* * * HAITI INFO * * * News direct from the people and organizations of Haiti's democratic and popular movement 10 February 1996, Vol. 4, #8 *** HAITI INFO now has photos in every issue *** Contents: Stories: PREVAL: THE DIFFICULTY OF A CHOICE U.N. COMMISSION POINTS FINGER AT CIA PUPPETS PROTEST NEOLIBERALISM News from Les Cayes: PEOPLE MOBILIZING RAOUL PECK PLEAS FOR LOCAL PRODUCTION Close-up: HAITI'S AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION PREVAL: THE DIFFICULTY OF A CHOICE PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb. 23 - Almost two months after being elected, President Rene Preval announced he has chosen agronomist Rony Smarth as prime minister. The announcement came after weeks of meetings which caused a great deal of discussion, at least in the capital. Despite the fact that the president and parliament are all supposedly from the same Lavalas "family," arriving at an agreement was not easy, and indicates what kind of cohesion is in store for the country in the coming months, especially since the pitiful experience of the FNCD is fresh in everyone's minds. The first and second choices of the Oganizasyon Politik Lavalas, the strongest component of the Lavalas platform, were said to have been OPL leader Gerard Pierre-Charles and Frantz Verella, former Minister of Public Works for Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Other names circulating were Chavannes Jean-Baptiste and Suzy Castor. Smarth, much less in the public eye than any of the others, was rarely mentioned as a candidate, and appears to have been chosen as both a compromise and as someone who would not present as much of a challenge as Pierre-Charles, Verella or Castor who, because of their personalities, could overshadow Preval. As he was obliged to choose someone from, or proposed by, OPL, Preval made the least-bad choice, from his point of view. Smarth's Background Smarth, 55, is currently director of Centre de Recherches Sociales et de Diffusion Populaire (CRESDIP), a non-governmental organization which has published a series of dossiers on Haiti, and he has been for the past five years a chief advisor to Minister of Agriculture Fran ois Severin. Smarth studied law at the State University and then agricultural economy in Chile where he later taught and worked for the governments of Eduardo Frei and Salvador Allende, for the latter in the Corporation of Agrarian Reform until the 1971 coup d'etat. Then, he taught and worked in Mexico, for the U.N. and the government and in Nicaragua for the Sandinista government. Preval's choice has not caused much of a stir from the "traditional" politicians, and understandably so. Smarth is known as a moderate, and although he has not said much about his program, in an interview with Libete this week, while stressing the need to increase national agricultural production, he noted that, although neoliberalism "has limits," "we must try to marry the international demands with our capacity to solve the problems of the population." He also showed clearly his faith in "the market": "The way to [lower prices] is to let competition develop in the private sector." Next Step: Parliament Smarth will next present his program before parliament, which has to ratify him. Astoundingly, a memorable face appeared at the chambers last week: vehement putschist Sen. Eddy Dupiton. Rather than accepting him into its fold, the lawmakers should have voted to have him tried by the Supreme Court, but it appears reconciliation is as strong as ever, even in a Lavalas parliament. U.N. COMMISSION POINTS FINGER AT CIA PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb. 18 - Breaking from United Nations bodies' usual deference to the U.S., albeit a bit late, this week a U.N. Human Rights Commission report openly accused and harshly criticized the actions of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Haiti in a report submitted in Geneva, Agence France Presse reported yesterday. "In addition to the efforts made by the international community to reestablish democracy in Haiti, we are stupefied to learn today that there is another anti-democratic effort which was directed by the CIA, to discredit President Aristide and prevent his return to Haiti," the report said. The report, drawn up following a delegation visit this fall, called on the U.S. to bring to light the "troubling role" the CIA played during the military regime and noted "according to different sources, the CIA appears to have played a double-game vis vis the international community and even the American administration while the military junta was in power... It had numerous contacts with the Haitian army and the head of FRAPH [the death squad Front pour l'Avancement et le Progres Haitien], Emmanuel Constant." The Commission also demanded that the U.S. return the 150,000 pages of documents seized by U.S. soldiers from FRAPH and Haitian army headquarters so that the truth of "where the responsibility lies in each case" and the role of the CIA can be brought to light. [All citations translated from French.] Pages, Constant