NOTE: go here to read the full testimony.
This testimony details the results of neo-liberal and neo-colonialist policies but does not detail how the policies were developed and enforced. For example, prior to the Clinton years, Haiti was self-sufficient in terms of rice production, after Clinton Haiti was dependent on rice imports from the USA. This was not simply a case of corruption or incompetence. When Aristide came to office as president of Haiti, his policies were opposed by the USA government. Aristide was forced out of office at gunpoint by U.S. Marines—TWICE! On the other hand both Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier were supported by the USA government. Haiti poverty is a direct result of international oppression and exploitation aided by, but not caused by, internal tyrants who were kept in office by international forces, the USA government chief among the forces.
—Kalamu ya Salaam
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TESTIMONY
“Reconstructing to Rebalance Haiti after the Earthquake”
Robert Maguire, Ph.D.
Trinity Washington University
And
The United States Institute of Peace (USIP)
Testimony presented before the Subcommittee on International Development,
Foreign Assistance, Economic Affairs and International Environmental Protection of
the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
February 4, 2010
Thank you for inviting me to testify today.
My first visit to Haiti was in 1974. My first full day in Haiti was the day that Haiti’s
National Soccer Team scored the incredible goal against Italy in the World Cup. That
may not mean much to Americans, but to Haitians it means everything. I have come to
take this coincidence as a sign that there was bound to be some kind of unbreakable
bond between Haiti and me. And that came to pass.
My most recent visit ended on January 10, 2010, two days before the earthquake. In
between, I have visited Haiti more than 100 times, as a US government official working
with the Inter-American Foundation and the Department of State; as a scholar and
researcher, and as a friend of Haiti and its people. I have traveled throughout that
beautiful, if benighted, land. I have met and broken bread with Haitians of all walks of
life. I have stayed at the now-destroyed Montana Hotel. I had dinner there 5 days
before the quake, chatting with waiters and barmen I had befriended over the years. I
speak Creole. I have lost friends and colleagues in the tragedy. I am anxious to share
my views and ideas with you.
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In the deep darkness of the cloud cast over Haiti by the terrible tragedy of January 12
there is an opportunity for the country and its people to score another incredible goal,
not so much by reconstructing or rebuilding, but by restoring a balance to achieve a
nation with less poverty and inequity, improved social and economic inclusion, greater
human dignity, a rehabilitated environment, stronger public institutions, and a national
infrastructure for economic growth and investment. And, if that goal is to be scored,
relationships between Haitians and outsiders also will have to be rebalanced toward
partnership and respect of the value and aspirations of all Haiti’s people.
A Country Out-of-Balance
In the five decades that I have traveled to Haiti, I have seen the country become terribly
out-of-balance. Much of this revolves around the unnatural growth of Haiti’s cities,
especially in what Haitians call “the Republic of Port-au-Prince.” In the late 1970s,
Haiti’s rural to urban demographic ratio was 80% to 20%. Today it is 55% to 45%. The
earlier ratio reflected what had been chiefly an agrarian society since independence.
The population of Port-au-Prince in the late 1970’s was a little over 500,000 – already
too many people to be adequately supported by the city’s physical infrastructure. By
then, Haitians from the countryside had already begun trickling into the capital city as a
result Dictator Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s (1957 – 1972) quest to centralize his grip
on power. Under Papa Doc, a ferocious neglect beyond PAP took place, as ports in
secondary cities languished, asphalted roads disintegrated and, in some cases, were
actually ripped-up, and swatches of the countryside were systematically deforested
under the guise of national security or by way of timber extraction monopolies granted
to Duvalier’s cronies. Small farmers were ignored as state-supported agronomists
sought office jobs in the capital.
The only state institutions present in the countryside were army and paramilitary
(Tonton Makout) posts and tax offices – which enforced what rural dwellers told me was
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a ‘squeeze – suck’ (pese - souse) system of state predation. With wealth, work and what
passed for an education and health infrastructure increasingly concentrated in Port-au-
Prince (PAP), it was no wonder that poor rural Haitians had begun to trickle off the land
into coastal slums with names like “Boston” and “Cite Simon” (named after Papa Doc’s
wife), and onto unoccupied hillsides and ravines within and surrounding the city.
