"Today we demonstrate. Tomorrow we bring weapons. People are going to get killed."
This is the unashamed statement coming from a member of a violent gang roaming the streets of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, causing mayhem, burning buildings, and using tactics of intimidation to have its preferred candidate declared president of this impoverished Caribbean nation. Haiti's November 28 presidential elections were always fraught with danger and violence especially after the devastation of the country by a powerful earthquake in January.
This event caused massive loss of life, put at approximately 300,000, almost complete destruction of government buildings and infrastructure, and a population still reeling and suffering from the after effects of the quake that left more than 1.5 million people in makeshift shelters. And in recent weeks the capital was gripped by a cholera outbreak that has so far killed more than 2,000 people. So an election held under these very extreme and difficult social circumstances was bound to be problematic.
Long before the elections gangs of unemployed young man had become active in the slums and squatter camps beating, raping and exploiting defenseless and vulnerable woman. Haitian land owners have also "employed" these gangs to forcibly remove destitute people from their lands and in other cases as "rent collectors" who beat and bully those squatters unable to pay. Unemployment has always been a major problem in Haiti but the earthquake destroyed businesses, small and large, boats and other means of livelihood, including livestock and crops.
All of these challenges have acerbated the inherent contradictions in Haitian society that has degenerated into a kind of "dog eat dog, survival of the fittest" where the weak and vulnerable get exploited by the strong and ruthless. Haiti's government, still traumatized and led by an extremely flaccid leader, has not been able to engage the Haitian masses or give strong, capable leadership to the suffering people. President Rene Preval is today the most unpopular political leader in Haiti.
In this social, economic and political mess Haiti, under pressure from the international community and it local elites, was pushed and rushed into a presidential elections in less than passable circumstances. Financed by the European Union to the tune of millions of dollars this plebiscite was supposed to demonstrate the political resilience of the Haitian people and their thirst for democratic rule. Here again the historic colonial relationship between Haiti and the rest of the world came into being with people in Paris, London and Washington dictating what they believe should happen without taking into consideration the reality of the situation on the ground in Haiti.
So why has things gone so horribly wrong?
The crisis of Haitian unemployed workers --" former farmers, peasants, construction workers, craftsmen, domestic workers, farm hands, sex workers and other daily wage laborers --" is not new. It is intimately connected to the Lumpen problem that drives social upheavals, violence and other anti-social behavior in Haiti. For example, parts of the unskilled tier of the fledgling construction sector are penetrated by this element that is now plagued by gangsterism of all kinds.
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