Report from Haiti: “Clorox” hunger, the modern-day guillotine?

by Mark Schuller

July 14, 2008

It’s Bastille Day, the commemoration of the French Revolution, when the frustrated masses lopped off the heads of the callous and aloof monarchy who reportedly said “let them eat cake” in response to news of bread shortages.

The French bourgeoisie who took to arms were fed off of the backs of slave labor, particularly from a country that was to become the second free republic in the Americas forged by slaves who had the audacity to believe that the Revolution’s slogan of liberty, equality, and fraternity applied to them as well.

Years later we are again in a food crisis, with prices for staple grains – notably, rice – skyrocketing. Rather than take to the guillotine many among this people who are also heirs to that revolution took to the streets. Some took rocks in their hands and broke windows. Haiti’s people declared enough was enough. The world finally took notice. The World Bank has declared a “New Deal” for developing agriculture and food security. The U.S. and U.N. have issued appeals for emergency food aid for places like Haiti.

All along the street of Delma, the main road from downtown to the suburb of Petyonvil, there are many places – I’d estimate about a little less than 1 in 3 – still have broken windows unrepaired, many on the second story of the building. Others are boarded up. I particularly noted that several small branches of commercial banks have been boarded up. Some stores have not just boarded up but they have built a concrete enclosure where the windows and doors were, never to open again. The Socabank branch appears permanently closed – although that may also have to do with its earlier financial woes. Lots of “for rent” signs, many in English. A Texaco station is not only shut down but a 7-feet concrete wall was erected to close the station permanently. A few people have told me that people spared Digicel – the upstart Caribbean cell phone company – because people need their phone service. The biggest bank – Sogebank – and the biggest private enterprises – Delimart and Epi Dor – seem to have been reopened and appear to be functioning, more or less.

It’s astonishing that the windows could have been broken on the second and sometimes third floor, not by gunshots but by the force of human hands throwing rocks. It’s hard to imagine the pent-up frustration that propelled the rocks.

Pieter Van Eike, a journalist at Alterpresse said that he was stuck there on Thursday of the riots, since his office is on Delma. He waited for a long time to go home. Every block, there was a barricade, some burning tires. And the U.N. troops, MINUSTAH, bragging that this violence demonstrates that they need to be in the country, didn’t stop it. Instead, they set up a barricade, a border, to contain it. Where was the barricade? Delma 33, where they have a base? No. Delma 40, 75, or 60, each logical main corners, protecting main crossroads? No. Not even Wout Fre, which winds back to the airport and their main base, as well as the plain where the new U.S. Embassy is being built in advance of Haiti’s new free trade zone – at the expense of one of Haiti’s last fertile agricultural plains. According to Van Eike, it appeared that the U.N. deployed most of their people power and tanks at Plas Senpyè – at the St. Peter Cathedral at the top of Petyonvil. In other words, the U.N. said, you can even take Petyonvil but the violence and the pillage would stop there, and protect the rich people above: Laboule, Fermathe, Kenscoff, with super big houses, cars, and yards, where the true elite live. It’s pretty clear in whose interest they’re working.

A Haitian proverb cautions that kabrit ki gen twòp mèt ap mouri nan solèy – literally, “the goat with too many caretakers will die in the sun.” When not filled with ads, ad-copy about local tourist destinations or gossip, the establishment press is dutifully reporting every single thing that international agencies like the World Bank, IMF, IDB, the UN, and USAID are doing in the name of ending the country’s food crisis. Each has their own plan and idea about how to solve it. Even though it’s clear that subsidized rice from the U.S. that has come with all kinds of conditionalities attached, including lowering tariffs and other barriers to U.S. trade, the U.S. and U.N. continue to push for this same kind of food aid and low tariffs (Lest people think I judge the U.S. too harshly, the E.U. as well is calling for market-based solutions to the crisis, say my colleagues from the other side of the pond).

If ever there was a moment for a radical rupture, political momentum to challenge this export-led model that has systematically destroyed Haiti’s food security and food sovereignty, now is the time. Groups are collaborating across bitter partisan lines; pro-Aristide CTH and anti-Aristide Batay Ouvriye are working together to increase Haiti’s minimum wage from 70 goud ($1.75) to 250 goud ($6.25) per day. Today all unions met to finalize their position to send to Parliament. Groups close to Aristide are collaborating with PAPDA on issues of national production and alternatives to neoliberalism. Even “Chicago Boy” Marc Bazin, former World Bank official and the international community’s favored son in the 1990 presidential elections (against Aristide), has called the neoliberal experiment that he helped engineer and implant a failure and is calling for national production. What has been done with this momentum?

Sadly, nothing. Not unlike Napoleon centuries before, the Haitian political class, led by rightist Senator Youri Latortue, relative of former interim Prime Minister Gérard Latortue, capitalized on the people’s frustration to destabilize the government, ousting Prime Minister Jacques Alexis. This past weekend marked the third month since Haiti has been operating without a prime minister. Parliament rejected President René Préval’s first two choices, the first on a technicality.

The third, Michele Pierre-Louis, director of George Soros-funded foundation, FOKAL, is being hamstrung. For the first time in Haiti’s history, not only is a candidate’s personal life being scrutinized but also her intimate life. Rumored to be a lesbian, this issue has dominated the public conversation. Protestant groups have issued press statements dutifully published in Haiti’s media condemning homosexuality, quoting three particular Old Testament Scriptures. They use the language of morality. Isn’t forcing a people to continue to starve also an issue of morality? (to be fair, there aren’t too many openly LGBT folks as prime ministers of any country…) Many people are taking a live-and-let-live approach, particularly people in the Vodou sector, Haiti’s progressive NGOs, and many low-income people within the grassroots urban movement. Her private life is her own business. Haiti needs a functioning government now more than ever. Nou bouke! is a common slogan spray-painted on the walls. “We’re fed up!”

