The Martelly government and the will to create a modern and hospitable Haitian society ...out of the medieval and inhospitable Haiti ...of which we are living in today ...in the year of our Lord - 2012

The Martelly dilemma

By Jean H Charles

This month of September brings back the specter of 55 years of a life of horror endured by the Haitian people.  It started with the Duvalier regime that haunted Haiti for 29 years (September 22, 1957, to February 7, 1986).  It continues with the bad memory of 20 years of pseudo Marxist regime of the Lavalas and Lespwa governments, Jean Bertrand Aristide and his nemesis Rene Preval (February 7, 1991 – May 14, 2011) with in between militarism disguised as a democratic carnival (1986-1991).

I thought that at least and at last we have a hoof with a good government that would ease the pain and the suffering of the Haitian people.

The President’s enemies

Joseph Michel Martelly, who followed the Preval regime, is facing, after one year in power, stiff opposition from several segments of the population.  I would divide this opposition into three groups.

There is first the factions of the old regimes, as well the majority of the defeated political class that is frustrated that this government with no political foundation and no political acumen could succeed where they have all failed miserably.  They intend to leave no room for action for the Martelly government to govern in peace.  They are like the scribes and the Pharisees in Jesus time, picking up faults in everything and everywhere.

Each action or non action of the regime is studied with a fine microscope lens for alleged infractions of the Constitution.  The president’s push, to establish a Permanent Electoral Board mandated by the Constitution some twenty five years ago, is facing stiff resistance by the political class, which is crying foul that he may be packing the Board with only his cronies.

They have found their hero in Senator Moise Jean Charles, a former mayor from Milot near the Citadel Henry, who became a senator due to President Preval’s good graces.

He has been pounding the Martelly government with big and small punches, one after the other.  It was first the issue of double nationality of the president, which was a mountain made out of a molehill; then a story of corruption with the then candidate, now President Danilo Medina of the Dominican Republic.  It ended as well as a storm in a teacup.

Senator Moise Jean Charles was recently at the Black Caucus of the American Congress in Washington DC drumming up support to seek the destitution of the Martelly/Lamothe government.

President Martelly has also amongst his enemies his best friends.  They have been his companions on the road for long time.  Their sense of entitlement to privileges and bounties of the republic seems without limit.  The life of luxuries of the friends of the regime is in stark contrast with the privation of the majority of the population.

President Martelly is also facing an opposition factor in the mass of Haitians to whom he has made the promise of lifting them from their sordid and miserable life in which they have been living for the past two hundred years.  It is the first time such a promise has been made to the Haitian people since the days of the founding father Jean Jacques Dessalines, who in 1804 exclaimed: “What about the former slaves?  Don’t they have also the right to enjoy the patrimony of the labour of their ancestors who toiled for three hundred years to build this nation!”

The Haitian people, with a zombie-like patience that accepted a de facto status that lasted for generations, are now awakening.  As a child not accustomed to the discipline of delayed gratification, as if two hundred years of ill governance must be corrected within one year; it is demanding results now.  Several demonstrations took place in the major cities, mainly Cape Haitian and Les Cayes.

But with unemployment hovering around 85% in the population, any demonstration can be bought on the cheap by Martelly detractors.

President Martelly has, to his credit, the confidence of the populace that he is filled with goodwill and he is definitely committed to changing the living conditions of the most desperate of the population.

His dilemma is how to go about moving mountains of structural problems that are not even on the agenda of policy solutions.  Haiti described by the Wall Street Journal as the poorest nation on the planet (it used to be the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere) is facing the same problems of non nation status as Central African Republic, its nemesis on the ranks of failed nations.

The Haitian dilemma

Its mass of poor and uneducated peasants, who lived in the mountains that are now depleted from its trees to prepare charcoal, the readymade cash crop, are invading the outskirts of the cities, creating insurmountable environmental problems of urbanization.

