the wages of haiti's dictatorship

36 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN December 1994

Athin layer of soot falls continu-ously on Port-au-Prince, a visitor reports. This black dust is not

so much the fallout of two years of in-ternational oil embargo as of two cen-turies of economic myopia. Made indis-criminately from any wood, charcoalpowers dry-cleaning plants, bakeriesand the cookstoves of the richÑthepoor burn their wood only once. Morethan 90 percent of Haiti has reportedlybeen denuded, leaving the country be-reft of natural resources crucial to itseconomic survival.

Wallace Turnbull, a missionary whohas spent most of his life in Haiti, onceasked oÛcials why they did not im-port cheap kerosene to reduce de-forestation. They replied, he says,that such largesse would endangerthe proÞtable tax on diesel fuel be-cause people might adulterate thekerosene to run trucks. Other oÛ-cials, meanwhile, were exportingcharcoal to the neighboring Domin-ican Republic, where environmentalregulations forbid its production.

This kind of bizarre subtextseems typical of the Haitian land-scape. Barbara Lynch of the FordFoundation recounts how the Hai-tian army destroyed tree seedlingsthat were part of a reforestationproject. Although the trees mighthave been good for the environ-ment and hence the country as awhole, she explains, the rural devel-opment program that planted thembrought peasants together. The re-sulting coalition diminished thearmy and the Tonton MacoutesÕcontrol over the countryside, threat-ening the long-standing arrange-ments by which they Òextracted re-sources upward.Ó

Political and economic power areoften closely linked, but in Haiti the

two became almost indistinguishable.The government, according to Michel-Rolph Trouillot of Johns Hopkins Uni-versity, had Òno role other than as apredatory mechanism for the elite.ÓViewed in this light, many counterpro-ductive aspects of the Haitian economycan be understood not simply as short-sighted individualism run amok butrather as trade-oÝs between the per-ceived utility of higher proÞts for theislandÕs owners and the risk that anymoney trickling down might upset theestablished imbalance. Lynch notes thelack of investment in the simplest ofinfrastructure: roads, schools and pub-

lic utilities, even in rich neighborhoods. Some of the elite have made a proÞt

from both the instigation and the after-math of environmental destruction.Government lands near Port-au-Princeserved as free quarries for concrete tobuild mansions, Trouillot says, but theresulting erosion loaded nearby riverswith sediment. The delvers then truckedin potable water from more distant riv-ers and sold it to those whose supplythey had rendered undrinkable.

Yves Renard, director of the Carib-bean Natural Resources Institute, re-ports malign neglect throughout thecountryside, where hoe-based farmingmethods have not changed substantial-ly since the early 19th century. Wealthylandowners had little incentive to raisetheir opponentsÕ standard of living, andpeasants saw no reason to improvetheir husbandry as long as those abovethem stood ready to extract whateversurplus they might produce. Turnbullrecalls how the annual harvest of man-goes from the village of Marmont, nearSt. Michel in central Haiti, dwindledfrom $60,000 to nothing in two yearsduring the late 1980s, as farmers cutthe trees to make perhaps $15,000worth of charcoal.

The current challenge for Haiti is toset such a self-destructive system on asustainable path. The U.S. occupationhas mitigated the traditional means ofenforcing distinctions of wealth andpower, but most of the perverse incen-

tives are still in place. Initial U.S.plans for funneling half a billiondollars of aid to the island havecalled for the standard measuresthat the International MonetaryFund and the World Bank imposeon supplicants: cutbacks in gov-ernment spending (a near oxy-moron here) and removal of tariÝson imported goods.

This ÒurbanÓ plan, drafted with-out input from the incoming Min-istry of Agriculture, could be disas-trous, Trouillot warns. If importedfoodstuÝs undercut local produc-tion, the poor will become evenpoorer, and the last nonÐÞrewooduse of the land will disappear.

As Renard points out, however,simply injecting capital into the ru-ral economy could easily do moreharm than goodÑeither reinforc-ing existing inequalities or creatingnew ones. Wise investments maydepend on getting people forciblysilenced for nearly 200 years tospeak up and on having a govern-mentÑcurrently as bereft of inde-pendent power as any of its prede-cessors ever wereÑin a position tolisten to them. ÑPaul Wallich

DEFORESTATION, carried out by manual labor-ers, reßects the eliteÕs economic shortsightedness.

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count. Peters says the tests cannot beblamed: they are highly sensitive. In-stead he argues that most of the nega-tive cases, if investigated, would befound to stem from bacterial pneumo-nia and other known causes of respira-tory distressÑafter all, oÛcials have es-timated that some 50,000 cases of res-piratory failure occur in the U.S. everyyear, and many of these cases are nev-er adequately explained.

But the undiagnosed cases of appar-ent pulmonary syndrome from the FourCorners region and elsewhere intriguePetersÕs co-worker Sherif R. Zaki. ÒAfterI get out from under [the Sin Nombreinvestigation],Ó he says, Òmy Þrst planis to go back and see what caused thedeaths of these other patients.Ó Afterall, it is always possible that yet anoth-er unknownÑand deadlyÑvirus is onthe loose.. ÑJohn Horgan

THE ANALYTICAL ECONOMIST

The Wages of HaitiÕs Dictatorship

Copyright 1994 Scientific American, Inc.