It seemed unlikely that the economic crisis could get worse. But it has. Despite the fact that two years ago Parliament ratified the Petro Caribe accord that Préval negotiated with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (offering low-cost petroleum and lower-income loans to develop national energy infrastructure), gas prices have gone up to 260 goud in some places, more than $6.25 per gallon. An associate of the Chavez government explained that it was because the Haitian government has not yet put Petro Caribe into application. To wit, the government has yet to negotiate with the private gas retailers – Texaco, British Petroleum, Shell, and Total, all opposed to the measure. On June 23, the day I arrived, Préval announced that the government no longer had sufficient funding to subsidize the cost of gas, and so announced a price hike. Three days later, the fares for public transit shot up.

The effects of the transit fare hike were immediate and hard-hitting. For several days after the fact taptap-s were almost never full – an occurrence I only remember during the worst days of the political violence. This morning was the same thing in all of the tap-tap-s I took. Several timachann whom I frequent to buy my food and sundries just stopped going downtown to get merchandise. Renette, on the corner, had a couple of joumou and some old bell peppers. No onions, no garlic, no green onions, no hot peppers, not even sea salt. It was a painful exchange with her when she said that she didn’t have anything that I was looking for. Several other folks who normally have a full suitcase of crackers, cookies, and sweets are also nearing empty. On my block, Fifi is selling next to nothing – scraps of grains and beans, and spaghetti. The price for (Haitian milled, imported flour) spaghetti just went up from 20 goud to 22-25 goud (from 50 cents to around 60). A ti mamit – soup can, about two cups – of Haitian rice is 50 goud ($1.25). I’m noticing it elsewhere as well. People call this hunger “Clorox” because it’s eating up their insides. Many intersections have this message, aba grangou klowòks spray-painted on it, down with the Clorox hunger.

A new phenomenon in Pòtoprens heralds a certain de-facto privatization, profiteering off of the crisis within Haiti’s public sector. Water trucks delivering to people’s homes are announced by the ubiquitous chiming of Celine Dion’s love theme from Titanic. While it seems they hover around middle-income neighborhoods such as mine and others that I have frequented – at times it seems one every ten minutes – I have also heard them near the National Palace and the industrial park. I vaguely remember hearing a couple of these ice-cream-truck-like sounds while I was here mid-March. But now they’re everywhere.

I just saw my first graffiti tag that clearly said, “aba blan.” (down with foreigners), and others that have a more direct message, like “si MINUSTAH pa ale, nap pran zam.” (if the U.N. doesn’t leave, we’re going to take up arms). The longer the U.N. troops stay here, it may be that the people’s support for the Army – disbanded for its role in perpetuating human rights abuses – is gaining. More and more, people appear fed up with the whole system, not just the U.N. troops but are also tired of the system of NGOs. Some attribute the constant presence of the UN and foreign NGOs since the mid-1990s as a leading factor in the high housing costs, at least in Pòtoprens. For another example, the U.N. recently held a three-day conference at the posh Hotel Montana about “poser la problématique des latrines en Haïti” (pose the problem of latrines in Haiti). More than a few people commented with that money, they could have built at least one latrine in every neighborhood in Pòtoprens. Lots of people shared their individual analysis of how the whole system needs to be replaced, a few reciting a proverb, rat mode, soufle (the rat bites you and then blows on the wound to make you feel better).

To be clear, there are some signs of progress. Roads are being repaired, even at night. Trash is being regularly cleaned up by t-shirted public works employees. As mentioned above, there seems to be a certain reconciliation – at least collaboration on specific issues – among the progressive movements. Some new groups are springing up. A Sitesolèy-based group is forming to support the South-South collaboration of Chavez called “ALBA.” While they have yet to begin projects they are planning, another group of youth is making all kinds of progress. In addition to building upon five free neighborhood schools, SODA – Solidarite Djòl Ansanm (Solidarity of Combining our Activism) have opened an egg project with the financial support of a Rotary chapter and technical assistance from a Belgian volunteer within ITECA, a Haitian NGO. They have also added a program at the very busy (and sometimes dangerous) intersection of Kafou Ayewopò for homeless street kids who beg for money by wiping a dusty rag on the cars stuck in traffic. Also in view of national production, they’re hooking up with peasant groups in the Artibonite Valley, helping them start free schools in exchange for Haitian rice instead of using World Food Program rice for the Pòtoprens schools.

Any day now, the U.S. Senate is set to pass the Jubilee Act, calling upon international financial institutions to cancel the debt of 67 countries, including special instructions to immediately cancel Haiti’s debt. While this won’t ensure a full plate of rice on every Haitian family’s table, it is a leap in the right direction, as a lot can be done with $1 million per week.

Dr. Schuller is Assistant Professor in Anthropology and African American Studies at the City University of New York. Schuller co-edited a recent volume, “Capitalizing on Catastrophe: Neoliberal Strategies in Disaster Reconstruction” (www.CapitalizingOnCastrophe.org) and is currently in Haiti to finalize filming for upcoming documentary, “Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy” (www.potomitan.net).