Haiti: Trapped in the Outer Periphery 9781626373587

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Haiti

Haiti TRAPPED IN THE OUTER PERIPHERY ROBERT FATTON JR.

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2014 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2014 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-1-62637-036-4 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

vii

Preface

1

Haiti’s Predicament

1

2

The Outer Periphery

13

3

The Contradictions of Haitian Citizenship

55

4

Political Economy in the Aftermath of the Quake

89

5

The Unending Politics of Crisis

135

6

Corruptions of Power

163 183 213 227

Bibliography Index About the Book

v

PREFACE

THIS BOOK IS A SEQUEL AND YET A DEPARTURE FROM TWO PRE-

vious volumes, Haiti’s Predatory Republic (2002) and The Roots of Haitian Despotism (2007). It continues to emphasize the roles played by domestic social forces and political processes in shaping Haiti’s predicament, but argues more forcefully that this predicament is unintelligible without studying the profound impact of the world capitalist system on the country’s internal affairs. I posit here that the persistent imperial interferences and interventions of the past three decades have exacerbated the conditions of acute poverty, social polarization, and misgovernance that have traditionally characterized the island. Tragically, the devastating earthquake of January 2010 aggravated these dire conditions and transformed Haiti into a virtual “trusteeship” of the international community. In fact, I contend that the imposition of an extreme neoliberal regime on the country has trapped it in what I have termed the outer periphery. The outer periphery is the world system’s new zone of catastrophe and zero-sum politics comprising more than a dozen states under the tutelage or occupation of a self-anointed foreign community. It is a zone of extreme poverty integrated into the margins of the margin of the global economy. Engaged in ultracheap labor production for exports, the outer periphery is at the very bottom of the production process of the world system. Caged in this zone, Haiti has little room to maneuver. This is not to say that it has no capacity to extricate itself from this quagmire but that, to do so, its rulers would have to develop an alternative project to the prevailing neoliberal program. The country would need to renegotiate its current insertion in the global economy and privilege vii

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PREFACE

its agricultural system, which is highly unlikely given the existing constellation of both domestic and international forces. In fact, the Haitian political class as a whole—the government and the so-called opposition—is more interested in the capture of power for its own corporate gains than in formulating and implementing a different type of development. The devastating earthquake has changed little in Haiti’s zero-sum politics; public office remains the means to acquire private gains and wealth. The temptation to monopolize power and curb dissent has persisted. Similarly, the main imperial forces have not altered their commitment to maintain the existing global economy and the obscene inequalities that it has generated. The plans of development have new names, but their contents are still deeply rooted in neoliberal dogmas. In the eyes of both the agents of the imperial apparatus and their complicit Haitian rulers, there is simply no alternative to the status quo. It is easy to proclaim from afar, in the comfort of well-paid US academia in the heart of the world capitalist economy. While it is possible to feel Haitian in the diaspora, it is quite another thing to face the vicissitudes, uncertainties, and insecurities of daily life in Haiti itself. I do not claim any moral high ground in my condemnation of those responsible for Haiti’s predicament, or in my rage against the injustices and violence of the world capitalist system. In fact, consciously or unconsciously, an intellectual like me partakes in some of the privileges generated by this warped system monopolized by a mere fraction of humanity. As a member of the US professoriate, of the Haitian bourgeoisie, and of the diaspora who has opted to adopt US nationality, I must acknowledge that I am a privileged individual living in a cocoon of fundamental contradictions. I have the luxury of distance and of a tenured chair; I can afford to look at Haiti’s present and future with a deeply critical eye and a certain sense of despair. The vast majority of Haitians simply cannot. To go on facing the daily struggle for food and shelter, they must ultimately believe that things will change and that they cannot simply continue to fall apart. People must believe that the struggle continues not just for themselves, but also for future generations. It is this belief that inspires hope. In addition to acknowledging and honoring the tenacious spirit of the Haitian people, I would be remiss if I did not thank all the scholars of the Haitian Studies Association for providing the intellectual energy and camaraderie fueling my research. Special thanks go to

PREFACE

ix

Alex Dupuy, Bob Maguire, Leslie Desmangles, Carole Charles, Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, Laurent Dubois, and Francois Pierre-Louis for sharpening my arguments. Clearly, they have no responsibility for the inevitable shortcomings of this book. I also extend my gratitude to the University of Virginia and the anonymous funder of the Julia Allen Cooper Chair whose endowment has granted me a full year of unencumbered research. I offer, however, my deepest debt of gratitude to the three people I love most: my wife, Cindy Hoehler-Fatton, my intellectual and academic companion, who has generously freed me from many obligations and tasks; Luc, my son, who accepted my leaves of absence from his intense soccer life and high school studies; and Vanessa, my daughter, whom I visited too rarely in New York while immersed in my research and typing away on my computer. I hope that, once they read this book, they will conclude that my time away from them was not wasted.

1 Haiti’s Predicament

HAD IT NOT BEEN FOR THE HORRORS OF THE CATACLYSMIC

earthquake of January 12, 2010, that killed more than 220,000 Haitians and destroyed much of the country, this book would never have been written. I have published two books on Haiti in the past ten years, and had decided to remain silent because I had nothing new to add to the literature. The earthquake with its ghastly dust of death and destruction compelled me to reassess that decision. This book has therefore been conceived in deep anguish and at times utter despair; it is full of anger, disappointments, but also faint hopes. It is about Haiti in a time of catastrophe and in the age of globalization. It rages against the inequalities generated by the existing imperial world order, which for more than thirty years has inflicted the “scourge of neo-liberalism”1 on the poorest societies of the planet. It laments the failures of popular movements such as Lavalas2 to transform the internal structures of society once they had achieved power. Many of these movements degenerated into opportunistic forms of presidential messianism under the combined weight of internecine conflicts, ruling class opposition, and imperial intrusions. It is a book infused with a deep pessimism of the intellect and a fragile optimism of the will. The neoliberal scourge has created a new zone of catastrophe in the world system: a zone of generalized inequities and ultracheap wages whose politics offers a simulacrum of electoral “democracy” under the tutelage of a self-appointed international community. This zone is often besieged by wars, natural disasters, regime change, and foreign occupation. It is composed of states like Sierra Leone, Guinea, 1

2

HAITI

Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, East Timor, Afghanistan, and Haiti. These are the states that conventional wisdom defines as fragile or failed states.3 I prefer to call them instead the states of the “outer periphery.” I have coined this label because failed-state theorists tend to argue that failed states are the product of their own traditional culture, which resists in dysfunctional ways the liberalizing, progressive, and rational impact of globalization. These theorists contend that failed societies can be fixed only if they abandon their “backward-looking” norms and embrace “modernity” and its triad, the rule of law, liberal democracy, and entrepreneurial behavior. In turn, this transformation is impossible without the full cultural, economic, and often military intervention of a Western-led international community. Stephen Krasner, former director of the Policy Planning Staff at the US Department of State under the George W. Bush administration and professor of political science at Stanford University, puts it bluntly: Left to their own devices, collapsed and badly governed states will not fix themselves because they have limited administrative capacity, not least with regard to maintaining internal security. Occupying powers cannot escape choices about what new governance structures will be created and sustained. To reduce international threats and improve the prospects for individuals in such polities, alternative institutional arrangements supported by external actors, such as de facto trusteeships and shared sovereignty, should be added to the list of policy options . . . . [M]ajor states or regional or international organizations could assume some form of de facto trusteeship or protectorate responsibility for specific countries, even if there is no general international convention defining such arrangements. In a trusteeship, international actors would assume control over local functions for an indefinite period of time. They might also eliminate the international legal sovereignty of the entity or control treaty-making powers in whole or in part (e.g., in specific areas such as security or trade). There would be no assumption of a withdrawal in the short or medium term.4

A new version of the white man’s burden is thus in vogue, calling for the imposition of de facto trusteeships on all failed states; it is infused with militaristic impulses hidden by humanitarian and cosmopolitan gestures.5 Thus, failed-state theorists advocate the further integration of countries like Haiti into the existing world system as a means of extricating them from their predicament. I argue that this proposition is deeply flawed.

HAITI’S PREDICAMENT

3

The point is not refusing to participate in world economic and cultural exchanges as a matter of principle, but rather to reject both the current hierarchical mode of participation and the exploitative nature of that world economy. The further integration of outer peripheral states into the existing system, and under present relations of power, can only exacerbate their desperate conditions instead of improve them. In fact, it is the interaction between privileged domestic classes and imperial forces that confines a country like Haiti to the outer periphery—the devastated wasteland of the global capitalist system. The paradox of the outer periphery is that it has been fully integrated into the circuits of the capitalist world economy, but the mode of integration has forced this wasteland into subordinate forms of production requiring limited capital investments and export-oriented enclaves of unpaid or ultracheap labor. In Haiti, this pattern has remained unchanged since the colonial days of slavery and the sugar plantations. What differs now, however, is the scourge of neoliberalism, which has deepened local and global inequalities and contributed to the disintegration of already weak states. The financial apparatuses of neoliberalism, particularly the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, have inflicted waves of economic deregulation and privatization on poor, dependent nations to the point that states cannot perform vital functions and are increasingly supplanted by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Bypassed by foreign aid, which privileged funding to NGOs, such states have become empty shells incapable of providing minimal services to their citizenry. The decomposition of the state has generated political decay, increased levels of insecurity and narco-trafficking, not to mention the complete erosion of the sense of civic obligation. In fact, societies in the outer periphery exhibit symptoms of decadence, pervasive corruption, and depravity. With the complicity of imperial forces, rulers seek to use electoral circuses to hide these symptoms of venality and disintegration. The reign of neoliberalism has introduced into the outer periphery a simulacrum of democracy; rigged elections sanctioned as free and fair by the international community’s machinery of legitimation occur regularly and parachute improbable rulers into power. So for instance, the international monitors decreed that the first round of the Haitian presidential elections of 2010 was “salvageable” even though it effectively stopped after barely five hours of voting and had been

4

HAITI

rejected as fraudulent by virtually all the candidates. This electoral fiasco, whose original results were reversed after months of negotiations and imperial threats, led to the victory of Michel Martelly, a popular entertainer and singer known as “Sweet Micky” for his burlesque Kompa performances or “Têt-Kalé” for his bald head. With no previous political experience and no effective party affiliation, Martelly defined himself as the paradigmatic “antisystem” candidate who would change Haiti by challenging a corrupt political class. Haitians initially perceived Martelly’s candidacy as a blague (hoax), but the generalized incompetence and powerlessness of the political class in dealing with the cataclysmic destruction brought about by the earthquake created a space for his ascendancy. In short, popular disenchantment with the political figures that had been in and out of power since the fall of the Jean-Claude Duvalier dictatorship in 1986 created a vacuum that Martelly cleverly filled. Moreover, the absence of Lavalas, the party of former president JeanBertrand Aristide, which had been banned from the elections, facilitated Martelly’s rise. The minority of Haitians who bothered to vote overwhelmingly elected Martelly in 2010. This long election that ended almost half a year after it began marked a period of magical realism in Haitian politics. It was an election that should have never taken place. After such a devastating earthquake, the election should have been postponed and a government of national unity created. It was clear that Haiti had neither the organizational means nor the political energy to go to the polls; the country was exhausted, destroyed, and under foreign occupation. It was also a time of cholera, which United Nations (UN) troops introduced into the country.6 And yet, imperial forces demanded and got an election, which was, to use the French word, incroyable, in the sense that it happened; it was no hallucination, even though it should have been. Martelly became president of Haiti on May 14, 2011, six months after the debacle of a discredited first electoral round. In spite of this electoral fiasco, the international community was satisfied with the result. So much so that, in June 2013, it kept the fiction going when US vice president Joseph Biden “commended Haiti on the successful and peaceful election that brought President Martelly to power.”7 Haiti’s deep political, economic, and social crises reflected the interests and choices made by powerful domestic and international actors. But these crises were also born of the fury of uncontrollable natural disasters. Prior to the 2010 earthquake, the country had been

HAITI’S PREDICAMENT

5

devastated by four major hurricanes (Faye, Gustave, Hanna, and Ike) that maimed, killed, and ravaged people and harvests in 2008. And in October 2012, a new storm, Sandy, inflicted yet another blow to a barely recovering nation. It is true that had Haiti enjoyed a modicum of good governance, these natural calamities would not have had such a destructive impact. On the other hand, this relentless pummeling by the gods of nature has undermined what reconstruction efforts are under way and deepened Haiti’s agony. This quagmire has reinforced common stereotypes; Haiti is continuously described as the “poorest nation of the Western Hemisphere.” 8 Its citizens are seen as lacking the discipline to work, its rulers are deemed venal and corrupt, and its culture is perceived as incomprehensible and weird. Haiti is simply the paradigmatic “Other.” In fact, Samuel Huntington calls Haiti a “lone country” that “lacks cultural commonality with other societies.” He says that “Haiti’s Creole language, Voodoo religion, revolutionary slave origins, and brutal history combine to make it a lone country. . . . Haiti, ‘the neighbor nobody wants,’ is truly a kinless country.”9 This tale of Haitian exceptionalism explains nothing; it assumes that Haitians are so unique—or bizarre—that their history is incomprehensible and their predicament is beyond any solution. It is as if Haitian poverty were inexplicable, vodou unfathomable, and the slave-led revolution unconceivable. In such a view, Haiti remains an impenetrable enigma. Haiti has its own unique history. But Haiti is also like any other nation; it confronts similar problems and shares common experiences. While understanding the causes of poverty, corruption, religion, revolution, and violence is difficult, these phenomena are not exceptional. They are as explicable in Haiti as in any other place on the earth. To claim Haitian exceptionalism when it comes to intelligibility is to claim unintelligibility tout court. In fact, concepts like power, class, state, empire, gender, nation, and race provide powerful heuristic tools to understand the Haitian reality. In Haiti, unproductive capitalism has transformed proximity to state power into the prime site for acquiring wealth for those not born into the elite class, which owes its economic power to comprador business practices. However weak, the state still controls the apparatus of taxation, the dispensing of licenses, and the means of coercion with which to obtain and monopolize prebendary gains. 10 Moreover, the emasculation of the state brought about by neoliberal-

