Tate Watkins

Haiti links: Book reviews and recommendations; a former aid worker's perspective; on remittances

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:07:52 -0400

1. Pooja Bhatia reviews The Big Truck That Went By and Farewell, Fred Voodoo.

It’s hard to know who is responsible for what—the Haitian government, the US government, DFID, USAID, the NGOs that contract aid money to other NGOs, the NGOs that implement projects etc. At least under the American occupation from 1915 to 1934, Haitians knew who was in charge.

2. Ben Fountain’s top 10 books about Haiti.

3. One former aid worker’s perspective: “I Came to Haiti to Do Good …”

4. “Remittances account for at least one-fifth of Haiti’s economy.”

Haiti links: Leopard Capital investing in Haiti; Martelly fêtes his two years; Mèsi Jezi; more

Wed, 15 May 2013 08:14:29 -0400

1. Leopard Capital Haiti, a $20 million private equity fund, invests in solar-powered water purification kiosks.

2. A road trip through the heart of Haiti, with plenty to see along the way.

3. Tèt Kale Defends First 2 Years in Office, with a concert on Champs-de-Mars. And Frantz Duval on “La fête des deux ans.”

4. The AP reports on tent camp forced evictions, including the recent attempted arson at Camp Acra that led to one resident being beaten to death.

5. NPR economics reporter and New York Times columnist Adam Davidson on t-shirts: “Economic Recovery, Made in Bangladesh?”

6. Jesus endorses Haitian American candidate for North Miami mayor (allegedly).

Photo by me

Planet Money talks t-shirts in China, but they could have just as well been in Haiti

Tue, 14 May 2013 09:42:56 -0400

Three years ago, the people who produce NPR’s Planet Money were inspired to manufacture their very own t-shirt—from scratch—and document the story all along the way. They provided an update on the project in an episode that aired two weeks ago.

During the update episode, reporter Adam Davidson described talking to women in Chinese garment factories. Many of the sentiments in their stories mirrored those of women I talked to at the Caracol Industrial Park for my story on Haiti’s manufacturing sector.

Two Chinese workers told Davidson that the job was awful and completely boring. But they said they much preferred it to working on duck farms, which is what their parents did back in their home village. To drive home the point, one of the women contrasted her life with that of her mother: her mother had never bought makeup, had only one outfit—a “Mao suit,” as Davidson called it. The daughter, however, goes to the mall every Sunday, her only off day, to buy cosmetics and hang out with friends.

“That Sunday,” Davidson says, “that weekend of one day, was sort of enough to her to make up for that week or drudgery, which was not quite as much drudgery as working at home on a duck farm.” He adds that the woman told him she had a plan: save up some money, and eventually return to her home village to start a business and support her family.

One of the workers I talked to at Caracol and who appeared in my story, Rosedaline Jean, is a 22-year-old who’s worked at the garment factory for five months, her first job ever. “This isn’t the ideal job,” she told me, “but it’s better than nothing. I don’t intend to make a career in this job. I plan to start a business, and I’m already saving for it. But it’s difficult, because my salary is practically nothing.”

That sentiment—that Jean doesn’t want to cut-and-sew garments as a long- or even medium-term job—ran through the accounts of other women I talked to who didn’t make the published story, and accounts other journalists have published.

Youseline Joseph, 24, used to sell second-hand clothing and knickknacks in Caracol, but her micro-business went under because most of her clients bought on credit and never paid. She says she now works as an inspector at the Caracol factory. “If I still had my business,” she says, “I would not have worked here. It’s tiring. I spend all day on my feet, and I don’t have an adequate salary. But it’s still better to have a job.”

“I will not stay here all my life,” she added. “I will start my own business, when I get the money. My colleagues and I, we save money together in a sol,” a routine practice in Haiti—a group of about 10 people pay into a fund each 15 days or month, and each person takes the entire pot, doing with it what they will, in turn.

Jeantilia Charles, 23, has worked for three months sewing garments at Caracol: “Before, I did nothing,” she says. “My life has changed somewhat with this job, which is also my first.” Charles says she doesn’t want to stay in the job for a long time: “Eventually, I plan to start a business or go to Port-au-Prince. There, I have a family who may be able to help me find a better job.”

The story of sewing t-shirts together isn’t a glamorous one. But neither is that of working on a duck farm in China or being a smallholder farmer in rural Haiti, and a significant part of the t-shirt story is the potential to change people’s lives for the better in both places, and many in between.

