Since that fateful day of February 29th 2004, I have met three disillusioned and highly educated Haitians who left Haiti in the waning days of the Boniface-Latortue regime (2004-06) and settled in New York in search of a better future. Besides their impeccable professional credentials, these refugees hold identical views on Haiti’s deplorable situation which, they assert, rests on the shoulders of exiled former president, Jean Bertrand Aristide and his primitive populism. Despite their proletarian roots, they remain implacably resentful of populism and unconditionally support the U.N occupation. Trying to understand this political uniformity, which I found troubling, I discovered they have worked for Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s), a collection of foreign-funded entities functioning as an alternative to the inefficient and corrupt Haitian institutions or more pointedly as a state within the state.
Notwithstanding the fact these organizations benefit from extraterritorial immunity, they are subversive academies whose main purpose is to indoctrinate the next generation of Haitian bureaucrats and leaders. Therefore, it is not surprising that 4 years after the unceremonious departure of Jean Bertrand Aristide, the three economic refugees, gullible victims of a Grand Deception, remain instinctively hostile to the former president and everything he represents. In fact, they equate Aristide and populism with obscurantism and anarchism and are convincingly sold on the altruistic nature of the occupation.
Not surprisingly, the tired old propaganda of the former president, afflicted with an incurable cult of personality, squandered a once in a lifetime opportunity to unite Haiti’s divergent constituencies, forms the essence of their hatred. It may be true Aristide’s autocratic inclination was a factor in the political crisis that led to Haiti’s occupation, but so was the subversive machinations of the opposition, financed and controlled by foreign interests. Like automatons, these economic refugees would not even entertain the thought that the Andy Arpaid-Gerard Gourgue-Guy Philippe-Evans Paul gang was part of an international conspiracy against Haiti’s constitutional government, despite the unwarranted and unlawful occupation validating the point.
In a country offering few opportunities to its underclass, it is understandable these thoroughly indoctrinated refugees, having made it through exceptional circumstances, feel their successes could be replicated by others. But what I could never understand is their reactionary attitude toward the hordes of unfortunate Haitians who fail, not because of lack of trying, to conquer the insurmountable odds. More ominously is their indiscriminate use of derogatory words such as banditry, barbaric, primitive and other appellations to describe the actions of those marginalized by the politic of exclusion, while ignoring the MINUSTAH’s well-coordinated violence against poor and destitute Haitians. One of them nonchalantly ventures the thought of obliterating Sité Solèy (homes and residents included) as a necessary step in the process of rebuilding Haiti.
Hearing Haitians advocating a genocidal policy against communities that friends and family members still call home proves the power of indoctrination. I must admit that was taken aback by the comment but quickly realized that the powers behind the occupation were the primary advocates of the policy. Moreover, besides the impenitent collaborators who took over Haiti’s destiny following the February 29 2004 infamy, the foreign-controlled NGO’s, through subterfuges, financial incentives and other unconventional methods, are busy indoctrinating thousands of potential Jean Baptiste Conzé for the long haul.
Exemplifying the subservient attitude permeating Haiti’s leadership is the continued implementation of the IMF directives that center on the wholesale privatization of the Haitian economy and minimal government participation in the public sector. While the U.S and the E.U, the promoters of these policies, are pouring hundreds of billions of dollars and euros into public works and nationalizing failing companies, Haiti is forbidden to spend money on its infrastructure i.e. schools, bridges, roads and hospitals. With the U.S and the European Union sucking up every available dollar on the capitalization market to finance their budget shortfalls, it is hard to imagine Haiti getting a piece of the pie as the twisted logic behind the IMF directives prescribed.
Fortunately, the gatekeepers (Vodouists) are not sitting idle. Last week, some 300 of them manifested in front of the National Palace imploring the government to come to its senses. Max Beauvoir, the recently appointed Vodou Supreme Chief, even demanded the departure of the heavily armed MINUSTAH and the NGOs which, he correctly pointed out, accomplish little while preventing the locals from helping themselves. Tragedies after tragedies, natural or man-made, have yet to shake the nation from its stupor, a hard to explain situation that implies entrenched defeatism. Because the occupation was concocted on behalf of the elite, its accomplishments would never benefit the vast majority of Haitians, hence the need for a pro-active reaction to it.
It is indeed the apex of arrogance that foreign donors professing to help Haiti would bypass the legally constituted government of the country and distribute their assistance through these organizations (NGOs). To make matters worse, the Haitian government seems impotent or unwilling to challenge this unwarranted intrusion that strikes at the very foundation of its legitimacy. Is the foreign donors’ approach a novel experiment tailored for so-called “failed states” or the new face of neo-colonialism? Needless to say, the longer the occupation lasts, the more irreversible its damages would be, because a new generation of bureaucrats, quite possibly one of the best Haiti has ever produced, is slated to continue the nefarious deeds of the occupiers.
ddjougan@yahoo.com
Three refugees: disillusioned but thoroughly indoctrinated …
