Analysis of current events in Haiti, considering issues of political ecology, colonialism and neo-colonialism, environmental racism, ecological morality, and challenges regarding distribution of human services, viewed through an applied anthropology perspective. Term project for Environmental Anthropology, ANTH212, Dr. Caroline Hartse, 2012.
Image of Kreyol pig, from Kochon Kreyol : A story in pictures http://faculty.goucher.edu/mbell/
A Rude Awakening:
While initially
beginning this research, I sought to explore the presuppositions about the
advantages in utilizing the resources of Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs)
and contrast it with the effectiveness of direct governmental aid or UN
peacekeeping forces to assist the victims of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. NGOs in many instances demonstrate slower
progress and cost more than local Community Based Organizations (CBOs) to
complete projects (Reitman, 2011, Schuller 2009, p.91), push unwanted programs on
the Haitian people (Reitman, 2011; Schuller, 2009; Vannier, 2010, p. 290-2) cause
social rifts within communities (James, 2012, p. 63-68; Sontag, 2012, para. 4-7),
in many instances are self-perpetuating cash-cows (Wearne, 2012; Reitman, 2011),
and often further the aims of covert international political groups (James,
2012; Schuller, 2007, p. 87; Reitman, 2011, sect. 5). Even before the quake, Haiti hosted almost
10,000 NGOs (Wearne, p. 18 ), many of them in residence for so long they are
nearly naturalized citizens (“Haiti: Constitution of 1987”, 2011). While NGOs are in several cases useful for
direct and immediate emergency relief, their presence in many ways hinders the social,
economic and infrastructural rebuilding that are needed in response to the
nation’s current dire straits resulting from not only the recent natural and
biological disasters in Haiti, but from the many layers of domestic and
international failures going all the way back to the Saint Domingue island colony
on Hispañola.
This in itself was a revelation, and upon further digging I found evidence linking the destabilization and centralization of Haiti’s agricultural systems, as well as forced dependence on imported foods to actions by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Kreyol pig eradication in the 1980s (Murray, 1987, p. 244), followed by the influx of US subsidized rice imports (Lindsay, 2010; Wucker, 2004) both caused extreme hardship on the majority rural population and led to mass migration from the countryside to the capital city of Port-au-Prince, where the available work was to be found in low-wage jobs producing export items in foreign owned factories (Lindsay, 2010, p. 20; Wearne, 2012, p. 19). I propose that the colonial and neo-liberal world powers’ systematic hobbling of Haiti’s self-determination and economic success since the inception of the independent nation not only keeps the country’s people in neo-colonial servitude, but also contributed greatly to massive loss of life in the 2010 earthquake, centered in the nation’s capital. Wearne (2012) likens the US and international communities’ policies to genocide.
“An empty bag cannot sit on its own.” –
Haitian proverb
The end of the Duvalier regime in the
late 1980s also saw the end of the United States’ favor for the Caribbean
nation, formerly a Cold War era insurance policy against Cuba. When Jean-Claude Duvalier was ousted to the
protective custody of the US government, much of the nation’s treasury
disappeared with him, and Haiti was left holding the proverbial empty bag. When the impoverished country sought
assistance from the IMF, loans were granted under the condition that it “allow”
heavily subsidized rice to be imported from United States’ rice farmers.
Tariffs were lifted, markets were flooded, and small Haitian farmers went under
while the “Miami rice” business boomed (Wearne, 2012, p. 18). When combined with other IMF demands such as
the privatization of many governmental agencies, increased taxes and the
elimination of fuel subsidies (Wucker, p. 43) the resulting economic effects
were devastating. Fluctuations in market
prices caused riots in the years preceding the election of President Aristide,
and in part led to the installation of international peacekeeping forces to suppress
uprisings and maintain order. President
Clinton, who worked extensively to bring the rice program to Haiti, has acknowledged
its shortcomings: “It was a mistake…I have to live every day with the
consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed these
people. [sic] Because of what I did. [sic] Nobody
else.” (Wearne, 2012, p. 18). Haitians may question whether Clinton lives
with these consequences in the same way that they do every day, and even
Clinton’s actions within more recently implemented works bring into question
his sincerity. Projects such as a new industrial park on a previously undeveloped
bay, and new maquiladora style
factories owned by foreign companies, both supported by the Interim Haiti
Reconstruction Commission (IHRC) of which Clinton is a co-chair, are still
popping up in Haiti, while the issues of self-determination and food production
are put aside (Lindsay, 2010; Reitman, 2011; Wearne, 2012).
