By Michelle Karshan | www.laughingmaze.blogspot.com
In May 2007, while in Haiti, friends told me of the rising
cost of living. As I spent what seemed like a lot of money purchasing food to
cook three meals a day, I wondered how folks were feeding their families even
one meal a day at those exorbitant prices.
Michelet, a young man, considerably thinner since 2004, pointed out that he had personally seen a rise in TB in his own neighborhood. He explained that with the increase in the cost of living people could not nourish themselves enough to fend off disease.
Dr. Paul Farmer has so
eloquently drawn this connection between infectious disease and poverty, yet
the international financial institutions have yet to re-prioritize their
economic plans.
Former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide often
referred to structural adjustment and the debt as “Economic Terrorism”, because
globalization and the way it revolves around creating and keeping impoverished
countries impoverished results in starvation, disease, illiteracy and death.
And, in the end millions of dollars spent on poverty reduction cannot turn a
country around without debt reduction and forgiveness.
Last week, while Haiti and each Haitian there still suffers
from the backbreaking debt inherited from the Duvalier regime, former dictator
Jean-Claude Duvalier was heard on the airways apologizing for the atrocities
and corruption during his administration.
Not coincidentally, his plea for forgiveness came
immediately following Switzerland’s announcement that they would extend the
Haitian government’s period of time to wage their legal battle to recover the
millions of dollars in Duvalier’s Swiss bank accounts.
Haitian President René Préval rightly responded to
Duvalier’s maneuvers, stating that while forgiveness is good, justice must
prevail. Préval made it clear that his government would continue its pursuit of
the monies, and that if Duvalier chooses to return to Haiti he will certainly
be brought to justice.
It was extremely frustrating working as the Foreign Press
Liaison to presidents Aristide, Préval and Aristide again. All the while, the
international press ignored the debt that shackled any efforts towards
recovery, ignored the U.S.-led embargo against Haiti’s government, and the
economic “death plan” Aristide tried to resist. The U.S. Embassy waged a campaign
denying that there was any financial embargo and they harassed press who dared
to call the embargo an embargo!
The international press, distracting its readers from the
real talking points, lay all blame at Aristide’s door, and characterized Haiti
as: “spiraling downward;” “a basket case;” “a failed state;” and “a people
unable to govern themselves.”
Yet inside the storm, at the eye of the storm, was
globalization, the endless debt, the imposed impoverishment of a country up
against a proud nation that believes that justice — economic justice — means
accessible, universal health care, schools, literacy programs, and the right to
work and farm.
It will not be hard for me to begin my fast today. What has
been hard is to eat, knowing that more than 8 million people in Haiti cannot
eat one meal a day.
Michelle Karshan is the former Foreign Press Liaison for President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Haiti’s president in 1991, then from 1994 to 1996 and from 2001 to 2004. Aristide was the second elected leader of Haiti.
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