I’m trying to avoid the big story because I believe it’s all an illusion, all ideology:

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The truth contained in the earthquake disaster is tiny. The truth about Haiti is much less sensational and more diurnal. From the perspective of the longue durée, we can see that the earthquake is a minor event when compared to another event that happened in 2008:

The food riots in Haiti were also a result of policies and actions of the international community. Haiti has lost its food sovereignty as a result of decades of foreign-imposed neoliberal measures.

Many people in Haiti argue that the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) eradication of the Haitian pig population, Haiti’s “great stock market crash,” was the first trigger, eventually contributing to the ouster of longtime dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier on February 7, 1986. Under U.S. military supervision, an army junta took over. Its finance minister, Leslie Delatour, imposed a series of neoliberal measures, including currency devaluation, trade liberalization, and lowering Haiti’s tariffs. Today, Haiti is the most “open” economy in the hemisphere.3

In the 1990s, USAID gave hundreds of millions of dollars in direct food aid. The implementation of this aid weakened Haiti’s economy, with free or heavily subsidized U.S. rice underselling the local peasantry; food-for-work programs arriving during harvest when farmers needed hired help the most; and conditionalities such as even lower tariffs and further trade advantages for U.S. businesses.

While it can be argued that Haitian governments can choose to refuse this aid, the majority of their funding comes from international institutions, a situation Haitians call “politics of the stomach.” Not surprisingly, U.S. assistance to Haiti is still laced with conditionalities that benefit U.S. corporate interests.

I wonder if the earthquake aid will come with “conditionalities.”

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

20 replies on “A Word On Haiti: Politics of the Stomach”

  3. Indeed, Charles. Haiti has been and, sadly, will probably continue to be a prime recipient of what Naomi Klein calls economic shock therapy or disaster capitalism.

  4. What kills me is that most Haitians don’t even have high aspirations. Unlike some in the third world, they’re not after a highly modernized society with all its conveniences. I firmly believe that most Haitians would be content with a stable, subsistence-level agrarian society, and I’ll be damned if they’ll ever get a chance at even having that.

  5. Obama ought to be sending all avail. hospital ships national guards and huge relief effort NOW.

    Fuck.

    We sit here debating whether saying this or that word is racist, and people are dying a few miles away and we’re sitting on our collective ass.

  6. Charles,
    I doubt now is the time to make a political point but fine you did. The damage is already done, literally.

    Look, the tragedy of Haiti is multifold. Even the occupation of Haiti by American troops from 1915-1934 doesn’t amount to much compared with the Duvalier dictatorship/dynasty over many decades. The USA is not to blame. Food aid (save for relief and even the distribution of that is problematic) usually comes with stipulations. Haiti is just plain cursed. 30 coups or attempts, denuded forests which aid and abet hurricane destruction (the tress are gone & as a result hurricane gales are far stronger), shoddy housing construction (shanty towns) which clearly aren’t “up-to-code” and erosion. The country is geographically situated in a seismically active and hurricane prone zone. It is a disaster waiting to recur over & over.

    Over 200+ years this country has greatly suffered. That is just a few years younger than our Republic. Can we at least admit that Haiti’s successive governments are mostly held accountable? This is a pity.

  7. That’s something that those who like to throw around labels such as “miserable” and whatever other unpleasant adjective they can think of, chose to overlook. Haiti’s economic woes which have been provoked and exacerbated by the outside world, especially western powers, have been of the same magnitude if not greater than this earthquake. The difference is that the later has had the effect of bringing a quick death without notice to many unsuspecting Haitians, while the former has been nothing short of a vengeful and complicit war that has been waged painfully slow against them since the conception of their Republic.

  8. Lark, the U.S. must certainly share blame. Those conditions you speak of – “shoddy houses” etc. – are the result of a U.S. economic policy in Haiti that resulted in, among other things, mass migration into cities. The structure of Haiti’s government cannot be separated from an entire history of U.S. intervention (clandestine or otherwise) into the country. Haiti, like so many other countries, has been exploited by global capital, positioned as a surplus population, or, in other words, systematically impoverished, and what we are seeing now is the result.

    Moments of disaster are precisely the time maintain a politically critical perspective because they are the very moments when populations are subjected to the most egregious kinds of political exploitation. I applaud Charles for his brief observations.

  12. I would characterize Haiti’s situation as crepuscular. And as it is unlikely to be edging up on a new dawn, it must be on the verge of darkness. I hope I’m wrong.

  14. I remember being on the tarmac getting ready to take a little trip to restore Aristede (?) to power a while back. We ended up not going, thank goodness. Political and economic instability coupled with seasonal and seismic instability is a tough row to hoe.

  15. @8 Wrong. The mass migration to the cities and the destruction of the agricultural sector is entirely due to Poppa Doc seizing farms and giving them to members of his personal militia, the Tonton whatever (ala Mugabe). America has played a historically negative role in Haitian affairs,but to to blame us for the unceasing disaster that is Haiti shows a lack of historical perspective.

  16. @15 indeed. But, the U.S. had no problems with, and in fact SUPPORTED Duvalier as long as he presented himself as an anti-communist dictator. See, that’s the kind of dictator the U.S. doesn’t mind at all. BUT, when a liberation theologist like Aristide gets a bit too much power the U.S. doesn’t think twice about staging a CIA backed coop. Saying that Haiti’s political situation is the fault of Poppa Doc and not the U.S. is like saying that floods are the fault of water and not rain.

  17. @15 I agree with what you are saying, especially your point about Aristide. I was just pointing out that part of your post (mass migration to the cities was a result of US economic policy) was off base. I never implied in my post that the current state of Haiti can be blamed entirely on Poppa Doc. The whole country is a whole bucket of fucked up. The French played a role, as did the Americans, the Haitian people and shit…I read today that Syrian nationals even tried to pull off a coup back in the day.

  20. France has done its own share of dirty moves to screw Haiti over as well – back in 1804, when black Haitians slaves rose up, freed themselves, and declared a republic, France made them pay a massive sum for the loss of its colony. Which of course it stole from native peoples in the first place, and I’m pretty sure the only compensation they got was genocide.

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