IWW Delegation Reports from Haiti

by Justin Vitiello and Nathaniel Miller

The IWW was invited to Haiti by the Confederation of Haitian Workers (CTH) to learn about their fight against “le plan neoliberal” and provide material aid and solidarity from North America.  We were there April 24th- May 5th.  Our four-person delegation spent 2/3 of the time in the capital Port-au-Prince meeting workers in the soon-to-be privatized state infrastructure, and the remaining time in rural areas learning from peasants. 

Haiti shares an island, Hispaniola, with the Dominican Republic (where Haitian sugar workers face intense racism). It has close to ten million people, with another four million living abroad, mainly in the United States and Canada. Unemployment is a serious problem. For seven million people in the active workforce, there are only 200,000 formal jobs, split between 50,000 in the public sector and 150,000 in the private sector.  Most Haitians barely subsist in the informal economy, “la sector informal.” The government has privatized much of its infrastructure and is now in the process of cutting public sector jobs. Nearly $1 billion sent from Haitians living abroad make up about 20 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product, propping up the country’s economy. Yet six percent of Haiti’s population controls 85 per cent the wealth. The richest billionaire in Latin America is Haitian, while Haiti has the most billionaires in the Caribbean.

Haitian political instability has marred the country time and again. The second oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti gained its independence in 1804 after a successful slave revolt against France, only to be economically stifled by France and the United States.  US-sponsored dictators and local resistance to them has dominated most of Haitian history.  Hopes rose in 1991 with Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s election, only the second elected Haitian president in its history, but he was overthrown 7 months later in a military coup. Aristide returned in 1994 to resume his presidency, albeit with many US-imposed conditions, particularly relating to forced privatization.  Amazingly, the US forced Aristide to include the 3 years he spent in exile as part of his presidency. Rene Preval, close political ally of Aristide, won the 1996 elections (and is currently Haiti’s president). Aristide was elected president again in 2000 with a new political party, but a Canadian/French/US-led coup forced him out of power in 2004. Coincidentally, this Bicentennial coup occurred immediately after he asked France to repay the crushing blackmail-debt imposed on Haiti after independence so that France wouldn’t re-invade, a debt Haiti paid in full over 125 years, and that is the single largest reason for their current economic plight.  Today Haiti is under a UN quasi-occupation, their foreign aid-dependent government shackled to forced privatization.  Shortly before the IWW delegation visited Haiti a sudden rise in food prices prompted riots throughout the island. In response, the government ousted Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis on April 12 in a non-confidence vote, though the price problem remains.

The Confederation of Haitian Workers (CTH) hosted us for our entire stay. Workers in dictator Francois Duvalier’s sweatshops founded the CTH in 1959. Many were tortured, killed and forced into exile, but a small cadre remained and went underground. CTH organized as dictators and military governments came and went. In recent years, the CTH has struggled to rebuild amid the economic hardship facing Haitians. It is composed of 11 union federations covering as many industries, an office in every department of the country and three national commissions on women, health and youth (www.haitilabour.org). The CTH is currently campaigning against privatization, which led to the tripling or quadrupling in the cost of living over recent weeks. CTH organizing has found more support in this time of crisis as Haitians search for answers.

In Part One of a two-part series IWW member Justin Vitiello reflects on our trip to the Haitian countryside where we witnessed an utter lack of infrastructure.  For a thorough explanation of the trip and more photos visit our blog http://www.iwwinhaiti.blogspot.com/

Grassroots Work With Peasants and Lack of Infrastructures in Haiti to Combat Their Poverty Part 1, by Justin Vitiello

Our trip to Haiti as IWW delegates was most satisfying when we met and worked with people at the grassroots level: peasants and un-and-underemployed workers in the peripheries of rural towns and in the countryside.  Our major trips outside the capital Port-au-Prince were to the Central Plateau (north-east of Port-au-Prince) and to Roche-a-Bateau (on the southwest coast of the country).  In both cases, we met people who clearly had the intelligence, imagination and courage to fight for freedom, dignity and justice, but still lacked the infrastructures to realize their visions.

Part of their dilemma has to do with the multinational conglomerates (especially the US government) that have on and off in the last two centuries blocked their initiatives for self-determination and turned their country into a pool of cheap labor.  As we talked to more and more people, the situation became increasingly dramatic for us too: there was no development per se on the part of the Haitian populace.  As the persons we met testified, they had no water, no electricity, no hospitals, no public transportation, no schools, no housing, no amenities like parks (not even in the midst of beautiful mountains and coastlines), no phones, no toilets.  As two groups of landless peasants summed it up, “WE HAVE NOTHING”.

En route to the Central Plateau, jostled by roads that resemble mountain streambeds, we witnessed occasional signs of social protest.  Most striking among them was the banner in the city of Mirebalais: “Life is too expensive, but the more you live, the more you must hope.”  We stopped too at the Peligre Dam, designed to provide electricity to the Plateau and to Port-au-Prince. Drying up at this point, it did neither.

Proceeding toward Hinche (provincial capital of the High Plateau, Haiti’s poorest region), we witnessed children and women who were clearly malnourished.  Arriving at Hinche, we met with trade union and grassroots organizers of cooperatives in commercial enterprises, agriculture, transportation, artisanry and women’s initiatives.

