Last week I sat with a group of Haitian women in their weekly reflection on a selected text. The text for the week: the cause of things, written by Aristotle, or Aristot in Creole. As many of their discussions do, the conversation quickly moved to the condition of women in Haiti and the reasons for their difficulties.
These women form part of one of the many grass-roots groups of victims from the 1991-94 coup d'tat when President Aristide was ousted from power. They were each raped by military and paramilitary members during the coup for their involvement in pro-democracy organizations, and many of them lost their husbands, family members and friends as a result of political violence. Daily, I am humbled by the incomprehensible sacrifices they made in this fight and their unyielding hope for democracy in a country beset with a history of tyranny and extreme poverty.
Many of the women in the victim's group survive on less than $1 a day and like most Haitians, they struggle to obtain access to safe drinking water, education for their children and basic health care. That life in democratic Haiti is characterized by deteriorating humanitarian conditions is neither accidental nor inevitable, nor can it be attributed to the current embattled Haitian government.
In Creole, the language spoken by all but a small minority of Haitians, there is a common proverb, "Bay kout bliye; pote mak sonje," which means, "He who gives the blow forgets; he who bears the mark remembers." Such is the case in Haiti, where the many victims who can vividly describe the nature and cause of their suffering are often forgotten and silenced by the individuals, institutions and nations responsible for it.
In present day Haiti, the women that represented the heart and soul of the democratic movement now find themselves fighting to not become victims once again -- this time of the Haitian middle and upper classes and of American foreign policy towards Haiti.
Consistent with its policies elsewhere in Latin America, the United States has single-handedly led efforts to undermine the transition to popular democracy in Haiti. It blocked the disbursement of $500 million in multilateral humanitarian aid to the government -- money allocated for public health, education and clean water -- citing alleged electoral problems. The aid embargo has had a devastating impact on the health and welfare of the Western Hemisphere's poorest population and constitutes a violation of economic and social rights as guaranteed by the International Covenant on Economic and Social rights.
At the same time, the United States has continued to finance a political opposition that has consistently refused to engage in dialogue necessary for legislative elections to occur and has been responsible for the recent violence sweeping through the country. Rather than recognizing the true authors of this violence, it has instead blamed the Haitian government and suggested the need for a "regime change." In effect, the United States has arrested the process of institution building in a country with virtually no history of democratic governance and further destabilized the government.
It is true, as the opposition contends, that the Haitian government is not perfect, and pressure needs to be exerted on it to reform more quickly. But this can not happen if the United States and the international community undermine its legitimacy, deny it the tools to move forward and sow divisions within an already polarized population.
The United States has been enabled in its efforts by journalists who fail to understand the historical and social contexts of the current situation and systematically distort the truth in their coverage of the country. Much of what I have seen mainstream journalists -- including those from the two major wire services, The Associated Press and Reuters -- report in recent months has been either factually incorrect or marred by serious and intentional omissions of information. Most importantly, journalists have grossly misrepresented public opinion and in doing so re-silenced the poor majority of the Haitian population. The United States has also been aided by a Haitian civil society populated by a middle class that many of the Haitians with whom I converse daily regard as having exploited them to advance their own political or economic ends. The women in the victim's group view the current crisis as little more than class warfare supported by international powers who have never had their interests at heart.
Last week, the women victim's group concluded its reflection by reaffirming its commitment to the fight for justice for all Haitians. Until we each understand the sacrifices that these women and the Haitian people have made for democracy, the United States can not offer an imperialistic foreign policy that has failed elsewhere as an alternative to the popular will. It is time that the United States recognizes the real causes for Haiti's crisis and begins to see the Haitian people as its solution.
