by andrea

Haiti, mon pays
Wounded mother I'll never see
Ma famille set me free
Throw my ashes into the sea

Mes cousins jamais nés
Hantent les nuits de Duvalier
Rien n'arrête nos espirits
Guns can't kill what soldiers can't see

In the forest we are hiding
Unmarked graves where flowers grow
Hear the soldiers angry yelling
In the river we will go

Tous les morts-nés forment une armée
Soon we will reclaim the earth
All the tears and all the bodies
Bring about our second birth

Haiti, never free
N'aie pas peur de sonner l'alarme
Tes enfants sont partis
In those days their blood was still warm

- ‘Haiti’, Arcade Fire

As the world burns with protests and uprisings occurring in Hong Kong, Chile, Indonesia, Bolivia, Peru, and Iraq, we forget about Haiti. Haiti has had centuries of injustice, human rights violations, slavery, extreme poverty, and violence with no end in sight. Has anyone seen the protests that have paralyzed Haiti these past few weeks? The people of Haiti are demanding the current president’s resignation for perpetuating the blatant inequality Haitians have had to live with for generations.

If you think interventions and international aid are the solution - you are wrong. Haitians don’t want food and handouts- they have spoken and they are saying they want reform in their government, leadership, and economy. How is a country supposed to prosper when their homes, livelihoods, and autonomy have been ripped away from them? When the very basic ability to grow food and sell their products is made impossible, even illegal to do? The US in particular has only perpetuated the violence and oppression in Haiti in recent decades. Here’s a bit of history. Since the collapse of Duvalier’s government in the late 1980’s, Aristide’s election in 1990, and the bloody coup that ensued less than a year later, it has been known just how involved the US has been in the ravaging of Haiti. The CIA helped create and fund a paramilitary group called FRAPH (Front for the Advancement and Progress of Haiti). FRAPH’s incentive was to undermine the strong support for Aristide, who was a fervent representative of the poor and oppressed. Emmanuel Constant, the founder of FRAPH (FRAPH really was nothing but a Haitian death squad) was on the CIA’s payroll as an informant and spy in early 1992. He later reported that US CIA agents were present with Army General Raoul Cédras at the army headquarters during the military coup. Before the coup, Cédras and François received military training in the United States of America. In regards to foreign aid, the organizations created to “help” Haiti are just a different extension of legalized corruption. The foreign aid system that we’ve created has eroded the power of the state, as well as its financial capacity by just bypassing the Haitian state and its institutions, for decades. The result of this is a weak state that is more susceptible to corruption. Although there is local corruption, to a certain extent, you also have to look at international organizations and governments’ roles in establishing the systems that facilitate that very corruption.

Why does the world turn a blind eye to the most extremely marginalized? Is it fear of realizing we are all ‘them’ - or is the harsh reality of people’s suffering too much to perceive? Never-ending socioeconomic inequalities are bound to make the underserved explode, and we are seeing this now on a global scale. Crises precipitate change. Haiti’s people are screaming, dying, and ready for this change. The least we can do as global citizens is help the truth, history, and innocent people experiencing these injustices remain visible to the world.

haiti