The trickle turned into a flood in the early 1980’s when the rapacious regime of Jean-
Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier (1972 - 1986) yielded to Haiti’s international ‘partners’ –
governments, international financial institutions, and private investors – who had set
their sights on transforming Haiti into the “Taiwan of the Caribbean.” Political stability
under the dictatorship combined with ample cheap labor and location near the US
formed a triumvirate that shored up this idea, and the “‘Tawanization” of Haiti
proceeded, creating by the mid-1980’s somewhere between 60K and 100K jobs in
assembly factories, all located within PAP. Fueled by a parallel neglect of Haiti’s rural
economy and people, the prospect of a job in a factory altered the off-the-land trickle
into a flood, as desperate families crowded the capital in search of work and the
amenities – education, especially – that the city offered. Between 1982 and 2008, Port-
au-Prince grew from 763,000 to between 2.5 and 3 million, with an estimated 75,000
newcomers flooding the city each year.1
As immigrants piled up in slums, on deforested and unstable hillsides, and in urban
ravines, the opportunity offered by the city became a mirage. Following the ouster of
Duvalier in 1986 when, as Haitians say, “the muzzle had fallen” (babouket la tonbe) and
freedom of speech and assembly returned, factory jobs began to dry up as nervous
investors sought quieter, more stable locations. By the 1990’s, only a fraction of those
jobs remained. Yet the poor continued to flow into the city.
1
Robert Maguire, Haiti After the Donors’ Conference: A Way Forward, United States Institute of Peace,
Washington DC, Special Report 232, September 2009.
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Papa Doc’s centralization, combined, under the rule of Baby Doc, with the urban-
centric/Taiwanization policies of key donor countries (including the US) and
international banks had a devastating impact on Haiti. Enacted by a government and
business elite who saw these policies as a golden opportunity to make money, the
internationally-driven Tawanization of Haiti neglected what Francis Fukuyama has
pointed out as the key to Taiwan’s own success: a necessary investment in universal
education and agrarian improvement before investing in factories.2 Haiti’s people were
viewed internationally and by local elites strictly as pliant and ample cheap labor.
Education might make them ornery. Avoid it. Why invest in agriculture when cheaper
food – heavily subsidized imported flour and rice – could feed Haiti’s growing urban
masses? In the late 1970’s Haiti did not need to import food. Today, it imports some
55% of its foodstuff, including 360,000 metric tons of rice annually from the US.3
The folly of these policies was seen in early 2008, during the global crisis of rapid and
uncontrolled commodity price increase, when that rice, still readily available, was no
longer cheap and the urban poor took to eating mud cookies to survive. Another spin-
off of these fallacious policies of the 80’s was political instability. Poor Haitians took to
the streets in early 2008 to protest “lavi chè” (the high cost of living), with the result
being the ouster of the government headed by Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis
who, coincidentally, had just won praise from the US and the International Financial
Institutions (IFIs) for the creation of a national poverty reduction and economic growth
strategy that would serve as a blueprint for developing all of Haiti, and reversing the
long history of rural neglect.
Rural neglect combined with migration to cities, moreover, placed considerable
pressure on those still in the countryside to provide the wood and charcoal the
burgeoning urban population required. Here was a recipe for desperately poor people
2
Francis Fukuyama, “Poverty, Inequality and Democracy: The Latin American Experience,” Journal of
Democracy 19, no. 4 (October 2008).
3
Op.cit, Maguire, “Haiti After the Donor’s Conference”
Page 5 of 15
to further ravish the environment. Today, 25 of Haiti’s 30 watersheds are practically
devoid of vegetative cover.
Port-au-Prince, and other cities, particularly Gonaives, had become disasters waiting to
happen as a result of these developments. The vast majority of the 200,000 who
perished on January 12th were poor people crowded on marginal land and into sub-
standard housing devastated by the quake. The vast majority of the thousands who
died in the floods in Gonaives in 2004 and 2008 were poor people crowded on alluvial
coastal mud flats and in river flood plains. For Haiti’s poor, their country has become a
dangerous place and a dead-end. Is it surprising that Haitians seek any opportunity to
look for life (chèche lavi) elsewhere? As one peasant told me in the 1990’s, ‘we have
only two choices: die slow or die fast. That’s why we take the chance of taking the boats
(to go to Miami)’ (pwan kantè).
