Haiti has chosen to become a poor country?

Due to the ongoing protests and depreciation of the Haitian gourde, this blogger decided to read Etzer Emile's Haiti has chosen to become a poor country: The 20 reasons that prove it. Emile's short book focuses on the period after the fall of the Duvalier regime, which helps condense the text, could also cause readers to overlook the exceptional violence, corruption, and economic malaise made by decisions under the dictatorship. It's difficult to understand the socio-economic crises of Haiti after 1986 without taking into account the uniquely negative impact of the Duvaliers. Nonetheless, Emile is clearly aware of the antiquity of the several problems shaping Haitian economic underdevelopment, but using data from the post-Duvalier period illustrates how Haiti continues to reproduce poverty while other countries in the Latin America and Caribbean  region have reduced it. 

Emile argues from a pro-market perspective that promotes productive activity, protective tariffs, and educational reform. He does mention several differing definitions of poverty by theorists, but anyone expecting Marxist interpretations or what this blog would consider a neoclassical approach of Lundahl will be disappointed. Instead, one can see elements of past Haitian economic theorists in Emile, particularly Edmond Paul. The work of scholar David Nicholls, who wrote extensively about Edmond Paul, Janvier, Auguste Magloire and others who, over 100 years ago, argued in favor of economic reforms, industrialization, self-sufficiency, etc., shows how long Haitians have debated the economic troubles of the country. 

Emile's work, especially in his concern for educational reforms geared toward entrepreneurialism,  the sciences, and mathematics, resembles these past reformers. He even appears to echo some of them in his calls for educational reform that pushes Haitian youth towards business, math, and science instead of things like poetry or managing wealth over creating it. Clearly, Haitian graft, social conflict, corruption, and dependency have deep roots. Consequently, a thesis on Haitian underdevelopment must adopt a larger time frame, perhaps akin to Leslie Péan's work on the political economy of corruption.

However, where I take issue with Emile's book is the somewhat arbitrariness of 20 distinct reasons, as well as the focus on the post-1986 period. Many of the 20 reasons are hardly unique to Haiti, such as the middle-class living above its means. They are not unique to Haiti since they're common in places like the US or Canada. Indeed, elite opposition to raising wages is also common in the US, so the Haitian upper-class are not alone. Corruption, like monopolistic businesses or corporations, are also not limited to Haiti or the 'Global South.' 

Nor do I find irresponsible behavior towards the environment to be exceptionally Haitian. Moreover, Emile does not address the concerns about a potential mining industry in Haiti bearing negative consequences for the environment, despite acknowledging past bad deals with SEDREN or Reynolds. Furthermore, while it is certainly the fault of Haitian leaders and the private sector, ultimately, for the abysmal conditions of life, Emile does not question the nature of globalization and international markets which structurally keep poor nations trapped. 

In spite of a few quibbles I have with it, this remains a very useful book and source for statistics on contemporary economic troubles of Haiti. The wastefulness of the national electric company, for example, was astonishing. The problem of a focus on rent-seeking instead of production and exports is explained very well by the author. Haiti's missteps with full liberalization of the economy as a disaster is not ignored at all, since it raised unemployment and contributed to the destruction of agricultural production. Surely, Haiti definitely needs to diversify trading partners, too. 

Dependence on the US, Dominican Republic, Canada, or, recently, Venezuela for oil, will not work and the nation must look to forge partnerships and trade with countries in Asia or Africa. Successful examples abound, such as Jamaica and the DR expanding economic ties to Asia, BRICS or even Senegal expanding the market for its exports. Undoubtedly, there must be a change with relations to the Haitian Diaspora, too. Remittances that don't serve towards wealth-generating activity will leave Haiti dependent on the Diaspora while contributing to Haiti's trade deficit as that money is used to purchase imports. There must be a change with regards to the role of the Diaspora in the economic affairs of the country. 

Operation Bootstrap

A short video on Puerto Rico which praises Operation Bootstrap. It appears to be propaganda for the PPD and Operation Bootstrap, and presents it as being part of the economic miracle of the island and a model for economic development across the Global South. Since Haitian intellectuals like Cary Hector have called attention to the Puerto Rico model for understanding transformations like the rise of garment assembly factories in Port-au-Prince, a look at Operation Bootstrap in Puerto Rico is useful. Ayala and Bernabe show how it did little to weaken Puerto Rican reliance on the US, but it did play an important role in industrialization. This video, clearly a product of its time, ignores these contradictions but exemplifies the cultural politics of the PPD at the time (praise Puerto Rican culture or identity while maintaining a dependent relationship on the US). 