6

HAITI

ism and the accompanying rise of the “NGO republic” have battered Haitian sovereignty to such a point that the symbolic razing of the heavily damaged National Palace was left in the hands of the J/P Haitian Relief Organization run by US actor Sean Penn.11 Confined to the outer periphery, Haiti has little room for maneuver; it is totally dependent on foreign assistance and the remittances of its diaspora. Without this external support, the country would have a hard time staying afloat. Stuck in a society with indecent levels of inequalities and poverty, it is not surprising that Haitians seek to take what they can get from any source of assistance. For the overwhelming majority of Haitians, life is a sauve qui peut, a daily struggle for subsistence. This environment of generalized scarcity invites opportunistic strategies of survival, thoroughly unprincipled forms of patronage, and criminal combinaizons. It nurtures from top to bottom a permanent and pervasive search for easy money, which has in turn generated networks of banditry uniting members of the lower, middle, and upper classes with politicians and security officers at the highest level. The so-called Brandt affair exploded on October 22, 2012, when Clifford Brandt, a member of one of Haiti’s richest light-skinned families, was arrested for masterminding a kidnapping ring. The ring exposed the multiclass nature of Haitian criminality.12 It reflected the reality that, in their effort to retain or strengthen their positions of wealth and power, some members of the grande bourgeoisie, the government, and the security apparatus have created a Haitian mafia by enlisting the support of petty bank clerks, public functionaries, and gangs from the urban lumpen proletariat. Bourgeois bandits target and kidnap their own for ransom and use subaltern groups as well as the police itself to accomplish their crimes. Criminality has become another means of consolidating fortunes, sustaining class status, and moving out of slums. This relatively new criminal phenomenon marks the disintegration of old symbolic norms of public deference that enforced class hierarchies. The bourgeoisie can no longer hide behind a wall of deference. It is exposed, and fearful not only of the masses but also of its own demons. In fact, criminality has acquired dimensions that threaten the very survival of the state; President Martelly has claimed that the Brandt affair has uncovered a cartel of powerful gangsters that could easily overthrow his own government.13 Haitian society is thus undergoing a Hobbesian transformation, whereby a narrowly selfish individualism in the pursuit of easy

HAITI’S PREDICAMENT

7

money is in the process of gangsterizing society and obliterating any pretense of solidarity. As Lyonel Trouillot puts it, “Banditry has spread through society as the weapon of a monstrous and dissocialized individualism. And it is the Haitian bourgeoisie, which is Haitian only in terms of the origins of its profits, which has greatly contributed to this dissocialization.”14 While the bourgeoisie is a paradigmatic comprador class functioning as a middleman between capitalist centers of production and the domestic market, it is not the only guilty actor in the Haitian drama. Imperial forces are also culpable since they have always defended the status quo. They have contained and suffocated the radical demands of popular movements that were themselves poorly organized and crippled by their own internecine squabbles and messianic complexes. In fact, Haiti’s pervasive scarcity has pushed those not born into privilege into using politics as a means of social advancement and illicit gains. The electoral process has facilitated the ascendancy of a political class seeking to use its access to state resources to escape its increasingly impoverished middle-class origins. Prebendary behavior has thus infected the body politic and sapped the ideal of the public good. What can be done? While I have little to offer in terms of remedy for Haiti’s failures, it is clear that the postearthquake strategies of reconstruction should be reversed because they differ little from past development efforts and will lead to the same impasse. In fact, they carry on the export-oriented policies of the late 1970s and they continue to bypass the state. These strategies will merely create more dependence, food insecurity, and inequalities. In addition, they are likely to accentuate rural migrations to urban areas, which will not provide the employment and wages required to avoid the further expansion of slums. Haiti, as it were, is on its way “back to the future.” This perspective, however, is rejected as unrealistic and misguided by the key foreign powers and financial institutions funding Haiti’s neoliberal developmental project. Mats Lundahl, a leading scholar on the political economy of the country, offers a forceful defense of the neoliberal mode of industrialization advocated by these powers. He contends that Haiti has to submit to the discipline of world market prices and take advantage of its cheap labor to engage in production for export, which at this time implies the apparel industry. Lundahl views this strategy as the only viable option. 15 He rejects as “utopian” any plan that would privilege the development of agriculture and food sovereignty.16 As he explains,

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Making agricultural production for the domestic market behind protective tariff walls the first economic priority, will not only lead to inefficient high-cost production at the expense of consumers but also to political rent creation and revenue seeking. The tariff revenue obtained will quite probably be extracted by corrupt future governments and their cronies. Institutions will become, more, not less, extractive, and so will, presumably, the political institutions of Haiti.17

According to Lundahl, prioritizing agriculture leads not only to poor economic outcomes; it is also impractical given the extreme soil erosion, high man-land ratio, and lack of an effective titling system. He approvingly quotes Uli Locher, who bluntly asserts in his study of land distribution, tenure, and erosion that “rural Haiti as we know it is doomed.”18 In addition, Lundahl contends that feeding Haitians through Haitian agriculture is not feasible: “Increasing food production simply contributes to soil destruction, to ‘mining’ the soil. . . . An increasing agricultural population means more food crops at the expense of perennial tree crops which bind the soil on the mountainsides. For the process to be reversed, the man-land ratio must decrease, not increase.”19 Not surprisingly, Lundahl argues that reducing the rural population can be achieved only by creating employment “elsewhere, in the context of an open economy, and then there is only one viable alternative: the manufacturing sector, apparel production, where Haiti has a comparative advantage in terms of wages and privileged access to the American market.”20 The problem with Lundahl’s argument is that the neoliberal strategy he espouses was adopted by the Jean-Claude Duvalier dictatorship in the mid-1970s and early 1980s to create the so-called Taiwan of the Caribbean. Instead, it had devastating consequences. It failed to industrialize the nation; it led to massive corruption, utter neglect of agriculture, and the creation of vast slums in the vicinity of the so-called industrial zones. Lundahl offers no reason to believe that following the same path in the current conjuncture will lead to a different outcome. In fact, while he applauds the recently inaugurated free-trade area of Caracol in the northeast of Haiti, he acknowledges that things could go very wrong: “Unless social services, housing, urbanized villages, etc. are prepared what you will get is simply a new Cité Soleil or Martissant, with an impatient and disorderly labor pool.”21 Thus, it is hard to believe that the neoliberal industrialization that Lundahl advocates is more realistic than prioritizing the development

HAITI’S PREDICAMENT

9

of agriculture. While privileging the existing structures of rural production, or a return to some idyllic nineteenth-century lakou agriculture, would lead to an impasse, there is no convincing reason to assume that the modernization of the countryside need be naïvely utopian. In fact, the launching of a coherent agrarian reform, a transition to higher tariffs, and a public plan of reforestation would do more to employ, feed, and equalize life chances of Haitians than any neoliberal industrialization based on cheap labor and uncertain foreign demand for apparels. On the contrary, what is utopian is to believe that after prioritizing the apparel industry for more than three decades, it can now miraculously generate the virtuous cycle of development, which it has consistently failed to deliver. This is not to say that export-oriented production should not be part of a development plan, but it should not be its central driving force. The agricultural sector, and particularly food production for the domestic market, should have priority. Again, this recommendation does not amount to a form of peasant triumphalism, nor is it calling for a return to an idyllic pastoral life. Instead, it entails using agriculture to build a modern infrastructure of roads, irrigation canals, and electrical plants. Moreover, labor-intensive methods should be privileged to reduce the high levels of unemployment and the exodus from rural areas. To implement this plan, the Haitian government must first engineer a transition period to impose protectionist measures; the country simply cannot afford to continue to have an open door policy that destroys its domestic economy. This plan is neither radical nor backward looking, but it does conflict with the dogma of the international financial institutions (IFIs) and the interests of powerful domestic and foreign forces. Unless Haitians decide to take matters into their own hands and challenge these forces, any plan of this kind is unlikely to see the light of day. Taking matters into their own hands is, however, no simple and easy task for Haitians. In this book, I argue that under the weight of an externally imposed neoliberal regime, a quasi-permanent crisis of governability, and the devastating earthquake of January 2010, Haiti has tumbled into the outer periphery. The outer periphery is a new zone of catastrophe and zero-sum politics comprising states under international tutelage or occupation. I contend that while domestic social forces have played a fundamental role in Haiti’s collapse, the nation’s fall is unintelligible without studying how it was precipitated by the world capitalist system. The patterns of imperial intervention

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that Haiti has endured over the years, especially in the aftermath of the quake, have transformed the country into a virtual trusteeship. Integrated into the margins of the margin of the global economy, starved of direct foreign investments, and compelled to engage in ultracheap labor activities for export, Haiti is at the farthest end of the global production process—trapped in the outer periphery.

Notes 1. Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance (New York: The New Press, 1998), p. vii. 2. Alex Dupuy, The Prophet and Power (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); Robert Fatton Jr., Haiti’s Predatory Republic (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002); Jean-Claude Jean and Marc Maesschalck, Transition politique en Haiti (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999). 3. Magui Moreno Torres and Michael Anderson, Fragile States: Defining Difficult Environments for Poverty Reduction (London: Poverty Reduction in Difficult Environments, 2004); Robert Rotberg, When States Fail: Causes and Consequences (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Pierre Englebert, Africa: Unity, Sovereignty, and Sorrow (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2009); Richard Caplan, “From Collapsing States to Neo-Trusteeship: The Limits to Solving the Problem of ‘Precarious Statehood’ in the 21st Century,” Third World Quarterly 28, no. 2 (2007): 231–244. 4. Stephen D. Krasner, “Sharing Sovereignty: New Institutions for Collapsed and Failing States,” International Security 29, no. 2 (Fall 2004): 86, 119. 5. Robert Keohane, “Political Authority After Intervention: Gradation in Sovereignty,” in J. L. Holzgrefe and Robert Keohane, eds., Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 275–298; Mark Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2007); John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999); John M. Hobson, The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); James Fearon and David Laitin, “Neotrusteeship and the Problem of Weak States,” International Security 28, no. 4 (Spring 2004): 5–43; Sebastian Mallaby, “The Reluctant Imperialist: Terrorism, Failed States, the Case for American Empire,” Foreign Affairs 81, no. 2 (March–April 2002): 2–7; Stephen D. Krasner and Carlos Pascual, “Addressing State Failure,” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 4 (July–August 2005): 153–163. 6. Michael Higgins, “UN Peacekeepers to Blame for 7,500 Cholera Deaths in Devastated Haiti: Public Health Expert,” National Post, October 24, 2012, http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/24/haiti-cholera-that-has -killed-7500-blamed-on-un-troops-from-nepal/. 7. White House, “Readout of Vice President Biden’s Call with President

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Michel Martelly of Haiti,” Office of the Press Secretary, June 20, 2013, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/20/readout-vice -president-biden-s-call-president-michel-martelly-haiti. 8. Millery Polyné, “To Make Visible the Invisible Epistemological Order: Haiti, Singularity, and Newness,” in Millery Polyné, ed., The Idea of Haiti (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), pp. xi–xxxvii. 9. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), pp. 136–137. 10. Fatton, Haiti’s Predatory Republic. 11. Randal C. Archibold, “Palace in Haiti, Damaged by Quake, Is Being Razed,” New York Times, September 13, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com /2012/09/14/world/americas/haitis-national-palace-being-demolished .html?_r=0. 12. Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH), “Affaire Brandt: Le RNDDH exige l’aboutissement de l’enquête ouverte et le jugement de tous les membres du gang,” November 13, 2012, http://rnddh.org /content/uploads/2012/11/Affaire_Brandt-nov2012.pdf; Lyonel Trouillot, “L’affaire Brandt ou le prix symbolique du fonctionnement social et économique de la bourgeoisie,” Radio Kiskeya, November 8, 2012, http://www.radiokiskeya.com/spip.php?article9265. 13. Eddy Jackson Alexis, “Insécurité: L’equipe Martelly presque dos au mur,” Tout Haiti, November 25, 2012, http://www.touthaiti.com/touthaiti -actualites/1406-insecurite-l-equipe-martelly-presque-dos-au-mur. 14. Quotation in text translated by the author from the original French: “Le banditisme s’est répandu dans la société comme l’arme de l’individualité monstrueuse et désocialisée. Et cette désocialisation, cette bourgeoisie qui n’a d’haïtienne que l’origine de ses profits y a largement contribué” (Trouillot, “L’affaire Brandt”). 15. Mats Lundahl, The Political Economy of Disaster (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. xxiv, 284, 341. 16. Ibid., p. 283. 17. Ibid., p. 341. 18. Ibid., p. 277. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid., p. xxiv. 21. Ibid., p. 292.

