The curse of striking gold in Haiti

By Jean H Charles


The news is out of the bag: Haiti has billions of dollars of gold in its ground.  Will this gold serve as a curse to make the nation as divided as the Central African Republic or will this gold enrich each citizen with the means put at his disposal so he will become as educated as possible so its endowed genius could come out for his benefit, his family and his nation?

I was speaking recently with an official responsible for environment in the country; I told him Haiti is one of the best candidates to work out a deal with the pension fund of New York City and State to fill the mountains of the country with precious hardwood such as mahogany, ebony and cedar.

Twenty-five years from now, the country will be so rich and the investors will have such a high return on their investment that the only curse is how to protect Haiti from the international predators who will try to divide the north against the south of the country to put a hand on that wealth.

Singapore, without natural resources, and the Central African Republic, with ample natural resources, has proven that the best resource a country has is not its natural resource but its critical mass of highly educated people that this nation has within its midst. 

Showing off Haiti, to Jimmy Sherlock, an American friend, has taught me to become an acute observer of the energy of the Haitian people in surviving daily.  Without support in infrastructure and in institution-building from past predatory governments, the people have developed significant resilience that has made them extraordinary workers!

The trick will be how to combine this resilience with education and formation so the citizens will strike gold and protect their precious resource (material and spiritual) against international predators that will reduce them to the state of the aboriginal Indians or the citizens of the Central African Republic (remember Bokassa!). 

It is significant that this gold discovery in Haiti happens at this time.  In my old age of sixty-six years this is the first time since I was six years old that I felt Haiti has a government that is committed to fully defend the interests of the citizens of the country.  The nation’s motto that resembles the French rallying cry at its revolution: liberty, equality and fraternity, must be translated into peace, tranquility and liberty.

I am observing today a combination of entrenched-interest actors made up of the old regime dinosaurs and a sector of the press bought by past governments bent on demonizing the Martelly/Lamothe government so peace and tranquility will not be the lot of Haiti.

Haiti was at the same standing economically sixty years ago than most of the countries of the Caribbean.  Through dictatorial, military and illiberal democratic regimes it has become a pariah state where its citizens seek by any means at their disposal to leave their country for better pasture abroad. 

The earthquake of January 12, 2010, produced a shock that trembled not only the land but also the spirit.  This spirit emboldens the people in particular, the downtrodden who took the leap of choosing an irreverent leader but totally determined to change the way business is conducted in Haiti.

Can this government protect the exploration of the gold mine so the country may receive what it is due in return?  Initial information indicates that a good deal has been worked out where Haiti would receive one dollar out of every two dollars of revenue after expenses collected by the investors.

The gold mine in Haiti is large and deep -- twenty three million ounces, the equivalent of 40 billion dollars, with very promising samples according to Michael Fulp, a geologist based in New Mexico, USA. Gold and Haiti have been bedfellows for centuries.  Christopher Columbus, when he landed first in San Salvador, Bahamas, from his extraordinary travel from Spain, was told by the aborigines to continue further down, where he would find Ayity where gold flowed naturally from the rivers.

The Spaniards, in digging for gold in Hispaniola, exterminated not only the culture but also more than one million Arawaks who peopled the island.  Dejected by the hard work associated with the search for gold, the Spaniards left for Mexico where mining was easier.

The French who followed the Spaniards with imported slaves from Africa discovered black gold in the production of sugar from sugar cane produced and harvested by the African slaves.  It was as such for three centuries, with St Domingue becoming the richest island of the world, transshipping immense fortunes to the European elite. 

The revolution of 1804 brought liberty but brought also misery to the mass of former slaves.  Haiti was a bad example for a world bent on using slaves as a tool for production.  Internal strife led by entrenched international interests that characterizes today the resource rich Central African Republic was also the lot of Haiti for two centuries after its independence.

In 1970, the United Nations in a study found that Haiti was rich in natural resources, especially gold and phosphate.  But through a strange connivance of the dictatorial regime with the prestigious international organization that information was kept secret.  I remembered visiting the library of the United Nations doing research on Haiti's mining potential; I was told such information could be delivered only with the authorization of the Haitian government. 

The cat is now out of the bag, Haiti the pariah of the world is also a Cinderella.  Will it be for one day?  Or will it be sustainable, the newly found gold serving to make Haiti rich and well developed as Norway is using its black gold to keep the country and its citizens fully protected for the dry days of the future?

The rush to create a critical mass of educated Haitians as initiated by President Michel Joseph Martelly is a sure way to erect a safeguard to protect the newly found gold niche in Haiti.  It is the only potion to remove the curse of striking rich!