If you want a Planet Money t-shirt, you still have about 7 hours to back their Kickstarter project for $25 and order one.

Photo by me

Haiti links: Préval and Mulet quarrel; France has a slavery remembrance day; Martelly’s report card for the year

Mon, 13 May 2013 10:37:00 -0400

1. Who said what when? Featuring Préval, Mulet, and Peck.

2. A Haitian gastronomy event in Miami last Saturday.

3. “What has been, has been,” says Hollande.

4. Kentucky basketball recruit Skal Labissiere on a path from Haiti earthquake to U.S. college bball.

5. “Quel bilan pour Martelly cette année ?”

Photo by me

Haiti links: Aristide in court and the street; Caracol and manufacturing prospects; Puerto Rico as new migration way station

Thu, 09 May 2013 07:46:00 -0400

1 AP: Thousands follow ex-Haiti president Jean-Bertrand Aristide after court appearance in Jean Dominique case.

More coverage from Le Nouvelliste (fr), the Miami Herald, and Reuters. Seemingly no details have filtered out about the hearing itself or Aristide’s testimony in relation to the 2000 murder case of one of Haiti’s most famous journalists.

2. “How Haiti’s Future Depends on American Markets.” My Quartz/Atlantic piece on the Caracol Industrial Park and manufacturing prospects in Haiti.

3. Haiti’s $1 billion market is reportedly one-fourth of yearly local exports from the Dominican Republic.

4. “Haiti migrants braving sea in rickety boats add Puerto Rico as way station trying to reach US.”

5. Wyclef has a guitar that looks like an automatic rifle. Peter Tosh had one in the ‘70s, apparently.

Photo by me

Factory jobs and manufacturing prospects in Haiti: 'not a gift,' but not nothing

Wed, 08 May 2013 09:52:36 -0400

A piece I did on the Caracol Industrial Park and manufacturing prospects in Haiti ran today at Quartz:

The industrial park sits just south of the small coastal town of Caracol and employs 1,600 people today, in an area where there are three main alternatives: farming, fishing, and leaving.

…

Haiti is not the easiest place to run a business. It lacks reliable electricity, good roads and ports, and solid institutions. But it managed to attract Korean textile manufacturer Sae-A Trading Co., among the largest in the world, as the anchor tenant of Caracol Industrial Park.

The US government put up $124 million for an on-site power plant and other infrastructure. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) promised $100 million to build the park. The government of Haiti gave Sae-A a 15-year tax holiday. Sae-A itself pledged $78 million to cover equipment and operations, with a reported initial investment of $39 million.

Sae-A public affairs officer Karen Seo says the “decision to invest in Haiti became clear” with the international aid package. But there was one other sweetener, which officials say was the linchpin of the whole deal: US legislation that, with a few conditions, gives apparel imports from Haiti duty-free status.

Read the entire thing here.

Photo by me

Haiti links: a trip to the fortress; many trips to Chile; more Peck; 'assessing progress'

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 08:01:00 -0400

1. “Haiti’s forgotten fortress.”

In August, I was in Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic. Wanting to see Haiti for myself, I found there was a direct bus to Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s earthquake-ravaged capital. Another option was a bus to Cap-Haitien, the nation’s second city. I took that one.

2. Translation of a São Paulo article about a recent wave of Haitian immigration to Quilicura, Chile, in the Santiago metro area.

Related: “If People Could Immigrate Anywhere, Would Poverty Be Eliminated?”

3. Raoul Peck interviewed in The Globe and Mail:

It wasn’t my goal to bring anyone down but to get people to question how this machine works. …

In Berlin, someone asked me: ‘What do you say to the German grandmother who sent her 50 euros to the poor Haitian children?’ The cynic might say, ‘Well, it didn’t make much difference to the Haitians because they didn’t see the money.’ The issue here is to look at the machine between the donor and the receiver, which is not working in either of their interests.

4. “Haiti Police: Canadian Killed After Leaving Bank.” There was a spate of similar robbery-shootings (fr) last summer.