Haiti had lost its balance in other ways, particularly in social and economic equity, and in
the ability of the state to care for its citizens. By 2007, 78 percent of all Haitians – urban
and rural – survived on $2.00 a day or less, while 68 percent of the total national income
went to the wealthiest 20 percent of the population.4 During the 29 year Duvalier
dictatorship, Haitian state institutions virtually collapsed under the weight of bad
governance. Following the 1986 ouster of Baby Doc, who, ironically, was lorded with
foreign funds that went principally to Swiss bank accounts, donors were loathe to work
with successor governments – including those democratically elected. Instead, they
chose to funnel hundreds of millions annually through foreign-based NGOs that enacted
‘projects’ drawn up in Washington, New York, Ottawa, etc. and that lasted only as long
as the money did. Haitians, by the early 1990s, were derisively calling their country a
“Republic of NGOs” and by 2008, none other than the President of the World Bank,
4
Maureen Taft-Morales, “Haiti: Current Conditions and Congressional Concerns,” Congressional Research
Service Report for Congress, May 5, 2009.
Page 6 of 15
Robert Zoellick, lamented the cacophony of “feel good, flag-draped projects” that had
proven a vastly inadequate substitute for a coherent national development strategy.5
Without doubt, Haiti was seriously out-of-balance before the earthquake and Port-au-
Prince was a disaster waiting to happen. Many had feared that it would come by way of
a hurricane; rather the earth shook. Now, let us see how we might make a positive
contribution in restoring balance to Haiti so that when, inevitably, the country is struck
by another natural disaster – be it seismic or meteorological – it is less vulnerable and
better able to confront and cope with the disaster.
Rebalancing to ‘Build Back Better’
Allow me to stress two points: we must be fully cognizant of past mistakes, such as
those outlined above; and the key to ‘building Haiti back better’ is to work toward a
more balanced nation with less poverty and inequities, less social and economic
exclusion, greater human dignity, and a commitment of Haitians and non-Haitians
toward these essential humanistic goals. With this, Haiti can also achieve and sustain a
rehabilitated natural environment, stronger public institutions, a national infrastructure
for growth and investment, and relationships between Haitians and outsiders that are
based on partnership, mutual respect, and respect of the value and aspirations of all
Haiti’s people.
What follows are ideas and recommendations based on not only my experience in Haiti,
but on endless discussions/conversations with Haitian interlocutors. In this regard, I
should add that the principal reason for my visit to Port-au-Prince in early January was
to deliver an address on prospects for rebalancing Haiti. That presentation was made to
an audience of 50 or so Haitian civil servants and policy analysts – some of whom I fear
are no longer with us - who gathered in Port-au-Prince at a Haitian think tank. My ideas
were received by them with great and at times animated interest.
5
Robert Zoellick, “Securing Development” (remarks at the United States Institute of Peace conference
titled Passing the Baton, Washington, DC January 8, 2009.
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1. Welcoming Dislocated Persons: A de facto Decentralization
Since the quake, some 250,000 Port-au-Prince residents have fled the city, returning to
towns and villages from which they had migrated or where they have family. An
estimated 55,000 have shown up in Hinche in Haiti’s Central Plateau; the population of
Petite Riviere de l’Artibonite has swelled from 37,000 to 62,000; St. Marc’s 60,000, has
swollen to 100,000.6 The flight of Haitians away from a city that now represents death,
destruction and loss might become a silver lining in today’s very dark cloud. If that is to
be the case, however, we – both the government of Haiti and its international partners
– must catch up with and get ahead of this movement. Already underdeveloped rural
infrastructures and the resources of already impoverished rural families are being
stretched. The provision of basic services to these displaced populations is an urgent
priority. If conditions in the countryside are not improved, the displaced will ultimately
return to Port-au-Prince, to replicate the dangerous dynamics of earlier decades.
To catch up and get ahead of this reverse migration, we should support an idea
proffered by the Government of Haiti in Montreal last week: the reinforcement of 200
decentralized communities. As soon as possible, “Welcome Centers” might be stood up
in towns and villages. They can be temporary, to be made permanent later. They can
serve as decentralized ‘growth poles’ that offer multiple services, including relief in the
short term, with health and education facilities attached. Let us not forget that Haiti has
lost many of its schools and among those fleeing the devastated city are tens of
thousands of students. Twenty five percent of Haitian rural districts do not have
schools. And schools that exist outside Port-au-Prince are usually seriously deficient.
The reverse migration we are seeing today offers a golden opportunity to rebalance the
education and health system of Haiti.
The centers can coordinate investment and employment opportunities, as well as state
services including robust agronomic assistance to farmers. Haiti’s planting season is
6
Trenton Daniel, “Thousands flee capital to start anew,” Miami Herald, January 23, 2010; Mitchell
Landsberg, “The displaced flow into a small Haitian town,” Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2010; data from
MINISTAH headquarters in Hinche.