2 The Outer Periphery

WHILE THE EARTHQUAKE KNOWN AS THE GOUDOUGOUDOU 1

of January 12, 2010, killed more than 220,000 people and destroyed much of the capital city, Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s desperate material and social conditions predated this cataclysmic event. 2 A long history of predatory rule and twenty-five years of failed attempts at democratic governance explain in part the incapacity of the Haitian state to deal with the catastrophe and embark on a coherent reconstruction. 3 The country’s predicament is also symptomatic of the degradation of the world capitalist economy brought about by more than thirty-five years of neoliberalism, which have accentuated inequalities. As Robert Maguire points out, inequalities in Haiti are indeed stark: Of all the world’s countries, Haiti has the second largest overall income gap between the very rich and the very poor. More than 68 percent of total national income accrues to the wealthiest 20 percent of the population, while less than 1.5 percent of national income accumulates among the poorest 20 percent. Of the aforementioned 78 percent of its population earning less than $2 a day, 56 percent must make do with less than $1 a day. In rural Haiti, where some 60 percent of its 9.7 million people live, extremes of destitution are even greater: 86 percent of the population earns less than $2 a day; 69 percent less than $1 a day. Although life in the countryside is bleak, Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, is no land of milk and honey. One prominent businessman estimates that as many as 300,000 of the 2.5 million to 3 million residing in the metropolitan area wake up every day without a penny in their pocket.4

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The “scourge of neo-liberalism”5 not only has had deleterious consequences for Haiti, but it has exacerbated social polarization globally.6 Up until the 1980s, the world capitalist system was hierarchically divided into three major zones—the core, semi-periphery, and periphery. I argue, however, that in the past two decades the neoliberal regime has engendered a new zone of catastrophe that tumbled out of the existing periphery to become a new outer periphery, a zone integrated into the margins of the margin of the global economy. This outer periphery is at the very bottom of the production process of the world system; its states are virtual trusteeships of the international community and the large majority of its population lives in abject poverty. It is a zone that has suffered not only from the economic devastation of neoliberalism, but also from the shocks and aftershocks of politics, nature, and wars. Broadly speaking, the outer periphery is a de facto occupied territory under the surveillance of foreign peacekeepers and under the control of international financial institutions and nongovernmental organizations. Not surprisingly, the ruling classes in the states of the outer periphery are continuously negotiating the terms of their countries’ subservience to the core. This degree of subservience depends not only on the global strategic location of the country in question, but also on the nature of the particular political system and domestic constellation of power within which it operates. The typical state of the outer periphery is a simulacrum of democracy with extremely limited sovereignty over its territory, domestic policies, and electoral processes. Examples include Afghanistan, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Mali, and East Timor. States in this conceptual zone are marked by zero-sum politics and profound social inequalities, which are aggravated by an environment of scarcity and poverty. Not surprisingly, most people in outer peripheral states sorely lack the sense of belonging to a community of equals, of being full citizens. To give more concrete meaning to the concept of the outer periphery, I concentrate on Haiti as a case study. Devastated by natural disasters, winner-take-all politics, obscene inequities, neoliberalism, and imperial interference, Haiti is under the control of NGOs and IFIs. It has become a virtual trusteeship of the foreign community. It lacks the basic bureaucratic apparatus to execute the policies and laws that it promulgates. The earthquake exacerbated these dire con-

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ditions and pushed Haiti into a catastrophic social impasse. Goudougoudou injured over 220,000 people and forced about 500,000 to exit the capital for the rural areas while over 1.5 million continue to live in makeshift encampments or dangerous housing that lacks proper shelter and sanitation. In addition, 80 percent of Port-auPrince’s buildings and virtually all government ministries were destroyed, including the National Palace. Finally, both the health and educational systems, which had always been quite inadequate, were left in ruin. As one Haitian puts it, “tout Ayiti kraze” (the whole country is no more). In fact, the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) prepared by the international community and the Haitian government estimated that the total value of damage and losses caused by the earthquake came to nearly $8 billion.7 According to the PDNA, this amount represented “just over 120 percent of the country’s GDP [gross domestic product] in 2009.” The report observes that “this is the first time that the cost of a disaster is so high in relation to the country’s economy,” and goes on to detail the economic devastation: Most damage and losses were felt by the private sector (USD 5.5 billion, i.e., 70 percent), whereas there was USD 2.4 billion of damage and losses in the public sector (i.e., 30 percent of the total). The value of destroyed physical assets, including housing units, schools, hospitals, buildings, roads, bridges, ports and airports, is estimated to be USD 4.3 billion (55 percent of the overall cost of the disaster). The effect on economic flows (production losses, reduction of turnover, loss of employment and wages, increase in production costs, etc.) was USD 3.6 billion (equivalent to 45 percent of total).8

In the wake of this catastrophe, Haiti has grown increasingly dependent on foreign powers, finance, and philanthropic assistance. Its degree of dependence has reached such an extent that it has come to rely on its neighbor, the relatively poor Dominican Republic. Haiti is thus becoming a periphery of the periphery. It embodies the paradigmatic state of the outer periphery.

The Core, Periphery, and Semi-Periphery Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis posits that the capitalist world economy generates patterns of exploitation and depen-

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dence between three fundamental types of states: an “upper stratum of core states,” a “lower stratum of peripheral states,” and a “middle stratum of semi-peripheral ones.”9 This trifecta is embedded in particular production processes that reflect the profound differences of power between these three strata of states. Historically, however, production processes are always changing; what used to be a quasimonopoly of the core becomes a downgraded production process of first the semi-periphery, and then the periphery. For instance, textiles, which were uniquely concentrated in the core as the prime industry of the nineteenth century, have now become a cheap productive process scattered throughout the periphery.10 Core states are thus characterized by their capacity to monopolize the most advanced and diversified productive forces of a particular period; this, in turn, transforms them into areas of high-wage products. The core is bent on keeping its status through the deployment of its superior military, cultural, and material arsenal. While core states can decline, their descent into the semi-periphery, let alone the periphery, is a matter of la trés longue durée. Wallerstein’s semi-peripheral states have a mixture of advanced and backward processes of production; some do rise occasionally to the core, but their ascent is fraught with difficulties. While they tend to be protectionist to enhance their domestic industry and develop their own advanced technology, they welcome demoted production processes that are no longer monopolized and located in the core. Their fundamental function in the world capitalist economy is actually political. Given that such an economy can create only extreme inequalities between the core and periphery, the global system would face the permanent danger of an uncontrollable social polarization without the existence of buffering middle sectors. As Wallerstein explains, A system based on unequal reward must constantly worry about political rebellion of oppressed elements. A polarized system with a small distinct high-status and high-income sector facing a relatively homogenous low-status and low-income sector including the overwhelming majority of individuals in the system leads quite rapidly to the formation of classes für sich and acute, disintegrating struggle. The major political means by which such crises are averted is the creation of “middle” sectors, which tend to think of themselves primarily as better off than the lower sector rather than as worse off than the upper sector.11

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The world economy is thus a hierarchic chain of exploitation preserved by both aspirations to ascend to a higher stratum and fears of falling into the lower one. From Wallerstein’s perspective, the periphery of the system is a constant reminder to the semi-periphery that rapid economic degradation and fall are never far away. 12 Peripheral states tend to monopolize relatively backward productive processes and represent low-wage areas. Their politics are highly unstable and, while some exhibit a thin democratic veneer, their deep structures are authoritarian. The instability and unaccountability of these states reflect the nonhegemonic status of their ruling classes, which are engaged in few productive economic activities. Capital accumulation in peripheral states tends to result from close proximity to state offices and parasitic comprador undertakings. To that extent, wealth is extracted through corrupt practices and criminal networks. This is not to imply that the periphery has a monopoly over larceny or bribery; far from it, the core and semi-periphery are engulfed in this nefarious business too, but it is not the prime means through which their ruling classes accumulate capital. Ruling classes, especially in the core, and to a lesser degree in the semi-periphery, are not as gelatinous as their peripheral counterparts; they exercise much greater hegemony over the polity and their states can stake a very real claim to sovereignty. In contradistinction, peripheral states have a vulnerable dependence on outside powers and limited room to articulate their own economic policies. What distinguishes Wallerstein’s capitalist world economy from a world empire, which would have a single common political system, is the existence of a multiplicity of nation-states claiming sovereignty over their respective territories. This multiplicity of nationstates, which is critical to the functioning of the capitalist world economy, has two principal advantages for the bourgeoisie. According to Wallerstein, “First, the absence of a single political authority makes it impossible for anyone to legislate the general will of the world-system and hence to curtail the capitalist mode of production. Second, the existence of state machineries makes it possible for the capitalist sellers to organize the frequently necessary artificial restraints on the operation of the market.” 13 Nation-states have therefore a relative capacity to bend the structural constraints imposed on them by the world economy. Core nation-states play a vital role in sustaining the supremacy of their respective economies

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by manipulating market forces, preserving relatively high wages, and minimizing mass immigration from the periphery and outer periphery. Thus, core nation-states impose certain limits to capital’s global operations. They deploy their regulatory and administrative powers to create and maintain financial trust, the flow of transactions, the sanctity of private property, and the enforceability of contracts. In short, they seek to assure the legal and political conditions of capital accumulation on both a global and a national scale. This in turn requires monitoring and, in some instances, curbing the extent of globalization. Thus, the nation-state continues to play an essential role in the working of the world capitalist economy. Ellen Meiksins Wood well captures this role in the era of globalization: Globalization has been as much about preventing as promoting integration. The global movements of capital require not only free transborder access to labour, resources and markets but also protection from the opposite movements, as well as a kind of economic and social fragmentation that enhances profitability by differentiating the costs and conditions of production. Here again, it is the nation state that must perform the delicate balancing act between opening borders to global capital and deterring a kind and degree of integration that might go too far in leveling social conditions among workers throughout the world. . . . The fragmentation of the world into separate economies, each with its own social regime and labour conditions, presided over by more or less sovereign territorial states, is no less essential to “globalization” than is the free movement of capital. Not the least important function of the nation state in globalization is to enforce the principle of nationality that makes it possible to manage the movements of labour by means of strict border controls and stringent immigration policies, in the interests of capital.14

Not all nation-states, however, are equal in their effectiveness; core nations have much greater power to affirm their sovereignty, manipulate market forces, and compel semi-peripheral and peripheral states to accept unequal exchanges and their overall global inferiority. Thus, while all nation-states claim sovereignty over their territories and receive international recognition of this juridical claim, some cannot effectively control their boundaries, assist their people, and resist foreign domination and ingérence. In short, there is a gradation of “stateness” in Wallerstein’s triad of states. The higher a nation’s

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status in the world economy, the denser is its stateness. Stateness is both a cause and effect in the reproduction of inequalities in the world capitalist economy: Once we get a difference in the strength of the state machineries, we get the operation of “unequal exchange” which is enforced by strong states on weak ones, by core states on peripheral areas. Thus capitalism involves not only appropriation of the surplus value by an owner from a laborer, but an appropriation of surplus value of the whole world-economy by core areas.15

Broadly speaking then, Wallerstein offers a global configuration of an exploitative world economy divided into three fundamental geographical zones characterized by the core’s systemic extractions of surplus value from both the semi-periphery and periphery. While Wallerstein’s configuration has been subjected to postmodern criticisms for its grounding in a neo-Marxist structural analysis and for its emphasis on the multiplicity of nation-states16 in smoothing the functioning of the world capitalist economy, I believe his model remains far superior to any of the recent and fashionable globalization theories that have coincided with the hegemonic rise of neoliberalism. In fact, most globalization accounts either repeat in different words the basic Wallersteinian framework, or adopt a full-fledged celebratory apologia of capitalist globalization. The remaining analyses are lost in a convoluted and jargon-plagued tale of difference and indeterminacy. All these frameworks downplay—or completely ignore—the stark realities of imperialism, nation-states, and classes. The conventional definition of imperialism as a system that necessarily implies the legal existence of colonies partly explains the reluctance to use the concept to explain the patterns of domination characterizing the existing world system.17 Not surprisingly, some observers have contended that there is no longer an imperial center; the world system is run by no one except an inchoate “multitude,”18 or an “electronic herd”19 of financial investors that has neither national nor class interests. In this view, no particular agent drives globalization; it merely reflects technological imperatives and the logic of productive rationality. In her review of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s book Empire, Emily Eakin states that globalization “has no emperor, no geographic capital and no single seat of power.” It represents “a fluid, infinitely expanding and highly organized system that encompasses

