Flashback 1987 — Haiti's dilemma; Impoverished country needs, but distrusts, U.S.

 

Bakery, Haiti, 1987.

    Anyone who has ever traveled around a Third World country knows the depth of misery that can be found around the globe. To think that a central effort of the United States to allay that suffering has been scuttled by an unelected shadow king, to save money to give to rich fucks such as himself, is an enormous shame to add to our ever-growing tower of humiliation.
     The irony is, such aid was always problematic, and didn't always lead to the gratitude that our current leader craves. It required knowledge, wisdom, care and nuance, and those are out of style nowadays. I went looking for past columns that address the work USAID does — or rather, did — and found this from long ago. It's twice as long as a usual column, but I think well expresses the challenges the United States will now be shirking entirely. 

     PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti On a plane traveling recently to this small Caribbean country, not one but two men were carrying padded dashboards. Several people held onto portable black and white televisions, as well as assorted boxed items such as baby walkers and blenders. One young man carried a small suitcase filled entirely with packages of sandwich cookies.
     "There're bringing in the hard goods," said Didier Thys, a Belgian in Haiti with Catholic Relief Services. He went on to explain that since the economy of Haiti is so fractured, anyone coming back from the United States brings as many manufactured products as they can, to sell at a profit later.
     Also on the plane were five young student priests from a Catholic seminary in Boston, and a half dozen or so Baptist missionaries, the latest installment in a steady stream of Americans, and other foreigners, who come here to contribute their efforts to relief projects — vocational training, literacy programs, housing, nutrition, health care, food aid, reforestation — sponsored by organizations such as the United Development Agency, Catholic Relief Service, the Peace Corps, the Baptist Mission at Kenscoff, and others.
     While these programs provide real benefit to the Haitian people and economy, they also present a dilemma in the minds of many Haitians, and some Americans. The aid is needed, but accepting the aid raises the specter of Haiti becoming dependent to the United States, that along with the money and programs comes a silent itinerary that will subvert Haiti's gingerly progress toward self-determination, after years of repression.
     But before anything else can be said about Haiti, it must be understood that this is a nation in the grip of numerous crushing problems. International organizations usually describe the problems in numerical terms. More than a year after the overthrow of President for Life Jean-Claude Duvalier, the statistics about Haiti are still shocking: 50 percent unemployment/ underemployment, 80 percent illiteracy, 87 percent of the households without running water, per capita income of $369 a year.
     But being statistics, they mask a harsh reality that defies numerical description. To really understand what these statistics mean, you have to take a walk through the sloping, hot streets of Port-au-Prince, the capital city of this crowded nation of 6 million.
     Fifty percent unemployment means that at any given time, there are as many people standing around — marking time, playing dominoes, hustling, begging — as there are working. In a country without a social welfare system, some people have never held a job. Those with jobs cling to them and perform them diligently, even though a good daily wage in the city is $3, and a woman working eight hours in a hemp factory in the countryside may earn 90 cents.
     Lack of potable water means that people get water where they can find it. Large crowds form around public taps, and most people get water to their homes by carrying it in large buckets balanced on top of their heads. Those who can afford to drink bottled water religiously avoid tap water, which can carry enteric diseases. Everyone else drinks from the taps and, frequently, from the open sewers at the side of the road.
     High illiteracy means that the most popular newspaper in the country, the Haiti Liberee, has a circulation of only 7,500. There is one public college to serve the entire nation, and to become a doctor, you have to leave the country. Many don't return, which is why in rural areas of Haiti there is one doctor for every 42,000 people. Lack of an educated public also makes it that much harder to affect any kind of change. Harder to provide vocational training. Harder to foster democracy (only 5 percent of the public voted in the last election, to select representatives to draw up a new national constitution.) The official language of the country is French, but 90 percent of the population speak Creole, and can communicate in French with difficulty, if at all.
     Most distressingly, though, the average annual income in Haiti is $369, making the country 650 miles southeast of Miami the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere. In this shattered economy, people scrape by in all manner of marginal ways. Burning wood into charcoal, which is then sold as a fuel, is so popular that the country has become deforested, resulting in massive erosion. People work as draft animals, pulling huge carts of lumber up hills, or set themselves up on a street corner, selling tomato paste by the teaspoon to make 3 cents on a can.