The Idea of Haiti: Rethinking Crisis and Development

The Idea of Haiti: Rethinking Crisis and Development, edited by Millery Polyné, is uneven but useful for general and academic audiences. The text consists of a collection of essays and one phone conversation on Haitian development and the need for new narratives and approaches after the 2010 earthquake. Some essays were quite informative and challenged common notions of Haitian underdevelopment or responses to the earthquake, particularly Karen Richman's nuanced explanation of Protestant conversions in Leogane after the catastrophe. Instead of arguing, like some Western journalists did, that Haitians turned away from Vodou after the earthquake because the lwa did not stop the natural disaster (clearly, these US journalists know nothing about Vodou, as Richman demonstrates), Richman argues that we must see the religious landscape of Haiti as fluid and inseparable as people adopted new religious identities for various reasons, often temporary. 

Understanding and respecting Vodou is one of the central themes of the text (McAlister's excellently researched essay on Bois Caiman as a pact with Satan in the eyes of evangelical Christians was also informative) tied to the need for inclusion of grassroots organizations, the peasantry, and the urban lower classes in government and decisions made by NGOs. In a similar context, arguing for the philosophical underpinnings of Haitian univeralist freedom and the importance of the Haitian Revolution, as well as the detrimental impact of the Western powers, indicates the importance of understanding Haiti's history, positive meanings and contributions of the nation, and how Haiti cannot be solely reduced to a aberration of international standards or crises. Patrick Sylvain's essay buttresses these points, too, focusing on the silence of Preval in the aftermath of the quake as a lost opportunity for fostering Haitian solidarity and national identity. The President's failure to speak to the people was, as Sylvain suggests, a form of violence that materialized in protest, anger, social distrust, and lamentable conditions as NGOs and the US became the real arbiters of authority and providing services in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. 

The impact of NGOs on taking away resources from the Haitian state and lacking any real accountability to Haitian citizens is also superbly elucidated by Mark Schuller through his analysis of several camps established after the earthquake for internally displaced people. Moreover, the funding of NGOs and the shift after the Cold War in donors' relationship with NGOs was new information to me, and quite useful for explaining how Haiti became the 'Republic of NGOs. The transformation of Port-au-Prince, also included in the text, was a dry read but the essay on Duvalier's relationship with Kennedy via the Alliance for Progress aid program was an enlightening reminder to the geopolitical and strategic purposes of international aid  the difficulties of delivering that aid to the Haitian state. The author of that essay, Arthus, unfortunately, seems to have a more conservative conclusion that is at odds with most of the other writers, but certainly is in the right for placing part of the burden on the Haitian state for not taking enough measures to ensure compliance with some of the conditions of donors for aid. 

Unfortunately, Yveline Alexis's chapter was the weakest part of the text. It was lacking in enough sources and felt redundant, which is odd given how strong her dissertation on the same subject reads. Regardless, her chapter supports the aforementioned role of remembering the caco resistance as part of Haitian historical memory, just like Bois Caiman, as important in Haitian self-identity and key to local ideas of democracy as rooted in the popular classes. Nesbitt's chapter, alas, was too pedantic for my taste and nothing new from his earlier writings, but useful for introducing new concepts and arguing for Haiti's place in history as part of universal liberation, not as the cause of Haiti's 'ruin' or persistent series of crises. Fischer's essay on Gilden's photography was likewise one of the weaker sections of the text, albeit certainly important for understanding how Haiti is framed by the outside world as exceptional, savage, mysterious, irrational, ultimately working against the possibility of supporting a sovereign Haiti.

For scholars and lay audiences, this is certainly a worthwhile read. The editor's useful introduction places everything into context and the essays, for the most part by Haitians or Haitian-Americans, offer different perspectives that reorient questions of development and what Haiti represents to those more meaningful to Haitians. Instead of blindly supporting NGOs, Western governments, and imperialist or racist readings of Haiti's history and present poverty, one must see Haiti as part of modernity (the incarnation of the radical Enlightenment, to paraphrase Nesbitt) that is a highly complex society in need of multiple solutions (some, seemingly so simple, like formal cadastres). Overall, the text seems consistent with leftist ideas on Haitian development, while some individual essays in the text are more aligned with neoliberal development.