Page 8 of 15
almost here and now more than ever the country needs a bountiful harvest. Displaced
people working as paid labor can reinforce Haiti’s farmers. Infrastructure needs to be
rebuilt – or built for the first time - including schools, health clinics, community centers,
roads, bridges and drainage canals. Hillsides need rehabilitation, particularly with
vegetative cover and perhaps even stone terraces. Providing work for not just the
displaced, but to those they are joining in towns and villages throughout Haiti, will go a
long way toward rebalancing Haitian economy and society, and toward repairing a social
fabric ripped to shreds by decades of neglect and subsequent migration. This is an
opportunity that must be seized.
2. Support the Creation of a National Civic Service Corps
Since 2007, various Haitian government officials and others have been working quietly
on the prospect of creating a Haitian National Civic Service Corps. Citizen civic service is
mandated in Article 52-3 of the Haitian constitution and, even before the quake, the
idea of a civic service corps to mobilize unemployed and disaffected youth seemed
attractive. Now is the time for this idea to take off. As I have recently written, a
700,000-strong national civic service corps will rapidly harness untapped labor in both
rural and urban settings, especially among Haiti’s large youthful population, to rebuild
Haiti’s public infrastructure required for economic growth and environmental
rehabilitation and protection; increase productivity, particularly of farm products;
restore dignity and pride through meaningful work; and give Haitian men and women a
stake in their country’s future. It will also form the basis of a natural disaster response
mechanism.7
If this all sounds familiar, it should: the idea of a Haitian National Civic Service Corps
parallels the same thinking that went into the creation of such New Deal programs as
the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC).
7
Robert Maguire and Robert Muggah, “A New Deal-style corps could rebuild Haiti,” Los Angeles Times,
January 31, 2010.
Page 9 of 15
We have seen what these programs did to help the United States and its people stand
up during a difficult time.
In the aftermath of the storms that devastated Haiti in 2008, Haitian President Prèval
asked not for charity, but for a helping hand to allow Haitians to rebuild their country.
Today he is making a similar point. Here is more symmetry between the Haiti and the
U.S. As Harry Hopkins, the legendary administrator of the Works Progress
Administration, pointed out: “most people would rather work than take handouts. A
paycheck from work didn’t feel like charity, with the shame that it conferred. It was
better if the work actually built something. Then workers could retain their old skills or
develop new ones, and add improvements to the public infrastructure like roads and
parks and playgrounds.”8 Let’s help Haiti restore its balance by supporting a national
civic service corps that can accomplish the same for Haiti and its people as our New Deal
programs did in the United States decades ago.
To reiterate, as was the case with our New Deal, Haiti’s civic service corps must be a
‘cash-for-work’ initiative. Cash-for-work will inject serious liquidity into the Haitian
economy and stimulate recovery from the bottom-up. Already there are various entities
employing Haitians in a variety of cash-for-work programs. This Monday, for example,
the UNDP announced that it has enrolled 32,000 in a cash-for-work rubble removing
program; a number expected to double by tomorrow.9 Coordination of existing efforts
within an envisaged national program will be essential to maximizing how Haiti can be
built back better – by its own people, with everyone wearing the same uniform.
A special commission, similar to those established by President Prèval in 2007 to engage
Haitians from diverse sectors to study and make recommendations on key issues
confronting his government, might be established to oversee this coordination. (Other
special commissions could be mounted to tackle other topics or needs and as a means
of expanding the Haitian government’s human resource circle.) Such a commission
8
Nick Taylor, American Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA, (New York: Bantam Books, 2008), p.99.
9
UNDP, “Fast Fact of the Week,” accessed on February 2, 2010 at undp.washington@undp.org
Page 10 of 15
could be enlarged to include representatives of key donors. A central figure like Harry
Hopkins will have to lead the endeavor. Perhaps such a figure could emerge from Haiti’s
vaunted private sector. In any case, let’s avoid a repetition of the cacophony of feel
good, flag-draped projects.
3. Strengthen Haitian state institutions through accompaniment, cooperation and
partnership
At the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Haiti held last week, witnesses
spoke of the need to rebuild the Haitian state from the bottom up, and of working with
Haitian officials – not pushing them aside. I agree with these points whole-heartedly.
This is not the time to impose governance on Haiti – that is a 19th century idea unfit for
the 21st century. This is an opportunity to help strengthen Haiti’s public institutions, not
to replace them.