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the world’s entire population. It’s a system that no one person, corporation or country can control.” This hyperoptimism sees globalization as “an enormous improvement” leading to a supranational order in which there is neither a privileged position, nor leading hegemon.20 In reality, globalization is a euphemism for imperialism; imperialism did not die with the end of colonialism. On the contrary, imperialism without colonies is the very stuff of today’s world system. Europe, Japan, and the United States are the triad forming the core or center of this system. The United States, however, is the “center of the center aspiring to exercise its hegemony,”21 in part through its continual deployment of its arsenal abroad in a “perpetual war for perpetual peace.”22 This pursuit has meant millions of deaths from Vietnam to Iraq through bombings, assassinations, and special operations. In fact, a comprehensive survey of US military interventions in other countries’ affairs reveals that 263 such interventions occurred between the end of World War II and 2003. Moreover, these interventions increased significantly in the post–Cold War era as the United States initiated 176 of them between 1991 and 2002 whereas only 87 were launched before 1991.23 The United States pays a huge cost for waging this perpetual war for perpetual peace. Its military budget for 2010 was about $700 billion—larger than the combined military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, The USA continues to be exceptional in terms of its military spending. As well as being overwhelmingly the largest spender in absolute terms, with 43 per cent of the global total, six times its nearest rival China, it has led the way in the global increase since 2001, with an 81 per cent rise in real terms compared to 32.5 per cent in the “rest of the world.” Moreover, the share of US GDP devoted to the military—the “military burden”—has increased sharply, from 3.1 per cent in 2001 to an estimated 4.8 per cent in 2010, while in the majority of other worldwide the military burden has fallen or remained steady.24

In 2007, the United States had at least 865 military bases in 130 different nations.25 To sustain this worldwide military network, the United States has created an array of international financial institutions, which also help ensure its strategic and economic hegemony. Clearly, the idea that globalization is a benign process without a head

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belies the continuous patterns of brutal imperial interventions that have marked the past thirty years.26 This is not the place to engage in a full critique of globalization theories. Suffice it to say that they have neither the explanatory power, nor the oppositional intellectual force of world-systems analysis. In fact, the idea that capitalism is globalized is hardly new. Wallerstein, theorists of imperialism, and even Karl Marx himself, have expounded the very concept of the world capitalist economy.27 What is distinctive about today’s “globalizers” is that they are “market fundamentalists” who “seek to enshrine laissez-faire capitalism as the self-evident and natural order of our era.”28 Some are the engineers of the so-called Washington Consensus, which assumes the universality of the neoliberal model of free market, budget cuts, and privatization.29 In fact, these fundamentalists assume that globalizing economic forces are inevitable and beneficial to all societies. Globalization in this view is telic and irresistible; it is the end process of modernity. There is no other alternative to it; it obeys the transcendental and natural laws of the market. In an astonishingly absurd appropriation of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the World Bank approvingly quotes The Communist Manifesto in its 1996 report to explain the inevitability and transformative nature of globalization30: “Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation. . . . All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices, and opinions, are swept away. . . . All that is solid melts into air.”31 What the authors of this World Bank report missed, however, was the fact that, for both Marx and Engels, the global spread of capitalism entailed imperial domination and destruction and served the corporate interests of particular capitalist groups. Unlike the World Bank, Marx and Engels argue that, instead of being a process without an agent, globalization was an imperial system of exploitation driven by the dominant classes of the world. Globalization in this sense is synonymous with imperialism.32 Clearly, this is not the view of today’s market fundamentalists. Peter Martin offers a mainstream conceptualization of globalization. He defends and defines globalization as “the accelerated integration of previously marginalised societies.”33 Moreover, he contends that “this process is a true collaboration across borders, across societies, across cultures—not the false collaboration of spurious North-South

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dialogues and bureaucratic elites.”34 Globalization, in Martin’s view, has “produced an enormous degree of improvement in human happiness in those countries which have taken advantage of the opportunities it provides.”35 This transformation, he concludes, “will produce exactly the opposite of the effects that its left-wing critics claim. It will lead to an irreversible shift of power away from the developed countries to the rest of the world.”36 In fact, he argues that the liberal market economy that has generated globalization is “the summit of human endeavour.”37 Another globalizer, Martin Wolf, argues that the market is “the most powerful institution for raising living standards ever intended. . . . But [he concludes,] markets need states, just as states need markets.”38 The best marriage of states and markets is the contemporary liberal democracy. And he adds that today’s problem “is not that there is too much globalization, but that there is far too little.”39 In fact, according to Wolf, “in some respects the global economic integration is no more than it was a century ago, before the breakdown that occurred between 1914 and 1945. In some ways, it is considerably less.”40 Thus, “[too] many people are effectively outside the world market.”41 Indeed, Wolf observes that globalization faces real problems. Chief among them is its failure to generate massive transfers of capital and ideas to the developing world. Conceding that critics of globalization are not wrong on all points, Wolf condemns “the grotesque hypocrisy of the high income countries” on liberalization.42 Sectors in which developing countries have a potential comparative advantage, such as agriculture and textiles, have thus far been largely locked out of liberalization. Tariffs and other protectionist obstacles in these sectors hurt the poorest. Not surprisingly, Wolf applauds China and India’s increasing globalization, a process which in his eyes has reduced global inequalities. The “some 1.5 billion people that lag even further behind” live in miserable conditions because their societies have either refused to, or been precluded from, globalizing.43 In a similar vein, Jagdish Bhagwati argues that globalization, which he defines in purely economic terms, is an unequivocally good thing. In his eyes, the phenomenon represents “diverse forms of international integration, including foreign trade, multinational direct foreign investment, movement of short-term portfolio funds, technological diffusion, and cross-border migration.”44 According to Bhagwati, these economic processes generate growth and alleviate

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poverty, particularly in those societies that had previously resisted integration into the global capitalist system. Bhagwati applauds the market reforms that have taken place in China and India that have had these positive consequences. To that extent, liberalization, open economies, and active participation in globalization bring affluence and prosperity. Bhagwati concedes, however, that globalization can generate patterns of inequitable development. In his view, these patterns are not inevitable by-products of globalization; in fact, they can be redressed by appropriate policies. Moreover, if poor people have the capacity to voice their interests, they can introduce legislation that will enhance their life chances. Thus, on the whole, Bhagwati argues that globalization has no malign social consequences; as he puts it, it does not need to invent a human face since it already has one.45 Anthony Giddens offers a less Panglossian definition of globalization.46 In his view, globalization represents “the intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa.”47 Globalization reflects therefore a fundamental acceleration, on a worldwide scale, of the sheer pace of social, cultural, and economic change. The global movement of capital, particularly finance capital, characterizes this acceleration. Finance capital moves freely across nations by electronic means, and such mobility generates truly global changes in exchange rates, interest rates, and stock prices. Competition, production, and speculation have become globalized leading to a profound shift to profit-maximizing behavior at the expense of collective welfare. In the words of George Soros, the philosopher-capitalist, “The hallmark of the current form of global capitalism, the feature that sets it apart from earlier versions, is its pervasive success: the intensification of the profit motive and its penetration into areas that were previously governed by other considerations.” “We must recognize,” Soros argues, “the growing role of money as an intrinsic value.”48 The triumph of money as an intrinsic value is only one aspect of the free movement of finance capital. The latter is marked also by a departure from the international economy that prevailed until the mid-1980s, where nation-states had a significant amount of control over their domestic economies and politics, and thus could regulate their relationships to global capitalism. Since the mid-1980s, such

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controls and regulations have decreased significantly and this in turn has contributed to the making of the current great world recession. In other words, globalization generates forces that foster a partial emasculation of the nation-state. Thomas Friedman goes so far as to argue that globalization announces a “frontier-less” new age created by the computer revolution. This new age is ruled by an “electronic herd” of financial investors and multinational corporations, which have neither national nor class interests. The electronic herd is suspended in midair and free from allegiance to any power structure. There seems to be no alternative to its beneficial and rational global reach.49 Or to put it more clearly, it is not that there is no alternative, but rather that the choice is clear and stark: societies either globalize or are condemned to stagnation, poverty, and obscurantism. Progress in Friedman’s view has an iron necessity: it is a journey to globalization, or a descent into barbarism.50 Such linear visions of progress transform globalization into a natural necessity and deny the possibility of historical choices. In truth, rather than being an inevitable force or an unfailing progressive movement, globalization is a dialectical phenomenon that generates contradictory tendencies. But why would globalization, with its universalistic pretensions, fuel contradictions? It seems to me that this is because globalization in fact aggravates the huge disparities of wealth and power that have characterized the long history of the world capitalist economy. What is dubbed as globalization is simply the acceleration and deepening of old imperial processes under a neoliberal regime. Globalization, as I attempt to demonstrate in this book by taking Haiti’s trajectory as a case in point, is not fundamentally different from the imperialism inaugurated by Christopher Columbus in 1492. To put it more clearly, globalization, as we currently experience it, is nothing more than an intensification of some of the long-standing manifestations of imperialism. The current decline of national sovereignties in peripheral regions is, after all, a logical continuation of colonization. Existing world inequities have their roots in the earlier imperial division of labor along national, racial, gender, and class lines. The transnationalization of Western culture is the direct descendant of earlier policies of assimilation. And the internationalization of capital is nothing new; it has merely been accelerated and deepened by technological advances. Similarly, if imperialism fostered economic dependence while at

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the same time generating movements of decolonization and multiple forms of nationalism, globalization is bringing about a loss of sovereignty while at the same time fueling democratic struggles for local autonomy. All of these historical outcomes contain patterns of accommodation and capitulation as well as patterns of resistance to the dominant forces of the world system. Therefore, globalization has not displaced the old categories of analysis. On the contrary, class, nationalism, ethnicity, gender, and race are still essential tools for understanding existing disparities of power. Globalization’s neoliberal regime, however, has created a new zone in the world system, the outer periphery to which I turn our attention now.

Imperialism in the Age of Globalization: The Outer Periphery What is new in imperialism in the age of globalization is the dramatic accentuation of world inequalities and polarization in spite of the fact that significant economic growth has occurred in regions that had previously been relatively low-wage areas. The grotesque extent of inequalities brought about by neoliberalism has generated a qualitative transformation in the world system whereby the periphery itself has fragmented and spawned an outer periphery. According to the United Nations, “World inequalities have been rising steadily for nearly two centuries. An analysis of long-term trends in world income distribution (between countries) shows that the distance between the richest and poorest country was about 3 to 1 in 1820, 11 to 1 in 1913, 35 to 1 in 1950, 44 to 1 in 1973 and 72 to 1 in 1992.” 51 The extent of inequalities is simply obscene. Luisa Kroll and Allison Fass report that in 2007 the world’s billionaires, just 946 individuals, were worth $3.5 trillion (over 7 percent of the world’s GDP) 52 while the 2.4 billion people in low-income countries accounted for just $1.6 trillion (barely 3.3 percent of the world’s GDP). 53 The World Bank estimates that, in 2005, the wealthiest 20 percent of the world accounted for 76.6 percent of total private consumption, and the poorest fifth just 1.5 percent.54 This tale of gross inequities is unending, but suffice it to add that over 3 billion people, about half of humanity, live on less than $2.50 a day and that 80 percent of the world’s population lives on less than $10 a day. 55 Or to

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put it another way, the “$600 billion of income of the three million richest Americans (the top 1.1%) exactly matches the total income of the world’s poorest 1.3 billion people.”56 It is primarily this structural gap between the core and periphery and within the periphery itself that has spawned what I call the outer periphery—the fourth zone of the world capitalist system. The outer periphery is at the extreme lower end of the production process with wages that barely assure the biological reproduction of the individual worker, let alone of his or her household. Not only is the outer periphery a region of ultracheap wages and abysmal social inequities, but it is also dominated by unusually high rates of unemployment and a vast informal sector. In addition, the politics of the outer periphery are a simulacrum of representative democracy in which fraudulent elections are more or less regularly held. These elections are not merely financed, but also certified as free and fair by outside powers and prodemocracy organizations that are poorly rooted in the local terrain. Finally, the outer periphery lacks the state apparatus to establish any real sovereignty over its territory, finances, and security. It has become the periphery of the periphery itself—a zone under the virtual trusteeship of the international community. While outer peripheral regions owe much of their existence to their own domestic social forces and processes, they are also the product of the history of their subordinate incorporation into the world capitalist economy.57 It is the interaction between imperial actors and indigenous collaborators resulting in an opportunistic convergence of interests that explains the outer periphery’s obvious dependence on the core. This dependence, however, does not entail the absolute subservience of the former to the desires and objectives of the latter. In fact, the outer periphery’s internal politics, class structure, material environment, strategic location, and cultural matrix mediate the core’s imperial reach. The typical pattern of indirect rule that characterized the classical phase of Western imperialism remains alive in the era of globalization. While territories are no longer conquered or annexed, they come under the dominion of the core. What Alejandro Colas says about imperialism is clearly applicable to current conditions of suzerainty affecting the outer periphery: For all their claims to universal imperium and global domination, empires have historically relied heavily on local collaborators,

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intermediaries, delegates, clients and assimilated elites to exercise their authority across vast territories and diverse peoples. They have also faced significant challenges—both human and environmental—to their attempts at direct domination. This dynamic of resistance and accommodation has delivered complex, amorphous and often indeterminate combinations of direct and indirect rule which have in turn generated peculiar forms of spatial organization on the periphery. Here again much of imperial history results from the tensions between centripetal and centrifugal forces, between the tendency of empires, on the one hand, to concentrate power and wealth and, on the other, to redistribute and devolve it more widely so as to maintain that very imperial order.58

