Haiti is in a state of class warfare

[Vendetta21]

http://www.haitianalysis.com/2010/8/...reconstruction

...
In this way, the Préval government and CIRH appear ready to squander the millions contributed to Haiti by buying land at inflated prices from the bourgeoisie, land which was often stolen or obtained by ruse in the first place.

Land is also needed to grow food for Haiti’s increasingly hungry masses, especially as post-quake humanitarian aid begins to drop off. Haiti’s bourgeoisie and big landowners are more interested in building assembly industries, office buildings and luxury homes, not on developing fields of rice, millet or corn. In the past six months, four new industrial parks, according to one report, have been built to take advantage of Haiti’s $3 a day minimum wage.

This struggle for Haiti’s principal means of production – the land – has now been thrown into sharp relief as sharks and vultures use this moment of a weakened state to expand their real estate holdings, not contribute them to their devastated compatriots.

A good example of this is in Ganthier, a town of about 72,000 located 18 miles east of the capital near the Dominican border. Half the town’s residents are peasant farmers who survive by farming on state lands used as a commons to grow food for over 80 years. But in recent weeks, two businessmen have laid claim to this state land.

Two weeks ago, the businessmen sent out a bulldozer that began to clear the peasants’ plots. The peasants banded together, burned the bulldozer, and blocked the road from the border. The local mayor, Ralph Lapointe sided with the peasants and was arrested for a few hours. He credits his partial freedom to immediate local protests and barricades. His office’s general director was imprisoned for more than 24 hours.

“We are both now under virtual house arrest,” he told journalists from Haiti Liberté and Democracy Now! “My life is in danger if I leave my home. As a government representative, I am supposed to defend the interests of the local population. Instead the judicial authorities are allying themselves with the marauding businessmen and are attacking the peasants and those that defend them, like myself.”

Meanwhile the interlopers, armed with false deeds to the land (the elite’s age-old weapon of choice), have enlisted the police in a manhunt for the leaders of the peasant rebellion against the land grab. Mayor Lapointe identified the two businessmen trying to take the land as Frank Galette and Gérald Brutus. “Because I don’t agree with their actions, they have promised to assassinate me,” the mayor said.

This stand-off in Ganthier does not bode well for Haiti’s reconstruction under the leadership of Préval and the CIRH. To build Haiti back better, Haitian authorities will need to expropriate at least some of the land the elite has stolen and accumulated over the past 200 years. Instead, landowners’ thugs, often in concert with police and UN troops, are brutally uprooting people, often at gunpoint and at night, from spontaneous settlements without giving them any alternative homes. The internally displaced just have to move farther up the mountainsides or further into the Arizona-like desert north of the capital. ...

The West only gave Haiti 10% of what it promised, most of that isn't going out, and what is going out is being used by the government to legitimize the theft by the rich from those who are in a state of abject squalor, and this right before Hurricane season.

[Omeganitros]

I don't get why--Well, I do get it, but, it just seems to obvious that jumping from third-world country to first-world country isn't going to work. Office buildings? Luxury homes? It's like how in some countries, cell phones are a common sight, but house lines and telephone poles aren't. Rome wasn't built in a day. You can't make the quality of living magically jump.

[kommisar]

lapointe



god damit I'm related to him



10% of what was promised is awful. Assuming a number of that promised amount was from donations, this is of course outrageous. The country was already poor as **** before this, now it's just a corrupt aids land of bourgeois bull****.

[foilman8805]

I can't think of a time when Haiti wasn't in some type of class warfare, so I'm not surprised. They have a hell of a history.

[adlp]

lol

[Vendetta21]

Originally Posted by foilman8805

I can't think of a time when Haiti wasn't in some type of class warfare, so I'm not surprised. They have a hell of a history.

Yes true it's a history of being ****ed by first-world powers.

[jchinzilla]

haiti sits on top of oil

[Frozen Beat]

The argument has been made that hollow dollars go to 3rd world countries.

[who_cares973]

time to buy land in haiti for cheap and sell it to business men for profit

[Vendetta21]

Originally Posted by Frozen Beat

The argument has been made that hollow dollars go to 3rd world countries.

Some ideas work and some don't the problem is that a lot of charities are ineffectively structured or they target symptoms and not problems, or their goals are just far too lofty for a region.

But there are some positive forces of good that bring results out there.

What's unique about the Haiti situation that truly makes it worth mentioning is that Haiti has been in a bad place, went to a worse place, and is getting even worse while there are tons of groups in the West that are making efforts to do things in Haiti because of the earthquake and the shallow but unheard truth is that these groups are things that people feel good about supporting when the reality is they really shouldn't be supporting them at all.

Maybe all of this can be boiled down to a lesson in the idea that wanting to help is not good enough you also have to make sure that what you're doing to help is actually helping. If you feel a responsibility to help others in this world than it is equally your responsibility to make an effort to do it the right way.