INTERNATIONAL AID TO HAITI’s ‘Big Lie’, DEFEND THESIS Haitian author

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INTERNATIONAL AID TO HAITI’s ‘Big Lie’, DEFEND THESIS
Haitian author claimed that the country is being recolonised by transnational capital

“There’s nobody helping Haiti. Is Haiti that is helping everybody, “said the Journal of Unicamp Haitian Franck Seguy who just defended his doctoral thesis” The disaster of January 2010, the ‘International Community’ and recolonization of Haiti, “at the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH) at UNICAMP, under Professor Ricardo Antunes.

“The international aid to Haiti is the big lie that the media business,” said the researcher. In his thesis, he argues that the catastrophic earthquake in January 2010, which left about 300 people dead and 2.3 million homeless, gave what he called “International Community” – the set of hegemonic countries and organizations they linked, commonly called international community – the opportunity to enforce the recolonization of the country. “Literally, Haiti is becoming a colony,” he said. “Not as formerly a colony, the colony of a metropolis, but it is a colony of transnational capital.”

The project recolonization says Seguy, already became clear in the text of the “Action Plan for Recovery and Development Haiti” (PARDN), presented by the Haitian government two months after the earthquake. “The Haitian government wrote a reconstruction plan that it offers its partners the evil called international community – not Haitian civil society. Except that when I analyzed the plan for my thesis, I found that is really just an update of a study by an economist at Oxford University called Paul Collier, who was sent to Haiti by the UN Secretary General, and published the his report in January 2009, “he explained. “I mean, what is being implemented today in Haiti as ‘reconstruction’, is actually a plan before the earthquake.”

“The earthquake struck Haiti in the region where it is the capital. Haiti is divided into departments. The department is where the capital, Port au Prince, called the West Department. And this was the region that was hit, the Western Department and some Southeast. But all that is happening around the reconstruction of Haiti’s happening in the Northeast, “reported the researchers. “On the other side of the island. The plan is not meeting the needs created by the earthquake. The plan is implementing the conclusions of the previous study to the earthquake, which is the Collier Report “. Survey of Reuters realizes that, earlier this year, there were still over 150 thousand people living in tents and makeshift shelters in Port au Prince, and who have neither clean water and even sinks for washing hands.

One of the proposals is that Collier Haiti take advantage of a number of United States laws, which allow manufactures Haitians entering the country without paying tariffs, to establish a number of free zones for textile production. Text says Collier, quoted in the thesis:

“In the clothing sector, the main cost is the manpower. Haiti is relatively poorly regulated, the cost of labor perfectly stand competition with China, which is the standard reference. The Haitian labor is not only cheap, quality is also. Indeed, given that the garment industry has previously been much more developed than is currently there, Haiti has this an important reserve labor sector experienced work. ”

The focus of investment supposedly sent to the country’s reconstruction, explains Seguy, has been the free zone of Snail in northeastern Haiti, where it is being deployed exporter textile industrial park. The thesis argues that the park occupies “250 acres of land cultivated by peasant families, the government expropriated.” “On January 11, 2011, ie the day before the first anniversary of the earthquake, the Haitian government had signed an agreement with the U.S. secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, along with representatives of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB ) and Korean textile company, Sae-A Trading, under which 366 households of farmers working 250 acres of the most fertile lands of the municipality needed to be expropriated to leave the place to the construction of an industrial zone said, “the thesis. Families who had their land expropriated still awaiting compensation.

Franck does not believe that the installation of exporting industrial zones such as snail can lead to economic development of the country. “Haiti is seen as a space to produce, not as space consuming. The Haitian workers in the free zone, which produces shirts, jeans or sneakers will never consume these products. Why? Because his salary, the salary of the Haitian today is 200 gourdes (about $ 5) a day. I mean, is using Haiti to produce, but does not see Haiti, Haitian worker as a consumer. ”

Moreover, he recalls, industrialization is taking place through textile production without technology transfer and investment firm without the entrepreneur, which is usually abroad. “The construction of the space is not the capitalistic. The investment to build the mill is the money going to Haiti in name of aid to the Haitian people. If in some region of the world labor is cheaper than Haitian, the company has no difficulty in moving. The capitalist who is exploiting Haitian labor has no commitment to Haiti. Because he has nothing to preserve there. ”

The researcher is not optimistic about the possibility of better integration of Haiti into the global economy: “The international division of labor has already decided what the role of Haiti: provide cheap labor.” Over 80% of Haitians college graduates leave the country, he said. “There are two migration flows: what is called brains, mainly to Canada and the other manual workers, to the islands of the country about Haiti, and now increasingly for Brazil.” Franck argues that part of the flow of low-skilled Haitian workers into Brazil seems illegal, but actually the routes are well organized, and the authorities known. “If you were not serving interests in Brazil, they could easily be closed,” he said.

BRAZILIAN TROOPS

The Brazilian Army arrived in Haiti after the 2004 uprising, which culminated in the exile of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Brazil assumed the military command of the United Nations Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH) in June of that year. Franck is skeptical about the need for the presence of international forces in their country.

“They had to sell the idea that the country was at war and needed to be pacified. And since I came to Brazil this is the question they ask me about the war or the Haiti peacekeeping mission in Haiti. No, Haiti never needed peace mission, never had war, “he said. Furthermore, the researcher points out that the very name of the mission is “stabilization”, not peace. He compares the situation of disorder that led to international intervention in Haiti to conflicts within the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. “These conflicts exist, and justify many things, but one can not say that Brazil is at war and needs to be pacified,” he compared.

As international capital makes use of free zones, Brazil is serving in Haiti to gain prominence in the international arena, trying to prove their ability to occupy a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and to train its troops, said the researcher. “Haiti is to it. It is a training ground. Virtually all Brazilian soldiers who have been to Haiti are now being used to track Rio de Janeiro, because the situation is very similar. ” The role of Brazil in Haiti, he said, is in repressing social protest movements. “In 2008 there was a movement against the rising price of basic food and, in 2009, many workers movements by the minimum wage. What is the role of the Brazilian Army on such occasions? Repression. The role of Brazil is the police, to suppress any movement against this order which is featuring in Haiti “paper.

FUTURE

Haiti is now a country without sovereignty, says Franck, where the national government has less power than a state governor. “If Haiti were attached to the U.S., its governor would have more autonomy that Haitian leaders have now,” he said. The researcher does not see a way out of the country that pass by the “international community”, the national government and the ruling classes that collaborate with it.

“The output would be the other side, the side of social movements, social struggles, only this side is also committed: because today, what is social movements in Haiti lives of foreign funding of NGOs by NGOs say they are left. ”

Franck suspicious of NGOs, even those that claim to be leftist. The text of his thesis brings criticism to “show solidarity” of international organizations. Referring to the support provided by NGOs to Haitian peasants, he writes: “both civil society NGOs and the social movements, to organizations of urban neighborhoods and contemporary peasant movement itself, when they organize, they do so with the intention of metamorphose into project management development institutions, instead of putting the agrarian question – fundamental issue – the political and ideological agenda. ”

“The NGO may even say left, but the NGO, left or right, works-based funding. E must report periodically to the lender. An official of the NGO may believe it is a militant, but can not be an activist against capital. Because he is an employee who must give account. ”

Thesis: “The disaster of January 2010, the ‘International Community’ and recolonization of Haiti”
Franck Seguy
Advisor: Ricardo Antunes
Unit: Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences (IFCH)

Story text: CARLOS ORSI
Photo: Marcello Casal Jr / ABr – 2010, Brazilian military inside Haiti (extracted from the original

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