Haiti in the Aftermath of the Earthquake:

The vicissitudes of a Neo-Trusteeship

American Political Science Association

Washington DC

August 29th, 2014

Robert Fatton Jr.

University of Virginia

1

On January 12, 2010, a major earthquake known as

Goudougoudou1 devastated Haiti killing more than 220,000 people and

destroying its already weak and inadequate infrastructure. This

catastrophe highlighted and exacerbated the patterns of social

exclusion, rural neglect, wrenching poverty, and geographical

centralization that have characterized the country. Beyond this

horrible toll and the atrocious pain and trauma Haitians endured, is

the reality that politically, economically, and socially the country was

and remains at ground zero.

In the midst of the cataclysm, however, Haitians showed a new

sense of solidarity and citizenship that offered a glimpse of an

alternative order, a new and more democratic society. The

earthquake became a relative equalizer; but it soon became clear that

the small, well-off minority was extricating itself from this crisis far

more quickly and easily than the poor majority. While death and

devastation affected all irrespective of class or color, old divisions

and social reflexes soon reasserted themselves. The hard realities of

severe material constraints, entrenched class interests and foreign

intrusions undermined the possibility of establishing a more

2

inclusive social pact between the privileged few and the poor

majority.

In fact, in the aftermath of the earthquake, Haiti’s limited

sovereignty eroded further. The country was turned into a virtual

trusteeship under a wave of humanitarian interventionism and

international plans of reconstruction. It became part of what I call the

outer periphery,2 a new zone of catastrophe; a zone created by four

decades of neo-liberalism. This is a zone of generalized inequities

and ultra cheap wages whose politics offers a simulacrum of electoral

“democracy” under the tutelage of a self-appointed “international

community.” It comprises the states that conventional wisdom

defines as “fragile“ or “failed states.”3 I prefer to call them instead

the states of the “outer periphery.”

I have coined this label because “failed state” theorists tend to

argue that failed states are the product of their own traditional

culture, which resists in dysfunctional ways the liberalizing,

progressive, and rational impact of globalization. These theorists

contend that failed societies can be “fixed” only if they abandon their

“backward looking” norms and embrace “modernity” and its triad,

3

the “rule of law,” liberal democracy, and the capitalist market. In

turn, this transformation is impossible without the full cultural,

economic, and often-military intervention of a Western-led

international community.4

Haiti’s continuous economic and political crises and the

devastating earthquake opened wide the door to imperial intrusions,

which had already established their deep imprints. A supranational

body called the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC)5

displaced the country’s already weak and ineffective government.

Created in Washington by key figures in the State Department with

the help of American private consultants and lawyers, the

Commission was parachuted with little warning on the Haitian

government.6 While it eventually underwent some changes under

the impetus of the René Préval administration and some other major

international players, it clearly demonstrated the limits of Haitian

sovereignty. In April 2010, the Haitian Parliament voted for a state of

emergency law giving the Commission complete authority to

determine the country’s future until October 2011.

4

The Commission aimed to achieve “the coordinated, effective

and efficient planning and implementation of priorities, plans and

projects in support of Haiti’s recovery and development in the wake

of the 12 January 2010 earthquake.” Moreover, it received the

mandate to “be responsible for continuously developing and refining

development plans for Haiti, assessing needs and gaps and

establishing investment priorities.” Finally, the IHRC was to

“operate within the framework of the State of Emergency Law and

[was] vested with all the power and authority necessary to conduct

its activities.”7

Co-chaired by the Haitian Prime Minister and “a prominent

non-Haitian official involved in the reconstruction effort,”8 who

happened to be former US President Bill Clinton, the Commission was

unaccountable to any Haitian representative body. All decisions

made by the IHRC were “deemed confirmed” unless vetoed by

Haiti’s president within 10 business days after formal notification.9

Thus, the Commission maintained a legal façade of ultimate Haitian

authority, but in reality, it placed the country under “l’International,”

5

the word Haitians use to describe the major powers and

organizations of the foreign community. 10

The 24 voting members11 of the Commission were equally

divided between a number of Haiti’s government officials and civil

society organizations on the one hand, and foreign powers and

organizations, on the other. Apart from the representative of the

Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the other foreign voting

members came from institutions or countries that “pledged to donate

at least US$100,000,000 for the reconstruction of Haiti over a period of

two consecutive years, or that [had] pledged at least US$200,000,000

in debt relief to Haiti.”12

The Commission is now defunct, though the current Martelly

administration recently revived and reformed it along more

nationalistic lines as the Cadre de Coordination de l'Aide Externe

(CAED).13 Haiti, however, remains utterly dependent on the external

community for its security and financial survival. The presence of

the so-called Mission des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en Haïti,

(MINUSTAH), a contingent of some 13,000 United Nations

6

peacekeepers, as the primary organized coercive force operating in

the country has emasculated further the Haitian state.

Both, the Interim Commission and MINUSTAH were conceived

with very little national debate or discussion. They defied the

nation’s sovereignty and have been unrepresentative of Haitian

aspirations. For instance, the Commission had neither a peasant nor

a refugee camp representative on its board. The Commission was

instead an urban, elite, and foreign phenomenon pretending to speak

for the countryside and the poor. For its part, MINUSTAH was the

vehicle used by the United States to “pacify” the country in the

aftermath of President Aristide’s forced departure from office in 2004.