5. Congresswoman Barbara Lee of California introduces the Assessing Progress in Haiti Act.

Photo by me

Haiti links: on Papadocracy; The Response; energy and tents and garments

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:12:00 -0400

1. From Our Woman in Port-au-Prince: Papadocratic Caucus.

2. The Response to The Letter (fr).

3. A second Scientific American article on energy and electricity in Haiti, this one focusing on rural electrification or lack thereof. One quote from energy security minister Rene Jean-Jumeau, on the topic of outsiders trying to push solar and other renewables onto his country in lieu of coal and other dirty fossil fuels:

“Energy is indispensible, be it in education or tourism or industry or agriculture. But if we’re not careful, we could eventually create more harm than good,” Jean-Jumeau cautioned. Still, he said, “The people that we all know and care about, the people who are living, breathing people who want a better life, who are struggling for a better life and who are looking to us to help provide that — well, that doesn’t seem to matter to a number of people throughout the world who just want a laboratory to develop their ideas.”

4. A euronews video on tent camps and forced evictions. More on that topic and the obsession on The Number here.

5. An Other Worlds article on the garment assembly industry in Haiti. Focuses on significant issues around labor conditions and wages, but ignores some vital pieces of the puzzle. One to start with: in the wake of yesterday’s factory collapse, numerous reports peg the Bangladeshi minimum wage in the industry at around $38 per month, at least three times cheaper than in Haiti.

Photo by me

Why building codes didn’t save Bangladeshi factory workers

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:20:00 -0400

More than 200 people died yesterday when an eight-story Bangladeshi garment factory collapsed, the floors buckling and eventually settling one on top of each other. The day before the collapse, the so-called Rana Plaza building should have been evacuated, says the AP:

Deep cracks visible in the walls of a Bangladesh garment building had compelled police to order it evacuated a day before it collapsed, officials said Thursday. More than 200 people were killed when the eight-story building splintered into a pile of concrete because factories based there ignored the order and kept more than 2,000 people working.

Moreover, the building was illegally constructed in the first place. Also from the AP report:

Abdul Halim, an official with the engineering department in Savar, said the owner was originally allowed to construct a five-story building but added another three stories illegally.

On a visit to the site, Home Minister Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir told reporters the building had violated construction codes and that “the culprits would be punished.”

The Daily Star, a Dhaka newspaper, corroborates:

Chief Engineer of [the Bangladeshi urban development agency], Emdadul Islam, said the owner of the building had not followed the Bangladesh National Building Code. Besides, there was no supervision by any architect or engineer during the construction work which, according to him, was the main reason for the collapse.

So not only did local police deem the building too unsafe for people to be working in it, the structure never should have been constructed as it was in the first place according to the relevant public authority. The problem with the factory construction wasn’t that it was unregulated, it was that the existing regulations weren’t properly enforced.

There could be a host of reasons why the structure wasn’t built to code: lack of capacity on part of the building authority to properly monitor construction, greedy factory owners cutting corners to save a buck, political influence that allows for rules-don’t-apply-here treatment, and many many more, or combinations of the lot.

The Daily Star has a little more context:

Rana Plaza was owned by Awami League youth wing Jubo League’s Savar town unit senior joint convener Md Sohel Rana. Locals said none had dared to challenge the construction of the building succumbing to the young politician’s influence in the area.

And from a The New York Times report

Poorly constructed buildings have long been a problem in Bangladesh. In 2005, at least 64 workers at Spectrum Garments were killed in a building collapse. Alonzo Suson, who runs an A.F.L.-C.I.O. training center in Dhaka known as the Solidarity Center, said Wednesday’s accident illustrated the repeated failure of government inspectors to ensure that safety standards and building codes are met.

“It is substandard construction, shortcut construction,” Mr. Suson said. “There was already a crack in the building.”

If building codes don’t inherently lead to safe construction, the more useful issue to focus on: why have 800 people now died in Bangladeshi factories since 2006.

Addendum: The Wall Street Journal reports that building garment factories without proper permits, and presumably without necessarily following code, is a common practice of late:

The mayor, Refayet Ullah said his office had issued a permit to Mr. Rana without seeking necessary permission from the Dhaka building-safety agency. Mr. Ullah said the agency took too long to issue permits at a time when Bangladesh’s garment industry is booming, as foreign garment manufacturers look for cheaper alternatives to China.

“Hundreds of factories in this area have been built with local council permission,” he said.

Photo via wikipedia

Who wants to live in a tent camp?

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 08:22:00 -0400

Last year I lived in Delmas 33. Every few mornings I’d take a short walk from my house to go to the gym—it was basically an open-air concrete slab with some old machines, free weights, and dumbbells, ringed with corrugated tin. Dues were 250 gourdes per month, about $6. You can listen to me and my friend and colleague Jacob Kushner describe it in detail here.