Will this problem be dealt with sentimental and cosmetic solutions or will the government, surrounded by competent and forward looking ministers, tackle the problem at its source, creating a nation out of the Republic of Haiti, one where its people will be no more nomads in their own country?  Travelling from hamlet to cities, and from there negotiating an illegal trip abroad in search of a friendlier sky!

The government is seeking new investment to provide jobs to the populace.  The issue of unemployment is a global one, whether in Europe, where Spain has 50% unemployment, or the United States, where young graduates cannot find a job and unemployment is at 15%.

Europe and the United States have the infrastructure, the security and the education level to produce jobs.  Haiti has none of these assets; it only has a large, resilient and non educated population with no infrastructure and limited security.  The factory jobs friendly to Haiti are in the garment industry, the Caracol experiment; it will produce in the long run, only frustration or a dream deferred.

The Haitian solution

Haiti should rely instead on its natural and organic assets to produce jobs in organic or nostalgic agriculture for export (to its own Diaspora), husbandry with a human touch, with chicken so tender that they are in the delicatessen sections of all the supermarkets of the world (as the Haitian mangoes) and arts and crafts so peculiar to the creative talent of a critical mass of the population.

Later it will capitalize on its fascinating scenic beauty to create a niche market for tourists not afraid of strong memories and emotions drawn from the year long religious and cultural festivals.  They can also hibernate in a setting where land, labour and material is still cheap compared to the rest of the Caribbean.

I have made the point often in this column that education is the key to future development.  The government has embarked on a project of reaching out to all youngsters who have been out of school for years.  It is not enough.  An literacy program spurred by the Cuban brigade is receiving scant support from the government.  Yet all the studies have point to the direction that there can be no development if the majority of the population is not highly educated.

Last but not least the government must accelerate its project of re-dotting the country with the Haitian army.  Haiti is suffering of a deficit in the perception of security coverage.  The new Haitian army will provide that insurance.  Haiti is no less safe than most of the islands of the Caribbean yet perception (as location in real estate) is all that matters!

In the end, the Martelly/Lamothe government will have to harness all its muscle to discard the feelings of those who fail in the past to be compassionate to the fate of the majority. It must understand that the problems of Haiti are first structural -- cosmetic solutions will only compound the problem.  It needs the best collaborators to define and bring about corrective remedies.  It must rein in the gluttonous thirst of its best friends who, like some of the Haitian generals after the Haitian Revolution, took the position that the return from Haiti’s independence was only for themselves and for their families.

It should not be afraid of educating the Haitian people about the concept of deferred gratification for a better good later.  Bringing solace to the Haitian people must start with hospitality in the smallest territorial collective, building development from the ground up.

Creating a nation is a hard concept at home and abroad, it demands strong leadership.  Go and ask Dr Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore. He was the laughing stock of the Western world twenty years ago when he enforced the punishment of a young American to a flagellum for throwing chewing gum on the street.  Yet he has now one of the most developed and richest nations on the globe!

Haiti as a forward looking nation at its creation can again become a lightning rod for itself and for the world if its government takes steps to unleash the creativity of each one of its citizens.  The Martelly government has the whereabouts to accomplish that feat if only it can head into the lessons of this essay and start demonstrating it has the will to create a modern, hospitable, Haitian society out of this medieval inhospitable Haiti that we are living into today in the year of the Lord 2012!

September 29, 2012

Caribbeannewsnow

Haiti, its history, its culture and its people

By Jean H Charles

Its history

Haiti, previously called Ayiti by the Tainos who inhabited the island, was the most populous and the most organized of the chain of the territories of the Caribbean. Their days were changed on December 5, 1492, when Christopher Columbus arrived in a northern bay renamed Bay of St Nicholas because of the feast of St Nicholas on that day. The Tainos received the Spanish explorers with genuine hospitality, offering gold chains to the men. Columbus returned to Spain to inform Queen Isabella of his discovery, leaving behind a crew of sailors.

Within a generation, the population of some one million Tainos was reduced to hundreds. Those who were not decimated through new disease brought by the Spanish men, such as tuberculosis, gonorrhea and syphilis, were destroyed through hard labour, alcohol and plain mutilation.