In other words, while ruling classes of the core seek to maximize their control and minimize the costs of their domination over the outer periphery, outer peripheral rulers maneuver to keep a degree of autonomy and extract badly needed scarce resources from the core. Thus, there is a space for negotiating the extent of domination and dependence. The nature of the relationship between the core and a specific area of the outer periphery is determined not only by strategic location and access to critical natural resources, but also by elements of chance and statecraft. What is clear, however, is that the outer periphery must conform to what Alasdair Roberts refers to as the “logic of discipline,”59 a logic that has compelled virtually all nations to devise policies and institutions that protect and insulate the interests of global capital from democratic practice. Outer peripheral rulers risk losing all loans, foreign aid, debt cancellations, and investments, if they dare reject this logic, which is plutocratic insofar as it enforces the rules defended by the international institutions that govern global capitalism. As Branko Milanovic suggests, It is plutocracy rather than democracy that we live in—even if plutocracy’s codification . . . in charters of different international organizations and treaties does represent advancement in comparison to the old days of colonialism when the rich ruled untrammeled by any global strictures. It has become almost commonplace to point out that the rules of the game in all important international organizations are disproportionately influenced by the rich world, and among them by specific interest groups. . . . Current arrangements in global institutions that do matter are very far from the rules that prevail within nation-states, where voting rights, if not necessarily real political power, are not proportional to one’s wealth or income. In the global arena, however, we

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seem to be much more comfortable with plutocratic than even partly democratic decision-making.60

Thus, the structures of global capitalism impose strict limitations on the degree of autonomy that outer peripheral ruling classes can achieve. These classes are subordinated to the core, but they can curb this subordination by manipulating their domestic political environment and strategic choices. It is this dialectical interaction between internal conditions and external factors that led to the development first of the periphery and, eventually, the outer periphery. The outer periphery is the specific product of the effects of the long-term imposition of neoliberal policies on the one hand, and of the continued absence of productive capital investments on the other hand. What James Ferguson writes about Africa applies even more trenchantly to the realities of the outer periphery: Capital does not “flow” from New York to Angola’s oil fields, or from London to Ghana’s gold mines; it hops, neatly skipping over most of what lies in between. Second, where capital has been coming to Africa at all, it has largely been concentrated in spatially segregated, socially “thin” mineral-extraction enclaves. Again, the “movement of capital” here does not cover the globe; it connects discrete points on it. Capital is globe-hopping, not globecovering.61

Outer peripheral nations are thus simultaneously integrated into the world capitalist system and marginalized from its main process of capital accumulation. Capital has largely hopped over and bypassed the Haitis, Guineas, Liberias, and East Timors of this world. The logic of privatization, state withdrawal, and market rationality unleashed by globalization on the weakest links of the periphery debilitated further their already fragile governmental capacity, weak economies, and tenuous sovereignty. The ultimate result is the outer periphery, a zone devastated not only by neoliberal policies, but also by foreign embargoes and direct and indirect military intrusions. In fact, the outer periphery is becoming the geographical space occupied and managed by peacekeepers and NGOs of a self-appointed international community. Promoted by the IFIs as the substitute of corrupt and failed states, NGOs unwittingly become part of the liberal “assemblage of occupation” 62 not only in postdisaster and postconflict nation building, but also in the aftermath of regime change.

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Over the past twenty-five years, the core of the world system has enforced the practice of regime change on the outer periphery in the name of democracy and human rights. 63 Regime change, however, has led to acute crises of legitimacy whereby alien forces are parachuted in to oversee sham elections that empower emasculated, unpopular, and unaccountable governments. This political outcome is symbolic of a reckless international community that assumes little responsibility for the massive political dislocations and economic destruction that its takeovers inflict on the peoples of the outer periphery. In spite of claims to the contrary, regime change is never followed by a systematic plan of nation building, however misguided and ludicrous the concept may be. This is not surprising since the conventional wisdom of the core is grounded in a world vision that does not really see, or understand, the existence of peripheral nations as extensions of global capitalism. Instead, most leaders and intellectuals in core countries view outer peripheral societies as failed states whose pathetic condition has little to do with the world capitalist system, but is the product of backward traditional cultural norms, corruption, and irrational antimarket policies.64 Additionally, failed states tend to generate conflicts, ethnic violence, and political chaos—all of which can degenerate easily into civil war. In fact, in the dominant paradigm, failed states are the new “barbarians” who need civilization from the “successful” states. In the eyes of the Fund for Peace, “It is critically important that the international community understand and closely monitor the conditions that create weak and failed states—and be prepared to take the necessary actions to deal with the underlying issues or otherwise mitigate the negative effects of state failure.”65 Not surprisingly, the international community is charged with guiding the further integration of failed states into the world capitalist economy. It must promote nation building so they can acquire the norms of bourgeois culture and craft institutions of good governance. In this vision, the failed state’s metamorphosis into an efficient state is thus a matter of liberal political, cultural, and economic engineering. Such engineering is less likely to succeed in countries that are simply trapped in their own policy quagmires than in countries that have suffered the shocks of major conflicts or catastrophic natural disasters. Paul Collier, one of the leading proponents of globalization, points out that “the normal condition for a failing state is to be

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stuck, as bad policies and governance are highly persistent. Postconflict situations are the major exception: they are failing states, but change is relatively easy. This suggests that our policy interventions to help failing states need to differentiate between types of situations, treating postconflict situations as major opportunities.”66 In a paradoxical way Collier echoes one of the most vocal opponents of globalization, Naomi Klein, who argues that, in any society, the introduction of extreme forms of neoliberalism always follows a military or natural shock of some kind.67 In other words, war, civil strife, and disasters disorient the public and facilitate the imposition of unregulated forms of capitalism. Whereas advocates of globalization welcome such unregulated forms of capitalism as necessary reforms, opponents of globalization view them as the rise of a malevolent disaster capitalism. While it is true that the aftermath of wars and disasters offers great opportunities for the spread of capitalism, there is nothing new about this pattern. Since its inception, capitalism has both benefited from and fueled violence. The two are related symbiotically; their union becomes even more devastating when the market is left to its own devices. The unregulated market of globalization moves the world economy back to the future of nineteenth-century European and US civilization. We are once more entering in a period of disaster capitalism, or what Karl Polanyi long ago called “the idea of a self-adjusting market,” which implied “a stark utopia.” Such utopias cannot “exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society.”68 Capitalism inflicts and thrives on violence; it has never been implanted spontaneously, or without massive coercion. The point here is that there is far more continuity than rupture in the structural history of the world system. The world capitalist economy owes its origins to aggressive racist conquests, slavery, and forced labor; it was, from inception, a form of disaster capitalism on a global scale. The original peripheral zones that the system created in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia have, with few exceptions, remained peripheral. Upward movements to the core are extremely rare and, when they have occurred, they have brought little change to the hierarchical and exploitative nature of the system. This is not to say that there has been no resistance to the world capitalist economy, or that social progress is impossible. Far from it, the world system has always been besieged by its own political, ideolog-

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ical, and economic contradictions. These contradictions have opened opportunities for reformist and antisystemic forces.69 The fundamental economic contradiction stems from the capitalist drive to maximize profits and generate surplus extraction from the working class on the one hand, and from the necessity of finding a market for the goods produced and thus redistribute part of the surplus to the working majority, on the other hand. Surplus extraction and consumption are the opposite faces of the capitalist coin. Not surprisingly, the world economy suffers from periodic crises of overproduction and overconsumption. In an effort to mitigate the effects of these crises and maintain a balance between the two sides of the metaphorical coin, the capitalist core has always sought to penetrate peripheral areas to deepen the exploitation of their labor force by keeping wages low in the pursuit of greater surplus value and cultivating potential consumer markets there. This intensification of the core’s surplus extraction from the ultracheap labor of the periphery and outer periphery has, in turn, exacerbated the ideological and political contradictions of liberalism. Rooted in claims of human universalism, citizenship, and egalitarianism, liberalism is besieged by the reality that the economic system it engendered—capitalism—is inherently polarizing and hierarchic. Moreover, the continued salience of stateness and the nation, particularly in the core, is a reminder that boundaries, exclusion, and chauvinism are obdurate fixtures of the current conjuncture. Nation-states are not just “imagined communities,”70 they are exclusionary constructs that helped transform peripheral areas into zones of the barbarian or exotic Other.71 Until the 1950s, the Other was marginalized, excluded, and infantilized; the moral community of humanity comprised only the self-appointed citizens of the civilized Western core. Not all people in the core had been citizens; in fact, it was only after long struggles (typically, preceding and following wars) that working classes,72 women, and minorities gained the rights to full citizenship. As Anthony Marx explains, At the very heart of liberalism is an ugly secret: Supposedly inclusive nationalism was founded on the basis of violent exclusion, used to bound and forge the nation to whom rights would then be selectively granted. Democracy itself was so founded also on exclusions in demarcating the unit to which rights of citizenship would be granted. Founded on this basis, liberal democracy would then eventually serve as a cover, with gradual enfranchisement hiding

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past exclusions and obfuscating that at the heart of liberalism is an illiberal determination of who is a member of the incorporated community and who is not.73

While at the level of the world system, all human beings are now allegedly equal, some are clearly more equal than others. In fact, the core has given itself the right to determine unilaterally whether the international community should intervene in peripheral and, particularly, in outer peripheral states “to foster life or disallow it to the point of death.”74 Such interventions span a spectrum ranging from saving lives as in the case of disaster relief, or “terminating them with extreme prejudice”75 during regime change. The point is that core nations have the capacity to exercise ultimate sovereignty over individual human beings of the outer periphery. Indeed, it is the core that decides what constitutes a humanitarian emergency, crimes against humanity, weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and rogue nations. Such labels carry with them the potential unleashing of economic embargoes, distant mechanical killings, mass bombings, and occupation. Punishments like these are not generally the result of the outer peripheral state’s significance in world capital accumulation, but rather of its strategic value and the security threats it inspires in the core. In fact, core nations fear that the dysfunctions and violence that global capitalism has unleashed in the outer periphery will spread like a contagion to the core itself. A plethora of imperial interventions into the outer periphery is now haunting the core’s security; it has fueled anger against the core in the destructive spiral of the socalled blowback effect.

Blowback, Violence, and Protecting the Other Blowback is a term that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) invented to describe its own 1953 operation to overthrow the Iranian nationalist regime of Mohammed Mossadegh. It has become a metaphor “for the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people. . . . The most direct and obvious form of blowback often occurs when the victims fight back after a secret American bombing, or a U.S. sponsored campaign of state terrorism, or a CIA-engineered overthrow of a foreign leader.”76 Blowback tends

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to generate an incessant boomerang of violence such as the cycle that reached its apex with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, against the United States. While it is difficult to go beyond the grief and the horror produced by this murderous event, it is critical to emphasize that it is neither the scale of the violence, nor the number of victims that transformed it into an epochal moment. In fact, 9/11 acquired its historical significance because it targeted the United States. The destruction of the World Trade Center in New York and the strike against the Pentagon in Washington, DC, represented the most extreme blowback ever perpetrated against the very symbols of the world capitalist empire.77 As Arno Mayer explains, Until now, in modern times, acts of individual terror have been the weapon of the weak and the poor, while acts of state and economic terror have been the weapon of the strong. In both types of terror it is, of course, important to distinguish between target and victim. This distinction is crystal-clear in the fatal hit on the World Trade Center: the target is a prominent symbol and hub of globalizing corporate financial and economic power; the victim the hapless and partly subaltern work force. Such a distinction does not apply to the strike on the Pentagon: it houses the supreme military command— the ultima ratio regnum—of capitalist globalization, even if it entailed, in the Pentagon’s own language, “collateral” damage to human life. In any case, since 1947 America has been the chief and pioneering perpetrator of “preemptive” state terror, exclusively in the Third World and therefore widely dissembled. Besides the unexceptional subversion and overthrow of governments in competition with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Washington has resorted to political assassinations, surrogate death squads and unseemly freedom fighters (e.g., bin Laden). It masterminded the killing of Lumumba and Allende; and it unsuccessfully tried to put to death Castro, Khadafi, Saddam Hussein (and bin Laden?) [The last three have in fact been killed either in the hands of Western-sponsored forces or US special forces]. These “rogue” actions worsened local political and economic conditions and were of a piece with equally unscrupulous blockades, embargoes, military interventions, punitive air (missile) strikes and kidnappings, always in the name of democracy, liberty and justice.78

Blowback goes beyond violent reactions to imperial interventionism; it is also reflective of the despair generated by the conditions of dire poverty in which large segments of humanity are con-