Still in U.S. Hands In the meantime, some of the 150,000 pages were reportedly delivered to the U.S. embassy several weeks ago, but the Haitian government said it will not accept them piecemeal, only as an ensemble. Press reports say that, in addition to papers, there are videos, cassettes and "trophy photos." The "terms" of the return are still not clear. The U.S. announced that the names of all U.S. citizens and residents will be blocked out, and tried to get the Haitian government to sign an eight- point "memorandum of understanding" where it would promise that "information in the documents... will not be made public or otherwise disseminated in such as way as to risk unlawful repercussions or abuses," that access to them is restricted, and that "records will be maintained of the individuals who have access." So far, it appears the government has refused to sign. In the meantime, Constant is still in the U.S., having apparently decided to appeal his deportation. According to a Dec. 11 memo obtained by The Nation, if he ever is sent back, it will be in "a U.S. plane complete with 'V.I.P.' security and 'no advance notice' for the Haitian government." He will then benefit from "'crowd control' and a 'public affairs strategy' designed to urge Haitians 'to remain calm despite the intensity of anti-FRAPH and anti- Constant sentiment,'" wrote Allan Nairn in an article dated Feb. 26. Nairn also wrote that the CIA is still active in Haiti, having "placed agents inside the rebuilt Haitian National Police," reporting that Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, transition chief of President-elect Rene Preval, told him that in an interview. Although Jean-Baptiste later told Agence Haitienne de Presse that he had not said anything so "formal," Nairn wrote that the "statement has been confirmed by U.S. officials... who say that much of the CIA recruitment took place during... police training" in the U.S. PUPPETS PROTEST NEOLIBERALISM PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb. 22 - This year's Carnival had a new addition to the traditional characters and music. Several popular organizations, cultural groups and a new non-governmental organization made giant puppets who mingled with the merry-makers to protest the imposition of neoliberal policies on the country. Five giant peasant women puppets carried baskets bearing named for regions of peasant struggle, like the Artibonite Valley or Jean Rabel, while a giant, yellow-faced and evil-looking "Structural Adjustment" puppet menaced and three giant letters - I, M, and F - paraded behind. Banners and signs bore slogans like "Stop making money on the backs of the poor," "Let's turn our back on the IMF," "Long live the permanent revolution" and "IMF = Misery" Although the puppeteers did not have time to write and plan out a drama, as some would have liked, on each of the three days of carnival, they paraded amongst the crowd. The giant puppet procession was organized by Platforme Haitienne de Plaidoyer pour un Developpement Alternatif (PAPDA), a new platform about which not much is yet known except that it groups together some non-governmental organizations, popular organizations and peasant groups and says it will be fighting against neoliberalism. A member of the Bread and Puppet Theater in Vermont, USA, who has worked in the domain of popular education groups in Central America came to help in the project, explained Jonathan Pitt, Assistant Executive Secretary of PAPDA. With four days of work, PAPDA, the puppeteer and members of RADA (Rassemblement d'Artistes), Kako Lakay, a cultural association of members of Solidarite Ant Jen (SAJ) and ATP-H (Arts et Techniques Populaires - Haiti), an association dedicated to working with artisans, produced the giant puppets. Students from Ecole Nationale des Arts (ENARTS) also lent a hand. "One of our mandates is to try to raise the level of awareness on economic policy and political economy in Haiti, with a particular reference to neoliberalism," Pitt said. This initiative is a perfect example of the phenomenon described in the previous Haiti Info: the use of Carnival as a place for political expression, not only by the government but also by those fighting for change. News from Les Cayes: PEOPLE MOBILIZING Students and workers here were not distracted by the Feb. 7 change of government in the capital, and already this year both have held protests. On Feb. 5, 600 to 700 students from Lycee Philippe Guerrier, took to the streets in solidarity with teachers who have not received six months of back raises owed them. With about 2,000 students, the lycee is the only public high school in this city of 50,000. In October, 1995, teachers throughout the department held a strike for the same reason. This one was lead by students. "We organized this demonstration to force the minister to pay the professors and to demand that she send the forms for exams," said a member of Komite Revandikatif pou yon Lise Miy (Demands Committee for a Better High School), a student organization. The students, who chanted slogans like "Down