May 19, 2012


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Haiti and the issue of education

By Jean H Charles



The month of October used to be the cruelest month of the year in Haiti.  It is the month when parents must find the full tuition payment for their children’s education.  The previous Haitian governments have been so delinquent in their mission of educating the children that 80 percent of the education system is the hands of the private sector.

Joseph Michel Martelly, the president of Haiti, akin to Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, has made education and the acquisition thereof, the cornerstone of his administration.  He was not afraid of the ire of some members of the Diaspora in resting on their back the bulk of the education funds by taxing $1.50 for each transfer to and from Haiti and by exacting 5 cents on each call to and from Haiti.  He plans to raise as such $300 million per year to send all the children in age of education to school, free of charge to their parents.

The business of providing an excellent education to the children of a nation is not the business of the parents.  It is the business of the state.  The business of the parents is to provide the enrichment and the nurturing to support the education received in school.

According to Emil Vlajki often cited in this column, the wealth of a nation depends not on its natural resources but on the degree of education and the extent of creativity and resilience of its people.

Singapore in Asia, with limited natural resources but with a highly educated population, is a world giant in economic development, while Niger or the Sudan, with ample natural resources but with a poorly educated population, is a basket case in Africa.

As such it is in the interest of the state to take the necessary measures to establish a critical mass of citizens, well educated, creative and resilient, to build the sustaining wealth of the country.

President Joseph Michel Martelly is breaking the circle of treating the children of the Haitian masses as second class citizens in pushing forward a policy of universal free education.  The program started this year with some 772,000 students, those who have never been to or left school because their parents were too poor to help them to remain in a program of study.

The education funds that started in May 2011 have already collected $28 million.  PAM and UNICEF are putting their resources into the fray in adding a hot meal a day and a school kit with bags and books and notebooks for the children.  In addition, President Martelly has also taken the initiative to insure that the children have free transportation to and from school, with a police officer in each bus to provide security.

Haiti has come a long way in pushing forward education as a priority in its public policy expenditure.  In the Caribbean area, Haiti occupies the last place in education indices.  This practice is as old as the history of the Republic.  At the eve of the revolution leading to independence, the topic amongst those freed from servitude was: what measure should be adopted to create a distinction between those who were free before independence and those who became free after.

The choice was that education should be as restricted as possible for the former slaves; as such the privilege of an upper class would be preserved for ever.

If Haiti’s founding father Jean Jacques Dessalines wanted to create a Haiti hospitable for all in the new Republic, at its birth in 1804, it was not the vision of his comrades in arms.  In fact, he was assassinated two years after independence on October 17, 1806.  Henry Christophe, who became king of the north of Haiti after being denied the presidency of the whole Republic, introduced the British system of education, as well as civic formation for all.  (Who said the men of the north of Haiti are better!).  It lasted only twenty years.

Alexander Petion, who controlled the rest of the Republic, stamped the nation with the culture of discrimination against the majority of the population.  (It is true the Alexander Petion Lyceum was his creation!)  That culture, extended by his successor, Jean Pierre Boyer, became the law of the land until today when Joseph Michel Martelly took the decision to put education at the center of his social revolution.

His ambitious program may have a few holes at the beginning; they will be corrected as the program goes along.  The extreme joy was in the face of Senatus Antoine, a father of two, whom I met on the public bus recently.  The fee that he was struggling to find “has been paid by the government” he was told by the principal.

Speaking of principal, I met with the principal of Marie Jeanne Lyceum, a no-nonsense woman, who led her school with an iron hand.  Parents travel from close and a far to enroll their children in this public school for girls.  The public school system in Haiti needs many more principals as the one at the Marie Jeanne Lyceum; the competition will drive more children to the public school system, leaving the meager income of the parents for other options such as food and shelter.

In the end, education as a priority is essential but as New York City indicates, Mayor Bloomberg, after more than eight years in command of the city, needs much more than education as a priority to keep New York City afloat.

Michel Joseph Martelly will have to prepare and implement a complete vision for Haiti that includes complete security in the territory, decent infrastructure and sane institutions to root the population in their localities with economic incubation to put value in each citizen; as such the nation of Haiti will be rebuilt after it has been ravaged by 60 years of national governments that were at best predatory and at worst criminal.

God’s hand was also in the fray, the Republic of Port au Prince that gobbles 80 percent of the national economy was almost destroyed by an earthquake that occurred on January 12, 2010!

Haiti will have to use, as said Michaelle Jean (the former Governor General of Canada), a new paradigm to (re)build a nation filled with promises but that went astray because education for all was not at the center and at the end of all the transactions conceived and elaborated by the government.

October 15, 2011

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