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Letter to Newsday, 3/7/2006

Dear Editor,

The U.S. holds far greater responsibility in the destruction of Haiti than your Feb. 27 editorial would acknowledge. Forty years ago, a dictator named François “Papa Doc” Duvalier made himself, and then his 19 year-old son Jean-Claude “Baby Doc,” presidents- for-life, with the support of three consecutive U.S. administrations. That was during the Cold War, and the Duvaliers and their police state were seen as bulwarks against communism. The brain drain from Haiti began in those early years, followed by the desperate exodus of “Boat People” in the late 1970s and 1980s.

As recently as the 1960s when I was growing up, Haiti was able to feed itself. Haiti had a relatively backward but self-sustaining economy, based on agriculture, crafts, and basic industries like sugar, essential oils, cement, flour mills, domestic utensils, etc. But by the mid-1970s, the U.S. Agency for International Development ruled that it was counter-productive for Haiti to grow its own foodstuffs when it could buy them from the U.S. Haiti’s comparative advantage, it was decided, was in tourism, the production of cash crops for the U.S. market, and its cheap labor force.

The U.S. had begun outsourcing some of its assembly jobs in the textile industry to the periphery. A program of eradication funded by USAID in 1981 wiped out the entire native pig population, the backbone of the economy in the countryside. Likewise, the rice industry was destroyed by cheap Miami rice dumped in Haiti. Hundreds of thousand of dispossessed peasants migrated to Port-au-Prince and other cities, looking for work in the textile free-trade zones. But by then Haiti was no longer competitive in that market, due to political instability.

Some Haitians would argue, as I do, that the U.S. has already done enough harm interfering with Haiti. A massive influx of economic investment or aid is unlikely as you say, and another military occupation ill-advised. So why not un-shoulder the “white man’s burden,” and for a change let Haitians decide their own destiny? Not in isolation, but with the help and good will of many nations, including the U.S., Haiti can regain the self-government and the self-sufficiency it lost in the last few decades.

Daniel Simidor, Haitian community activist Brooklyn, NY
Grassroots member