with corruption" and "We demand an improved school," marched to local government offices and forced them to close their doors "to paralyze the town so that those in positions of responsibility satisfy our demands quickly," a press release said. "The school is the way it is because they never concern themselves with the running of state schools. They would rather waste the people's money buying beautiful automobiles." The next day, parents contributed 25 gourdes each so exams could take place. A few weeks earlier, on Jan. 19, about 100 former workers from the Dessalines sugar mill demonstrated to demand their severance pay, owed to them since 1991, by blocking the highway between Les Cayes and Jeremie. When security guards at the plant fired in the air, the workers responded with rocks. Nobody was reported hurt. Esterin Paul, General Secretary of Syndicat des Ouvriers, Travailleurs, Employes de la Centrale Dessalines (SOTECD), explained that Raymond Coles, who bought the factory from its Cuban-American owners in 1991, immediately closed its doors and fired three-quarters of the employees. "Since then, we have been mobilizing to get our due pay," Paul said. "Coles is just using the plant as a cover to pull off a sugar-smuggling business... There are workers who spent more than 20 years in the plant. Coles should understand he cannot do whatever he wants with it." The union organized its first demonstration on Feb. 7, 1994, and three years ago filed a legal complaint, but has had no response. At its peak the mill produced 200,000 sacks of sugar per harvest, SOTECD said, adding that although it was closed temporarily in 1990, the Jean-Bertrand Aristide government had been considering ways to reopen it in 1991. Within weeks of the coup, Coles bought and closed it. RAOUL PECK PLEAS FOR LOCAL PRODUCTION PORT-AU-PRINCE, Feb. 16 - Filmmaker Raoul Peck is not mincing words: "It is a question of our very identity." State of Cinema and AV At a presentation to about 60 journalists and others today, Peck outlined the state of Haitian cinema and audiovisual (AV) production and diffusion, and lamented that 80 to 95% of all films shown in Haiti are U.S. "action" movies. "The price of such a rate of penetration is the very identity of a country, which will disappear," he said. "There is a real need to see Haitian images." Peck said the penetration is not based on quality but on control of the market, and called for opening independent theaters. One sole company, Capitol S.A., he pointed out, owns all of the movie theaters in the country, the number of which has dropped from 53 ten years ago to 17 today (14 in the capital.) Peck denounced Capitol's "gentle censorship." In 1994, it tried to get him to withdraw one of his films (Le Silence des Chiens) from a festival at Capitol theaters. In the end, Capitol broadcast a disclaimer before each screening, something "never seen in the history of cinema," Peck said. The situation in television is little better, Peck said, noting that although some new stations opened, they rarely produce or buy local shows and appear to be motivated only by the desire to sell publicity slots. The few local shows that are done are of very low quality due to lack of training and resources, he said, but he also noted people watch them anyway, indicating a desire for local shows, and although the number of movie-goers has dropped (1.3 million in the capital in 1986, but only 700,000 in 1993), Peck said that figures indicate many will still pay to see movies, and would attend Haitian works. Peck made a strong plea for regulation to protect artistic creation (on videos, films etc.) and to generate revenues - through taxes and fees - that could be added to government money to nurture and support local cinema, AV and theatrical production. "The grease of the pig should cook the pig," Peck declared. For Peck, a key step is for producers, directors, actors and others to join together to put pressure on the government and to create a "social conscience," saying: "It is a question of our survival." Forum El Dorado Launched Today's talk was Peck's second appearance in public this week. On Wednesday, together with dramatist Herve Denis, he announced one contribution to the combat: the El Dorado Forum Foundation, whose goal will be to "relaunch a policy of development of Haitian cinema, audiovisual production and theater" from the currently closed El Dorado theater on Place Jeremie in the capital with projections, dramas, a video and film archive and other activities. The foundation is being co-founded also with dramatist Syto Cave and filmmaker Arnold Antonin, a candidate in the illegal Jan. 18, 1993, elections and a former leader of the PANPRA party which supported the coup d'etat. Close-up: HAITI'S AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION Over the last 30 years, Haiti has gone from near-self sufficiency in food to being almost half-dependent on imports and has watched its agricultural exports plummet. This drastic change came about due to a predictable evolution of the agricultural system, but