Old lessons must be learned
by Gagan Dhaliwal
The images coming from Haiti are nothing short of horrific: children with lacerations, bystandards trapped under rubble, makeshift hospitals flooded, and bodies scattered throughout the streets. Yet, as we mourn for the Haitian people and offer whatever aid we can, it is vital that we realize the opportunity ahead and the need to reexamine Haiti’s past in order to ensure that the Haiti after the earthquake is not the Haiti before.
Haiti has lived up to the title of “poorest country in the western hemisphere.” Two thirds of the population lives on less than $2 a day, ninety per cent of the children suffer from waterborne diseases, and over 220,000 Haitian children in the cities work as household servants in abhorrent conditions. While the world watched the financial system collapse, the food crisis hammered Haitians so maliciously that many in the slums ate “dirt cookies” in order to abate the hunger.
And then there is the catastrophe of foreign intervention. In 1915, American troops invaded Haiti and forced the legislature to elect the candidate the President Wilson had selected. Seventy-five year later in 1991, the US overthrew Jean Jean-Bertrand Aristide— Bertrand was originally elected by massive grassroots movements—and put in place a brutal military junta. Then in 2004, the US overthrew Aristide and forced him to South Africa. All the while, the CIA poured millions into the Haitian Intelligence Service—an organization meshed in the drug trade financed by Columbian cartels.
If there is one thing that we can do to help Haiti develop is restrain foreign powers from doing what they did in previous disasters. After the Tsunami, foreign countries turned over the “blank slate” that was Southeast Asia to for-profit consulting firms, engineering companies, mega-NGOs, government and UN aid agencies and international financial institutions. Much of the aid failed to reach the people directly; even worse, stories arose of poor people not being able to rebuild in their own neighbourhoods because the land was being used for “economic development” such as tourist hotels. Without restraint, Haiti may become another victim of corporate globalization.
A great economist once said, “only a crisis—actual or perceived—can produce real change.” Lets take this opportunity to rebuild Haiti in a truly positive way rather than making the same mistakes as past.