A guy named Paul managed the gym, which basically involved unlocking the padlock at sunrise every morning and loudly explaining every day why Barcelona would win the Champions League. He lives right across a gravel path from the gym’s entrance, in a tent camp called Adokin.

The area next to the gym is still home to about 3,000 people; supposedly 30,000 still live in the whole of Adokin and neighboring Camp Acra. Amnesty International reported last week that Haitian police allegedly beat a man to death after he and others protested an arson attack on the camp that was possibly meant to be the first salvo of an attempted forced eviction.

Yesterday at a press conference in Port-au-Prince, Amnesty released a new report, “Nowhere to Go: Forced Evictions in Haiti’s Camps for Displaced People.”

Forced evictions threaten nearly a quarter of the more than 320,000 people still living in camps more than three years on from the earthquake,” said Javier Zúñiga, special advisor to Amnesty International. “Appeals from Amnesty International and other NGOs to halt the forced evictions have fallen on deaf ears; not only has the Haitian government not put an end to them, but it has allowed them to increase since the beginning of this year.”

The report claims that between January and March 2013, nearly 1,000 families were forcibly evicted from their homes. “These 977 new families,” it says, “come on top of the at least 60,978 people who have been forcibly evicted between July 2010 and the end of 2012. Many of these forced evictions have been carried out or condoned by the authorities.”

Since the number of displaced people peaked at an estimated 1.5 million after the January 2010 earthquake, there’s been an obsession with the official number of tent-camp dwellers that remain. Every couple of months, the International Organization for Migration releases estimates that try to answer the supreme housing-in-Haiti question: How many people are still under tents? This month’s report pegged the number at 320,050, a 79 percent decrease from the peak.

But the obsession with that question has been to the detriment of others. Where have most of these tent dwellers gone? Are they any better off than they were before? Clinging to denuded Port-au-Prince hillsides in bidonvilles little better than tents? Settling in surface-of-the-moon-like conditions just north of the capital?

How many of them are leaving because they chose to, perhaps lured by an aid-funded rental subsidy? How many are being forced out in the middle of the night by hired thugs wielding machetes and cans of gasoline, either with the explicit or tacit support of authorities?

If you don’t have substantive answers to those questions, it’s impossible to talk intelligently about the ‘tent camp situation,’ or whether it’s actually improved, on the whole, since early 2010. Are things better? Just because the IOM and Lamothe and Martelly will tell you that the situation is improving daily, just because Dessalines no longer holds court to thousands of tarps and tents surrounding him on Chan Mas, doesn’t automatically make it so.

Photo by me

Haiti links: 'a better energy future?'; critiquing Peck; alleged attack, fatal beating in Delmas 33 camp; more

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:43:00 -0400

1. “Can Haiti Chart a Better Energy Future?” Scientific American feature on energy, electricity, and related topics in Haiti.

2. A different and important take (fr) on Raoul Peck’s Assistance Mortelle.

3. Amnesty International: Protester allegedly ‘beaten to death by police’ following attack on camp in Delmas 33

4. “Haitian government: Welcome to Hugo Chávez International Airport,” in Cap-Haïtien. See my previous post about Chávez in Haiti.

PetroCaribe context from Jacquie Charles:

While #Venezuela erased $395M after quakein Petrocaribe that Preval administration wracked up, #Haiti has now wracked up $1B since 2010.
— Jacqueline Charles (@jacquiecharles)
April 19, 2013

Jokes from Charlie Petty:

Can’t wait to take off at Reagan and land at Hugo Chavez #Haiti #airports @tatewatkins @jacobkushner
— Charlie Petty (@chuck_petty)
April 19, 2013

5. Haitian PM Laurent Lamothe meets with Canadian cabinet minister Julian Fantino; “The problem with Fantino is resolved,” says Lamothe.

6. “BAHAMAS MILITARY STOPS BOAT CARRYING 30 HAITIANS”: “Authorities in the Bahamas say they have intercepted a rickety boat carrying 30 Haitian migrants, including five children.”

Last week, the Haitian consulate in the Turks and Caicos cancelled a National Diaspora Day event after “several vessels carrying Haitian migrants made landfall on TCI shores.”

Photo by me

Scraping by in Port-au-Prince

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 17:02:38 -0400

“hello mrs tate, how are you? i don’t hear from you.”

Every few weeks, my phone buzzes with an SMS from John. We met on the streets of Port-au-Prince shortly after I arrived in Haiti in 2012, a freelance writer with no assignment but my own. I’ve got no money, no contacts. But I’m American, and to John that’s a chance.

Americans were in the vanguard of an invasion of aid workers and peacekeepers and journalists that arrived after the January 2010 earthquake flattened the capital. Haitians at times loathe the newcomers, but Yankophilia is everywhere. You’re as likely to see Kobe Bryant or Jay-Z adorning the side of the tap-taps — ubiquitous, colorful trucks that bus people around the cities — as you are Toussaint Louverture or Jean-Jacques Dessalines, two of Haiti’s founding fathers.

That’s from a first-person piece I’ve just had published at Medium, a new-ish online publishing platform that’s the Twitter founders’ latest venture. Learn more about Medium here, and learn more about the Medium for Haiti collection here.

Photo by Jacob Kushner

What does Haiti export?

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:36:00 -0400

Data from 2010. Via the MIT Observatory of Economic Complexity.

Haiti links: NPR on Atis Rezistans; Durandis on cabinet resignations; Charles on Montas

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 08:34:00 -0400

1. NPR does Atis Rezistans. A few months ago, Amy Wilentz blogged about the Grand Rue sculptors, their recent L.A. exhibit, and the art-culture-penis-sculpture mash-up that they present to outsiders:

>One of the many difficult issues underlying In Extremis is the confounding of ethnography with fine arts, which has been the result of a long stretch of outsider fiddling in the world of Haitian religious arts and traditional crafts. You feel as you walk through the beautifully curated halls of outlandish and sometimes gorgeous works at the Fowler exhibit, that you are seeing something made by Haitians within their own culture, but much of the time, that’s not the case.

2. Ilio Durandis on last week’s cabinet resignations

3. “Michèle Montas looks to Haiti’s courts for justice in husband’s death.” Jacqueline Charles on the Jean Dominique case and more.

4. Will Delta be the next international carrier to establish vacation packages to Haiti?

Addendum: The Toronto Star interview with Richard Morse about his January resignation from his government post: “I left because of corruption in the palace, and infrastructure sabotage.”

>“Rather than fight the corruption,” he said, “I feel like they have embraced it.”

Photo by me

Getting 'in line' to come to America

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 09:22:00 -0400

“Most paths that do allow people to come to America make waiting in line at the DMV look like traveling by high-speed rail. One egregious example: a Mexican who wanted to file paperwork tomorrow to obtain a visa by way of her U.S. citizen sibling can expect to wait about 164 years. That Methuselah Line exists because of limits on how many visas can be granted to people of a given nationality in one year, part of an antiquated and inefficient quota system.”

That comes from a RealClearPolicy piece of mine published today about how convoluted our immigration system is, and how much it costs in terms of time and money to immigrate to the U.S., legally.

The current scheme dates to the 1960s, when it replaced a national-origin quota system that blatantly discriminated against a host of ethnicities and became untenable as a Mad Men Era gave way to a Civil Rights one. Today’s system uses two main channels to ration the number U.S. immigrants: family members already here, and employment. No more than 7 percent of the yearly visa allotment for employment- or family-based immigration can be issued to natives of any one country. So the system doesn’t account for factors like population and proximity to the United States—let alone demand and supply of workers – hence the aforementioned 164-year wait for a Mexican sister.

More fun with bureaucracy contained within, here.

Photo by mdfriendofhillary (cc)

Haiti links: ‘Humanitarianism in Haiti’ at Duke; France renews travel warning; reports on aid and rice; more

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 11:05:00 -0400

1. Humanitarianism in Haiti conference going on today and tomorrow, hosted by the Duke Haiti Lab. Quite the panel line-up, including Michèle Pierre-Louis, Jonathan Katz, Father Joseph Phillippe, Mark Schuller, Vijaya Ramachandran, and many more. Follow on Twitter at #haitiproject and watch the livestream here.

2. “France advisory against traveling to Haiti renewed”

3. A recent report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research finds, surprise, surprise:

>It remains unclear how exactly the billions of dollars that the U.S. has spent on assistance to Haiti have been used and whether this funding has had a sustainable impact. With few exceptions, Haitians and U.S. taxpayers are unable to verify how U.S. aid funds are being used on the ground in Haiti. USAID and its implementing partners have generally failed to make public the basic data identifying where funds go and how they are spent.