Yet, the gold exploration had to continue, and a priest by the name of Las Casas, under the pretext of protecting the Taino population from oblivion, obtained from the Queen of Spain, the authorization to grant the right for merchants to seek and bring Africans into the Western hemisphere to labour in the mines.

From 1503 to 1793, almost three hundred years, the black slaves toiled the land, producing sugar, cotton and cocoa that enriched principally the French colonists, who ruled the island with an iron fist.

It was as such until a Jamaican slave by the name of Bookman organized a voodoo ceremony in the northern part of St Domingue on August 14, 1791, to energize the slaves in revolting with the slogan: Better death than return to slavery!

The destruction of the plantations followed, but Bookman was seized and killed. Toussaint Breda, who became later Toussaint Louverture, continued the movement. A well educated and profoundly religious man, Toussaint was aware of the wind of human rights brought upon St Domingue first by the American Revolution in 1776 and later by the French Revolution in 1789.

Through several battles, he defeated first the British, later the Spanish and proposed a French Commonwealth to Napoleon Bonaparte, leading the destiny of the island with prosperity and hospitality for all. His reputation as a nation builder was sterling. Indeed the second president of the United States, John Adams, already trading with the governor of the country, was contemplating advising him to become king of the island.

Bonaparte responded with an armada supported by the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Through a ruse, where family affection was at the root, two sons of Toussaint were on the boat coming from France, and he was lured into the hands of Rochambeau, Bonaparte’s brother in law, who was the commandant of the naval regiment.

Toussaint was captured, imprisoned and sent to die in a prison in France. He had predicted that the roots of freedom were strong and deep and they would not wither.

Jean Jacques Dessalines took up the revolutionary movement and, within three years, he had succeeded, with the support of other generals such as Henry Christophe and Alexander Petion, to root out all the French soldiers from the island. In a memorable battle on November 18, 1803, the ragtag army of slaves succeeded where Spartacus with his 6,000 men could not accomplish with the Roman Empire some 2,000 years earlier in 70BC.

They rang the song of freedom for all slaves on the island and foreshadowed the beginning of the end of slavery in the world.

This saga was a short glorious moment for Haiti. Two years after Independence Day, on January 1, 1804, Jean Jacques Dessalines was assassinated on October 17, 1806, by his comrades in arms. His ideas of nation building, making Haiti hospitable to all were not the vision of the majority of the other generals. They envisioned the spoils of the colony for themselves only, and their families.

Haiti has never recovered. Through internal revolts fomented by foreign powers such as France, Germany and the United States, with the assistance of, first, mulatto rulers and later poorly educated black generals, Haiti and its people descended into a spiral of ignorance, misery and environmental calamity until today.

The latest one, the earthquake of January 12, 2010, destroyed its capital Port au Prince, as well as sending to death some 300,000 people. This disaster was preceded by 150 years of neglected mulatto governments and recently 50 years of black dictatorial regimes, followed by illiberal democracy that is closer to criminality than good governance.

Its culture

The slaves that climbed the mountains of Haiti after the Independence Day became the Haitian peasants. No one has ever bothered to ask them whether they should have good institutions such as schools and hospitals or decent infrastructure such as roads, electricity and communications. They have preserved intact the African culture mixed with the century’s old acculturation taken from the remaining Tainos and French masters during slavery times. Haiti is at the same time a mosaic of purely African, Santa Fe, USA, and Provence, France, culture.

The aftershock of the Haitian revolution was varied and unnerving as a cause. The Latin American revolution with Bolivar, through the help of Alexander Petion, took place. Abraham Lincoln and Frederic Douglass, inspired by Haiti, brought about the black emancipation. As such, the nation was ostracized by the then world order of slavery.

Only the Vatican, through a Concordat in 1860, accepted to send teachers to Haiti to educate the population. The priests and the nuns did what they could, they provided the bread of good formation to the tiny elite that peopled the cities, leaving behind the masses in the rural areas uneducated and ill advised.

