"N'ap forme" are the first words that I hear after stepping into an open-air training center high in Haiti's Central Plateau after a nail-biting plane ride across the mountains in a four-seater Cessna. The training center is run by the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP), a Grassroots International partner. N'ap forme is the Kreyol way of saying we are training, literally, we are forming ourselves.
Haiti's fight for basic human rights often finds its way into the Kreyol language's vivid and plentiful proverbs. Sak vid pa kanpe means that a hungry person cannot do anything – literally, an empty sack cannot stand up. Of the many root causes of the current food crisis that is rendering the poor majority of Haitians unable to feed them themselves, the lack of water rights is of utmost significance.
A focus group of Haitian woman in Port-de-Paix concluded that the water problem is what often causes massive hunger. They reported that the water problem is causing "people to die in its hands."
From Jacmel on the tropical blue Caribbean coast we drove up into the southern mountains to Cap Rouge. The main road had been washed away by floods and the route we took was a deeply potholed mix of dirt and gravel making for a very bumpy ride. We were in a rented SUV but saw scores of mopeds (mini motorcycles) carrying anywhere from 3 to 5 people along with their goods navigating the steep climb up the mountains with far more dexterity and speed than us.
The road to Jacmel is paved with good intentions - in fact, it is the best-paved road in all of Haiti. I was told that the road was built by France as a friendship gift to Haiti, but Haitians don't see it as enough repayment for all that France has taken from Haiti since colonial times. Centuries ago, when France herded African slaves to Haiti to work in the sugar cane plantations, they filled the slave ships returning to France with Haiti's precious tropical timber. Thus began Haiti's deforestation, from which it has never recovered.
From the capital, Port Au Prince, we take a small five-seater plane to the Central Plateau in Haiti's interior. My colleague Maria Aguiar and I are flying to Hinche, the capital of the Department of the Centre. From there we will drive to Papaye to visit Grassroots International's partner the Mouvman Peyizan Papay (Peasant Movement of Papaye), which is convening to celebrate its 35th anniversary and chalk out a plan of action for the next five years.
Hello from Port au Prince! I've just returned to Haiti for the first time since May 2004 and wanted to share my impressions with you.
This week we received a letter from Chavannes Jean Baptiste, Executive Secretary of the Peasant Movement of Papaye, one of Grassroots International's partners in Haiti. His letter highlights the root causes of the ongoing neglect of rural communities in Haiti and the devastation in the countryside due to recent floods. Please read his words below:
Last week Hurricane Noel brought torrential rains and catastrophic floods to nearly the entire nation of Haiti, along with vast swaths of the rest of the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico. The terrible human cost of the storm in Haiti is only now becoming clear.
We need your donation today to help the people of Haiti recover from this disaster and rebuild their lives and their communities.
The hardest hit by this catasrophe are Haiti's poorest, who were already living on the edge of deadly poverty.
Since returning from Haiti, I've had a number of conversations with people wanting to know more about "the situation in Haiti." Many say that they are not convinced that there is any hope, that things are going from bad to worse, that nothing can be done.
Reading the international press, it's easy to conclude that Haiti is a hopelessly violent place. The crushing poverty and claims of a "culture of violence" steer Haiti into a spiral from which it cannot escape. Certainly the poverty is a horrible, unfair burden. Is it "crushing"? Crushing implies inaction, certainly not the case in Haiti.
Editor's Note: Daniel Moss sent this post from Jacmel, a city south of Port au Prince on the Caribbean coast. They visited the small town of La Fond on 21st, the day of the national parliamentary elections.
Please join me in a jeep bumping over river stones with Vigot, an agronomist from KROS, the Regional Coordination of Southeast Organizations. As part of its Resource Rights Initiative, Grassroots International staff visited this remote area to observe up close the work of Haiti's regional peasant associations.
Haiti, as one person told me, is a country of contrasts. This person also told me to be careful that I present all of Haiti with all of its contrasts.
For example, as we drove up mountain after mountain visiting the Haitian countryside, there were farmers moving around doing the business of daily life. They were tilling fields on the side of a mountain with hoes. Their backs and arms were bent at angles that made them seem more like acrobats and dancers than farmers. There were women and children smiling as they fetched water and carried it in buckets on top of their heads.
Editor's note: Grassroots' staff members Daniel Moss and Azalia Mitchell have traveled to Haiti to visit with our partners and allies and to assess the situation on the ground after this winter's Presidential elections and this week's parliamentary run-offs. Azalia has sent along her first impressions of Haiti (below) and we hope we will hear more from them in the coming days.
In Port au Prince there are obvious signs letting a visitor know that presidential elections were recently held. Hanging from buildings, telephone wires and poles are huge banderoles reading: "Rene Preval: President" and "Everyone in Agreement: Magnigat for President." The Preval banners, as it turns out, proclaim the results of the election, while the Magnigat are reminders of his supporters' disappointment.
Grassroots International applauds the relatively peaceful manner in which Haiti's elections were carried out on February 7th. The long lines of people, determined to vote, who waited more than eight hours for their turn at the polls are a sign of the hunger of Haitians for meaningful democratic participation. We believe that the elections in Haiti as an important step on the road to democracy and one of the only ways for Haiti to move forward out of the current political impasse.
We are pleased to present to our readers this report prepared by the electoral observers from the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH) in Haiti (a member of Grassroots partner, POHDH–Haitian Human Rights Platform) summarizing their first hand observations with regard to yesterday's elections.
The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), its Chilean member Human Rights Defense Committee (CODEPU) and its partner organization in Haiti, the National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH) together demand the immediate suspension of General Eduardo Aldunate from his post as Deputy Commander in the military force of the United Nations Stabilizing Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).
General Aldunate belonged to the National Intelligence Agency (DINA), the political police force during Pinochet's regime (1973-1990). The DINA was responsible for 3,000 extrajudicial executions, 1,200 disappearances and the torture of 30,000 political prisoners. General Aldunate is also suspected of having been a member of the "Mulchen Brigade", which was responsible for the illegal confinement and assassination of Mr. Carmelo Soria in July 1976. Mr. Carmelo Soria was a Spanish diplomat then in charge of the United Nations Economic Commission in Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) in the Santiago headquarters.
More than 300 peasants from the departments of the South, the West, the Center and the Artibonite were assembled the 22 of August, 2005, in Petite Rive, Artibonite for the 214th anniversary
On July 14, the body of Haitian journalist and activist Jacques Roche was found. Roche had been kidnapped, tortured and killed. (Read the Reuters report here.)
This week, a coalition of human rights organizations, alternative development groups, public health advocates, women's groups and other civil society organizations have issued a statement emphasizing Roche's contributions as an activist--for example, he organized traveling art and photography exhibitions to educate communities and to encourage resistance to privatization and free trade schemes like Haiti's Zona Franca on the border of the Dominican Republic, which replaced some of the last productive, fertile land on the Maribahoux plain with sweatshops.
With just a few months to go before this fall's scheduled elections, voting officials in haiti are several million registered voters behind schedule. At the same time, hundreds of Haitians are taking to the sea in an attempt to escape the crushing poverty and violence of their home, the poorest country in the western hemisphere. (See Jim Lobe's "Another Regime Change in Trouble," for details.) While a wave of kidnappings of foreign nationals have made headlines and cued the U.S. and Canada to send all non-essential diplomatic personnel home, for the vast majority of Haitians, the lack of food, water and work at livable wages are just as terrifying.
