What Haitians Want From Americans (and What They Don't)
Sunday 04 April 2010
by: Beverly Bell, t r u t h o u t | Report
In a displaced persons camp, Port-au-Prince. (Photo: Conner Gorry / t r u t h o u t )We asked Haitians in civil society organizations, on the streets, in buses, "What do you want from the US? What help can Americans give Haiti?" Here are some of their answers.
Roseanne Auguste, community health worker with the Association for the Promotion of Integrated Family Health:
The US people don't know us enough. The first thing that Haitians need from the American people is for them to know our history better. They just see us as boat people. Especially Black Americans, we need them to know the other parts of our history, like that we defeated Napoleon. This would let them know that we're the same people.
By contrast, Haitians know what they like in the US They don't agree with American policies, but they have no problem with the American people. Rap music, Haitians appreciate it a lot: Tupac, Akon, Wyclef - even though he's originally from Haiti. The Haitian people feel strongly about Michael Jordan, a Black man who beat up on the other players. On the back of taptaps [painted buses] you see Michael Jackson, the Obamas. It doesn't matter that Obama is a machine of the establishment; the fact that he's a Black American, they identify with him.
There have to be more exchanges between grassroots organizations in the US and Haiti. If the American people knew more about Haitians, if they had a chance to meet more often people-to-people, they'd see we have lots to share. We could build another world together.
Marie Berthine Bonheur, community organizer:
Do the US soldiers come to bulldoze? No way. We have a people who are traumatized. Is that a situation that you respond to with arms and batons? We're not at war with anyone. They would do better to come help us get rid of this crumbled cement everywhere. We need equipment to help us demolish these building. Help us have schools and hospitals. We need engineers who can help us rebuild, and psychologists and doctors.
We don't need soldiers. They just increase our suffering, our pain, our worries.
Adelaire Bernave Prioché, geologist and teacher:
This country has a problem with skilled people, like all Third World countries. Once people get trained, they go to other countries.
This country needs youth to be trained in all domains. First, the Americans could help with this, for example with geologists. We lost so many teachers, we need people to teach. Second, we need massive investment to create employment to let people stay in Haiti.
Christophe Denis, law student:
The way the US is distributing aid ... a line of people waiting for rice and then across the street, a line of street merchants who can't sell their food. Are they sacrificing a class of people in the framework of aid?
Instead of supporting international trade to come in and crush us, reinforce our capacity for production and reinforce our self-sufficiency. The international commerce is just helping a small percentage. All that's produced in Haiti, it has to be strengthened.
Jesila Casseus, street vendor:
We want partnerships, people putting their hands with ours in the cassava pot to reconstruct our country. We don't want orders. We won't accept another slavery. We don't want dominion over us, we don't want to be turned into a protectorate.
Partnerships, okay. But NGOs are coming and sucking the country. They're taking our money and sending it back to where they came from. They're taking our riches and making us poorer.
Judith Simeon, organizer with peasant organizations and grassroots women's groups:
The American policy towards Haiti: none of the Haitian people want it. It's no good. The peasant economy was destroyed with the killing of Creole pigs [in the early 1980s, when USAID and other international agencies killed the entire pig population, allegedly in response to an outbreak of African Swine Fever]. That was the biggest crime of the American government. After that, the free market, neoliberalism - without thinking about the consequences - has crushed peasant agriculture and the rest of the economy even more. As for the rice that's coming in as international aid, what happens to the people in [the rice-growing area of] the Artibonite? Their production is destroyed.
If you're helping someone, you have to respect that person first. I can't tell you how it felt to watch the American soldiers distributing aid by throwing rice and water on the ground and having people run after it, like we saw on TV. That's not how you respect someone.
I can't suggest what else the US people should do. If you don't respect the dignity of a people, you can't help them. All this racist sentiment and action, we don't need that.
Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, director of the Peasant Movement of Papay:
When we speak of American imperialists, we make a distinction between government and people. We believe that a lot of people are conscious of what has happened to Haiti and don't want the imperialist project of the American government. There are a lot of things that we can do together. There are people here thinking seriously about alternative development in Haiti. There are many ways that progressive American people can help with that.
We need people in the US to tell the American government that what they are giving is not what we need. Why do we need 20,000 US soldiers? We don't. In Clinton's plan, there are free trade zones. We don't want that. We don't need them sending in American firms to reconstruct Port-au-Prince, either, which will just lead to its returning as the center of everything in the country. Rural areas could start producing construction materials that we need to rebuild. We need fruit plantations, we need irrigation systems, we need local agriculture industry.
American progressives could lead delegations to come see the country, so that when they return, they could help us reject the imperialist plan. Go out to the countryside, see that people have hope that they can change their lives. In the chain of solidarity, instead of sending food, send organic seeds, send tools, help with the management of water. A group in the US can work with a group in Haiti and help it build a cistern, dig a well, reforest, build silos to create seed banks of local seeds. Support groups that are reconstructing rural Haiti, that are creating work in the mountains. Help us establish rural universities. Help people who have left [earthquake-hit areas and gone to the country] be able to sustain themselves.
We need American people to say, "we stand with the popular project for the rebuilding of Haiti." We need it to be permanent, for Americans to continue to accompany the Haitian people, because the reconstruction of a Haiti is something that will take years.
This is the time to thank many groups for showing how much they are with the Haitian people, for doing all they can, for collecting medical supplies. There's been an extraordinary demonstration of solidarity.
Rony Joseph, policeman:
We need help reconstructing: roads, infrastructure, schools. We need a country that is modern. If you look at the world, you see globalization happening. Everyone has things that Haiti doesn't have.