     Into this nation, beset by numerous intractable problems, America pours money — $100 million in aid in 1987 — and relief workers, "hundreds and hundreds of them," according to Jeffrey Lite, public relations officer of the U.S. Information Service. "I'm told more than in any other country."
     Many Haitians — and Americans working in Haiti — worry about the impact of all this assistance activity. While intrusive, quid pro quo demands, such as the Protestant missionaries who require natives to renounce their voodoo religion before they receive medical aid, are rare, the very act of accepting the aid is seen as putting Haiti at risk of becoming a satellite of the United States.
     "The U.S. is seen in contradictory ways, which is not surprising, considering the U.S. is a big, powerful, and nearby, and Haiti is small and weak," said a U.S. Embassy official, who asked not to be identified. "Countries don't like to depend on other countries, but they also need the aid. You hear the phrase `Haiti is not for sale' a lot, as if the people of the U.S. somehow wanted to buy Haiti and put Haiti under its thumb."
     The Haitian fear of domination by the United States is given a bit of perspective by remembering that the U.S. Marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934, to oversee Haitian debt payment and customs activities. It is a memory that has not escaped the Haitians — the date "1915" can be seen painted in red on walls in Port-au-Prince.
     A good example of the controversy over U.S. assistance is found in the area of food aid. Over 10 percent of the Haitian population — 700,000 people — depend on U.S. handouts for their daily sustenance.
     "A lot of food aid is criticized, usually by well-fed people, who say its another way to make Haiti dependent," said a U.S. Embassy official. "Except people are hungry and without the aid they would be seriously malnourished, or worse."
     "The food thing is delicate," said John Hogan, director of Catholic Relief Services, which is a major food distributor in Haiti. "I can sympathize with people who say just giving food away can be a disincentive to production."
     The key to food aid, Hogan said, is to use it as a base, a "temporary support," until people can begin feeding themselves.
     "It behooves everybody who's involved to sit down and say: Where should we be with food in a few years? What's the sense of the Haitian leadership? How do we, in certain places, increase development technical assistance and decrease food aid? Maybe in some places you have to continue food aid because you can't get development going."
     Despite American concern over tailoring programs to meet Haitian needs, there is a lot of hostility directed toward America by the common people.
     "As far as people are concerned, they aren't really very happy with the American government," said I. Michel Meincheind, a Catholic Priest at Petite River des Nippes, a parish of 25,000 people west of Port-au-Prince. "People are very concerned in terms of the American plan for Haiti. Americans want Haiti to be a supply of cheap labor for the American economy. There is a general anti-American attitude here, in part because of what America did with the pigs."
     "What America did with the pigs" is a perfect example of the dilemma of American involvement in Haiti. In 1980, swine flu — which had come to the country in a ham sandwich aboard a Spanish airliner — was decimating Haiti's swine population and threatening to spread to U.S. pork producers. It was decided — by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, USAID and the Haitian government — to completely eradicate the island's swine population, and replace it, entirely, with a more resistant strain of hog. The program, while sound in terms of practical, big-picture health planning, took years to implement and caused great deprivation for peasants, who depend on their pigs for financial security.
     "The systematic slaughter of all the pigs in the country was a catastrophe for the peasants," said Meincheind. "Maybe there should have been a system of looking at each pig to see if they were sick, instead of wiping them all out. Revenues in the countryside are based on pigs, and until we get pigs, nothing will get better."
     To make things get better, to make development work — to launch job programs, build homes, improve farming and nutrition — American organizations have to convince Haitians of their good intentions, that any temporary dependency that comes from accepting assistance is offset by long-term gains to be made. It is a goal that assistance workers apply themselves to with a commitment and seriousness they hope is apparent to their Haitian hosts.
     "I wouldn't be here if I didn't think what I was doing was correct," said Ira Lowenthal, an American anthropologist working for USAID. "My basic approach to this country is, number one, I love it. Number two, it has virtually insurmountable problems. It has inherited an historical legacy which is overwhelmingly difficult as it plays itself out in a modern age of overpopulation, declining soil fertility, increasing foreign exchange problems, declining tourism and whatever else, and anybody who's here with a sincere desire to help, who doesn't think they know more than Haitians themselves about what to do here, and doesn't try to preempt the sovereignty of the country, is needed here.
     "The country needs all kinds of resources and commitment. It needs it primarily from its own citizens from every level of society, and it needs it from anybody else who wants to lend a hand."

      — Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 3, 1987