2010 - Volume 13 Number 3
Just over a week after the earthquake it was evident that the initial phase of the US-led relief operation conformed to three tendencies that have shaped Haiti’s recent history. Three tendencies of the US intervention which are not only connected, but mutually reinforcing:
- they adopted military priorities and strategies.
- they sidelined Haiti’s leaders and government, and ignored the needs of the majority;
- they proceeded to reinforce the already harrowing gap between the rich and the poor.
These tendencies of the US military "relief-intervention" will continue to govern the reconstruction effort unless determined political action is taken to counteract them.
Haiti has been robbed of its food, money and popular government. The ‘looters’ come from the colonial West that has never wanted a free Haiti, whose history consists of subjugation, revolution and further subjugation.
The USA and France have profited from the ‘three-cornered trade in sugar, manufactured goods and slaves’. In the name of free trade, US neo-liberal policies ruined Haitian agriculture when forced to lower its own tariffs that protected its rice growers. US subsidised rice flooded the market forcing mass migration of small farmers to Port au Prince, further adding to the overcrowded slums which made the earthquake so much more devastating.
The predatory ‘looters’ are still coming from outside Haiti’s fragile borders. Haiti needs genuine allies. It does not need to be occupied under the cover of aid.