The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley04212008.html

30 Years Ago Haiti Grew All the Rice It Needed. What Happened?
The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots
By BILL QUIGLEY

Riots in Haiti over explosive rises in food costs have claimed the lives of six people. There have also been food riots world-wide in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivorie, Egypt, Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

The Economist, which calls the current crisis the silent tsunami, reports that last year wheat prices rose 77% and rice 16%, but since January rice prices have risen 141%. The reasons include rising fuel costs, weather problems, increased demand in China and India, as well as the push to create biofuels from cereal crops.

Hermite Joseph, a mother working in the markets of Port au Prince, told journalist Nick Whalen that her two kids are “like toothpicks” they’ re not getting enough nourishment. Before, if you had a dollar twenty-five cents, you could buy vegetables, some rice, 10 cents of charcoal and a little cooking oil. Right now, a little can of rice alone costs 65 cents, and is not good rice at all. Oil is 25 cents. Charcoal is 25 cents. With a dollar twenty-five, you can’t even make a plate of rice for one child.”

The St. Claire’s Church Food program, in the Tiplas Kazo neighborhood of Port au Prince, serves 1000 free meals a day, almost all to hungry children -- five times a week in partnership with the What If Foundation. Children from Cite Soleil have been known to walk the five miles to the church for a meal. The cost of rice, beans, vegetables, a little meat, spices, cooking oil, propane for the stoves, have gone up dramatically. Because of the rise in the cost of food, the portions are now smaller. But hunger is on the rise and more and more children come for the free meal. Hungry adults used to be allowed to eat the leftovers once all the children were fed, but now there are few leftovers.

The New York Times lectured Haiti on April 18 that “Haiti, its agriculture industry in shambles, needs to better feed itself.” Unfortunately, the article did not talk at all about one of the main causes of the shortages -- the fact that the U.S. and other international financial bodies destroyed Haitian rice farmers to create a major market for the heavily subsidized rice from U.S. farmers. This is not the only cause of hunger in Haiti and other poor countries, but it is a major force.




WHILE I SIT HERE TRYING TO THINK OF THINGS TO SAY


SOMEONE LIES BLEEDING IN A FIELD SOMEWHERE

SO IT WOULD SEEM WE'VE STILL GOT A LONG LONG WAY TO GO

I'VE SEEN ALL I WANNA SEE TODAY

WHILE I SIT HERE TRYING TO MOVE YOU ANYWAY I CAN


SOMEONE'S SON LIES DEAD IN A GUTTER SOMEWHERE

AND IT WOULD SEEM THAT WE'VE GOT A LONG LONG WAY TO GO

BUT I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE

SWITCH IT OFF IT WILL GO AWAY

TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO

SWITCH IT OFF OR LOOK AWAY

WHILE I SIT AND WE TALK AND TALK AND WE TALK SOME MORE

SOMEONE'S LOVED ONE'S HEART STOPS BEATING IN A STREET SOMEWHERE

SO IT WOULD SEEM WE'VE STILL GOT A LONG LONG WAY TO GO, I KNOW

I'VE HEARD ALL I WANNA HEAR TODAY

TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO (TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO)

SWITCH IT OFF IT WILL GO AWAY (SWITCH IT OFF IT WILL GO AWAY)

TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO (TURN IT OFF IF YOU WANT TO)

SWITCH IT OFF OR LOOK AWAY (SWITCH IT OFF OR LOOK AWAY)

SWITCH IT OFF

SWITCH IT OFF

SWITCH IT OFF

SWITCH IT OFF

SWITCH IT OFF

TURN IT OFF


thanks phil collins for the words
my heart to the people of Haiti

[tomtomtom]

1. black on black

violence really pisses me off. How can you treat a brother like that?

[seemslikeadream]

3. Having a role model helps

[scarletwoman]

2. I don't know. But in some wildly optimistic moments I find myself thinking that the evil's getting

so damn outrageous that it's just going to implode. Not that there won't be plenty of suffering and death while it's happening, and for quite awhile afterward...

But I'm honestly thinking that the evil can't last too much longer. It's just gone too far -- gone global. Looks to me like what it's coming down to is: can they kill off the masses fast enough to prevent them from rising up in rebellion?

In my wildly optimistic moments I actually imagine the masses prevailing... someday....

;)
sw

[Judi Lynn]

4. Once they've killed off enough of the people who pull back from the thought of eating dirt cookies,

and the survivors realize they MUST work for only pennies a day and they have no other hope, EVER, then they will bring back all the sweatshops which had to move out due to public outrage among some conscientious people in other countries, earlier, like the Disney sweatshop, etc.

That island is being treated EXACTLY like a bunch of helpless, forgotten street people, orphans live there, to whose aid NO ONE will ever come. (This must show you the importance of getting lucky about where and to whom you are born!) You can see how deeply the human bond reaches in corporate officials when this desperate tragedy looks like OPPORTUNITY to them!

Wouldn't you love to believe there is something beyond what we can see which will actually comfort the suffering, in time, as has been claimed in the "good book?" This entire island, minus the U.S.-supported death squads would have such a future to finally realize. Dream on.

[Mika]

5. About the US/CIA/IMF, always remember this.

Castro and Cuba are BAD!

Y'know, health care, education, self sustainability, no hungry, no homeless, helping those in need around the world.

Bad bad bad.

:sarcasm:

==

As a Haitian friend has said to me before ... "Castro? We Haitians wish for a hundred, a thousand Castros."

==



Socialism is infectious. I am a socialist. Come closer friend, and let me infect you.

