Citizen Organizing & Politics

Reconstructing Haiti is not about buildings, projects, or money. It’s about power, about who gets to control what the future Haiti looks like. Redistributing power, and creating a new society based on different theories and practices of it, are perhaps more important in the aftermath of the January 11 earthquake than ever.

This priority is not particular to Haitian women. But they are most often the ones propelling it, and they and their children have the most to gain from it because of the special burdens that poverty and insecurity place on them.

“I came to protest so we can find a solution. Misery is killing me,” said Mascarie Sainte-Anne, 70, at the edge of a rally in front of Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive’s office on October 12.  Haitians have been taking to the streets with increasing frequency since August in calls for redress of the economic and social crisis which has followed the earthquake.

We asked dozens of Haitians from different social sectors how they felt about the November 28 elections, and what they want or expect from a new government. Here are some of their responses.

Louisiane Nazaire defines herself as a peasant. She is a member of a local peasant farmer group in the Grande-Anse, and is coordinator of the National Commission of Peasant Women.

Haiti is famous around the world primarily for its problems, one being advanced ecological destruction.  However, as with its other problems, citizens – with international friends and the occasional help of the government – are working to turn this around and create a healthy environment.
Aldrin Calixte tells of the social, economic, and political causes of the environmental crisis and what is being done to create a different future. One of Haiti’s principal environmental advocates, Aldrin is an agronomist who specializes in natural resource management. 

“There needs to be a new vision for Haiti, and that vision needs to come from the people,” says  Marc-Arthur Fils-Aimé, director of the Karl Leveque Cultural Institute (commonly known by its Creole acronym ICKL), a grassroots center which supports peasant and other popular organizations to help them develop their analysis and capacity as a movement.

Post-earthquake Haiti is often portrayed in the international media, by some international humanitarian organizations, and by the U.S. government as a nation of victims whose future depends on the largess of the international community.

Two months after Haitian farmers marched in protest of Monsanto's donation of hybrid seeds to Haiti, food sovereignty advocates, farmers, and agribusiness continue to debate the meaning of the donation and significance for the future of Haitian agriculture. Third World View on WORT in Madison produced an outstanding, in-depth 30 minute program exploring the seed donation from nearly every angle. The show features interviews with Haitian and American farmers, members of the international peasant movement Via Campesina, academic experts on the economics of food aid, representatives of Monsanto and US-AID, and food sovereignty advocates.

“We’re mobilizing people in the camps and the shantytowns to let them know that getting housing is a right. Our vision is to make the problem of housing a focal point of people’s struggle,” said Reyneld Sanon of the Force for Reflection and Action on Housing (FRAKKA by its Creole acronym).  Grassroots groups in Haiti are developing strategies to respond to one of the greatest lingering crises of many after the January 12 earthquake: homelessness for 1.9 million people whose houses crumbled or were too damaged to occupy.

Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen (Heads Together Small Producers of Haiti) is one of Haiti’s two national peasant farmer movements. The oldest peasant group in Haiti, it was born in 1970 under the Duvalier dictatorship.

Tèt Kole’s history is notable also because of the violence it has faced at the hands of large landowners. Two massacres have been committed against Tèt Kole members, one in 1987 in Jean-Rabel, the other in 1990 in Piatte. Those hired by the landholding families to commit the attack also burned farmers’ homes and crops and killed their animals. In separate incidents, two of Tèt Kole’s leaders were assassinated.

Haiti during the World Cup is much like my hometown of New Orleans was during the Superbowl. Don’t try to make plans with anyone to do anything during a game. (In the more cash-rich New Orleans, the ban on non-game-related activity stretched back a day or two before a game, because there was food and alcohol to be purchased and a feast to be cooked.)  I make the mistake of trying to go to a cell phone office during that time; employees sit hypnotized in front of the big-screen TV, unwilling to be distracted by clients.

One of the many effects of poverty in Haiti is that desperate parents regularly give away their children in the hope that the new family will feed and educate the children better than they themselves can. Instead, the children usually end up as child slaves, or restavèk. In a country which overthrew slavery in 1804, today anywhere from 225,000 to 300,000 children live in forced servitude.[1]  They work from before sunup to after sundown; are often sexually and physically abused; and usually go underfed and uneducated. (For more information, see Slavery in Haiti, Again.”)