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Therefore the “new” Haiti being
drawn up at the conference will
look very much like the old. “Expect
more of the same when the Haitian
elites and their lobbyists get their reconstruction
plans approved,” wrote Olofson hotelier and musician Richard
Morse in the Huffi ngton Post.
“Bill Clinton isn’t bringing hope
to Haiti. Bill Clinton isn’t bringing
change to Haiti. Bill Clinton, along
with USAID, the World Bank, the
Inter-American Development Bank
and the United Nations are bringing
more of the same to Haiti: more for
the few and less for the many.”
There are more than strings
attached to Clinton’s plan for Haiti.
There are chains. Haiti would be
yoked to an already sinking U.S.
economy by dependency on assembling
imported U.S. clothing and
electronics for pennies an hour, or
scrambling against neighbors to attract
U.S. tourists.
But it doesn’t have to be this
way. Two South American alliances
have offered Haiti substantial aid
based on solidarity and common
interests, not chains of debt and dependency.
ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance
for the Peoples of Our America, is an
alliance of eight Latin American and
Caribbean nations comprising Venezuela,
Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua,
Dominica, St. Vincent and
Grenadines, and Antigua and Barbuda.
On Jan. 25, when the U.S.-led
coalition held the Montreal meeting
to just plan another meeting, ALBA
held an extraordinary session which
came with concrete, immediate aid
of food, fuel, electricity, medicine
and a $120 million Humanitarian
Fund. ALBA expressed “concern
over the excessive presence of foreign
military forces in Haiti, with
no justifying reasons and without
precision about their authority,
purposes, responsibilities, and
length of stay, which threatens to
further complicate the conditions
on the ground and the realization
of the international cooperation.”
The ALBA nations also recognized
that “efforts to rebuild Haiti must
have the people and government of
that country as the principal protagonists.”
There is also the Union of
South American Nations or UNASUR,
which includes all the nations
of the South American continent
except French Guiana. In February,
it offered Haiti $300 million in
cash and money it would borrow on
Haiti’s behalf.
One might respond that no
South-South cooperation can come
up with the $34.4 billion Haiti needs
to rebuild over the next 10 years.
But how are such staggering fi gures
arrived at? These estimates
assume the costs to be charged by
Halliburton, Dyncorp, or one of the
Haitian elite’s construction companies.
But we have seen tens of thousands
of ordinary Haitians digging
themselves out and rebuilding their
homes, motivated not by profi t but
by compassion, solidarity and common
interest. This giant army could
be harnessed and supported with
solidarity from Cuba, Venezuela and
ALBA, which are already helping
with giant contributions of doctors
and fuel.
Progressive Haitian and Dominican
groups meeting in Santo
Domingo on Mar. 17 concluded that
a defi nitive “break” with the current
international system is necessary
for Haiti to recover. “We must break
with economic dependency,” they
wrote in a declaration. “We need to
build an economic model that encourages
national production by
focusing on agriculture, livestock,
and agro-industry aimed at meeting
our own food needs (cereals, tubers,
milk, fruit, fi sh, meats, etc. ).”
An anecdote captures the fl avor
and the essence of the UN Donors
Conference. On Mar. 30, the night
before the big day, there was an invitation-
only special event for about
200 US and UN offi cials, bankers,
CEOs and NGO bigwigs at the United
Nations Library. The sponsors of the
event: the UN, the Haitian Government,
the Inter-American Development
Bank, and.... Coca-Cola. The
name of the event was “Haiti Hope
Project.” If you like the ring of that
name, don’t get any thoughts about
borrowing it. Coca-Cola is seeking
trademark protection for the slogan,
which it plans to put on “ready to
eat food bars made primarily of
oats.” |