It hasn’t always been this way. The
Constitution of Haiti, in nearly all of its nearly twenty incarnations forbade
the foreign ownership of land and in contrast to its colonial beginnings,
supported a decentralized “counter-plantation” agricultural system (DuBois &
Jenson, 2012, para. 3). Even though
France extorted incredible sums of monetary “compensation” for the loss of its
coffee and sugar incomes from the former slave colony throughout the nineteenth
century (Hothschild, para. 5; Schuller,
2007, p. 71), the new nation still attracted immigrants from the Americas and
stood as a beacon of hope and democracy-in-action for slave populations across
the western hemisphere. An international
embargo enforced during the same time by colonial powers England, France and
the United States may actually have been a contributing reason for Haiti’s domestic
economic independence and development. Forced
to look within for resources and methods, Haiti developed a system that
worked. The fledgling government divided
its nation into districts, each with a seat city and its own port, designing a
confederacy of integrated cooperative counties where many merchants exchanged
unofficially with US business partners.
This system lasted until the invasion
and occupation by the United States from 1915 through 1934. The new occupying government rewrote the
Constitution to allow foreign ownership of land, and restructured the economic
system to center entirely around Port-au-Prince, using forced labor to build
roads from the countryside to the capital (DuBois & Jenson, 2012, para. 7),
and effectively streamlined the island nation for export; in short, re-colonizing it. A series of US supported dictators and
kleptocrats continued in this vein through much of the twentieth century,
enforcing economic policies and recreating the plantations’ system of indentured
servitude.
Still, thirty years ago Haitian
farmers grew the majority of their nation’s food (DuBois & Jenson, 2012,
para. 3; Lindsay, 2010, p. 21; Wearne, 2012, p. 18). About half of the nation’s marketed food was
produced domestically, and provided a varied diet. But by 2010, Haiti had
become the fourth largest importer of US grown rice in the world (Lindsay, 2010,
p. 21). Presently in the post-earthquake
economy, although farmers are still willing to produce, the international aid
community has put little emphasis on push-starting domestic food programs. Four percent of the UN’s request for aid
after the earthquake was budgeted for Haiti’s own Food and Agriculture
Organization, and months after the quake, only eight percent of that budgeted
amount had been allocated. Many farmers
were using that year’s seed supply as food for their families (Lindsay, 2010, p.
21).
“It’s the quiet pigs that eat the meal.” – Haitian proverb
The Kreyol pig
was a small black strain brought to the Americas by Spaniards in the early
colonization period. Traditionally Haitian peasants banked their surplus wealth
by keeping the pigs as insurance against bad times such as crop failures, or to
pay for weddings, funerals, medical bills and their children’s education. African
Swine Fever appeared in Haiti’s neighbor the Dominican Republic in 1978, posing
a threat to the international pork industry. The disease while damaging to swine is not
contagious to humans; infected pigs can be slaughtered and their meat eaten (Gaertner,
2000). The US insisted that the
domesticated pigs of Hispañola be eradicated. The Duvalier government along with the Inter-American
Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) enforced the slaughter of all
the Kreyol pigs in Haiti, about 380,000 swine, at an estimated loss of $600
million to the peasants (Aristide, 2000, as cited by “Toward Freedom”, 2005). The European strains of swine
imported from the US to replace the herds were dubbed the “four-legged prince”
by locals because of their delicate conditions, lack of acclimation to the
tropical climate and need for expensive feed, which was available through USAID
for a fee. The neo-liberal program that had
sought to replace the local traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) was a
failure.
