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Tag(s): Conflict; Government; History; NGOs; Other; Power; Protest; State
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April 14, 2008 at 05:41:25

Peter Hallward's "Damming the Flood"

by Stephen Lendman Page 2 of 10 page(s)

www.opednews.com

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-- 1% of Haitians control half the country's wealth;

-- in contrast, the vast majority (over 80%) "endure harrowing" poverty;

-- three-fourths of the population live on less than $2 a day and over half (56%) less than $1 a day;

-- 5% of the population owns 75% of the arable land; and

-- a tiny 5% of elites control the economy, media, universities, professions and what passes for Haiti's polity; six powerful families dominate the nation's industrial production and international trade; they split along two lines: deeply conservative rural landowners (the grandons) and their military allies and the more differentiated "importers, exporters, merchants, industrialists, professionals, intellectuals, academics, jounalists" and others like them; in solidarity, they have contempt for the masses and hold onto privilege through exploitation and violence in a country where class exerts the most powerful influence and workers have no rights.

Under this type dominance and America's iron grip, Haiti has been strip-mined for profits and its people neoliberally crushed. For decades, and especially since the mid-1980s, the country has undergone successive IMF-imposed structural adjustments. They cut wages and the size of the public sector workforce, eliminated tariffs to facilitate imports, directed agriculture to cash crops for exports, privatized public utilities and other state assets, and made Haiti "one of the most liberal trade regimes in the world," according to Oxfam.

These "reforms" slashed Haiti's per capita GDP from $750 in the 1960s to $617 in 1990, $470 in 1994, $468 in 2000, and down to $425 in 2004 - not counting the effects of inflation. In addition, agricultural production was halved by the late 1990s, and wages (even after inflation) dropped from $ 3 - 4 a day in the early 1980s to $1 - 2 a day by 2000. Haiti's official minimum wage at most is $1.80 a day, but even people getting it "survive on the brink of destitution." According to the IMF, that's most of them with 55% of Haitians receiving a daily income of only 44 cents, an impossible amount to survive on.

Other country statistics are just as challenging and show how, without outside aid, the government can't meet its peoples' basic needs:

-- unemployment and underemployment are rampant, and two-thirds or more of workers are without reliable jobs;

-- structural adjustments decimated the rural economy and forced displaced peasants to cities for non-existent jobs;

-- public sector employment is the lowest in the region at less than .7%;

-- life expectancy is only 53 years; the death rate the highest in the hemisphere; and the infant mortality rate double the regional average at 76 per 1000;

-- the World Bank places Haiti in its bottom rankings based on deficient sanitation, poor nutrition, high malnutrition, and inadequate health services;

-- the country is the poorest in the hemisphere with 80% or more of the population below the poverty line; it's also the least developed and plagued by a lack of infrastructure, severe deforestation and heavy soil erosion; a 2006 IMF report estimates Haiti's GDP at 70% of its meager 1980 level;

-- the country's national debt quadrupled since 1980 to about $1.2 billion; half or more of it is odious; and debt service consumes about 20% of the country's inadequate budget;

-- half its population is "food insecure" and half its children undersized from malnutrition;

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I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.

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1 comments

Except for repeated unsuccessful attempts to obtain a full-time job during the 1980s, my adult life has been spent in nuturing, and witnessing the progress of, my very large family. My personal evaluation of this experience is that it has contributed immeasurably to the expansion of my internal capacity to view other human beings as equal members of the human family before a loving Creator, and compellingly equal members of the society politic before our global institutions of government.
MyTwoCentsExcept for repeated unsuccessful attempts to obtain a full-time job during the 1980s, my adult life has been spent in nuturing, and witnessing the progress of, my very large family. My personal evaluation of this experience is that it has contributed immeasurably to the expansion of my internal capacity to view other human beings as equal members of the human family before a loving Creator, and compellingly equal members of the society politic before our global institutions of government.

"Damming the Flood"

Many thanks to Stephen Lendman for another review of another extremely important book.

"Damming the Flood" fills in the big picture on what U.S. human rights groups, such as Quest for Peace and Center for Constitutional Rights, were telling us about Haiti in the 1990s. It transcends Haiti as simply a national story; something big seems to be taking hold in Latin America. Perhaps, as we face deep recession in the U.S., those grassroots forces will redeem our nation also.

by MyTwoCents (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 36 comments) on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 at 1:53:33 PM