The Haitian tragedy:
Keegan, John E.
'FREEDOM OR DEATH' THE HAITIAN TRAGEDY U.S. RESPONSIBILITY The swiftness with which Lt. Gen. Henri Namphy was removed by a coup d'etat may signal something new in Haiti. Both the United States...
...AID economic development policy is built on the notion that Haiti will develop economically through export-oriented growth...
...Words from Peter Berger's Rumor of Angels echoed in my head as my plane landed in Washington, D.C...
...For, in addition to the corrupt, power-grabbing ineptitude of today's ruling Haitians, the unrestrained ravages of the Tontons Macoute, and the apathy of Haiti's wealthy, it is our policies, especially U.S...
...Berger's point: that some deeds were beyond moral relativiz-ing and temporizing...
...Associated Press simply reported what Anita Stockman, State Department spokesperson announced: that Avril phoned the U.S...
...There must be, as AID policy sees it, disincentives for domestic food production (PL 480 Program...
...policy for Haiti is fundamentally aimed at stability and the appearance of peace...
...policy leads at worst, to the slow death of Haiti...
...aid has been suspended since last November's election-day violence...
...has the dominant hand in the making of Haitian economic policy...
...What Haiti needs is assistance to its grassroots groups and associations that are trying to make the route to economic development pass through the rural population of Haiti with the hope that local resources might be restored to meet the basic and essential needs of its population...
...Some $70 million in U.S...
...These deeds are not only an outrage to our moral sense, they seem to violate a fundamental awareness of the constitution of our humanity...
...At best, it continues the urbanization of its poverty, the emigration of its people, and the silencing of self-determination...
...The rubric that explains the disincentives argues that Haiti's food security will be insured, more cheaply, through import of food from the U.S...
...There are certain deeds that cry out to heaven...
...Haiti is hopeless in being able to resist the absolute supremacy of the U.S...
...It is the policy itself...
...government had been to authorize the coup...
...It has to reach into the U.S...
...JOHN E. KEEGAN John E. Keegan, MM...
...military men who stood aside while thirteen were killed and scores wounded...
...There is, to be clear about it, very little real investment and development in the Haitian economy today...
...Even as we met, a glimpse of the monstrous evil called' 'the political-economic situation in Haiti'' had begun to show itself on TV: the attacks on worshipers at the church of St...
...The U.S...
...The fact of the matter is that a nontemporizing, nonrelativiz-ing condemnation of the evil violating the Haitian people in their struggle for freedom has to reach beyond Lt...
...We can well do without Haiti, but 85 percent of Haitian economic exchanges are with us...
...economic development policy, that need to be condemned...
...tools the key for opening the door to Haitian economic development and all the possibilities for social and political life that that entails...
...market...
...Haiti thus becomes a country whose economic development is tied to assembly-type industries and agricultural exports limited to coffee and, perhaps, a few winter vegetables for the U.S...
...AID policymakers that need to be judged...
...over its economic life...
...Mary's in peaceful Notre Dame, Indiana...
...Jean Bosco on September 11...
...is a visiting professor at St...
...It is not the good intentions of U.S...
...The U.S...
...Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana, and is a professor of theology and Christian ethics at Maryknoll School of Theology, Maryknoll, New York...
...I carried those words with me as I joined others who had come together at Missionhurst under the auspices of the Washington Office on Haiti and the Conference of Major Superiors of Men for a working conference: "The Crisis in Haiti: Towards an Effective Response...
...They are not quite so blunt...
...In this way, these deeds are not only evil, but monstrously evil...
...The military aid and riot control gear we sent to Namphy to protect his government against a coup, and the people against the Macoute, were turned against the voters last November...
...My Washington conference ended on September 18...
...The newspapers, of course, do not say this...
...Haiti's comparative advantage in a free-trade world is its abundance of cheap labor...
...Prosper Avril, a former military advisor for the Duvalier dictatorship, had declared himself president of Haiti...
...The domestic outcome of this policy is the suppression of unions in order to maintain Haiti's comparative advantage in cheap labor, systematic harassment of peasant and rural associations, and suppression of any manifestations of self-determination by the Haitian people...
...On Friday, September 16, I exited class at St...
...Both the United States government and the Haitian military establishment must have realized that Haitians had reached the point where their persistent cries for freedom could become '' Freedom or death...
...A number of things rush together as I write this...
...itself...
...ambassador and said he was assuming the presidency...
...five Haitian doctors reporting the plight of a woman, seven-and-a-half months pregnant, whose stab wounds reached the infant she carried...
...Every effort the Haitians make to meet their basic and fundamental human needs is seen as a challenge to the economic life that is imposed on them...
...Namphy, and beyond the succession of military personalities who, no doubt, will endlessly replace him...
...The response of the U.S...
...We parted with the news that Brig...
...The military are the protectors of the Haitian status quo and of our current policy...
...Haiti needs something better from the United States: solidarity with its suffering and struggle for freedom...
...three people justifying their attack on the church by announcing that the parish priest-Jean-Bertrand Aristide-was getting what he preached...
...Haiti's treasury is almost bare...
...The social and political situation this fashions creates Emigres and people whose human rights are violated...
Vol. 115 • October 1988 • No. 17