After this extreme financial loss in
the years preceding the 2010 quake, Haitians relocated to Port-au-Prince in
droves, where people built anything they could, anywhere they could, in order
to have shelter. The bidonvil (a Kreyol term for
“shantytown”) cropped up in arroyos, cliff sides, any place possible. By some estimates, 2.5 million have left rural
areas for the city in the past twenty years, which has seen its population
balloon from approximately 750,000 to 3 million (Reitman, 2011, sect. 7, para.
1; Wearne, 2012, p. 18) a fair share of the
nation’s 9.8 million people (“The World Fact Book”, 2012). The emigration from rural communities further
taxed the capital’s already strained infrastructure and services such as
garbage removal and road maintenance; electricity, sewers, and running water
were not widely available. When the
earthquake hit, the vast majority of residential buildings were reduced to
rubble. A few exceptions, such as a high rise public housing project built
under the administration of Aristide, escaped damage. While speculation as to whether the
devastating loss of life seen in the 2010 earthquake would have happened if
international policy had not forced the population to inhabit dangerous
structures that should never have been built does not change the outcome of
this tragedy, it is important to note this grave example of the effects of
globalization on subjugated cultures (Ambraseys & Bilham, 2011).
“When you’re poor, everything is your fault.” – Haitian proverb
Much has been written about the
failures of the barely functioning Haitian government’s lack of initiative to
proactively tackle the overwhelming obstacles it faces: non-functioning
infrastructure, continued squalid conditions in temporary housing camps, and
pervasive corruption inhibiting equitable distribution of aid. But I contend that the blame does not lie
squarely on the Haitian people, its government, or its culture. Haiti’s beginnings after the first successful
slave rebellion in the western hemisphere developed a self-determined nation, and
it’s continued persistence shows its will to survive, in spite of all its
challenges: NGOs that spend donations from well-intentioned international
private donors on air conditioners, fleets of shiny SUVs and banks of new
computers; international peace keeping forces that at best are ineffectual and
at worst cause outbreaks of infectious disease (Sontag, 2012b); kleptocratic dictators and
revolving door military juntas, these have all bent Haiti, but not broken it. Although it is easy to become overwhelmed with
the vastness of Haiti’s desperate needs, there are also glimmers of hope. A program to introduce reforestation as a
sustainable cash crop that provides income directly to individual farmers
(Murray, 1987) has worked to counteract the unilateral denuding of Haiti’s
trees and subsequent erosion of vital soils. CBOs are learning how to work the bureaucratic
system in their favor, and are proactively seeking partnerships with NGOs to
design programs that Haitians themselves find vital (Vannier, 2010).
The beginnings of a movement away
from the city and back to small scale farming in rural areas has encouraged
those who are ready to take neocolonialism by the horns, step up, and be heard.
As described by Lindsay, (2010) Louise
Bonne, who up until the earthquake had lived her entire life in Port-au-Prince, now camps on the patio of her cousin’s house in the country, and says she
would rather try to earn a living where she is now than return to the city:
“…they should help us develop our own natural resources for the long term. That way, we can respond to our needs without
having to depend on someone else to give us rice, beans and other daily
necessities.” The Haitian people found
their voice when they sent France packing in 1804. Two hundred years later, if enough voices like
Bonne’s keep making themselves heard, she may just get her way.
Bibliography
Ambraseys, N. and Roger Bilham (2011) Corruption Kills. Nature, Volume 469. Macmillan Publishers Limited.