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fined. In an unequal world profoundly divided by class, ethnicity, and race, violence and counterviolence are bound to be pervasive. While these conditions are neither an excuse nor a full explanation for terrorism, they certainly nurture this ugly, murderous beast. In short, terrorism is a morbid symptom of a decadent world order marked by the logic of war. This logic is now justified by 9/11 itself, which has legitimated the so-called war on terror and its assortment of preemptive strikes, neotrusteeships, and shared sovereignty that are intended to prevent the deleterious impact of collapsing states from spreading to the core. Thus, Richard Caplan explains, “As a consequence of globalisation, ‘zones of chaos’ . . . today are fertile grounds for the establishment of drug, crime and terrorist syndicates from which no country can be immune. . . . States can take measures to ensure that at least some of the problems arising from state weakness are kept largely within the borders of that state or the region that it inhabits.”79 The destabilizing effects of mass poverty, uncontrolled migratory flows, and terrorist fears that outer peripheral regions unleash on the world system explain the core’s quest to transform these regions into virtual trusteeships. The core is thus driven to protect itself from the very system it has engendered; it has unfolded a containment strategy against the surplus population of boat people, refugees, and asylum seekers of the outer periphery. A cordon sanitaire provided by the international community’s takeover apparatus seeks to prevent terrorist networks and plague-like diseases from spreading from the outer periphery to the core. Moreover, patrolling the outer periphery from within enhances the core’s capacity to stop large migratory flows of immigrants at the source itself. The constricting of the outer periphery to its own segregated space defies the liberal pretensions of universalism, solidarity, and equality that globalization allegedly entails. In fact, globalization has spawned a “new racism” that hides its ugly face behind the defense of “cultural difference”80 and a community’s right to exclude those who do not share its “way of life.”81 As Etienne Balibar suggests, this new racism “is a racism whose dominant theme is not biological heredity but the unsurmountability of cultural differences, a racism which, at first sight, does not postulate the superiority of certain groups of peoples in relation to others but ‘only’ the harmfulness of abolishing frontiers, the incompatibility of life-styles and traditions; in short, . . . a differentialist racism.”82 This differentialist racism reflects the reality of the reversal of colo-

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nial migratory flows when barbarians remained in their geographical spaces and imperial missionaries flocked to the colony.83 Then, the core’s civilization was untouched, unchallenged, and triumphant; but now, its very essence is disrupted and undermined by invading barbarians in quest of a better life. Universalism is thus a mirage, the ideology of those who have the power to project as universal their own civilization and reject as backward and medievalist that of others. Globalization is thus full of contradictions; it generates tendencies of universalism and yet leads to reassertions of profound particularisms because universalism itself is to a large extent an illusion. In my view, what we have in fact is the coexistence of a minority of rich nomads moving freely around the globe, and an overwhelming majority condemned to confining spaces of poverty or dangerous exits as part of a massive population of global boat people. Globalization has liberated capital to move freely across borders, but it has not debordered the movement of people. Nation-states of the core have reinforced their fences and their walls to prevent the poor of the periphery from penetrating their affluent shores. As Caroline Moorehead puts it, It has become fashionable, at the turn of the twenty-first century, to see frontiers and borders as archaic and irrelevant in the new age of globalization and the internet. Among free-market liberals, the talk is all of a “borderless” world; developments in communication technology, along with world market forces, are making frontiers absurd, while the peaceful interdependence of states can lead only to a further erosion of borders. In practice, of course, there is no peaceful interdependence of states and the “debordering” of the world is all about trade and little about people. . . . Most people today, as in the past, are not mobile. Somewhere between 2 and 3 percent of the world’s population can be counted as international migrants . . . the proportion is no higher and no lower than at any time in the last fifty years.84

Thus, in the first decades of the new millennium, the era of the supposed global village, disparities are more extreme than ever before. Life chances are profoundly dependent on class, ethnic, and racial appurtenance. This becomes exceedingly clear when we consider the world’s responses to the plight of refugees. While violence has generated similar victims and flows of displaced people around the world, the international community has reacted to their sufferings with glaring inconsistencies.

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T. Christian Miller and Ann Simmons point out that, during the horrific ethnic cleansings in Bosnia and the Great Lakes region of Africa, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees spent about eleven times more a day per refugee in the Balkans than in Africa.85 In fact, Balkan refugee camps differed markedly from their African counterparts. While clean water was readily available to the Kosovar refugees, large Eritrean families were given about three and one-half gallons of water to last three days. Moreover, there were no deaths from famines or epidemics in the Balkan camps of which the largest held 33,000 people. By contrast, deprived of basic amenities and significant medical care, African camps tended to be huge open spaces holding as many as 500,000 people, in which cholera and other diseases killed up to 6,000 refugees each day. So extreme were the material disparities between European and African camps that one would think they housed distinct species rather than suffering human beings. How do we account for such differences in the treatment of white versus black refugees? Of course, we know that we cannot. Yet justifications abound. For example, a camp manager working for a relief agency told Miller and Simmons that such unequal assistance was understandable: “The life in Africa is far more simple. To maintain the dignity and lifestyle of Europeans is far more difficult.” In fact, UN officials and aid workers argued that they had to “give European refugees used to cappuccino and CNN a higher standard of living to maintain the refugees’ sense of dignity and stability.”86 Thus, workers in the business of relieving distress and behaving out of moral conviction have come to defend human dignity by appealing to the old colonial virtues of racial and cultural prejudice. The end of colonialism has not erased the ideology of the white man’s burden; it was resuscitated in new ways in the refugee camps of Africa. Even the best motivations have not curbed the Western arrogance of power and sense of cultural and moral superiority. The distinct chasm separating the treatment of core and peripheral people extends to the application of international law. The core exempts itself from the very body of rules and norms that it imposes on the global community. Richard Cooper, who was a senior adviser to former British prime minister Tony Blair, unambiguously divides the world into premodern non-Western nations and postmodern civilized states of Europe, North America, and their allies. The latter are compelled to use

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brutal means to bring order and civilization to the former. Cooper expresses it thus: The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era—force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of every state for itself. Among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle.87

In Cooper’s view, and that of many others, the postmodern world should be bent on ushering in an era of liberal imperialism, which in reality is nothing but an empire of cosmopolitan double standards. For instance, the core, which invented the concept of national sovereignty, has consistently violated it in its relationship with peripheral areas.88 Similarly, core nations grant themselves the right to amass the most murderous military nuclear arsenal, but deny it to other states. In fact, the great irony—not to mention hypocrisy—of the international system is that the core nations possessing the largest and most vicious WMD are the very ones demanding that all other countries, except themselves, disarm in the interest of world peace. This is a prevaricated demand. It seeks to freeze current asymmetries of power and, in the long run, can be defended only through the permanent exercise of raw military force. If it is to succeed at all, real disarmament can only be global. As Perry Anderson states, The nuclear oligopoly of the five victor powers of 1945 is equally indefensible. The Non-Proliferation Treaty is a mockery of any principles of equality or justice. . . . If any states had a claim to such weapons, it would be small not large ones, since that would counterbalance the overweening power of the latter. In practice, as one would expect, such weapons have already spread, and so long as the big powers refuse to abandon theirs, there is no principled reason to oppose their possession by others.89

While there may be no principled reason to defend the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), this has not stopped core nations from developing Eurocentric legitimations for their monopolistic control of WMD. In this vein, only well-ordered liberal societies can

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be entrusted with such arsenals, allegedly because their democratic norms give them the moral authority to use them rationally and only when necessary. On the other hand, because of their despotic systems, burdened societies lack the political openness and ethical mores to possess nuclear arms; in fact, the well-ordered liberal core has the duty to prevent the rest from acquiring WMD. Thus, the ideology underpinning the white man’s burden reappears to justify the core’s strategic goals of maintaining military supremacy. Lee Feinstein and Anne-Marie Slaughter contend that the “major problem with the NPT is that its opening proposition is to treat North Korea as if it were Norway. This flaw has exposed the nonproliferation regime to abuse by determined and defiant regimes, especially those headed by dictatorial rulers.”90 Feinstein and Slaughter argue for a new, strategic posture “based . . . on the recognition that leaders without internal checks on their power, or who are sponsors of terror, and who seek to acquire WMD are a unique threat.”91 Core nations thus have the duty to prevent the emergence of nuclear powers in so-called closed societies. While Feinstein and Slaughter recommend the full unleashing of diplomacy in the initial stages of prevention, they welcome the simultaneous use of threat of force to pressure outlaw states into submission. If these means fail, then military intervention and preemptive strikes become necessary tools to prevent unrepentant outlaw regimes from amassing WMD. Feinstein and Slaughter are clear on these matters: Keeping force on the table is often a critical ingredient in making diplomacy work. It may be especially necessary for effective inspections and monitoring of WMD programs in closed societies. Force may be considered as part of an interdiction effort, may be targeted at specific dangerous facilities, or may be part of broader military action as a last resort. The utility of force in dealing with the most serious proliferation dangers is not a controversial proposition.92

The tendency to gloss such regimes outlaw or terrorist happens to coincide with the varying strategic interests of the core. Fundamental among these is the expansion of market capitalism into those areas that have either an abundance of critical natural resources, or security vacuums that could be filled by terrorist networks. Liberal imperialism, however, is not about imposing political order per se, let alone a liberal order. It is about operating profitable private corpora-

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tions in any territorial space that receives the contractual legal authority of a nation-state. In fact, these corporations are not in the business of national development; instead, they exploit extractive enclaves in thoroughly dysfunctional and despotic nations. Liberal imperialism is quite at ease with dictatorships provided they accept its economic rules.93 The African case is illustrative of this pattern, as Ferguson points out: All five top recipients of foreign investment in the period 1994–96 . . . fell into . . . the “most risky” category; the list was headed by such unlikely paragons of “good government” as Angola, Congo/Zaire, and Equatorial Guinea. Indeed, countries with raging civil wars and spectacularly illiberal governments have on a number of occasions proved to be surprisingly strong performers in the area of economic growth, as well. Angola, for instance, actually had one of Africa’s better rates of GDP growth during the war-torn . . . 1980s, while Sudan’s 8.1 percent annual GDP growth for the 1990s put it comfortably at the top of the continental pack, notwithstanding one of the most brutal and intractable wars in recent memory.94

Indeed, liberal imperialism is quite compatible with national chaos and violence; its corporate firms need neither political stability nor the protection of local public forces to thrive in extractive enclaves. These firms have come to rely on the private security of commercial mercenary firms such as Blackwater or Executive Outcomes to protect their operations from local insurgencies and impose the order of capital.95 In fact, such private military and security companies (PMSC) represent a growing global industry with contracts estimated to range between $20 billion and $100 billion annually.96 The PMSC are playing an increasingly critical role both in the military strategies of core nations, particularly the United States, and in zones of “low-intensity” conflicts. 97 They have been a major force in the US occupation of Iraq not only providing “protective services” to diplomats and businesses, but also repressing and killing insurgents.98 The PMSC are the mercenary troops of today’s liberal imperialism, ensuring the continued power of the core’s outer peripheral allies and the safety of its transnational firms. According to the United Nations, An emerging trend in Latin America but also in other regions of the world indicates situations of private security companies protecting transnational extractive corporations whose employees are often

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involved in suppressing the legitimate social protest of communities and human rights and environmental organizations of the areas where these corporations operate. Furthermore, in exchange for providing security services to some African Governments, PMSCs have in some cases received concessions for the exploitation of natural resources.99

The increased demand for private security and protection of property in outer peripheral states is symptomatic of their incapacity to deploy their own effective public forces. It symbolizes also that their juridical sovereignty does not go far beyond their internationally recognized rights to grant contractual legal authority to imperial firms. In fact, the sovereignty of outer peripheral states is often in the hands of PMSC, which are hired to protect des espaces utils (useful territories) from domestic insurgents. As the UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries explains, “In many of today’s ‘failed states’, the globalization of the economy, together with the bottom-up privatization of violence, in which non-State actors such as paramilitaries and warlords control natural resources, has had destructive effects because of the attempts by foreign actors to link their wealth (oil, gas, diamonds, timber and precious metals) to the world market and to control their national economy.”100 In general, the benefits of extractive enclaves have been socially very thin, they do not extend to the national space, let alone to the majority of the population.101 In fact, these enclaves are segregated zones walled off from the rest of the local society. They embody the inequalities and contradictions of global capitalism. From the vantage point of the outer periphery, the global is not, according to Ferguson, a “shiny, round, and allencompassing totality”; it is not “a seamless world without borders, but a patchwork of discontinuous and hierarchically ranked spaces, whose edges are carefully delimited, guarded, and enforced.”102 The hierarchic demarcations of the world capitalist system extend to the way in which core policymakers and financial institutions value life itself. Twenty years ago Lawrence Summers, then chief economist of the World Bank who later became US treasury secretary in the William J. Clinton administration, president of Harvard University, and director of the National Economic Council in the Barack Obama administration, argued that the dumping of hazardous waste in third world countries was justified. According to Summers, exposing poor people living in poor societies to hazardous material was

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cost effective given that they had shorter and more miserable lives than the well-off citizens of the core. In an internal memorandum sent to his colleagues at the World Bank on December 12, 1992, Summers contended, 1. The measurement of the costs of health impairing pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that. 2. The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I’ve always thought that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted; their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low [sic] compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City.103

Summers’s logic may have been “totally insane” as Brazil’s secretary of the environment at the time Jose Lutzenburger argued, 104 but it reflects the conventional wisdom of liberal imperialism, which places more value on the life of citizens of the core than those of the outer periphery. This reasoning again becomes clear when assessing the core’s treatment of victims of violence, terrorism, and war. For instance, when the Obama administration unleashes its drones, it “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants . . . unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”105 In fact, the deployment of the core’s military arsenal into outer peripheral areas is bent on terrifying their populations into submission. It is supposed to achieve rapid dominance over targeted territories by generating utter fear and paralysis in the face of monumental violence. This is the stuff of “Shock and Awe,” which Bud Edney, a retired US Navy admiral and naval aviator, defines as “actions that create fears, dangers, and destruction that are incomprehensible to the people at large, specific elements/sectors of the threat society, or the leadership.”106 The difference between conventional war and terror is thus vanishing, but the core has the power to define and label its conflagrations as it wishes. As John Feffer explains, “Explosive vests are a sign of extremism; Predator missiles, of advanced sensibility.”107 The core calls its mass killing of civilians unintended and regrettable col-