4. Oxfam America releases a policy backgrounder on “the rice value chain in Haiti.” The abstract notes that “foreign rice accounts for 83 percent of the supply of this main staple of the Haitian diet.”

5. Haiti’s finance minister Marie Carmelle Jean-Marie resigns

>Sources close to the minister told The Miami Herald that while she didn’t go into specifics about her reasons for quitting, she does point out that she no longer feels she has the support of her colleagues in her effort to provide responsible management of Haiti’s finances and economy.

6. Kids from my home state pack a shipping container full of beds to send to Haitian orphans, because beds aren’t sold in Haiti.

Photo by Ben Depp

Haiti links: rebuilding Haiti, democracy; 210 years since Louverture death; Frantz Duval reviews Raoul Peck; more

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 09:22:00 -0400

1. Bloomberg’s editors say that To Rebuild Haiti, Restoring Democracy is a Must, echoing The Miami Herald from last week.

2. 210 Years Since Death of Toussaint Louverture

3. Le Nouvelliste editor in chief Frantz Duval reviews Raoul Peck’s new documentary, Assistance Mortelle:

>Chaque étranger qui met les pieds en Haïti devrait en recevoir une copie et être astreint à regarder le documentaire intégralement avant de recevoir l’autorisation d’entrer sur le territoire.

4. In Memory of April 26th 1963. A Facebook page “remembering, 50 years later, those we lost to the Duvalier Regime.”

5. Haiti 0-3 USA: Under-17 CONCACAF Championship match in Panama City

>On a hot and humid evening in Panama City, Haiti started out as the more aggressive side. Jonel Desire found space behind the defense twice in the first 10 minutes, but he pulled his shot wide both times. His teammate Wisner Derival then should’ve put Haiti in the lead in the 16th minute when after exploited some miscommunication in the US backline. He sped past the defense and rounded the keeper, but somehow he missed an open net.

Haiti continues group play against Guatemala on Tuesday. In other soccer news, the Haitian national team will play Spain in a friendly in Miami on June 8.

6. In immigration news: Study Finds High Economic Cost of Immigration System. “Individuals and businesses devote 98.8 million hours to immigration-related paperwork annually, at a cost of approximately $30 billion.”

Photo by me. Sun rising Easter morning, near Saint Louis du Sud.

The unthinkable country

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 07:43:00 -0400

Pooja Bhatia in n+1 on the Pearl of the Antilles, Haitian Revolution, and Laurent Dubois’ Aftershocks of History:

The contradiction between revolutionary ideals and plantation practices provided an opening for Haiti’s own revolution, a 13-year-long war for human emancipation that began in 1791. Its success was improbable. Yet the island’s soldiers—dispossessed of kin networks, community, and a longstanding connection to the land—threw back Napoleon’s own army and emancipated themselves. They ushered into being the first black republic, in 1804, and the second republic in the hemisphere, after the United States. Haiti became a postcolonial state well before European colonial empires reached their zeniths. More than a century after Haitian independence, the concept was still too avant-garde for the American secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan. “Think of it,” he said, “niggers speaking French!”

In its time and for a long time after, the Haitian Revolution was “unthinkable,” in the description of the late Haitian scholar Michel-Rolph Trouillot—for how could a system predicated on the non-humanness of blacks acknowledge their agency, let alone their strategic acumen or statesmanship? Outside Haiti, the revolution remained unthinkable for decades even after Secretary of State Bryan’s quip, at least until 1960s African nationalists found inspiration in C.L.R. James’ classic, The Black Jacobins, one of the first major outside accounts of the revolution.

Read the entire thing here.

Photo by me

Buying gas with a credit card: Chavez’s legacy in Haiti

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 10:50:56 -0500

Yesterday, Haiti began a three-day mourning period over the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a “great friend” of the country, as Le Nouvelliste now calls him.

Many Latin Americans and people of the left have long set aside the repression and intolerance sown by Chavez to champion him “as a bulwark against U.S. economic and political dominance in the region,” as The Miami Herald puts it. In the paper’s article on Chavez’s legacy in the region:

“He was the great leader of the left in Latin America and advocated for a Latin American—and Caribbean—way of doing things as opposed to a U.S. way of doing things,” said Erick Langer, director of the Center for Latin Studies at Georgetown University.