As pointed out above, the capacity of the Haitian state, never strong to begin with, has
deteriorated progressively over the past 50 years. In recent years that was due in part
to international policies that circumvented state institutions in favor of private ones –
both within Haiti and from beyond, and left the resource-strapped government virtually
absent in the lives of its citizens. In the aftermath of the quake, we see starkly the
results of the decimation of the Haiti state. The already weak state has been further set
back by the death of civil servants and the loss of state facilities and physical resources.
In this context, the government of President Rene Prèval and Prime Minister Jean Max
Bellerive has taken much criticism for its response – or lack thereof – in the past few
weeks.
It is easy to kick someone in the teeth when he or she is already on the mat. Rather
than swinging our foot, however, we should offer our hand. This is the time of the
Haitian government’s greatest need. Achieving cooperation and partnership, as pointed
out by Canadian Prime Minister Harper at the recently-held Montreal Conference, is the
Page 11 of 15
biggest concern.10 Over the past four years, the Prèval government has won praise
internationally – and among most in Haiti – over its improved management of the affairs
of the state. Political conflict, though still extant, has diminished considerably. Haiti’s
terribly polarized society is a little less polarized today. Moderation and greater
inclusion – not demagoguery and a winner-takes-all attitude – have worked their way
into the ethos of the Haitian political culture. Partnership to strengthen the Haitian
state was on the horizon following the ‘new paradigm for partnership’ agreed to at the
April 2009 Donors Conference.11 Let’s stay that course. Generations of bad governance
and a zero sum political culture are not turned around overnight.
Quietly, but steadily in the post-quake period, the Haitian government has been picking
itself up by its bootstraps beyond the photo-ops and glare of the cameras to
reassemble, and then to reassert, itself.12 Still, given the magnitude of this catastrophe,
the government is overmatched. Any government would be. This is not the time to cast
aspersions. It is the time to work in partnership and to accompany Haitian leaders
through their time of loss and sorrow, into a more balanced and better future.
4. Get Money into the Hands of Poor People
In 1999, Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto estimated that there was $5.2 billion in
‘dead capital’ in Haiti, shared among 82 percent of the population. Of this sum, $3.2
billion was located in rural Haiti. This amount dwarfed by four times the total assets of
Haiti’s 123 largest formal enterprises. 13 This capital, principally in the hands of poor
people in the form of property, land, and goods, is considered ‘dead’ because it cannot
be used to leverage further capital for investment and growth. To free it up, clear titling
would be required along with a reduction of red tape and corruption, and a brand new
10
CTV.ca News Staff, “Foreign Ministers vow to be ‘partners’ with Haiti,” accessed on January 30, 2010 at
www.http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/plocal/CTVNews/20100125/Haiti_conference_100125/2010
11
Government of Haiti, “Vers un Nouveau Paradigme de Cooperation,” April 2009
12
Jacqueline Charles, “Haiti President Rene Preval quietly focuses on ‘managing country,” Miami Herald,
February 2, 2010
13
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital (New York:Basic Books, 2000).
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attitude toward Haiti’s most vibrant form of capitalism – its’ informal economy – and
the poor entrepreneurs who make it work. Doubtless, you have seen post-quake stories
of how Haiti’s grassroots entrepreneurs began rebounding within days.
A key to Haiti’s recovery – and, yes, to its rebalancing – is to get capital into the hands of
grassroots entrepreneurs – be they still in Port-au-Prince or elsewhere in the country.
Formalizing dead capital – which will be a long, tedious and conflictive path, but one
that perhaps can be facilitated now through such steps as the issuance of provisional
land and property titles that subsequently are fully formalized – is but one way of
getting liquid assets into poor people’s hands. Others, more expeditious, include:
More small loans (microcredit) to entrepreneurs, particularly those who
produce something, including farmers. Farmers with capital will not just
produce more food, but will increase employment. Government studies
indicate that a 10% increase in man-hours on farms will create 40,000 new
jobs.14 One strong candidate to improve microcredit throughout Haiti is an
organization called FONKOZE. With more than 33 branches country-wide, it
serves some 175,000 members, mostly among those who make – or made prior
to their engagement with microcredit - $2.00 a day or less. FONKOZE also
facilitates the efficient and lower cost decentralizing of the flow of funds sent
to Haiti from family abroad.
14
Government of Haiti, “Rapport d’évaluation des besoins après dèsastre Cyclones Fay, Gustav, Hanna et
Ike,” November 2008.
(end of part 1 of 2 — go here for part 2 of 2)