[DrDebug]

6. Hunger in a land of plenty

What do Haiti, Egypt, Sudan, and Iraq have in common? They are all countries blessed with extremely fertile ground allowing for not only self sufficiency but were tradionally exporters of food.

Another common theme of those four countries is that they currently have hunger and food shortages due to war and intentional destruction of the agricultural infrastucture.

The problem with Haiti is not the ground because it can support two harvests a year, the problem is that the rice is imported instead of homegrown, the farmers have been chased from their lands, and no resources are allocted for mass irrigation of the area.

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Neoliberalism in Haiti: The case of rice
Haiti Info, Vol. 3, #24, 16 September 1995

With the focus on the impending privatization of state-owned enterprises, it is easy to forget Haiti has been undergoing similar measures since the early eighties, when the Jean-Claude Duvalier government began to apply some liberal measures, and with the big push for liberalization in 1987. The current privatizations are only one aspect of an over-arching program aimed at integrating Haiti more into the international market which, in Haiti's case, means the U.S. and its multinational companies.

An examination of the plight of Haitian rice, of symbolic and food security importance because it is the second-most consumed cereal crop, offers a look at how liberalization has effected and will continue to effect the Haitian population and economy, and shows clearly the cynicism of the international lenders (the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and Inter- American Bank (IDB)), U.S. government agencies, and the current government, all of which know their policies are leading to the further impoverishment of peasants, further dependence of Haiti on the U.S. for basic foodstuffs, and the shift of Haiti's best lands into the hands of export-crop agribusinesses.

Historical/Economic Background

Not long ago, Haiti was self-sufficient in rice. Haitian rice is expensive to produce (for example, in the 80s, it was 40% more expensive to produce than Thai rice), due to a number of reasons: low level of mechanization; high cost of leasing land; high cost of fertilizers and other inputs; usurious credit systems where peasants pay up to 100% interest per month; high taxes; high transport costs, and a disorganized, exploitative system of distribution and marketing. Like other agricultural products, historically it has been produced in the complete absence of state regulating agencies or support and an untrammeled exploitation of the peasants. An IDB study in the 80s determined, for instance, that in the Artibonite Valley, where most rice is grown, about 22% of the land are plots of 3.26-10.25 hectares and are owned by 1.7% of owners; 23% of the land are plots of 1.01-3.25 ha., owned by 4%; 37% of plots measure .26-1 ha., owned by 31%, and the majority of landowners, 63%, have plots measuring .01-.25 ha., accounting for only 18% of the land.

Another interesting statistic is that only 70,000 ha. of land in Haiti (32,000 in the Artibonite) is irrigated, whereas studies indicate 200,000 ha. (a total of 40,000 in the Artibonite) could be irrigated, showing the potential for higher production.

(...)

The breaking down of Haiti's rural economy through the flood of U.S. products, the destruction of the creole pig and other measures are not by hazard. They are part of the same neoliberal vision pushed by the U.S. and the multilateral institutions in all “dependent” countries. By the early 1980s, the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), had decided Haiti should not grow its own food or develop any national industries. The international division of labor, AID and the other planners and bankers said, called for Haiti to do “export manufactur(ing) and process(ed) agricultural products, but with a sharply growing need to import grain.” Through Ronald Reagan's Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) in 1983, a vast increase in food aid and credit for agroindustries and other programs, during the 80s, “experts” worked consciously to dismantle the rural economy even though, according to authors DeWind and Kinley, AID knew that would cause increased poverty and “a decline in income and nutritional status.”

(...)

Rice Corporation of Haiti

One of the companies to profit was Erly Industries, which had positioned its Rice Corporation of Haiti (RCH) perfectly to take advantage of the coup.

Erly, a massive agribusiness headed by Gerald Murphy and his son Douglas, is the largest marketer of U.S. rice (as well making agricultural chemicals and orange juice). Its 1994 rice sales topped $350 million.

In December, 1992, a year after the coup and three years after filing papers in Port-au-Prince, it signed a nine-year contract with the illegal government of neoliberal champion, former World Bank employee and illegal Prime Minister Marc L. Bazin, where it promised to import at least 5.5 MT per month. (RCH also promised to help improve rice production in the Artibonite with U.S. agronomists, but three years later, they are not evident. What is more likely is that RCH will position itself to buy up land as little and big landowners go broke, and then grow export products like oranges.)

The RCH deal was squired through the various Washington and Port- au-Prince agencies by Larry Theriot, the first director of CBI and now V.P. of American Rice, one of the Erly rice spin-offs.

Erly knows the ins and outs of Washington. Despite a reputation that even the New York Times questioned and a brush with bankruptcy a few years ago, the Murphys still have many friends and they get subsidized loans, government contracts and other perks. In addition to the agribusiness, Gerald Murphy, a longtime Republican and supposed close friend of Ronald Reagan, wholly owns Chemonics, one of a myriad of parasitic “consulting firms” that live off of AID. Founded in 1976, Chemonics had won over US$89 million in AID contracts during the first six months of 1995 alone, and is now bidding heavily for contracts in at least two ministries here (justice and environment). Murphy, a Harvard Business School graduate, said he set up Chemonics because he “always wanted a way to do two things: one, have my own CIA; and two, be helpful to people.”

(...)

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/210.html

Recommended. The three Bush occupations which need to end: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Haiti...

[tkmorris]

7. K&R

The public perception here in the US of Haiti (even here in South Florida, where people should know better) is that it is an island nation made of mud and mountains, with far too many people. People believe that Haiti is INCAPABLE of feeding it's own, and is doomed to forever be poor. It isn't true, and I thank you for telling it like it is.