You know, foreign countries are helping us a lot today, but I think they have an interest in it, too. When we have a problem in Haiti, the US and Canada get very concerned and start helping. Otherwise we might end up on their doorstep.
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Beverly Bell has worked with Haitian social movements for over 30 years. She is the author of "Walking on Fire: Haitian Women's Stories of Survival and Resistance." She coordinates Other Worlds, which promotes social and economic alternatives, and is an associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies.
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Veteran Haitian journalist provides 'A Voice for the Voiceless'
Haitians
Farmers, fisher folk, street vendors and other enterprising Haitians, though not physically present at the international donor conference, had their say in the new Haiti the donors are supporting. Michele Montas, former UN spokesperson and Haitian national, and a team spent several weeks in the countryside gathering the views of those seldom heard from about what they wanted in the new nation. A Voice for the Voiceless Forum found out that the earthquake has shattered the image of the capital Port-au-Prince as the place of aspiration. UN Radio's Diane Bailey spoke to Michelle Montas.
MONTAS: We talked to peasant women, we talked to people who had to flee Port-au-Prince to go to the countryside, and we asked them 'What Haiti do you want? What type of country do you want to rebuild?' We didn't expect the reaction we had: an extremely enthusiastic reaction. For instance, for one focus group there were supposed to be 10 people in each focus group and 20 people would come, 30 people would come. We couldn't say no to them so we worked with them, we listened to them. And they were so eager to talk and to say what they thought and how they would want their country to be shaped. And several conclusions came out of that study.
BAILEY: Conclusions, or was there consensus?
MONTAS: We found out that there were a number of things that were similar. One of them is a strong call for, some people call it, decentralization. They gave it different names, but the idea is that there should be more power given to people living outside of Port-au-Prince. You know, Haiti has always been a country with an enormous "head," which was Port-au-Prince, the capital. They always called it the Republic of Port-au-Prince because everything was around Port-au-Prince. And then suddenly we are asking people, 'What do you think?' And they answered, and their answer was 'There should be more.' A lot of the people we had died because they could not find services where we are, they couldn't find secondary schools in their province towns, they couldn't find health services, they couldn't find, basic structures that the state is supposed to offer, so they had to come to Port-au-Prince to get it. We want schools where we are. We want work where we are and we do not want to come to Port-au-Prince to do so to get that.
DIANE: And that is not in the government blueprint, or is it?
MONTAS: It is also in the government blueprint. However, the content given by the people of what decentralization means is different. In the way the government expresses it is more services; in the way it is expressed by most of the focus groups was we want to control what is happening to our lives. There was also a form of consensus around the aid they receive. They say: We don't want to be given food. We want to earn that food. We want to work. We want to have the money that will allow us to choose what we want to do with that money in terms of sending our kids to school, in terms of buying the food we want. And there was also a very strong accent put everywhere we went on the idea that Haiti should be more self-sufficient.
BAILEY: And what did that do to-
MONTAS: -and they would come into Haiti without having to pay tariffs. That whole attitude of the International Monetary Fund a few years back was you have to open the borders; you have to open to food coming from anywhere. So the food would come and would destroy the production of the Haitian rice grower who could no longer sell his production of rice which became more expensive because he had buy entrance, which was inexpensive. So there was no way they could keep out the competition, so a lot of peasants gave up their work in the country tilling the land to go to Port-au-Prince.
BAILEY: And yet in the consolidated appeal, agriculture is the one area that is the least well-funded. What is the reluctance of international donors to fund agriculture in Haiti?
MONTAS: Well, it's very difficult to say. I think the international community has a tendency to focus on areas where traditionally the industrial world has focused on. Building factories, cheap labor; use the labor of Haiti - and this is not the way the Haitian people see it.
BAILEY: What would the funding for agriculture do? The people who are interested in resuming farming, what would they like the focus on agriculture to do?
MONTAS: Well, tools; The ability to have a more modern agriculture. The ability to have entrance at a lesser cost than what they have - fertilizer in particular, seeds. They want to be able to - not to be in constant competition with the food coming in from the outside. They want to also have the possibility to export. Haiti used to export quite a few things. And because there is, not only in terms of the agriculture itself, but in terms of the transformation of things, like mangos into juice. The mangos are exported as fruits. Well, if there was a value added by producing the juice in Haiti and canning it in Haiti, and sending it out with that help to the agricultural sector, they feel that they would be on a stronger foot.
BAILEY: Now I assume that you were part of the focus groups. You went and saw them. Is there anything that really stands out for you?
MONTAS: Well, I think it's several people really. There was a very strong demand for an end to exclusion. And there was that human factor, which is really what struck me the most. People wanted to be treated equally, they wanted to be treated with dignity, and the word dignity came back so much in those discussions with people from different walks of life. There has to be services given to the people who have gone to the countryside, who actually, for them to stay there they would need to get services and right now we see something which is worrisome and that was expressed by many of the people in the focus groups - people coming back to Port-au-Prince because that's where the services are, that's where the food is being given, and that's where the jobs are starting to be given, you know. And there should be cash for work programmes outside of Port-au-Prince, there should be factories being set up outside of Port-au-Prince. There also has to be support through credit to the small business owners. That situation was mentioned by the people who participated saying, "we need credit", "we need the ability too" because the banks can no longer give you credit; they're just in a situation where they cannot.
Michele Montas, Michele Montas, former UN spokesperson and Haitian national, talking about the Haitian vision of the future to UN Radio's Diane Bailey.
Duration: 6'23"
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