also because of the liberal reforms which began to be implemented beginning about 15 years ago. Rotten Roots of System The Haitian agricultural system was headed down a dead-end road from its start as a colony, where land usage was determined not according to the needs of the current and future populations of the nation, but according to the desires for profits of the colonists, the French plantation owners and business people, and the French empire. Along with the town of Potosi in what is now Bolivia, it was the most valuable colonial holding in the New World. But rather than the wealth coming from silver, it came from the exploitation of the soil of chiefly four products: sugar, coffee, cotton and indigo. Despite its mountainous territory (70% of land has a slope of 20% or more), Haiti was and remained an agricultural country. But even though its people carried out a successful revolution, its colonial heritage stayed with the territory up until today, being variously influenced and altered by the different capitalist interests that dominated Haiti over the years. Rubber, sisal, cacao, essential oils were all extracted. In the meantime, food was produced mostly on small and medium plots, either owned, leased or sharecropped by peasant families. Small industries grew up around food production and the export crops: cacao and sugar processing plants, denim-producing factories, corn and rice mills, etc. The income generated - directly and through taxes - supported a succession of governments, helped pay Haiti's indemnity to France and built many fortunes both inside and outside of the country. But as the decades went by, the ruthless exploitation of the land, unfair and inefficient distribution of plots and nearly 200 years of government neglect brought the system to what agronomists and specialists have been calling "a crisis" for several decades. Whereas only 29% of Haitian soil is really suited for farming (due to precipitous slopes), 46% is under cultivation. Across the century, low returns for export crops, population growth, subdivision of plots, the recent elimination of the Creole pig, the cutting of coffee and other trees and subsequently sped-up erosion, over-exploitation of soil and general degradation of the sector have all combined with liberalization (discussed below). Exports stagnated and began to drop off as peasants switched to food crops, and then production for local consumption also began to contract. Characteristics of the Crisis Despite the deteriorating situation, agricultural production remained an important part of Haiti's economy, accounting for almost half of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and over 90% of its exports mid-century. But those figures have changed drastically over the past few decades. In 1970, agricultural production was about 50% of GDP. It fell steeply to about 40% in 1979 and stayed at about 32% for the 1980s. [PNUD, BID] (The continuing drop in production during the 1980s is hidden because the GDP has been contracting: in 1980, GDP = 5,349 million 1975 gourdes; in 1991 = 4,645 million.) Some 700,000 small and medium-sized farms (1 to 1.5 hectares each) account for 80% of agricultural production. With the three-year crisis caused by the coup d'etat, most farmers are thought to have lost about 60% of their capital, and some, their land altogether. The drop in production can be seen in the figures on rural-to- urban migration, employment, food self-sufficiency and food dependency, the country's need for hard currency, and agricultural export figures. INCREASED DEPENDENCY: Haiti has gone from being nearly self- sufficient in food (with the notable exception of wheat and wheat flour, as well as luxury and other lesser used products) to being 10% dependent on food imports in the 1970s, 23% in 1981, and 42% in 1993 [BID, PNUD]. As a predictable result, food imports have shot up: purchased as well as "food aid" mostly from the U.S. government. (In 1994, for example, AID claimed it supplied Haiti with over US$35 million worth of "food commodities," almost half of it marketed.) Among the most striking signs of dependency is Haiti's reliance on sugar. The country - the hemisphere's top sugar-producer when it was known as "The Pearl of the West Indies" - went from producing almost 90,000 MT in 1951 to 30,400 MT in 1988 to zero (except for cottage industry production of rapadou, molasses, etc.) today. Haiti now imports sugar from neighboring countries. In 1987, Haiti still produced three-quarters of rice consumed here. By 1991, when peasants produced 195,000 MT and the country imported 100,000 MT, that figure had dropped to about two-thirds. In 1992, Haiti imported 136,000 MT and over 140,000 MT in 1993 and in 1994. Increasingly, Haiti is importing beans and corn, which also find their way into the country as "aid." Animal production has also fallen off and Haiti now imports eggs, poultry, beef, 12,000 MT of the 17,000 MT of fish consumed each year, and milk products. The agricultural sector is not only food. In the 1930s, Haiti was growing 6,000 MT of