While American and French troops initially filled the vacuum created

by this departure, neither Washington nor Paris was willing to play a

praetorian role for the medium or long term. MINUSTAH was thus

called to fulfill the strategic interests of the United States.

In a 2008 cable publicized by Weakileak, former Ambassador

Janet A. Sanderson stated that without “a UN-sanctioned

peacekeeping and stabilization force, we would be getting far less

help from our hemispheric and European partners in managing

7

Haiti.”14 Moreover, the cable noted that if MINUSTAH were to leave

Haiti, it could lead to "resurgent populist and anti-market economy

political forces—reversing gains of the last two years.”15 Finally,

Sanderson emphasized bluntly the vital strategic role of MINUSTAH:

The UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti is an indispensable tool

in realizing core USG policy interests in Haiti…. There is no

feasible substitute for this UN presence. It is a financial and

regional security bargain for the USG. USG civilian and

military assistance under current domestic and international

conditions, alone or in combination with our closest partners,

could never fill the gap left by a premature MINUSTAH

pullout. The U.S. will reap benefits from this hemispheric

security cooperation for years to come—but only if its success is

not endangered by early withdrawal.16

The UN troops, however, have never been popular in Haiti

except in some sectors of the ruling class. While most Haitians may

have initially tolerated MINUSTAH as a necessary evil to prevent a

8

descent into hell, it violated their most basic sense of sovereignty.

Very soon the population saw MINUSTAH as an occupying force

rather than a peacekeeping contingent. MINUSTAH’s human rights

violations in its fight against the so-called Chimères in the slums of

Port-au-Prince,17 and more importantly its clear connections with the

cholera epidemics18 as well its soldiers’ infamous rape of a young

Haitian exacerbated its already tense and difficult relations with the

local population. Most Haitians shared the feeling of fishermen in

the town of Abricots in the Grande Anse region who likened

MINUSTAH to the lionfish that have invaded Haitian waters and

depleted them of other fish species. According to the fishermen, the

lionfish are like MINUSTAH because "li gen anpil koule e li dezod

anpil"—they have many colors and they are extremely destructive.19

MINUSTAH’s unpopularity was compounded by the Interim

Commission’s inadequacies in reconstructing the country and not

surprisingly Haitians have come to resent both institutions.20 In fact,

nationalistic sentiments and unfulfilled foreign promises of

rebuilding the country have nurtured an increasingly powerful

disenchantment with the international community as a whole. While

9

the programs of reconstruction elaborated by the International

Financial Institutions in the aftermath of January 12 have paid lip

service to agricultural renewal, economic decentralization, and

building state-capacity, in reality, they are “old wine in new bottles.”

These programs continue to privilege the development of both the

assembly industry sector because of Haiti’s ultra-cheap labor, and

agricultural exports principally mangoes and coffee. In fact, they

echo the failed policies of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

For the past thirty years, the major financial institutions and

donors of foreign assistance have deliberately bypassed the state to

fund non-governmental organizations. These policies have

weakened governmental institutions to the point that at the time of

the tragic earthquake of January 12, 2010 the Haitian state was utterly

incapable of responding to the catastrophe. It was a powerless shell

at the mercy of the international community. And yet, in the

aftermath of the earthquake, the pattern of foreign assistance has

continued to bypass the government and reinforced state incapacity.

As Paul Farmer has pointed out in the foreword to the Report to the

Special Envoy for Haiti: “with over 99 percent of relief funding

10

circumventing Haitian public institutions, the already challenging

task of moving from relief to recovery—which requires government

leadership, above all—becomes almost impossible.”21

Of the $2.43 billion committed or disbursed in humanitarian

funding only $25 million was provided to the Government of Haiti.

Moreover, Haitian NGOs were virtually excluded from relief or

recovery funds. Only two—Perspectives pour la Santé et le

Développement (Prospects for Health and Development) and Adventist

Development and Relief Agency Haiti—received funding that amounted

to only an embarrassing $800.000.22 In fact, a significant portion of

both relief and recovery assistance funded organizations located in

the donor countries themselves. For instance, more than “75 percent

of USAID funds went to private contractors inside the Washington

DC “Beltway.”23

The Haitian state’s incapacity to become an effective vehicle for

the resolution of the most pressing problems confronting the country

is thus not just a reflection of an enduring domestic political crisis, it

is also the direct result of the type of foreign intrusions and

interferences that have marked the island’s history. In this

11

perspective, if Haiti is a “failed state,” it is also because the world

economy itself is a failed world economy. This failure is vividly

demonstrated by the post earthquake economic slogan, “Haiti is open

for business.” The cruel irony is that the slogan is nothing but a

repackaged plans of the failed policies of the Jean-Claude Duvalier

regime. Not surprisingly, capital itself does not believe in the slogan.

In reality the country’s political instability and lack of

infrastructure, characteristics of its outer peripheral nature, have

discouraged foreign investors. For instance, while direct foreign

investments may have increased to a record high in 2011, they

amounted to only $181 million,24 compared to the $ 2.371 billion the

Dominican Republic received.25 Moreover, in the 2012–2013 Global

Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum, Haiti ranked a

miserable 142nd out of 144 nations.26 Similarly, in the World Bank’s

“ease of doing business” index, Haiti ranks 174 out of 183.27

The continued absence of productive capital investments in an

outer periphery like Haiti is no accident. It reflects the preferred

movement of capital on a world scale. What James Ferguson writes

about Africa applies even more trenchantly to the realities of Haiti:

12

“Capital does not “flow” from New York to Angola’s oil fields, or

from London to Ghana’s gold mines; it hops, neatly skipping over

most of what lies in between…. Capital is globe-hopping, not globe-

covering.”28

Capital has thus largely “hopped over” and bypassed Haiti.

