Are the Haitian 's elites mostly motivated by greed ? Par L. Sept

Publié par siel sur 29 Août 2013, 12:38pm

A cette question posée par un internaute, voci la réponse de Mme L. Sept

"To start simply, I do not think "that Haiti's elites (Intellectual and economic) are mostly motivated by greed even to the detriment of their own nation". I think that the plights of Haiti and the Haitian people in the world has more to do with the greed of foreing interets vis-a-vis Haiti. Since foreing interests prevail in Haiti by sheer military, political and financial means, they can enroll a few members of the population, sometimes on a temporary basis to enforce their desires, and a few members of Haiti's Elites on a permanent basis in order to set their own trends, another words for setting their own ideological base in Haiti. But we can argue that foreing interests supported by members of the Haitian elites is a catalytic factor of this unfortunate situation.

Objectively, foreing Interests in Haiti have no reason, or motivation to care for Haiti or for its people. All they are interested is their own profit. We still live in a very darwinian world. As such, in order to penetrate and maintain their grip on Haiti, foreign interests have historically sought the help of Haitians. They will trade favor with any Haitian who can allow them to fulfill their goals in Haiti: their associate can belong to any segment of society. However, history has shown that they often enlist permanent help from members of the elites. This limitation is intrinsic in itself, because the masses in Haiti, being at the bottom of the food chain, are always on the move in order to improve their conditions. They are naturally revolutionnary because being a the bottom is not comfortable. Their interests in not compatible with the means of profits used by foreing interests. They search changes, often be violent outburst such as the many revolutions that shook our society, and try to cement them by legal means, such as the constitution of 1987. On the other hand, they are forced to accept the statu quo, by violent and ideological means. For example, actually, the Haitian masses and the middle class are maintaining unhealthy antagonistic relations, its doubftul that they even really know why. Let's make a quick journey through history in order to better understand.

A little before, and right after indepedance, the Haitian state was dealing directly with foreign commercial interest, principally with England and the USA. That how Toussaint Louverture, the Dessalines, Christophe and Petion could buy waepons for the war of Independance, built that extensive defensive infrastructure whose physical structures exist until today.

In 1825, le French arrive in front of Port-au-Prince and demanded money. Probably, JP Boyer was the worse accountant in all Haitian history. He gave all the money of Haiti to France: it was slavery under another name.

Until then, there was no formal diplomatic relation between Haiti and the rest of the world. No formal commercial activities. Thus a bunch of white foreigners came to Haiti and became quickly the principal commercial agents between Haiti and the rest of the world, since no white country wanted to deal directly with black Haitians. Then came what Yves L. Auguste called the "Carroussel fo Reclamations", the "Merry Go Round of Claims". We paid so much money to foreign interest as claim that no white foreigner would even bother to establish faire trade in Haiti. The came with a proposal for business, then just leave and send to the Haitian gouvernement a decision from some juges from their country to pay them damage and interest. If not we would be bombarded, or have our assets seized: France, Germany, the USA, they all looted us.

In 1910, the Americans decided that they would not just leave to some adventurers the pleasure to capture the bread out of the Haitian oven. Higher financial and industrial interets in the USA decided to caputure the whole oven. They first seize control of the finances of Haiti. The American divided even more Haitian society by separetely tapping the help of the light skin Haitian urban elite, and the dark skin rural land owners to established an econonomic and financial system designed to their own interests. That was the Hatian-American agro industry. They accomplish their purpose while waging a bloody war equally damaging to the poor of the rural as well urban areas alike. A significant number of the poor of our rural and urban population was forced to migrate to Cuba and the Dominican Republic.

In the 1950's to 1980, when the agro industry was not bringing profit anymore, the American, who controlled Haiti, transformed it into a center for sweat shops known as subcontrating (sous-traitance). In order to insure a maximum labor base, they had to destabilized, once again, the rural and urban area. While the industrial park near the airport was flourishing, farming was being literally sabotaged; the peasants had to migrate to Port-au-Prince in order to fight for jobs in the factories, making the wages dipped so low that even the workforce reproduction (the simple act of maintaining oneself to come to work the next day) became unsustainable.

One day, just like that, the factories of the Sonapi (industrial park of Port-au-Prince) started disappearing. It means that the same way the foreigners had found more lucrative alternatives to the agro-industry in Haiti, they had found even better ways to make money than sub-contracting in Haiti. With millions of displaced people from the countryside, with no viable agricultural or industrial work, the Port-au-Prince was overflowed, and people were aggressively leaving Haiti by motorboats, sailboats, planes to become expatriate workers.