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lateral damage, but brands other perpetrators of similar atrocities as terrorists and pathological murderers. In short, within broad limits the core has the power to both elaborate the narrative of the world system, and enforce it. Jo Becker and Scott Shane describe how the president of the United States has institutionalized and routinized assassinations.108 They explain that “Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret ‘nominations’ process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical.”109 Becker and Shane liken the assassination selection to “the strangest of bureaucratic rituals” where over 100 members of the security establishment meet on a weekly basis “to pore over terrorist suspects’ biographies and recommend to the president who should be the next to die.” President Obama makes the ultimate decision by seeking the “indispensable” “blessing” of his counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, who is compared by his colleagues to a “priest with extremely strong moral values who was suddenly charged with leading a war.”110 Moral values rooted in the “just war theories of Christian philosophers” legitimate robotic assassinations and allowed Obama to make what he described as an “easy decision” to kill a US cleric in Yemen.111 Costas Douzinas defines this imperial capacity to opt out from the law while simultaneously being its “sole authoritative interpreter” as a “universalist exceptionalism.”112 In fact, the core, and particularly the center of the core, has always invoked the doctrine of state of exception to run the world system; it has granted itself the right to suspend the law not only in moments of crisis, but also when it serves its naked interest. The rulers of the center of the core are thus the global sovereign. To paraphrase Carl Schmitt, it is they who set the modalities of the state of exception. 113 Moreover, core nations simply deny the harm that they inflict; it is as if their bombs and drones kill only insurgent targets and terrorists. And yet, a report by law professors at Stanford and New York University suggests that, “while civilian casualties are rarely acknowledged by the US government, there is significant evidence that US drone strikes have injured and killed civilians.” Moreover, the United States asserts its right to engage in permanent surveillance of communities located in foreign states. The report contends that the entailing damage to innocent civilian populations is enormous, but simply ignored:

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US drone strike policies cause considerable and under-accountedfor harm to the daily lives of ordinary civilians, beyond death and physical injury. Drones hover twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning. Their presence terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves.114

As the dominant sovereign of the core, the United States with its assemblage of occupation, surveillance, and destruction has proclaimed its droit d’ingérence115 into the internal affairs of those peripheral areas that it deems to have violated human rights. In fact, all core nations give themselves the right and obligation to become outlaws in their violent civilizing interventions against what the prime liberal advocate, John Rawls, defines as “burdened societies.” Rawls maintains that “well ordered peoples” of the core can violate the sovereignty of burdened societies because they have the “duty to assist” them into becoming civilized liberal territories. 116 Historian Paul Johnson captures the ethos of this imperial interventionism well: We are witnessing today a revival of colonialism, albeit in a new form. It is a trend that should be encouraged, it seems to me, on practical as well as moral grounds. There simply is no alternative in nations where governments have crumbled and the most basic conditions for civilized life have disappeared, as is now the case in a great many third-world countries. . . . Happily, the civilized powers need not get stuck in the old colonial quagmire, because they have the example of the trusteeship system before them. The Security Council could commit a territory where authority has irretrievably broken down to one or more trustees. These would be empowered not merely to impose order by force but to assume political functions. They would in effect be possessed of sovereign powers. . . . For more than 30 years the international community has been treating symptoms, not causes. The basic cause is obvious but is never publicly admitted: some states are not yet fit to govern themselves. Their continued existence, and the violence and human degradation they breed, is a threat to the stability of their neighbors as well as an affront to our consciences. There is a moral issue here: the civilized world has a mission to go out to these desperate places and govern. . . . If done firmly and confidently, such state-building

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will prove popular. It is important, therefore, that the first pilot projects should be carefully chosen, and its trustees experienced. Somalia is an obvious choice. So is Liberia and perhaps Haiti.117

The so-called responsibility to protect118 (R2P) doctrine elaborated by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty has become the legitimating doctrine for such imperial behavior. Here again, the pretense of a universal defense of human rights masks the realities of the core’s imperial drive. As John Hobson explains, “In certain key respects R2P is reminiscent of the nineteenth century ‘white man’s burden,’ requiring not just Western paternalist intervention to rescue Eastern victims, but a subsequent reconstruction of the state along Western lines. In this way R2P reconvenes the conception of Western hyper-sovereignty and conditional Eastern sovereignty.”119 Yet the R2P concept was not merely a call to assist victims of brutal regimes and justify the core’s hypersovereignty; it was also a response to the core’s security agenda, which sought to contain the civil conflicts and violence engendered by the world capitalist economy. The droit d’ingérence and the R2P are the essence of what has been called the “new humanitarianism”—a form of militarized intervention offering a moral cloak to justify imperial wars and the overthrow of regimes that are no longer utile (useful) to the core.120 The new humanitarianism implies not only forceful military overthrows of rogue states to protect civilians, but also increasingly militarized relief operations in zones affected by natural calamities. The core’s apparatus of mass destruction is now the intimate ally of humanitarianism; it is on a new civilizing and cosmopolitan mission to remove despots, establish human rights, implant democracy, and fuel economic development.121 This mission, however, does not require the imposition of the old heavy-handed imperial system; instead, it embodies the model of “imperialism lite,” a type of trusteeship run by the center of the core, but lacking both colonies and fullfledged military or bureaucratic occupation. To state it bluntly, the center of the core wants the benefits of empire without the costs: “a global sphere of influence without the burden of direct administration and the risks of daily policing.” 122 It is nation building from a distance and on the cheap, admittedly with troops and garrisons, but with few deaths among those that the core states count and value— their own and exclusively their own. “Drone-like,”123 this imperial-

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ism is controlled and executed from the core via the virtual world of video screens, but with real, devastating, and deadly effects on the distant outer periphery. It envelops itself in the fakeness of the new humanitarianism—a lie that empire tells itself to justify its continued civilizing mission. Organic intellectuals of the new humanitarianism acknowledge the lie. Michael Ignatieff puts it candidly: “The humanitarian empire is the new face of an old figure: the democratic free world, the Christian West. It is held together by common elements of rhetoric and self-belief: the idea, if not the practice, of democracy; the idea, if not the practice, of human rights; the idea, if not the practice, of equality before the law.”124 Nation building is thus fake. It is a mimicry of an imaginary liberal world for the liberal world, as it really exists, is full of contradictions between rhetoric and reality, between the egalitarian universalism it preaches and the global calamities it unleashes.125 As Susan Buck-Morss suggests, a moral outrage “is occurring at this moment, . . . the fact that political collectives proclaim themselves champions of human rights and the rule of law and then deny these to a whole list of enemy exceptions, as if humanity itself were the monopoly of their own privileged members—their war a just war, their terrorist acts a moral duty, their death and destruction legitimate by reason, or progress, or the divine.”126 In this chapter, I have argued that, far from creating a cosmopolitan polity, globalization has instead generated a system resembling apartheid South Africa with the outer periphery as its Bantustans. More than two decades of neoliberal discipline and unregulated capitalism have eviscerated the already fragile states of the poorest societies of the world and contributed to their chaotic and unending transitions to democracy. The increasingly limited capacities of these outer peripheral states have in turn contributed to their transformation into virtual trusteeships of the international community. Sustaining a world of mounting inequalities and growing polarization requires a massive arsenal of weapons. As Friedman acknowledges, “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist—McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”127 These contradictions, however, generate explosive tensions because the liberal discourse fuels aspirations that cannot be met

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within the existing parameters of the world capitalist system, let alone its outer periphery. The desire for social solidarity and a decent living standard in a democratic community where each individual is treated fairly as a citizen clashes with the continuing reality of political exclusion, grotesque inequalities, and persistent poverty on both a national and global scale. This tension is particularly acute in a country like Haiti where the overwhelming majority of the population is governed as an inconsequential mass of subjects. It is to this paradigmatic outer peripheral case that I devote the rest of this book.

Notes 1. Instead of using the term tremblement de terre in French, or tranblemantè a in Creole, many survivors have called the earthquake by the horrifying sound of the earth shaking, Goudougoudou. Moreover, out of fear that it might return, some Haitians prefer to not name it for what it was, opting instead to use the Creole term bagay la (the thing). 2. Laurent Dubois, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012). See also Mark Schuller and Pablo Morales, eds., Tectonic Shifts (Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2012); Paul Farmer, Haiti After the Earthquake, Abbey Gardner and Cassia Van Der Hoof Holstein, eds. (New York: Public Affairs, 2011). 3. Robert Fatton Jr., Haiti’s Predatory Republic (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002); Alex Dupuy, Haiti in the New World Order (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997); Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Haiti: State Against Nation (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990); Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, Haiti: The Breached Citadel, rev. ed. (Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholar’s Press, 2004). 4. Robert Maguire, Haiti After the Donors’ Conference: A Way Forward, Special Report No. 232 (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, September 2009), p. 3. 5. Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance (New York: The New Press, 1998), p. vii. 6. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 7. Government of the Republic of Haiti, Action Plan for National Recovery and Development of Haiti (March 2010), p. 7, http://www.haiti reconstructionfund.org/sites/haitireconstructionfund.org/files/Haiti%20 Action%20Plan.pdf. 8. Ibid. 9. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 23. 10. Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 29.

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11. Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy, p. 69. 12. Ibid., pp. 100–101. 13. Ibid., pp. 69–70. 14. Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Empire of Capital (London: Verso, 2003), pp. 136–137. 15. Ibid., pp. 18–19. 16. Andrew Jones, Globalization: Key Thinkers (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2010). 17. Harry Magdoff, “Imperialism Without Colonies,” in Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe, eds., Studies in a Theory of Imperialism (London: Longman, 1972), pp. 144–170. 18. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000); Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Multitude (New York: Penguin Books, 2005). 19. Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999). 20. Emily Eakin, “What Is the Next Big Idea? The Buzz Is Growing,” New York Times, July 7, 2001, B7, p. 6. 21. Samir Amin, The Liberal Virus (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004), p. 25. 22. Gore Vidal, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002). 23. John A. Tures, “United States Military Operations in the New World Order,” American Diplomacy, April 2003, http://www.unc.edu/depts /diplomat/archives_roll/2003_01-03/tures_military/tures_military.html (July 2, 2012). 24. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), “Background Paper on SIPRI Military Expenditure Data, 2010,” April 2011, pp. 2–3, http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/factsheet2010 (June 3, 2011). 25. Hugh Gusterson, “Empire of Bases,” Bulletin of the Atomic Social Scientists, March 10, 2009, http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists /hugh-gusterson/empire-of-bases (July 27, 2012). 26. Eric Hobsbawm, On Empire (New York: Pantheon Books, 2008). 27. As Wallerstein writes, “The proponents of world-systems analysis . . . have been talking about globalization since long before the word was invented—not, however, as something new but as something that has been basic to the modern world-system ever since it began in the sixteenth century” (World-Systems Analysis, p. x). 28. Manfred B. Steger, Globalism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), p. 12. 29. Ibid., pp. 63–64. 30. World Bank, World Development Report 1996: From Plan to Market (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 1. 31. Ibid. 32. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, trans. Paul M. Sweezy (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1964).

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33. Peter Martin, “The Moral Case for Globalization,” Le Monde Diplomatique, May 1997, http://mondediplo.com/1997/05/globalisation3157 (June 12, 2012). 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. Martin Wolf, Why Globalization Works (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), p. xvii. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid., p. 95. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid., p. 219. 43. Ibid., pp. 138–172. Wolf thus concludes that the world needs more globalization, not less. But we will only have more and better globalization if we have better states. We must reject the critics’ fantasies and nightmares. Above all, we must recognize that inequality and persistent poverty are the consequence not of the still limited integration of the world’s economy but of its political fragmentation. If we wish to make our world a better place, we must look not at the failures of the market economy, but at the hypocrisy, greed and stupidity that so often mar our politics, in both developing and developed countries. (p. 320)

44. Jagdish Bhagwati, In Defense of Globalization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. ix. 45. Ibid., pp. 49–195. 46. Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990). 47. Ibid., p. 64. 48. George Soros, The Crisis of Global Capitalism (New York: Public Affairs, 1998), pp. 115–116. 49. Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree. 50. Ibid., p. 407. 51. United Nations, Human Development Report 1999 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 38. 52. Luisa Kroll and Allison Fass, “The World’s Richest People,” Forbes, March 8, 2007, http://www.forbes.com/2007/03/06/billionaires-new-richest _07billionaires_cz_lk_af_0308billieintro.html (April 7, 2012). 53. Anup Shah, “Poverty Facts and Stats,” Global Issues: Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Issues That Affect Us All, January 7, 2013, http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats#src16. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. The Globalist, “America’s 1% vs. the Globe’s 1.3 Billion,” October 29, 2012, http://www.theglobalist.com/storyid.aspx?storyid=9793. 57. See some of the seminal work on the world capitalist economy: Samir Amin, Accumulation on a World Scale, 2 vols. (New York: Monthly

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Review Press, 1974); Paul Baran, The Political Economy of Growth (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1957); Andre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967); Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy. 58. Alejandro Colas, Empire (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2007), p. 34. See also Ronald Robinson, “Non European Foundations of European Imperialism: Sketch for a Theory of Collaboration,” in Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe, eds., Studies in a Theory of Imperialism (London: Longman, 1972), pp. 117–142. 59. Alasdair Roberts, The Logic of Discipline (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 60. Branko Milanovic, Worlds Apart (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), pp. 149–151. 61. James Ferguson, Global Shadows (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 38. 62. Mark Duffield, Development, Security and Unending War (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2007), p. 27. 63. William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 64. Lawrence E. Harrison, The Central Liberal Truth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). See also Fund for Peace, The Failed States Index 2012 (Washington, DC: Fund for Peace, 2012), http://www.fundforpeace.org /global/library/cfsir1210-failedstatesindex2012-06p.pdf. 65. Fund for Peace, Failed States Index 2012, p. 11. 66. Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 72–73. 67. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007). 68. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1944), p. 3. 69. For instance, the rise of national liberation movements that contributed toward ending the colonial era upset the global balance of power and empowered peoples who had hitherto suffered the indignities of alien rule under white supremacist regimes. These movements, however, failed to break the chains of dependence and their own class contradictions. Independence was not what it had promised; most postcolonies in fact ended up as peripheral or outer peripheral states. Frantz Fanon warns of such a bleak outcome when he alludes to the “pitfalls of national consciousness.” Such pitfalls reflected the nature of the emerging national ruling classes that soon discovered that their “historic mission” would be that of “intermediary.” This mission, as Fanon explains, “[had] nothing to do with transforming the nation; it consist[ed], prosaically, of being the transmission line between the nation and a capitalism, rampant though camouflaged, which today puts on the mask of neo-colonialism” (Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth [New York: Grove Press, 1968], p. 152). Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein contend that the struggles for national liberation were Janus-faced:

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On the one hand, these struggles have accomplished very much. The arrogant and self-confident global racism involved in colonialism has disappeared or at least gone underground. The role of indigenous persons in the political decisions affecting the less powerful states of the world is considerably greater today than it was in 1945. The actual state policies of such countries have tended to reflect this “indigenization” of political decision-making.