The logic of privatization, state withdrawal, and market “rationality”

unleashed by globalization and accentuated by post-earthquake

policies has debilitated further Haiti’s already fragile governmental

capacity, national infrastructure, and tenuous sovereignty.

Paradoxically capital creates zones that are so devastated that it no

longer seeks to penetrate them. In fact, Haiti is a geographical space

occupied and managed by “peace-keepers” and non-governmental

organizations of a self-appointed “international community.”

Promoted by International Financial Institutions as the substitute of

corrupt and “failed states,” NGOs have unwittingly become part of

the neo-liberal “assemblage of occupation”29 in post disaster and post

“regime change” nations.

To that extent Haiti’s domestic economic policies are largely

framed abroad in the headquarters of the major international

13

financial institutions. Similarly, Haiti’s electoral process is heavily

funded by foreign powers and under the surveillance of their

apparatus of democratic legitimation, which imposes strict limits on

political choice.30

While Haiti owes much of its problems to its own domestic

social forces and processes, it is also the product of the history of its

subordinate incorporation into the world economy.31 The interaction

between imperial actors and Haitian rulers has created the country’s

massive dependence on l’international. This dependence, however,

does not entail the absolute subservience of the former to the desires

and objectives of the latter. In fact, Haiti’s internal politics, class

structure, material environment, and cultural matrix mediate the

imperial reach of l’international.

In other words, while the major players of l’ international seek to

maximize their control and minimize the costs of their domination

over the country, Haitian rulers maneuver to keep a degree of

autonomy and extract badly needed scarce resources from

l’international itself. There is thus a space for negotiating the extent of

domination and dependence. This space varies depending on

14

statecraft, chance, and geopolitical realities. What is clear, however,

is that Haiti must conform to what Alasdair Roberts has referred to as

the “logic of discipline;”32 a logic that has compelled virtually all

nations to devise policies and institutions that protect and insulate

the interests of global capital from democratic practice.

Integrated into the margins of the margin of the global

economy, starved of direct foreign investments, and compelled to

engage in ultra-cheap labor activities for exports, Haiti is at the

farthest end of the global production process, trapped in the outer

periphery. It has come under the control of NGOs and IFIs. It lacks

the basic bureaucratic apparatus to execute the policies and laws that

it promulgates. The earthquake exacerbated these dire conditions

and pushed Haiti into a social impasse.

In fact, the American military and humanitarian intervention in

the aftermath of the quake demonstrated the complete helplessness

of the Haitian state under the Préval administration. It had neither

the institutional capacity nor the resources to deal with the

catastrophe. Once more the country was turned into a “laboratory”

for humanitarian assistance and worldwide charity. The laboratory

15

is the result of a pattern of decades-long interventionism by major

world powers and organizations. In fact, the most significant

moments in the last 30 years of Haiti’s history would not have

occurred had it not been for some form of imperial ingérence in its

internal affairs.33

This interventionism has varied from covert support for coups,

to foreign imposition of economic sanctions and embargoes, and to

outright military occupation and heavy-handed

“humanitarianism.”34 The orchestration and funding of elections, as

well as their final outcomes, have also deeply reflected imperial

decisions and interests. Thus, for instance, President Aristide’s

return to power in 1994 as well as his forced departure into exile ten

years later, 35 would have been impossible without the massive

intrusion of the United States, France, and Canada. More recently,

the election of Michel Martelly as President in 2010 would have been

unthinkable had it not been for the controversial involvement of

l’international.36 Haitian rulers are the product of their own

idiosyncratic milieu, but both their ascendancy to, and downfall from

16

positions of power are dependent on external as well as internal

forces.

The confluence of continuous imperial interferences and

domestic forces in the making of Haiti’s predicament explains why

treating the country, as a “failed state” is so erroneous. The Fund for

Peace, which has placed Haiti seventh among the worst ten “failed

states” on the planet,37 measures failure using indicators that are

primarily derived from the internal political economy of a society. In

other words, state evisceration, economic decline, social conflicts, and

political instability are all traced back to local mismanagement,

corruption, and culture. It is as if, the unbroken pattern of imperial

interventions in Haiti had nothing to do with the country’s massive

failures. In reality, it is only by analyzing the opportunistic

convergence of interests between reactionary domestic social forces

and imperial powers that we can begin to understand what is wrong

with Haiti. Dependence, agricultural collapse, military coups, and

state disintegration, are intelligible only through the prism of this

convergence of interests, which has ultimately set Haiti in the outer

periphery. The country’s dire condition is the product of the

17

hierarchical interconnections between local and global political

economies that continuously reproduce the massive disparities of

power and influence of our current global system.

As a state of the outer periphery, Haiti is at the extreme lower

end of the production process with wages that barely assure the

biological reproduction of the individual worker, let alone of his or

her household. It is afflicted not only by ultra-cheap wages and

abysmal social inequities, but it is also dominated by unusually high

rates of unemployment and a vast informal sector. In addition, its

political system is a simulacrum of representative democracy in

which fraudulent elections are more or less regularly held. These

elections are not merely financed but also certified as “free and fair”

by outside powers and “pro-democracy” organizations that are

poorly rooted in the local terrain. Finally, Haiti lacks the state

apparatus to establish any effective sovereignty over its territory,

finance, and security.

Not surprisingly Haiti has an increasingly dependent relation

with its relatively poor neighbor, the Dominican Republic (D.R.). In

fact, the D.R.’s altruistic reaction to Goudougoudou should not mask

18

the reality that Haiti has become its periphery. Moreover, it is clear

that like many “disaster capitalists,” powerful Dominican economic

agents have been eager to be part of what former U.S. Ambassador

Kenneth Merten called the “gold rush” precipitated by

Goudougoudou itself.38 The earthquake had positive effects on the

D.R. as its territory was used as a major conduit to provide assistance

to Haiti, and as several major Dominican firms have been directly

engaged in the reconstruction effort. In fact, it is estimated that in

2010, 2 percent of the 7.7 percent rise of the D.R.’s GDP was due to its

role in the relief operation.39

The D.R.’s economic involvement in Haiti actually predates the

earthquake. It took off in the early 1990s at the time of the economic

embargo imposed by the international community on Haiti as a

result of the military dictatorship of General Raoul Cédras. Since

then, the involvement of the D.R. in Haitian affairs has become

significant. Trade between the two countries is “nearly

unidirectional” as the D.R. exports to Haiti are estimated to total $2

billion in 2012.40 Haiti depends on the D.R. for 30 percent of its

imports and 10 percent of its GNP. Clearly, the Dominican Republic

19

and Haiti have relations that are looking increasingly like those

characterizing core and peripheral countries. Moreover, the D.R. is

now bent on exploiting ultra-cheap Haitian labor in Haiti itself or

near the frontier. This new Dominican strategy seeks to limit the

political costs of massive inflows of poor Haitians into its heartland

by locating certain manufactiring firms in Haiti itself.

Haiti’s increasing dependence on the D.R. is only one aspect of

its outer peripheral status; a more critical symptom is the evisceration

of the state. This evisceration is not only the product of the venality

of the Haitian political class; it is also the direct product of neo-liberal

policies that have consistently undermined state capacity. The

structures of the global economy impose therefore strict limitations

on the degree of autonomy that Haitian rulers can achieve. These

rulers are not helpless, however, they can manipulate their domestic

political environment and strategic choices to achieve certain

objectives. The recent history of Haiti’s relations with Cuba and

Venezuela demonstrates well the manipulative and creative capacity

of Haitian rulers in crafting their diplomacy.

20

It is well known that the United States strongly opposed the

further development of Haitian relations with Havana and Caracas.

Between 2006 and 2008, the U.S. had sought to block, and then

undermine, the PetroCaribe agreement that former President Préval

signed with Venezuela,41 even though the American Embassy

acknowledged that it “would save [Haiti] USD 100 million per

year.”42 Janet Sanderson, the American Ambassador, warned Préval

and his senior advisers that “a deal with Chavez would cause

problems with us.” She cautioned them against “the larger negative

message that [the PetroCaribe deal] would send to the international

community at a time when the GOH [Government of Haiti] is trying

to increase foreign investment.”43 Ultimately, the Préval

administration defied the U.S. and implemented the PetroCaribe

plan.

Moreover, to the dismay of Ambassador Sanderson, Préval

decided to attend as a “special observer” the summit of the

Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) in Venezuela for the

express purpose of finalizing a tri-lateral assistance agreement

between Haiti, Venezuela, and Cuba.44 Not surprisingly, Préval’s

21

determination to defend Haiti’s national interest contributed to the

deterioration of his relations with the United States. Ambassador

Sanderson lamented that Haitian officials did not understand that the

United States was not willing to tolerate a greater regional role for

Venezuela and Cuba.45

In spite of continued American misgivings, Haiti under

President Martelly seems determined to follow Préval’s friendly

foreign policy towards both Havana and Caracas. This policy is more

than just a matter of establishing some independence from

Washington; it responds to the simple reality that unlike other

foreign donors, Venezuela is willing to provide foreign assistance to

the Haitian state itself instead of privileging NGO-led development.

Whatever may be their ideological differences, Haitians have realized

that the results of some 40 years of NGO-led development have been

at best meagre.46 They have come to understand that it is time to

change trajectory. They agree with the analysis of Ricardo Seitenfus,

the former OAS special representative in Haiti, when he denounced

donors and NGOs for their own corruption and lack of transparency.

As he put it:

22

We have hundreds of millions of dollars in the hands of

the NGOs without any sort of social control, without any

transparency, or government management. And we are

accusing the government of Haiti of being corrupt when the

government of Haiti doesn’t even have money in their hands to

be corrupt with! We cannot demand from Haiti what we do

not demand for ourselves… All projects that come in to Haiti

that weaken even more the weak Haitian state, should be

discarded… We cannot make of Haiti a ‘Disneyland’ of the

NGOs.47

It is clear that local institutions remain extremely fragile;

moreover, at this point it would be difficult for them to function but

for the largesse of external donors, which control the country’s

development agenda. In truth, what passes for Haiti’s “civil society”

is largely made up of foreign organizations funded by foreign

sources and controlled by foreign agents. Most so-called “local

NGOs” are linked to transnational entities that are not accountable to

the local population. Moreover, NGOs have created powerful

23

networks that can in fact challenge and/or supplant governmental

policies. Thus, by forming a parallel and mostly internationalized

space within Haiti, NGOs undermine Haitian sovereignty.

With little control over their economy and territory, Haiti’s

politicians are compelled to rely on foreign countries for their

continued hold on office. In the post-Duvalier era, rulers of such

different political persuasions as Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Raoul

Cédras, Gérard Latortue, René Préval, and Michel Martelly rose to,

remained in, and fell from positions of power depending on their

respective relations with France, Canada, and the United States.

There is little doubt, for instance, that Michel Martelly became

President because of the massive interference of the international

community and especially the United States in organizing and

funding the 2010-2011 elections, to the extent of ultimately choosing

the victor.

In October of 2012, Martelly himself acknowledged that his

presidency was in essence “coup proof” precisely because he is the

man of the international community. In an interview on the French

cable television station, France 24, Martelly declared: “Today, there is

24

this peacekeeping unit maintaining order, this force of the United

Nations, the international community that watches over Haiti... Even

if there were a coup d’état against my government, I think it would

not be tolerated. (My translation).”48

While the presence of MINUSTAH may well protect Martelly

from being overthrown, it will not ease the crisis of governance that

has besieged Haiti’s unending transition to democracy. Haitians

perceive the UN troops as an unwelcome occupation force that has

caused a deadly cholera epidemic, been guilty of sexual abuses, and

failed to create the security that it promised. MINUSTAH is thus

contributing to the growing popular discontent with the status quo.

This discontent is stoked by a sense that reconstruction is nothing but

a long trail of unfulfilled promises, that the political system is

paralyzed in futile opportunistic battles, and that the cost of living

which has spiked with the massive influx of foreign NGO staff and

humanitarian aid workers, is prohibitively high for the average

Haitian.

What can be done? While I have little to offer in terms of

remedy for Haiti’s failures, it is clear that the post-earthquake

25

strategies of reconstruction should be reversed because they differ

little from past development efforts and will lead to the same

impasse. In fact, they carry on the export-oriented policies of the late

1970s and they continue to bypass the state. They will merely create

more dependence, food insecurity, and inequalities. In addition, they

are likely to accentuate rural migrations to urban areas, which will

not provide the employment and wages required to avoid the further

expansion of slums. Haiti, as it were, is on its way “back to the

future.”

The key foreign powers and financial institutions funding

Haiti’s post-earthquake developmental project have rejected,

however, any model departing from their neo-liberal dogma. Well

known scholars like Paul Collier and Mats Lundahl, and influential

think-thanks like the Rand Corporation have all embraced forcefully

the neo-liberal industrialization advocated by these powers. For

instance, Lundahl contends that Haiti has to submit to the discipline

of world market prices and take advantage of its cheap labor to

engage in production for export, which at this time implies the

apparel industry. Heviews this strategy as the only viable option.49

26

He rejects as “utopian”50 any plan that would privilege the

development of agriculture and food sovereignty.

Moreover, in Lundahl’s view giving priority to agriculture

leads not only to poor economic outcomes; it is also impractical given

extreme soil erosion, high man-land ratio, and the lack of an effective

titling system. He approvingly quotes Uli Locher who bluntly

asserted in his study of land distribution, tenure, and erosion that

“rural Haiti as we know it is doomed.”51 In addition, Lundahl

contends that feeding Haitians through Haitian agriculture is not

feasible. “Increasing food production [he contends] simply

contributes to soil destruction, to ‘mining’ the soil…. For the process

to be reversed, the man-land ratio must decrease, not increase.”52

Not surprisingly, Lundahl argues that reducing the rural

population can only be achieved by creating employment

“elsewhere, in the context of an open economy, and then there is only

one viable alternative: the manufacturing sector, apparel production,

where Haiti has a comparative advantage in terms of wages and

privileged access to the American market.”53

27

The problem with Lundahl’s argument is that the neo-liberal

strategy he espouses was adopted by Jean-Claude Duvalier’s

dictatorship in the mid-1970s and early 1980s to create the so-called

“Taiwan of the Caribbean.” Instead, it had devastating

consequences. It failed to industrialize the nation; it led to massive

corruption, utter neglect of agriculture, and the creation of vast slums

in the vicinity of the so-called industrial zones. Lundahl offers no

reason to believe that following the same path in the current

conjuncture will lead to a different outcome. In fact, while he

applauds the recently inaugurated free trade area of Caracol in the

northeast of Haiti, he acknowledges that things could go very wrong:

“Unless social services, housing, urbanized villages, etc. are prepared

what you will get is simply a new Cité Soleil or Martissant, with an

impatient and disorderly labor pool.”54

Thus, it is hard to believe that the neo-liberal industrialization

Lundahl advocates is more realistic than a plan giving priority to the

development of agriculture. In fact, an explicit anti-rural bias runs

through the policies favoured by the international community. As

Marc Cohen has pointed out, between “2000 and 2005, aid to

28

agriculture and rural development accounted for just 2.5% of all

official development assistance to Haiti.”55 While privileging the

existing structures of rural production, or a return to some idyllic

nineteenth-century Lakou agriculture, would lead to an impasse, there

is no convincing reason to assume that the modernization of the

countryside need be naively utopian. In fact, the launching of a

coherent agrarian reform, a transition to higher tariff, and a public

plan of re-forestation would do more to employ, feed, and equalize

life chances of Haitians than any neo-liberal industrialization based

on cheap labor and uncertain foreign demands for apparels. On the

contrary, what is utopian is to believe that after investing the bulk of

scarce resources in the apparel industry for more than three decades,

it can now miraculously generate the virtuous cycle of development,

which it has consistently failed to deliver.

This is not to say that export-oriented production should not be

part of a development plan, but it should not be its central driving

force. The agricultural sector, and particularly food production for

the domestic market, should have priority. Again, this

recommendation does not amount to a form of peasant

29

triumphalism, nor is it calling for a return to an idyllic pastoral life.

Instead it entails using agriculture to build a modern infrastructure of

roads, irrigation canals, and electrical plants. Moreover, labor-

intensive methods should be privileged to reduce the high levels of

unemployment and the exodus from the rural areas. To implement

this plan, the Haitian government must first engineer a transition

period to impose certain protectionist measures; the country simply

cannot afford to continue to have an open-door policy that destroys

its domestic economy. This plan is neither radical, nor backward

looking, but it does conflict with the dogma of the international

financial institutions and the interests of powerful domestic and

foreign forces. Unless Haitians decide to take matters in their own

hands and challenge these forces, any plan of this kind is unlikely to

see the light of day.

Taking matters in their own hands is, however, no simple and

easy task for Haitians. It implies adopting an alternative model

based on the protection and reinvigoration of domestic production

that satisfies basic needs and privileges the development of the rural

areas where the majority of Haitians live. It calls for promoting food

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self-sufficiency, the curbing of obscene class, and regional

inequalities, and the development of a sense of national cohesion.

Taking that bold trajectory represents a huge challenge that Haitians

must meet lest the country falls into total economic and political

decay.

NOTES

1 Instead of using the term tremblement de terre in French, or tranblemantè a in Creole, many survivors have called the earthquake by the horrifying sound of the earth shaking, Goudougoudou. Moreover, out of fear that it might return, some Haitians prefer to not name it for what it was, opting instead to use the Creole term bagay la—the thing. 2 Robert Fatton Jr., Haiti: Trapped in the Outer Periphery (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2014).

3 Magui Moreno Torres and Michael Anderson, Fragile States: Defining Difficult Environments for Poverty Reduction (London: Poverty Reduction in Difficult Environments, 2004); Lothar Brock, Hans-Henrik Holm, Georg Sørensen & Michael Stohl, Fragile States: War and Conflict in the Modern World (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012); Robert Rotberg, When States Fail: Causes and Consequences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Pierre Englebert, Africa: Unity, Sovereignty, and Sorrow (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2009); Richard Caplan, “From Collapsing States to Neotrusteeship: The Limits to Solving the Problem of Precarious Statehood in the 21st Century,” Third World Quarterly, 2007, Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 231-244. 4 Stephen Krasner, the former Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the U.S. Department of State under the George W. Bush administration and a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, put it bluntly [“Sharing Sovereignty: New Institutions for Collapsed and Failing States,” International Security, Volume 29, No. 2, (Fall 2004), pp. 86, 119.]:

Left to their own devices, collapsed and badly governed states will not fix themselves because they have limited administrative capacity, not least with regard to maintaining internal security. Occupying powers cannot escape choices about what new governance structures will be created and sustained. To reduce international threats and improve the prospects for individuals in such polities, alternative institutional arrangements supported by external actors, such as de facto trusteeships and shared sovereignty, should be added to the list of policy options…. In a trusteeship, international actors would assume control over local functions for an indefinite period of time.

See also: Robert Keohane, “Political Authority After Intervention: Gradation in Sovereignty,” in J. L. Holzgrefe and Robert Keohane eds., Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge

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University Press, 2003), pp. 275-298; Mark Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007); John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999); John M. Hobson, The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); James Fearon and David Laitin, “Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States,” International Security, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Spring 2004), pp. 5-43; Sebastian Mallaby, “The Reluctant Imperialist: Terrorism, Failed States, the Case for American Empire,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, No. 2 (March-April 2002), pp. 2-7; Stephen D. Krasner and Carlos Pascual, “Addressing State Failure,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 84, No. 4 (July-August 2005), pp. 153-163. On the specific case of Haiti see: Don Bohning, “An international protectorate could bring stability to Haiti,” The Miami Herald, November 23, 2004, accessed at: <http://www.lecontact.com/archives_of_editorials_7.htm>; Gabriel Marcella, “The International Community and Haiti: A Proposal for Cooperative Sovereignty,” Paper presented at the National/International Symposium: “The Future of Democracy and Development in Haiti,” March 17-18, 2005, Washington DC.

5 The site of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), accessed on April 12, 2012, at: <http://en.cirh.ht/about-us.html> is no longer available. On its web page, the US State Department states ironically that “To ensure that the reconstruction is Haitian-led, the U.S. Government coordinates all its recovery assistance through the IHRC.” See “Fast Fact on U.S. Government's Work in Haiti: Interim Haiti Recovery Commission,” accessed on January 15, 2011, at: <http://www.state.gov/p/wha/rls/fs/2011/154141.htm>. 6 Jake Johnston, “Outsourcing Haiti: How disaster relief became a disaster of its own,” Boston Review, January 16, 2014. According to Johnston:

the Commission was presented as a response to the devastation of the earthquake. But its basic tenets—and its slogan, “Build Back Better”—were actually agreed upon by the U.S. and U.N. in the year prior. The commission’s formation was handled not by the Haitian government, but by the staff of the Clintons, mainly Cheryl Mills and Laura Graham, as well as a team of U.S.-based private consultants. The commission’s bylaws were drafted by a team from Hogan Lovells, a global law firm headquartered in Washington, D.C. A team from McKinsey and Company, a New York based consultancy firm, handled the “mission, mandate, structure and operations” of the commission. Eric Braverman, part of the McKinsey team, later went on to become the CEO of the Clinton Foundation.

See also: Cheryl Mills, “Concept Note: Haiti Development Authority.” Unpublished Document. Washington, D.C.: United States Department of State, 4 February 2010. 7 See: Bylaws of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), Effective as of 17 June 2010, p. 5, accessed on April 1, 2012, at: <http://en.cirh.ht/files/pdf/ihrc_bylaws_20100615.pdf>. 8 Ibid. p. 2. 9 Ibid. p. 23. 10 L’International refers mainly to the United States, France, and Canada. More recently, Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela have occasionally been included in the group.

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11 Haiti Libre, “Haïti - CIRH : Liste officielle et complète de tous les représentants” (June 18, 2010), accessed at: <http://www.haitilibre.com/article-390-haiti-cirh-liste-officielle-et-complete-de-tous-les-representants.html>. 12 Ibid. p. 9. 13 Le Nouvelliste, “Le CAED Remplace la CIRH, des Organisations sont à l'Avant Garde,” accessed on November 29, 2012, <http://lenouvelliste.com/lenouvelliste/article/111227/Le-CAED-remplace-la-CIRH-des-organisations-sont-a-lavant-garde.html>; see also, Le Nouvelliste, “Réunions des Bailleurs de Fonds: Le CAED pour Redéfinir l'Aide Internationale,” accessed on May 9, 2013, at: <http://lenouvelliste.com/lenouvelliste/article/116609/Le-CAED-pour-redefinir-laide-internationale.html>. 14 MINUSTAH: [cable 08PORTAUPRINCE1381, WHY WE NEED CONTINUING MINUSTAH PRESENCE IN HAITI, E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/29/2018 TAGS: PGOV PREL HA SUBJECT: WHY WE NEED CONTINUING MINUSTAH PRESENCE IN HAITI], accessed at: <http://wikileaks.org/cable/2008/10/08PORTAUPRINCE1381.html>. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid. 17 Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood. Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment (London: Verso, 2007). 18 Michael Higgins, “UN Peacekeepers to Blame for 7,500 Cholera Deaths in Devastated Haiti: Public Health Expert,” National Post (October 24, 2012), accessed at: <http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/24/haiti-cholera-that-has-killed-7500-blamed-on-un-troops-from-nepal/>. 19 Jessica Hsu, personal communication. 20 Kevin Edmonds, “MINUSTAH’s Upcoming Renewal: A Setback for Democracy in Haiti,” NACLA (October 11, 2012), accessed at: <http://nacla.org/blog/2012/10/11/minustah’s-upcoming-renewal-setback-democracy-haiti>. See also: Mats Lundahl, The Political Economy of Disaster (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 250-265. 21 Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, Has Aid Changed? Channeling Assistance to Haiti Before and After the Quake. New York: Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, June 2011, p. 2. According to this document (p. 15), of the $2.43 billion committed or disbursed in humanitarian funding:

o 34 percent ($824.7 million) was provided to donors’ own civil and military entities for disaster response;

o 28 percent ($674.9 million) was provided to UN agencies and international NGOs for projects listed in the UN appeal;

o 26 percent ($632.5 million) was provided to other international NGOs and private contractors;

o 6 percent ($151.1 million) was provided (in-kind) to unspecified recipients; o 5 percent ($119.9 million) was provided to the International Federation of the

Red Cross and national Red Cross societies; 1 percent ($25.0 million) was provided to the Government of Haiti.

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22 Ibid., pp. 15‒16. 23 Vijaya Ramachandran and Julie Walz, “Haiti: Where Has All the Money Gone?” Policy Paper No. 004 (Washington, DC: Center for Global Development, 2012), p. 13, <http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/detail/1426185>, (May 21, 2012). See also Martha Mendoza and Trenton Daniel, “US Pledge to Rebuild Haiti Not Being Met,” Associated Press, July 21, 2012, <http://news.yahoo.com/us-pledge-rebuild-haiti-not-being-met-170346036.html>; Mark Schuller, Killing with Kindness: Haiti, International Aid, and NGOs. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012. 24 Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2011 (Santiago, Chile: United Nations Publication, 2012), p. 30. 25 Ibid. p. 10. 26 Klaus Schwab ed., The Global Competitiveness Report 2012–2013 (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2012), p. 13. 27 World Bank, Doing Business 2012, Doing Business in a More Transparent World (October 20, 2011), accessed at: <http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings>. See also: Junia Barreau, “Investissements directs étrangers : la difficile équation haïtienne,” Le Nouvelliste (August 28, 2012), accessed at: <http://www.lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid=108334>. 28 James Ferguson, Global Shadows (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 38. 29 Mark Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), p. 27. 30 Jake Johnston and Mark Weisbrot, “Haiti’s Fatally Flawed Election,” January 2011, Updated February 2011, accessed on March 2, 2011 at: <http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/haiti-2011-01.pdf>. 31 See some of the seminal work on the world capitalist economy: Samir Amin, Accumulation on a World Scale, 2 Volumes (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974); Paul Baran, The Political Economy of Growth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1957); Andre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967); Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy. 32 Alasdair Roberts, The Logic of Discipline (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 33 Alex Dupuy, The Prophet and Power (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007); Robert Fatton Jr., Haiti’s Predatory Republic (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2002); Hallward, Damming the Flood. Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment; and Randall Robinson, An Unbroken Agony. Haiti, From Revolution to the kidnapping of a President (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2007) 34 See Paul Farmer, edited by Abbey Gardner and Cassia Van Der Hoof Holstein, Haiti After the Earthquake (New York: Public Affairs, 2011). 35 Dupuy, The Prophet and Power; Robert Fatton Jr., Haiti’s Predatory Republic; Hallward, Damming the Flood. Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment; see also: Robinson, An Unbroken Agony. Haiti, From Revolution to the kidnapping of a President.

