Home > HAITI: FORGOTTEN & FORSAKEN

HAITI: FORGOTTEN & FORSAKEN

by Open-Publishing - Sunday 17 January 2010

Governments USA South/Latin America

A JAZZMAN CHRONICLE by Jack Random. DISSEMINATE FREELY.

“To the people of Haiti we say clearly and with conviction: You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten.”

President Barack Obama 14 January 2010.

“We have been living for one year now under this de facto government which is destroying the country. 95% of the people…who were working government jobs have been fired. Children cannot go to school. Students cannot advance in their studies. We are wondering how far this crisis will be allowed to go. All of this is why we are in the streets…demanding the…return of President Jean Bertrand Aristide…immediately. This is the only issue the people are interested in today. Aristide is the one who can save Haiti from all its woes.”

Dread Wilme, Community Leader assassinated in the Cite Soleil Massacre 6 July 2005.
Interview “Lakou New York” 4 April 2005.

.......

There are events in the world that should enlighten us even as they fill our hearts with sorrow, that should help us to place relative value on the myriad of problems and issues that concern us from day to day. Hurricane Katrina and the devastation of New Orleans was such an event. The Indian Ocean tsunami was such an event. And the catastrophic quake in Port au Prince is also such an event.

Bearing witness to such disasters even from a distance must pull at our hearts to reveal our naked humanity. If it fails to move us then we are jaded, numb and dehumanized.

Only days before the Haiti quake our news media showed the same level of obsession that we see today over a failed attempt to take down a plane. Only weeks before the same obsession occurred over the private affairs of Tiger Woods.

Now, as an epic tragedy plays out before our weary eyes, we can begin to put matters in proper perspective.

We should know by now that the devastation in Haiti (like the lower ninth ward in New Orleans) was a deadly combination of a natural disaster and human deficiency. In another country the destruction would not be so profound.

Days of endless coverage have passed without any real recitation of Haiti’s tragic history. Days have passed without any mention of Jean Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s beloved former president removed from office in a CIA coup. (He was spirited away in the middle of the night and transported out of the country, a modus operandi repeated in the recent coup in Honduras.) Instead, we are treated to the spectacle of two former American presidents leading the fundraising effort, both of whom bear their share of responsibility for the devastation of Haiti long before the January quake.

The people who presently make up the population of Haiti are the descendents of slaves imported from Africa by the French when that European power still had dreams of conquering the world. Modern day Haiti was founded in 1804 when the slaves rebelled and overthrew their French masters. In an act so profane it defies belief to this day the nation of Haiti was held financially responsible for asserting its independence.

Faced with a military blockade and without allies, Haiti was compelled to pay punishing reparations to the French, an act of extortion that claimed up to 80% of the nation’s budget and continued to 1947. That pattern of extortion was repeated through an American occupation from 1915 to 1934 and again in the modern era through the dictates of global “free trade” policies.

Haiti was the first independent nation in Latin America, the first post-colonial black nation in the world, and the only nation whose citizenry was predominantly former slaves. Without the oppression of European and American powers, Haiti should have been a source of pride to all humanity. Instead, it has become the impoverished and dysfunctional nation that was destroyed by an act of nature in 2010.

If the concept of international justice wanted expression it could find no better place in the world than Haiti. Since when does justice demand reparations from the oppressed to the oppressor? Yet when President Jean Bertrand Aristide, confronted with systemic poverty and the austerity demands of the global free trade establishment, demanded that France repay the extorted funds in the amount of $21 billion, he was summarily removed from power.

Aristide came to power after three decades of brutality under the dictators Francois “Papa Doc” and Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier. Tens of thousands lost their lives in a reign of terror that allowed no dissent. Yet a preacher from the Port au Prince slum of La Saline spoke out and the people rallied.

Aristide was elected by a landslide vote in 1990 and overthrown by a CIA sponsored coup in 1991. President Bill Clinton restored him to power in 1994 and he was re-elected in 2000 but he angered the American president when he pressed for higher wages and refused to enact the policies of global free trade. Clinton responded by blocking a $500 million loan from the International Monetary Fund and George W. Bush followed with the 2004 coup.

In July 2005 a Brazilian brigade of United Nations peacekeepers cleared the way for an upcoming election by leading a brazen and brutal attack on yet another slum of Port au Prince (a hotbed of support for the ousted president). Community activist Dread Wilme was killed along with many of his fellow citizens in what came to be known as the Cite Soleil Massacre. Their crime was protesting in the streets and supporting Jean Bertrand Aristide. Far from repenting and making just reparations, the action or one very similar was repeated in December 2005.

The citizens of Port au Prince were once again pacified and Haiti’s current president Rene Preval was elected in 2006.

Today, as the world’s powers make a great show of their collective generosity and charity, remember that France has not paid a penny in reparations for their crimes of extortion, brutality and oppression. Neither has America. Neither has the United Nations.

So when President Obama tells the people of Haiti: “You will not be forsaken; you will not be forgotten,” the people of Haiti if their voices could be heard might well reply:

You have already forsaken us and you have already forgotten.

Jazz.

“Discovered by Columbus, built by France – and wrecked by dictators” by Andrew Buncombe, The Independent, 16 January 2010.

“The US is failing Haiti – again” by Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, 16 January 2010.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). A COLUMNIST FOR THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS, WORLD EDITION, HIS CHRONICLES HAVE BEEN POSTED ON NUMEROUS CITES OF THE WORLDWIDE WEB. SEE WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM.