Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Rioting Continues

The riots continue in Haiti. UN troops surround the National Palace.Since they are happening simultaneously in Port au Prince and Les Cayes which are about a day’s journey apart, and since there is a call for the release of drug lords, along with cries about the high cost of food, there is a grave suspicion that this is an organized attempt to destabilize the fragile government of Rene Preval.

It may not take much. Haiti is pretty isolated. She hasn’t many friends. Her closest neighbor, the Dominican Republic, treats her pretty much with contempt and loathing, hope that “just enough” of her citizens will cross the border to get the heavy work done, the construction done, the crops picked, the sugar cane picked, the houses cleaned, but not so much that the country turns entirely black, so that every one’s hair goes completely kinky curly.

And America, which really would be watching if it were not sunk knee deep, waist deep, in the sand pit, big muddy of the quick sand desert of the desert storm and really really doesn’t want to deal with Haiti again because honestly….. we have enough of our own racial issues that we haven’t dealt with, ,,, I mean we all saw what happened with Katrina……

And then we have the American left which somehow thinks that progress means that we have no freedom of the press like in Cuba and still is stuck back in the Spanish Civil War so they aren’t a lot of help

So I don’t know who is going to help Haiti..

We do have a UN peace keeping mission in place.We always think that that will help stop the bloodshed, stop the violence. But I have a journalist friend, Michael Deibert, over in the Congo which has the largest peacekeeping force in the WORLD in place and he says that 45,000 people a month are dying there. 45000 A MONTH.

We have missionary groups who collect used clothing and send it over here which doesn’t help much since all the used clothing from Goodwill ends up here.

If we send in more subsidized food, will that not only make them more dependent on foreign food, in a land which can grow everything? So how do we break the cycle of dependence? How to help?

Haitians from abroad sent home $1.6 billion in 2006 which was about 1/4 of the GNP about $200 per capita - and - a substantial amount from a group who themselves are struggling to rise into the middle class in their respective countries. Does this help?

1 comment:

Alexandra said...

Elizabeth! I had no idea what was going on in Haiti until I read this post. Are you there? Will you write about it?