Retrieved May 14, 2012. <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v469/n7329/full/469153a.html>
Central Intelligence
Agency. Central Intelligence Agency World
Fact Book. Retrieved May 15, Retrieved May 14, 2012. <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v469/n7329/full/469153a.html>
2012. <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ha.html>
DuBois, L. and Jenson, D. (2012) Haiti Can Be Rich Again. The New York Times. Retrieved
April 1, 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/opinion/Haiti-can-be-rich-
again.html>
Gaertner, P. (2000) Excerpts from Whether Pigs Have Wings: African Swine Fever Eradication
and Pig Repopulation in Haiti. Bob Corbett, Professor Emeritus Webster University.
Retrieved May 15, 2012.
<http://www.websteruniv.edu/~corbetre/haiti/misctopic/pigs/gaertner.htm>
Haïti: Constitution (1987) La République d’Haïti. Retrieved May 15, 2012.
<http://pdba.georgetown.edu/constitutions/haiti/haiti1987.html>
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804. Duke University. Retrieved May 15, 2012.
<http://today.duke.edu/showcase/haitideclaration/declarationstext.html>
Hothschild, A. (2011) Haiti’s Tragic History [Review of the book The Aftershocks of History, by
Laurent DuBois]. The New York Times. Retrieved May 1, 2012.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/books/review/haiti-the-aftershocks-of-history-by-
laurent-dubois>
James, E. C. (2012) Witchcraft, Bureaucraft, and the Social Life of (US)AID in Haiti. Cultural
Anthropology, 27 (1) 50-75. Retrieved May 6, 2012 from EbscoHost online database.
< http://www.ebscohost.com/>
Lindsay, R. (2010) Haiti’s Excluded: How the earthquake aid regime sidelines those it is
supposed to help. The Nation. Retrieved May 9, 2012 from EbscoHost online database.
< http://www.ebscohost.com/>
Murray, G. F. (1987) The Domestication of Wood in Haiti: A Case Study in Applied Evolution.
Anthropological Praxis. Retrieved April 28, 2012, <http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/murray/
Research/Haiti/ Domestication_of_wood_in_Haiti.pdf>
Reitman, J. (2011). Beyond Belief: How the World Failed Haiti. Rolling Stone. August 18, 2011,
1137, 58-71. Retrieved May 12, 2012.
< http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-world-failed-haiti-20110804>
Schuller, Mark (2009) Gluing Globalization: NGOs as Intermediaries in Haiti. PoLAR: Political
and Legal Anthropology Review 32 (1), 84-104. Retrieved May 5, 2012 from
Anthrosource online database. < http://www.aaanet.org/publications/anthrosource/>
Schuller, Mark (2007) Seeing like a “Failed” NGO: Globalization’s Impacts on State and Civil
Society in Haiti. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 30 (1), 67-89.
Retrieved May 1, 2012 from Anthrosource online database.
<http://www.aaanet.org/publications/anthrosource/>
Sontag, D. (2012) Vaccinations Begin in a Cholera-Ravaged Haiti. The New York Times.
Retrieved May 1, 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/world/americas/
vaccinations-begin-in-a-cholera-ravaged-haiti>
Sontag, D. (2012b) In Haiti, Global Failures on a Cholera Epidemic. The New York Times. Retrieved April 4,
2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/world/americas/haitis-cholera-outraced-the-experts-
and-tainted-the-un.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all>
Toward Freedom (2000) Exerpts from Eyes of the Heart: Seeking A Path For the Poor in the Age
of Globalization by Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Retrieved May 14, 2012.
<http://www.towardfreedom.com/globalism/345-haitis-trail-of-broken-promises-800>
Vannier, C. N. (2010). Audit Culture and Grassroots Participation in Haitian Development.
PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review. 33(2), 282-305. Retrieved May 5, 2012
from Anthrosource online database. <http://www.aaanet.org/publications/anthrosource/>
Wearne, P. (2012) Beyond relief, beyond belief. New Internationalist. January/February 2012.
Retrieved May 7, 2012 from EbscoHost online database. <http//:ebscohost.com>
Wucker, M. (2004) Haiti: So Many Missteps. World Policy Journal, 21 (1), 41-49. Retreived
May 5, 2012. <http//:jstor.org/stable/40209901>