Socio-economic Crisis & Survival

By Beverly Bell

“Why is Haiti so poor?” That’s what deceased Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez asked, over and over, in a video shown at a recent memorial at the State University of Haiti. In the courtyard of the School of Social Sciences, a repository of radical intelligentsia and organizers, professors and students took the stage to sing, drum, and recite poetry, and to make impassioned speeches about Chávez’s opposition to privatization and the US empire.

By Beverly Bell
April 4, 2013

Inside the USAID-headquarters-turned-courthouse in Port-au-Prince, the case against former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier was being heard, in a trial unlikely to bring justice to the hundreds of thousands killed and tortured by him and his father François.

Vexed by the circus show of judges and defense lawyers, I fled the building and hailed a collective taxicab. The driver asked my nationality. When I told him, he said, “If you don’t mind, I want to ask you something. Are there all these children sleeping in the streets and under bridges in your country?”

Cross-posted from Inter Press Service

By Jane Regan

Map showing location of Morne Bossa property (VCS / Société Miniere Delta). Credit: VCS website 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb 24 2013 (IPS) - Outraged that they have not been consulted, this week Haitian senators called for a moratorium on all activities connected with recently granted gold and copper mining permits.

In a resolution approved by 15 of 16 senators present, the lawmakers also demanded the establishment of a commission to review all of the current mining contracts and “a national debate on the country’s mineral resources”.

Because We Are: A Novel of Haiti from Ted Oswald on Vimeo.

The following is a guest post from Ted Oswald, the author of the recently-published novel Because We Are: A Novel of Haiti. He is giving part of the proceeds from the book to Other Worlds:

In 2010, my wife and I lived in Haiti for several months and interned--she as an international development student, and I as a law student. I spent my days working for a human rights organization in Cité Soleil, the slum where my new novel is set. It was an unforgettable time.

Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen (Heads Together Small Producers of Haiti), Pati KAN Pep la (the People’s Camp Party), MODEP, FRAKKA, SEK GRAMSCI, FDDPA, RPS, FGPB, GREPS *

Port-au-Prince, February 18^th, 2013

Cross-posted from the Canada Haiti Action Network

Statement by the Canada Haiti Action Network, January 7, 2013

Billions of dollars of aid to Haiti have been pledged or spent following the devastating earthquake on January 12, 2010. Yet three years later, life remains very harsh for many of the country’s ten million people. Haiti’s prospects for post-earthquake progress remain exceptionally challenging.

Cross-posted from the Institute for Public Accuracy

by Brian Concannon [email], via Nicole Phillips [email], and our own Alexis Erkert, [in Haiti] [email]

Our own Alexis Erkert gives a detalied response to the question: Over 50 Dead in Haiti from Hurricane; Nearly 400,000 in Tents — Why? 

Cross-posted from BBC News

By Mark Doyle

New evidence has emerged about the alleged role of United Nations troops in causing a cholera epidemic in the Caribbean nation of Haiti.

In this letter to defense ministers of the Americas, an agglomeration of social justice organizations across the Americas rebuke the recent (and longstanding) militarization of development on the continent, calling for both an ideological and a practical paradigm shift on the part of the United States. 

On the occasion of the X Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas to take place in Punta del Este, Uruguay, on October 8-10, 2012, we make the following statement:...