Haiti is today a land of two cultures, the land of Catholic, refined, French-speaking and sophisticated city dwellers, as well as the land of voodoo practitioners, dispossessed former peasants living in squalid condition in shantytowns on the outskirts of prime land near the sea or peasants still forgotten in the mountains surrounding the cities.

Desperate, some have taken the ultimate chance of seeking a more hospitable sky through leaky boats to Florida, The Bahamas and all over the Caribbean islands, in particular, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, going as far as Suriname on firm land in Latin America.

Handy in arts and in art-craft, their production under different labels can be seen in the best hotels and shops on the tourist trail of the Caribbean, except that the label made in Haiti is removed. Good agricultural workers, from a native land that has been eroded by poor soil treatment and tree cutting for charcoal, they are replenishing the landscape of the Dominican Republic, Dominica and The Bahamas with fruit trees and hard wood that could have enriched their own country.

Its people

With a population of 10 million people, Haiti is in the enviable position of Sweden, Finland, Norway or Denmark; except it is not as cold. While the Haitian population is highly creative, it is not as educated and sophisticated as those Nordic countries, as such it miss the key ingredient that could propel the country into full employment and the bliss of growth and development.

It is a young population, eager to learn and pierce the world of modernity. Its adult population is resilient and willing to work hard for its daily bread. But its lack of education will continue to hamper the optimum utilization of its natural talents and the zeal to achieve.

In spite of this deficiency, Haiti, a small island with the proportions of the State of Maryland, has a brand name that goes beyond the Western Hemisphere. It has greatly contributed to the nation building process of several countries, through the utilization of its professional citizens, including the Congo, Brazzaville and Quebec, Canada. The famous Haitians, or celebrities with Haitian origins, include a roster that spans the arts, politics, sports and music. The list includes but is not limited to: E-W Dubois, James Audubon, Pierre Toussaint, Wyclef Jean, Edwige Danticat, Michaelle Jean, Andre Michael (boxer) Jean Michel Basquiat, Garcelle Beauvais, Jimmy Jean Louis, 50 Cent, Pierre Garcon, Jonathan Vilma, Maxwell Garcon.

Haiti experienced an avalanche of help from the nonprofit organizations and from the UN after the earthquake of 2010, but donor fatigue is languishing around because of a lack of good coordination and sound vision from the government. Will this new regime of Martelly/Lamothe deliver the goods to a nation and a people, so eager for so long to enjoy the bliss of hospitality?

It is too early to label the new regime as a Teflon government or a true agent of change that will transform the nation into the Tahiti brand of the western hemisphere, because of its natural and spectacular scenery, or the Bali brand of the Caribbean, because of its many cultural and religious festivals that are the staple of everyday life.

Anyway, Haiti has been too good for the region for humanity not to come to its help with enduring and sustainable tools that will change the lives of so many enduring and eager citizens ready to enjoy the bounties of God on this land that was once called the Pearl of the Islands.

August 25, 2012

Caribbeannewsnow

Who is Afraid of The Haitian People?

By Jean H Charles



President Michel Martelly has failed his appointment on November 18, 2011, to visit the historic and touristic city of Cape Haitian on the historic day of the Battle of Vertieres.   Previous presidents used to visit Cape Haitian on that date, to commemorate the final epic story of the slaves who defeated the mighty army of Napoleon on November 18, 1803, to render Haiti and the rest of the world free of the scourge of slavery of man by man.

They were all there -- the school children in bright costume uniforms marching to the beat of the drum and the sound of the trumpet, proud as the Spartacus of antiquity crossing the Rubicon to enter Rome, the conqueror that was at last defeated by a band of slaves.   The Haitian people have re-edited once more this event in the annals of world history.

Vertieres should occupy a preeminent place, along with Marathon, Waterloo, and Gettysburg in the record of great battles of the world!

It does not!