When natural light faded, we found it hard to continue our meeting and the filming of it, so we returned to our hosts’ home, enjoying great Creole food and a cool evening under the stars.  We talked of how crucial locally organized infrastructures are for Haiti.  Without electricity, decent telecommunications, roads, etc the possibility for locally controlled development is scant.  We also discussed the need for education and job training, especially among women, to do skilled labor, organize cooperatives and thrive, without relying on paternalistic foreign aid agencies or predatory multinational corporations.

Sitting under a celestial dome, we encountered local women selling their unique embroidery.  “Why don’t you organize a cooperative to sell your work internationally?” we asked—the work was quite exquisite, and many North Americans would doubtless pay a lot for it if there was a way for it to be transported from Haiti.  “Because we have no markets,” was the reply.  “We need technology to distribute our artwork too”.

Our journey to Haitian grassroots continued via a press conference the next day where we explained why we had come to the country. As in our other meetings with workers and peasants, we explained we, invited by the Confederation of Haitian Workers, were here to learn, and try to help, not through charity but via collaboration and solidarity with concerned and committed Haitians.  Thinking with them as to what to do next, we were overwhelmed.  Where could we start? The most invigorating thing, I thought, is that these people have nothing to lose.  So they could risk acting for the most radical change, particularly when initiated by Haitian women and youth, and with the international solidarity of organizations like the IWW.

Perhaps our most poignant meeting in the High Plateau was with a group of peasants who had sacrificed their whole afternoon of work to join us in solidarity.  Our hosts for two weeks, Paul “Loulou” Chery and Ginette Apollon, introduced us by speaking of how we might “struggle together to win a new world”.  Then, after our new companions sang a song for us in Creole, we got down to practical issues: food, health, education, shelter, real jobs, and leisure for cultural activities – all absent. Everyone stressed that all of the above depended on the development of agriculture, particularly for domestic consumption as neoliberalism gutted Haiti’s domestic agriculture leaving an increasingly hungry population dependent on soaring imported food.  First and foremost this means better irrigation – so that families could afford to feed their children and send them to school for their education and upward mobility.  We asked them if they had received any aid from their government or from the Western powers (especially the USA, Canada and France).  “NO!” was the resounding chorus.

Our final grassroots commitment was in Roche-a-Bateau, a seaside village on the island’s southwestern spur.  We initiated our visit by meeting with public servants and officials (“notables”) in a school that had no running water or bathroom facilities.  Many expressed their pleasure in meeting us “older folks” whom they trusted more than activists in their teens and twenties.  We discussed the difference between foreign charity and solidarity, being told a story about how, a few years ago, an NGO decided, without consulting the locals, to build a fountain in the town’s center, because the fountain used by the residents was “too far away.” People did not use the new fountain because they wanted the exercise required to travel to the old one where they could above all socialize.  This problem could have been averted and the money used it better spent had the NGO simply asked the locals what they needed.
 
After the meeting we walked through fields being cleared by twenty barefoot peasants wielding hoes.  Cody, our translator and photographer, approached them as they toiled to the rhythms of African drums.  They had a grand time seeing themselves on his digital camera screen. Later, we learned they were working the whole day just for food. We were amazed at how much ground they cleared this way under the blazing sun. Virtually all agriculture in Haiti is done by hand this way.

We proceeded toward the outskirts of Roche-a-Bateau, where we met Loulou’s parents who watch over a rural school not totally built. Most of the kids looked sick and there were no classes or teachers per se, so the semi-structure functioned as a day-care space.  A downpour fell. Luckily, we were already inside, though the roof leaked horribly. But in the pouring rain, peasants and their families came to meet with us.  They gazed: four white men from another planet. But our eye contact, smiles, and meager attempts at Creole overcame differences of tone, and they focused as we explained why we had come to “visit”.

We – Wobblies, like many of the Haitians we met – get to the heart of the matter: what can we do together to change OUR worlds? It flashes again through my mind that they can teach me more about how to change the world than I can teach them.

So I listened to people’s protests that by now are litanies: “Homelessness, or houses in shambles, no food, malnutrition, epidemic diseases, no government aid, families disintegrated, no hospitals, no beds to sleep or die in, no water, global shortages…” As beasts-of-burden brayed outside, the people elaborated, clearly aware of their problems.  They also know why, because of government corruption (much of the foreign money donated to Haiti is squandered or stolen) and multinational exploitation their children go hungry every day, without the capacity to concentrate in school.  Their situation leads to another vicious circle: the Dantesque Hell for the children born of the Haitian poor (90+% of the population).  As long as foreign multinationals and their client governments stifle Haitian self-determination those children can expect either a life in sweatshops sewing Spalding baseballs, dangerous “illegal” immigration to the US or the Dominican Republic, or for most, a paltry existence in the informal economy, selling sunglasses and the like on Port-au-Prince’s violent streets.

We dialogued for several hours with these people. We Wobblies mostly listened. As we ended with the Lord’s Prayer in Creole, the sun came out again. Returning to Port-A-Prince we noticed one of the few rice paddies remaining, a vestige of Haiti’s former self-sufficiency in rice production prior to the domestic market being undercut and destroyed by cheap, subsidized rice from North America. A white egret flew up from the paddy and disappeared above the Caribbean ocean. Cow herders walked to Port-au-Prince, driving their livestock at night to the capital, three hours away by car.


Look for Part 2 in the Next Defenestrator where IWW delegate Cody Anderson will discuss the struggles Haiti’s urban dwellers face.