I am just catching up on Haiti myself. I've been avoiding it because I didn't want to figure out how the US would fuck Haiti again and again and again. So after posting Brooks' little column about a progress resistant culture, I went over to Black Agenda to see what they had to say. BA posted a short column by Bill Quigley, Ten Things the US Can and Should Do for Haiti:
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/ten-things-us-can-and-should-do-haiti
I thought, right on and quickly realized, fat chance. Most of those positive changes were contra deliberately installed US policies under Clinton and Bush. Then I listened to Obama assign Clinton and Bush to coordinate US aid efforts. I was dumbfounded. What? After that I listened to Friday's Democracy Now. The best of it was Randall Robinson's interview:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/15/bush_was_responsible_for_destroying_haitian
I had forgotten the details of just how Clinton and Bush had dealt with Haiti, Haitian refugees, etc. So, to see through a glass darkly...
It becomes time to face the recent history again (I say to myself), because it is a critical part of the reason Haiti has so little public infrastructure---in terms of people and institutions. While all the physical assistance is obviously needed, there has to be, even if as day dream, attention paid to ways to get the government systems restored, rebuilt, or installed properly. How for example could that be done without committing yet another atrocity? I don't know.* Robinson said:
``The problem of what happened in February 2004 continues. We had democracy in Haiti, and that democracy was blighted by the Bush administration. And now President Aristide’s party is prohibited from participating in the electoral process. His party is the largest party in Haiti. And why should we be so afraid to let his party participate?''
This hints at the place to start. If Aristide's party is as Robinson says the largest party in Haiti and they are ban from government, it probably means that party also has more government administrative and professional people in it than those currently in power---provided they are still there.
By appointing neoliberal Clinton and neoconservative Bush to coordinate US efforts, that seems like a political and economic disaster set to follow. Those appointments seem to guarantee it. Reading further along, I find out:
``Coordination could be simple. Bill Clinton is already the U.N. special envoy for Haiti, and repeated donor conferences have established a well-known set of development priorities as well as a mechanism -- the Interim Cooperation Framework -- for delivering the help.''
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE60E5GP20100117
So, immediately suspicious, I wondered what is this shit Interm Cooperation Framework (ICF). Guess who wrote it? Consultants for the World Bank. Christ on a fucking crutch. Speaking of Voodoo religion. Here read some of it:
``The Haiti Interim Cooperation Framework is a good example of a results-based program used to draft a comprehensive plan for aid- management/coordination in a challenging security environment.''
To read the full text, google `interim cooperation framework', and download the PDF. I would strongly urge anybody interested to read it. It contains (reading between the lines) all the old Cold War anti-commie free world bullshit to justify US imperialism in the third world, which was transformed into our current Neoliberal solutions to poverty and development---including of course the roll back in public services and austerity measure for the poor. In other words the Bremer viceroy regime that worked so well in Iraq's security challenged environment.
Let's see, will Bush be coordinating the private security systems of Blackwater to protect Clinton's 10,000 NGOs (10k points of light?) while they channel UN, US, WB, and NGO funds?
Robinson or some one else referred to how powerful the NGOs were. I was thinking why is that? What are they doing? My guess is they are doing what government should be doing. It all has a neoliberal sink to it. In other words, that's probably why there is so little public institutional infrastructure, i.e. it's been either privitized directly, subcontracted to NGOs, or immigrated out of the country. I agree to a certain extent with Doug who wondered what Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine had to do with Haiti since there was nothing to exploit. The problem with this dismissal, forgets how lucrative international aid system are to exploit for `humanitarian' reasons.
Anyway, considering all this NGOs activity, it sounds like Brooks' is a little late with his plan to surround Haitians with No Excuses paternalism and breakdown their progress resistant culture. Question is, who has the most progress resistant culture, the US or Haiti?
CG