The people in Sunday dress were there on the battlefield en masse, waiting for the president and his officials to deliver the famous speech magnifying the glory of the past and urging the spirit of appurtenance to continue to build together a nation free and independent.   The momentum was at its peak.   The Haitian people were expecting Urbis et Orbi from Cape Haitian to the world, a mighty and revered president as the commander in chief declaring that the Haitian armed forces, issued from the patrimony of the ragged but dignified indigenous army, are reinstalled on the territory of the republic.

He was not there!

He has succumbed to the weight of the international community, France, the former slaveholder; the United States that profited from the Haitian victory to become from sea to shining sea a predestined nation in the Western Hemisphere; the United Nations, of which Haiti was a founding member, with its so called stabilization force, now the enforcer of the great powers agenda.

Who is afraid of the Haitian people is a legitimate question that astute observers should be concerned about?

I am!

Out of a population of 10 million people, 8 million of them are living in almost destitute poverty yet there is an energy of creativity and a reservoir of resilience coupled with a wit that sustains daily living.   This phenomenon is rare and maybe unique to Haiti.

The former slaves and their descendants have been denied for two hundred years the bread of education and the discipline of sophistication and refinement, as a line of demarcation for holding them indefinitely in the bondage neo-slavery.   They have survived by paying dearly for their children to be educated with the hope of a better tomorrow.

They have been deceived not only by the international community but also by their own nationals in positions of power and authority, who took their cue from those who assassinated their founding father to impose the rule that freedom was only for a few, not for all.

Finally, two hundred-plus years, 208 to be exact, Haiti has a president in love with Haiti and with the Haitian people.   He must be crushed by a Parliament, whose venal interests are in opposition to the national destiny.

I was not sure where this line of inquiry would lead me until I attended a conference this weekend in Cape Haitian on the national dialogue and fraternity in Haiti, organized by the Haitian Institute of the Christian social doctrine.   Two eminent bishops were present, the Archbishop Louis Kebreau, the president of the Haitian Episcopal, and the very intellectual and scholarly Bishop Dumas to underscore this momentous experience.

Dr Antonio M. Baggio, the main speaker for the day, was sharing with the audience the product of his research, a book entitled: Letters to France by Toussaint Louverture.   Dr Baggio has revolutionized the political thinking of the day by reviling and proving that Toussaint Louverture may have inspired the philosophical underpinning of the French Revolution not the other way around.

It will take some time for the world and the western civilization to accept this phenomenon that President John Adams of the United States had already perceived.   He wanted to help Toussaint to become king of Haiti and as such helping his own cause, liberate the slaves on the American territory half a century earlier.

Here we are!   Haiti that accomplished one of the most signature revolutions in the world does not have its place as a universal patrimony of the rational homo species.   Having forced onto the world order the concept of liberty, equality and fraternity for all, the concept of fraternity according to Professor Baggio has been eliminated from the political praxis and discourse.   (La fraternidad en perspective politica, exigencias, recourses, definiciones del principio olvidado.   Buenos Aires 2009 and La fraternita nella rifles-sione politoligica contemporanea, Roma 2007.)

Professor Emil Vlajki, as the great thinkers of the world who sing the same song in different languages from different countries (Moses, Jesus, Rousseau, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud), has reformulated the same concept by defining the world of absolute rationality (liberty, equality without fraternity) and the world of human rationality (liberty, equality with fraternity).

The young people of America assaulting Wall Street to demand fraternity, or human rationality in a world where cynicism is the rule are playing their own partition in this quest where fraternity must be, as dictated by Toussaint Louverture, a key underpinning of the world order.

President Michel Joseph Martelly, enrobed with a popular mandate, has the possibility to help Haiti recover for itself and for the rest of the world the possibility that fraternity, or human rationality becomes a reality in the country and by ricochet for the rest of humanity.

As in 1804, when slaves were ready to explode slavery of man by man, the Haitian people are ready today to follow a leader with the guts to confront the western powers to make this world a better one for all by injecting the concept of fraternity and human rationality as the oil that will fuel the transactional activities such as commerce, arts and industry between different and all nations.

November 29, 2011

caribbeannewsnow