Haitians love Chavez for the more than one billion dollars that Venezuela’s PetroCaribe program has given the country in recent years. It’s funded projects across Haiti, including power plants and airport runways, in addition to its main thrust: 14,000 barrels of oil a day that Venezuela sends Haiti on credit, most of which is burned to help produce the scant electricity Haiti generates. The government of Haiti pays for about 60 percent of the fuel now, with the remainder to be paid at 1 percent annual interest over the next 25 years. Also from The Herald article, on PetroCaribe:

In Haiti, for example, the savings from the Petrocaribe program financed 15 percent of Haiti’s meager $3 billion annual budget and account for 22 percent of the road and infrastructure projects, said Kesner Pharel, a leading Haitian economist.

“Chávez was the only guy giving money to Haiti without asking questions, and Venezuela is the only country giving credit to Haiti,” said Pharel. Without that help, he said, Haiti “will be in trouble.”

But if you’re buying gas on credit, you’re probably already in trouble. An AP report last July noted that after getting debt relief post-earthquake, Haiti’s “borrowing habits” had resumed: “Of the $988 million [in U.S. reconstruction funds] spent so far, a quarter went toward debt relief to unburden the hemisphere’s poorest nation of repayments. But after Haiti’s loans were paid off, the government began borrowing again: $657 million so far, largely for oil imports rather than development projects.”

The AP report also noted that since taking over in May 2011, “President Michel Martelly’s administration has borrowed $657 million, largely from Venezuela for basic fuel needs … Next year Haiti is expected to spend close to $10 million servicing those debts, according to the IMF.”

So those PetroCaribe imports are already saddling a financially-paraplegic government with millions in debt-servicing costs, let alone the bill-plus-interest that will come on that fuel one day. And the buying-regional-influence-through-oil-gifts diplomacy strategy doesn’t seem to be doing Venezuelans back home too many favors either. Again, from The Herald:

“Somewhere along the line … reality must set in,’’ said Anthony Bryan, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“Venezuela is currently giving away one-third of its oil production at below market prices: this includes loans-for-oil deals with China, and heavy subsidies in the domestic market,” he said.

With soaring inflation, a recent devaluation, high import bills, over-dependence on oil and shortages of everything from meat to toilet paper, the Venezuelan economy is in a downward spiral and the next president may be forced to concentrate more on domestic issues.

Chavez was “a leader that understood the needs of the poor”, as one particularly daft U.S. Congressman put it, who amassed a personal fortune of a billion dollars while handing out his country’s oil reserves to buy political clout and (at least some of) the people’s love at home and abroad. Haitians love him today. But will that love, or PetroCaribe’s import scheme, prove to be sustainable over the next 25 years?

Haiti’s bigger question over sustainability, however, comes by way of a detail from the AP’s report last year: “More than half of Haiti’s annual $1 billion budget comes from foreign aid.”

Photo from wikimedia commons

Txt relief: how SMS crowdsourcing contributed to emergency response in Haiti

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 08:43:00 -0500

A few months ago, I wrote a print article for Makeshift magazine’s communication issue about text message-based emergency response in Haiti that’s now online. It begins:

My name is Jean Wani my brother is working in unicef and I live in Carfour 11 Alentyerye I have 2 people that are still alive under the building! Send Help!”

This text message, originally sent in Haitian Creole seven days after the January 12, 2010 earthquake, reported one of the many ensuing emergencies. With this note and thousands of others like it, disaster relief entered the Information Age—in a country where Internet penetration falls under 10 percent.

Once sent, the message traveled through a global network of emergency responders, many of whom had never set foot in Haiti. The response was cobbled together by a group of people from disparate organizations, largely online. One of them was Ushahidi, a Kenyan organization originally created in response to Kenya’s 2007 post-election crisis. The group’s open-source mapping technology allowed residents to crowdsource information about ongoing riots and emergency needs via SMS.

After the earthquake in Haiti, Ushahidi and others rapidly developed and deployed an SMS response system to report and monitor needs. The system would connect victims with volunteers abroad analyzing reports, translators among the Haitian diaspora, and ultimately crews on the ground who could locate them and provide aid.

Read the entire piece, which contains photography by Ben Depp, here, and check out Makeshift’s entire communication issue, which contains pieces on messages sent into North Korea by balloon, Nigerian email scammers, how language affects saving, and much more.

Photo by Ben Depp