cotton a year, most for export, and production - for abroad and for local mills - stayed high (3,000 to 4,000 MT) until the 1980s. By 1960, local mills produced over 4 million meters of cloth a year, mostly denim (85% of "gros bleu," the trademark of peasant clothing, was used locally), with indigenous and imported cotton. As recently as 1975, they put out 2.2 million meters. In 1978, the figure had fallen to 457,000 meters, and by 1988, the industry was closed. DROP IN EXPORTS: As recently as 1941, agricultural products counted for over 90% of Haiti's exports: primarily sugar, coffee, cotton, sisal, cacao and bananas. By 1981, agricultural exports, totalling 50,000 MT, counted for about 40% of all exports, and more recently, throughout the 1980s, dropped off to around 20%. Haiti exported 30,000 MT of agricultural goods in 1989. Coffee is one of the few traditional agricultural exports left. Up until 1949, Haiti was the third largest coffee exporter in the world, with 12% of the world's production, but now its production is dropping, with 25,000 MT exported in 1980 and 13,600 MT in 1989. Other traditional exports - sisal, cacao and essential oils - have also fallen off drastically. (Among the new export products is mangoes. Haiti was the second-largest supplier of mangoes to the U.S. prior to the coup, shipping 2 million cases in 1990.) The drop in exports - due to exploitative structures, declining world prices, implementation of liberal policies, lack of institutional support and aggravation of the agricultural crisis in general - has meant that at the same time as it becomes more dependent on foreign sources of food, and thus more in need of hard currency, the country is losing its capacity to produce it. MORE MISERY AND MIGRATION: Agricultural production accounted for about 90% of total employment in the 1960s, but has now dropped to about 65%. The resulting drop in available jobs has had a strong effect on the economy. For example, whereas before peasants needing to supplement their incomes would migrate from poorer zones to regions like the Artibonite Valley for seasonal work, those spots are now filled by local people. Hundreds of thousands dependent on the sugar industry are unemployed. The drop in rice production also put thousands out of work. Over the past decades, the peasant family has had to survive in increasingly abominable conditions. Real revenue for all peasants has continually fallen. A recent Ministry of Agriculture estimate put the drop at 50% over the past three years, and said today it stands at 500 gourdes (about US$30) per year for the poorer categories. Almost 86% of peasant families do not meet even 75% minimal calorie requirements. Another effect has been to keep peasant children out of school. Health has also suffered. The immiseration has continued to push Haitian peasants overseas, to the Dominican Republic, or from the countryside to the cities. One estimate says 30,000 to 50,000 young people leave the countryside per year. Not a Homegrown Crisis But while the crisis was long-predictable, it is not entirely "indigenous." The destruction of the rural economy is not by hazard, and the country's increasing dependency is not an unfortunate occurrence, but has been hoped for and planned by the U.S. government through U.S. Agency for International Development (AID) and the multilateral agencies it dominates, like the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), for the past 15 years. That planning explains, in part, why, rather than tackling the crisis, the Jean-Claude Duvalier regime and the reactionary regimes that followed instead went along with liberalization measures. The Jean-Bertrand Aristide administration, despite its progressive rhetoric on economic development and national production, continued the implementation, following the same path. It might be argued that those policies have done almost as much to destroy the rural economy in 15 years as did three centuries of colonial and neocolonial exploitation, and perhaps more. The liberalization or application of "neoliberalism" quickly became known here as "The American Plan." At that time, Ernst Verdieu put out a 21-page document ("The American Plan for Haiti") that circulated widely and explained the U.S. objectives by citing U.S. and WB documents. In fact, the "plan" was the same liberal policies being pushed beginning in the early 1980s by the governments of Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. and Ronald Reagan in the U.S. "The American Plan" was and remains: * to re-orient the rural economy already in crisis by replacing (1) hillside and mountain slope food production with fruit, coffee and cacao trees for export, and (2) replacing sugar, rice and other cereal and food crop peasant plots in the plains with agro- industries of "non-traditional" products for export, and * to promote what they call Haiti's "comparative advantage": a poor population ready to work at rock-bottom wages. AID experts acknowledged that liberalization of the economy would cause "massive" rural-to-urban displacement, increasing