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36 Johnston and Weisbrot, “Haiti’s Fatally Flawed Election.”

37 The Fund for Peace, Failed State Index (Washington DC: 2012), pp. 14-17. According to the Fund, Haiti’s index of failures improved since the earthquake, though the improvement had made little difference for most Haitians:

The third-most improved country, Haiti, continues to languish at 7th place, however this is a significant improvement over its 5th-placed finish in 2011 as a result of the catastrophic January 2010 earthquake. Though Haiti improved by a solid 3.1 points in 2012, this should be interpreted merely as a partial return to pre-earthquake levels, recognizing the harsh conditions experienced by Haitians even when there is not the added calamity of natural disasters. Though Haiti did improve in 2012, we should not forget that Haiti was the most-worsened country for 2011. (P. 14).

38 Kenneth Merten, From U.S. Embassy, Port-au-Prince, “TFHA01: EMBASSY PORT AU PRINCE EARTHQUAKE SITREP as of 1800,” (10 PORTAUPRINCE 110), Wikileaks, February 1, 2010 accessed at: <http://wikileaks.org/cable/2010/02/10PORTAUPRINCE110.html#>. 39 Blanca Antonini, Relations Between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (Oslo: Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre, February 2012), p. 6. 40 Agence Presse Média Caraibes, "La balance commerciale reste encore trop déséquilibrée entre Haïti et la République dominicaine," <http://www.maximini.com/fr/news/haiti/economie/-la-balance-commerciale-reste-encore-trop-desequilibree-entre-haiti-et-la-republique-dominicaine--21005.html>; Blanca Antonini, Relations Between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Oslo: Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre, February 2012. 41 The PetroCaribe agreement served well the interests of Haiti; as Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives explain in their article WikiLeaks Haiti: The PetroCaribe Files: “Under the terms of the deal, Haiti would buy oil from Venezuela, paying only 60 percent up front with the remainder payable over twenty-five years at 1 percent interest.” The Nation (June 1, 2011), accessed at: <http://www.thenation.com/article/161056/wikileaks-haiti-petrocaribe-files?page=0,0>. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Mark Schuller, Killing with Kindness: Haiti, International Aid, and NGOs (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012). 47 Gabriel Elizondo,”An Insider's Critique of What Went Wrong in Haiti,” Al Jazeera (January 8, 2011), accessed at: <http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/americas/insiders-critique-what-went-wrong-haiti>. 48 Marc Perelman, “L’Entretien: Michel Martelly, Président Haïtien,” France 24 (October 29, 2012), accessed at: < http://www.france24.com/fr/20121027-2012-lentretien-michel-martelly-president-haiti-seisme-crise-alimentaireeconomique>:

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“Aujourd’hui, il y a cette force de maintien de l’ordre qui est là, cette force des Nations Unies, la communauté internationale qui veille sur Haïti et qui a déjà reconnu notre engagement, notre volonté de bien faire ce combat contre la corruption, et qui supporte la démocratie qui s’installe en Haïti ... Même s’il y avait un coup [d’État] contre mon gouvernement, je pense que ça ne passerait pas. Donc, il y a, à ce niveau-là, un découragement du côté de l’opposition.

See also: Djems Olivier , “Haïti-Politique : Martelly s’Estime à l’Abri des Coups d’Etat, La communauté internationale “Veille “ sur le Pays, dit le Président,” AterPresse (November 1, 2012), accessed at: <http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article13624>. 49 Mats Lundahl, The Political Economy of Disaster (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. xxiv, 284, 341. A similar argument is advanced in Paul Collier, Haiti: From Natural Catastrophe to Economic Security. A Report for the Secretary-General of the United Nations (Oxford: January 28, 2009); Collier contends: "In garments the largest single component of costs is labour. Due to its poverty and relatively unregulated labour market, Haiti has labour costs that are fully competitive with China, which is the global benchmark. Haitian labour is not only cheap it is of good quality." (P. 6). Keith Crane, et al., Building a More Resilient Haitian State (Rand Corporation: 2010). In this RAND report, The anti-rural bias is evident and unambiguously stated:

Some of Haiti’s best prospects for growth are to attract foreign and domestic investment to the garment industry. Haiti has too many people engaged in agriculture. The country is heavily populated, and more land is cultivated than is ecologically sustainable. In contrast, labor-intensive industries, such as garment manufacturing, provide an attractive source of jobs and income, especially given Haiti’s competitive, low-cost labor force. (P. 84).

50 Lundahl, The Political Economy of Disaster, p. 283. 51 Ibid. p. 277. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid. p. xxiv. 54 Ibid. p. 292. 55 Marc J. Cohen, “Diri Nasyonal ou Diri Miami? Food, agriculture and US-Haiti relations,” p. 3, accessed June 28, 2013, at: <http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs12571-013-0283-7.pdf>.