
Tom Friedman wrote in The Lexus and the Olive Tree, “‘The Golden Straitjacket is the defining garment of this globalization era. The Cold War had the Mao suit, the Nehru jacket, the Russian fur. Globalization has only the Golden Straitjacket. If your country has not been fitted for one, it will be soon”; and, “Once your country puts on the Golden Straitjacket, its political choices get reduced to Pepsi or Coke – to slight nuances of taste, slight nuances of policy, slight alterations in design to account for local traditions, some loosening here or there, but never any major deviation from the core golden rules. Governments which deviate too far from the core rules will see their investors stampede away, interest rates rise and stock market valuations fall….”
What Clinton and Bush must do is work with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to forgive Haitian debt, to declare a cease fire in that neoliberal assault, to release the country from the bondage of Friedman’s Golden Straitjacket. It would be a nice gesture if they welcomed Jean Bertrand Aristide to join them in helping with Haiti’s reconstruction. If Bush and Clinton can work together for Obama, well… politics do make strange bedfellows.