1987 to today: We saw the developpement of a consumer ecnonomy with a backdrop of scarcity and decreasing production in Haiti. Haitians becoming expatriate workers had the effect of showering Haiti with an infusion of cash never seen before. Then some genius came with the idea that Haiti did not need to produce anything anymore, considering that enough money was comming, not only from Haitian migrant workers, but also from that grand International Embezzlement scheme called "Foreing Aid". We should know, by now, that foreing aid from the rich countries to the poor countries in a scheme put together by rich financiers from the rich country to circumvent their own government, routed money from their own tax payers into shady governments throughout the world, and collect them clean a the other end. Never, in its history, so much cash was injected in the Haitian economy, but yet the country was becoming poorer and more violent. In the process, foreign helped raise corruption in Haiti at the international level (money laudering, swiss bank accounts), createe dependancy and failed states, a a whole network of corrupted allegiances.

These three simple paragraphs could be, and in fact, has been the subject of hundred of books and document written on Haiti. Paul Moral, Gerard Pierre-Charles, Yves L. August, Montas, Roger Gaillard, Lesly Pean, countless academic paper and books on Haitian history, the many aspect of the PAS (Programme d'Ajustement Structurel), MEP (Modernisation of Entreprises Publiques), l'Humanitaire, etc.

As you can see, these very powerful foreign interest are so big that they can sweep anyone on their course. Sometimes, they can be real meat grinders. All the time, they use local people, from Haiti's Elites and from other social segment to pursue their own goals. They are not going to use the majority of the population, since it could be contradictory to their maximum profit. Therefore, they enroll the help of a few, and they back this help with the lure reward, and the lethal waepons of their government. These few people, motivated by their own greed, will collaborate in their own personal interest.

At this point, being on top, these people, specially some members of Haitian elites, can become trend setters. It becomes then an existential issue. They carry the most dynamic individual with them, place them in the structure of power, and terrorize or impress the rest into financial and social submission.

Now, a young person with some education, aspiring to become part of the Haitian middle class, would he choose to align with the ruling factions or the underdog? Now, faced to these choices, what are the chance of that young person to make a decision that his against his or her original values? To chose for or against his own immediate interests? Sometimes, the individual choice may trump the collective choice. As we know, sometimes, the individual choice may be also detrimental to the collective choice, but pratically, the individual always tends to come first.

This is the set of dilemma every business person, every writer, every artist, every politically motivated person, every head of family makes everyday. After years of political, social, economic, environmental beatings, coup d'etat, horrible living conditions, chronic black out, shortage of drinking water, the catastrophy of January 12, 2010, the collective choice is never too clear cut to the individual.

As a matter of fact, being interviewed by Al-Jazeera on the matter of rice production in Haiti, it was Mario Andresol, chief of Police of Haiti then, who responded to the question of the reporter:

Al-Jazeera: "What to do?"

Mario Andresol: "A revolution!"

So, we can see that the elites is not as dupe as we may believe. They just do what elites usually do: maintain their position in society, no matter how bad that society is doing. When this position is insured by foreing interests who have no stake in the Haitian people itself, they will obey these interests.

Casin point: since the events of January 1st, 2004 (boycottage of the bicentenial of the independance of Haiti), have we seen how many literary awards and prizes Haitian intellectuals were awarded of nominated for? Did any of these people ever touch even remotely the subject that has cause the wrath of the powerful trio of E-Power to befall on Frantz Duval?

Mr. Duval, himself (we have a lot of respect for him) will only look timidely a this matter of the annulement of the famous "Arrete of 2 Septembre 2010" making the "Centre-Ville of Port-au-Prince" eminent domain (Utilite Publique). We were wondering about the enthouisiastic tittle of Le Nouvelliste: "Le Centre-Ville Libere" when Martelly et Lamothe chose to annule this measure that could have been to first step to the reconstruction of Port-au-Prince, until we realized that the owners of the Nouvelliste may have control of a sizable piece of the concerned space of down town area.

Indeed, though the people who controlled that space might have been collectively the first and biggest beneficiary of any infrastructure rebuilding in that space, individually the would rather retreat into the deepest corners of their social development (which is land based feudalism) to sabotage their own future, and everybody else with them.

It's complicated."

L. Sept

Aug. 28, 2013

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Are the Haitian 's elites mostly motivated by greed ? Par L. Sept

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