urban populations by 75% by the year 2001. (The capital has grown from about 500,000 in 1970 to an estimated 1.4 million in 1990, over 5% per year for a 280% increase. Smaller cities have grown about 3 or 4% per year.) All of those landless workers would find a job in the "Taiwan of the Caribbean," as one AID man called it, and during the 1980s U.S. and Haitian instances pushed U.S. companies to locate here. "We Get It Done For Less," an Association des Industries d'Haiti promised in one of its brochures. In the 1980s, 30,000 to 50,000 minimum or less-than-minimum wage jobs, which do little for the workers or the national economy, were produced for a few years, but they soon disappeared as investors moved to more stable, or cheaper, countries. Today Haiti still has the lowest wage in the hemisphere, but is competing against countries with better infrastructure or where the population is temporarily more controlled. In the meantime, the planners' own documents recognized the population would suffer. A 1985 WB paper called for cuts in "misdirected social objectives," defined as health, education, support for small farmers, and for assistance, not to peasants but to larger growers with a greater "growth potential." AID acknowledged in 1982 that the reforms would produce "a decline in income and nutritional status, especially for small farmers and peasants," and that the new, open economy would have "a sharply growing need to import grain and other consumer products." AID called the result of this new situation, paradoxically, "an historic change toward deeper market interdependence with the U.S." [AM] AID did have something to say about the need for "food security" in Haiti, but for AID, "food security" is actually "food and agriculture self-reliance," meaning the country would miraculously have enough agricultural and manufacturing jobs so, while it would not have "'food self-sufficiency' in the narrow sense," it could satisfy needs through local production combined with "importation of food at commercial terms paid for from export earnings." Naturally, the subsidized U.S. agri-businesses stood ready to fill those needs, as they have begun to do already. Preval and National Production The objectives of the U.S., the flagship of imperialist, capitalist expansion and the dominant member of its enforcer institutions, the IMF and WB, have long been clear in Haiti, and the latest stage - the application of a "Structural Adjustment Program" (SAP) - is part of the same effort. Quietly but with great effect, during the 1980s and also during Aristide's term, many steps outlined by the WB and AID 15 years ago have been enacted. Tariffs have been slashed. Mills have closed. Imports are up. Now the new president has begun his term saying he wants to boost agricultural production. Preval spent last weekend in the Artibonite Valley and ended his trip vowing to increase rice production through better irrigation and other measures. His promise and apparent plan - to cut down on imports by increasing local food production - could be interesting. But will this be another promise with no tomorrow, like those to which Aristide and his administration accustomed the country? Considering the general context - occupation, application of neoliberal policies, a government under tutelage, dependency on foreign monies - and remembering this government is a continuity of Lavalas, serious doubts arise, in the case he is well-meaning, that Preval will be able to make good on his naive promises. The facts and figures presented above testify to the profound crisis in which Haitian agriculture finds itself today. And although these quantifying elements - on the brutal fall in production, etc. - permit us to touch the wound and describe the crisis, they are not enough to permit an explanation of its causes. Only an analysis of the social and economic relations of the countryside would furnish the base elements for a true agrarian reform that would benefit the nation and the Haitian masses. Haiti Info will return to this question. SOURCES: BID = Haiti: Socioeconomic Report, BID, 1992; PNUD = Programme d'Urgence pour la Relance Economique, October, 1993; AM = Josh DeWind and David H. Kinley III, AIDING MIGRATION, Westview: 1988; Verdieu, Ernst, Plan Americain Pour Haiti, 1984, and other sources. ABOUT HAITI INFO: * Haiti Info is published every two weeks in Haiti by the Haitian Information Bureau, an alternative news agency, and is edited by a group of committed individuals from democratic and popular sectors. * All articles Copyright HIB. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED. Please cite Haiti Info and send copies of usage. * Haiti Info is available by mail, by fax, and also electronically via computer. Subscription rates range from U.S. $20 to $100, depending on location and method of reception. For subscriptions, other correspondence and help for journalists: Haitian Information Bureau, c/o Lynx Air, Box 407139, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, 33340, USA. For electronic mail: hib@igc.apc.org.