On the other hand, the changes certainly have not been as great as the national-liberation movements had anticipated as of, say 1945. There are two kinds of explanation for this. One is that the control of the state machinery of a state (any state) in the interstate system affords less real power in practice than it does in theory. The second is that there are internal class struggles going on in the states who have already known “national liberation.” (Giovanni Arrighi, Terence K. Hopkins, and Immanuel Wallerstein, Antisystemic Movements [London: Verso, 1989], p. 57). 70. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983). 71. Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth; Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Other (London: Verso, 2008); Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1978); Immanuel Wallerstein, European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power (New York: The New Press, 2006). 72. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1992 (Cambridge, UK: Blackwell, 1990); Ralph Miliband, Marxism and Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977). 73. Anthony W. Marx, Faith in Nation: Exclusionary Origins of Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 200. 74. Michel Foucault, The Foucault Reader, Paul Rabinow, ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), p. 261. 75. This expression dates back to the Vietnam War and was used by the CIA as a euphemism for executing enemies of the United States. See Terence Smith, “Beret Case Details Reported in Saigon,” New York Times, August 14, 1969, p. 1, http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F70C1 4FF345E1B7493C6A81783D85F4D8685F9. 76. Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Macmillan, 2001), pp. 8–9. 77. Gilbert Achcar, The Clash of Barbarisms (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002). 78. Arno Mayer, “Untimely Reflections upon the State of the World,” Daily Princetonian, October 5, 2001, http://www.dailyprincetonian.com /2001/10/05/3509/. 79. Richard Caplan, “From Collapsing States to Neo-Trusteeship: The Limits to Solving the Problem of ‘Precarious Statehood’ in the 21st Century,” Third World Quarterly 28, no. 2, (2007): 238. 80. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). 81. Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class (New York: Verso, 1991).

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82. Ibid., p. 21. 83. According to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “From 1990 to 2010, the migrant stock born in the South and residing in the North increased by 85 per cent, more than twice as fast as the global migrant stock (38%). The migrant stock originating from the South and living in the North increased by 34 million, from 40 million in 1990 to 74 million in 2010 (+85%)” (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Facts, No. 2012/3, June 2012, http://www.un.org/esa/population/publica tions/popfacts/popfacts_2012-3_South-South_migration.pdf). 84. Caroline Moorehead, Human Cargo (London: Vintage Books, 2006), p. 73. 85. T. Christian Miller and Ann M. Simmons, “Relief for Africans, Kosovars Worlds Apart,” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1999, http://articles.la times.com/1999/may/21/news/mn-39447. 86. Ibid. 87. Richard Cooper, “The New Liberal Imperialism,” The Guardian, April 7, 2002, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/apr/07/1. 88. The number of known military interventions, both large and small, of core nations into the periphery would easily surpass the hundreds. A comprehensive list is offered by Richard F. Grimmett, Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798–2010 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, March 10, 2011), http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R41677.pdf. The list accounts for “hundreds of instances in which the United States has used its armed forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or for other than normal peacetime purposes.” It does not include, however, covert activities such as the CIA-engineered coups in Iran and Chile that overthrew the respective elected governments of Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 and Salvador Allende in 1971. Clearly, the numerous military engagements of France and Great Britain in peripheral nations, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, are absent from the list. 89. Perry Anderson, “Casuistries of Peace and War,” London Review of Books 25, nos. 5–6 (March 2003): 12. 90. Lee Feinstein and Anne-Marie Slaughter, “A Duty to Prevent,” Foreign Affairs 83, no. 1 (January–February 2004): 144. 91. Ibid., p. 145. 92. Ibid., pp. 147–148. 93. China, which is rapidly moving to full core status, has its own methods of neoimperial penetration of the periphery and outer periphery. It has no ideological messianism guiding its economic and strategic interests. It is simply securing access to markets and natural resources, and seizing business opportunities irrespective of the nature of the regime of the penetrated country. 94. Ferguson, Global Shadows, p. 196. 95. Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater (New York: Nation Books, 2007), pp. 428–446. 96. United Nations, “Report of the Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries as a Means of Violating Human Rights and Impeding the Exercise of the Right of People to Self-Determination,” January 9, 2008, p. 11, http://

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d a c c e s s - d d s n y. u n . o rg / d o c / U N D O C / G E N / G 0 8 / 1 0 0 / 7 5 / P D F / G 0 8 10075.pdf?OpenElement. 97. P. W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003). 98. According to the United Nations, In Iraq, the number of “private contractors” fulfilling a number of military and quasi-military tasks varies according to different sources and the manner they are counted, ranging between 20,000 and 100,000 persons working for PMSCs. Most estimates agree to a figure between 20,000 and nearly 50,000 foreign armed “private contractors”. According to the Private Security Company Association of Iraq there would be some 70,000 persons providing armed protection, out of which 14,000 would be unregistered Iraqis and 20,000 unregistered foreigners. Other semi-official estimates give the following figures: 3,000 to 5,000 United States security contractors, 7,000 to 10,000 expatriates such as Australians, British, Canadians and South Africans, 15,000 to 20,000 third-country nationals from countries such as Bulgaria, Colombia, Chile, El Salvador, Fiji, Honduras, Nepal, Peru, the Philippines, Romania, Russian Federation, Ukraine and others, as well as 25,000 to 30,000 Iraqi host-country nationals. According to a United States Government Accountability Office report there would be more than 100,000 contractors of which 48,000 [are] working as private soldiers. (“Report of the Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries,” pp. 11–12)

See also Scahill, Blackwater. 99. UN, “Report of the Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries,” p. 10. 100. Ibid., p. 9. 101. Ferguson, Global Shadows, p. 198. 102. Ibid., pp. 48–49. 103. Lawrence Summers, “Let Them Eat Pollution,” The Economist 322, no. 7745 (February 8, 1992). 104. Jose Lutzenburger, quoted in David Palumbo-Liu, The Deliverance of Others (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012), p. viii. 105. Jo Becker and Scott Shane, “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will,” New York Times, May 29, 2012, http://www .nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al -qaeda.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1. 106. Bud Edney, “Appendix A: Thoughts on Rapid Dominance,” in Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade, Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (Washington, DC: NDU Press, 1996), p. 110. 107. John Feffer, “Their Martyrs, Our Heroes,” Le Monde Diplomatique, September 12, 2009, p. 13. 108. Becker and Shane, “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will.” 109. Ibid. 110. Ibid. See also Daniel Klaidman, “Drones: How Obama Learned to Kill,” Daily Beast, May 28, 2012, http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek /2012/05/27/drones-the-silent-killers.html.

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111. Becker and Shane, “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will.” 112. Costas Douzinas, Human Rights and Empire (New York: RoutledgeCavendish, 2007), p. 195. 113. Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, introduction by George Schwab, trans., and foreword by Tracy B. Strong (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 5. See also Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). 114. International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic (Stanford Law School) and Global Justice Clinic (NYU School of Law), Living Under Drones: Death, Injury, and Trauma to Civilians from US Drone Practices in Pakistan (Stanford Law School and New York University School of Law, September 2012), http://livingunderdrones.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09 /Stanford_NYU_LIVING_UNDER_DRONES.pdf. 115. Bernard Kouchner, founder of Médecins Sans Frontières, seems to have been the first to use the term droit d’ingérence humanitaire in 1989 at a conference on law and humanitarian morality. Kouchner became the “UNappointed viceroy of Kosovo” and eventual foreign minister in the French government of Nicolas Sarkozy. See Caroline Fleuriot, “A Right to Intervene?” Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2008, p. 13. See also Douzinas, Human Rights and Empire, p. 61. 116. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 79–81, 93, 106. See also Robert Keohane, “Political Authority After Intervention: Gradation in Sovereignty,” in J. L. Holzgrefe and Robert Keohane, eds., Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 275–298. 117. Paul Johnson, “Colonialism’s Back—and Not a Moment Too Soon,” New York Times Magazine, April 18, 1993, p. 22, http://search.ebsco host.com.proxy.its.virginia.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=n5h&AN=30597 292&site=ehost-live. 118. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect (Ottawa, ON: International Development Research Centre, 2001). See also Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarianism Contested (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 70–104; Douzinas, Human Rights and Empire, pp. 177–196. 119. John M. Hobson, The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 301. 120. Ibid., pp. 299–310. 121. Michael Ignatieff, Empire Lite (Toronto, ON: Penguin Canada, 2003). 122. Ibid., p. 106. 123. Michael Hastings, “The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret,” Rolling Stone, April 16, 2012, http://www.rolling stone.com/politics/news/the-rise-of-the-killer-drones-how-america-goes-to -war-in-secret-20120416?print=true. 124. Ignatieff, Empire Lite, p. 17. 125. As Wallerstein writes,

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These universal values are the social creation of the dominant strata in a particular world-system. . . . What we are using as a criterion is not global universalism but European universalism, a set of doctrines and ethical views that derive from a European context, and aspire to be, or are presented as, universal values—what many of its espousers call natural law. It justifies simultaneously the defense of the human rights of the so-called innocent and the material exploitation engaged in by the strong. It is a morally ambiguous doctrine. It attacks the crimes of some and passes over the crimes of others, even using the criteria of what it asserts to be natural law. (European Universalism, pp. 27–28)

126. Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009), p. 149. 127. Thomas L. Friedman, “A Manifesto for the Fast World,” New York Times, March 28, 1999, http://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/28/magazine/a -manifesto-for-the-fast-world.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.

3 The Contradictions of Haitian Citizenship

SITUATED AT THE LOWEST END OF THE PRODUCTION PROCESS

with a minuscule and ultracheap labor force, Haiti symbolizes the paradigmatic state of the outer periphery. It has neither a productive bourgeoisie nor a significant working class.1 The historical struggles that these two classes have waged to give birth to liberal democracy elsewhere2 have been largely absent in Haiti. Unfortunately, the country’s politics have been characterized by a zero-sum game, an intense battle between small elites to conquer state power and gain public offices with which to accumulate wealth illicitly.3 This pattern of corrupt governance owes much to the core’s white supremacist structures of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that condemned Haiti to an outcast role in the world system. These structures quarantined the world’s first independent black nation-state and relegated it to the status of a pariah community that was excluded from the “family of civilized nations.” As the product of the only successful slave revolution, Haiti was not only “unthinkable,”4 it was also a danger to the core’s imperial system of exploitation. Embodying the symbol of resistance to imperialism, Haiti had to be contained, marginalized, undermined, and denied. 5 Europe and the United States dedicated themselves to this mission for the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries. Besieged by the core, Haiti was forced to operate on a political economy of scarcity, which has in turn engendered a profoundly hierarchical social structure.6 Class and color fracture the state between a small, well-off ruling class and a vast majority of poor peasants and urban dwellers. The fracture between rich and poor is captured by the 55

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Creole appellation—moun andeyo. Moun andeyo designates the Haitian majority, particularly peasants, as a people outside the moral community of the nation, an inconsequential body separate from the ruling minority.7 This social chasm is far from being unique to Haiti; moun andeyo is in fact a universal phenomenon. The level of exclusion, the intensity of ruling class contempt, and the degree of deference exhibited by subordinate classes may vary from nation to nation, but they are dynamics intrinsic to life on the outer periphery of the world capitalist system.8 As a paradigmatic member of this extreme peripheral zone, however, Haiti’s inequalities are pronounced and leave little room for social mobility. According to the socioeconomic indicators in the UN Human Development Report 2011, Haiti ranked 158th among 187 countries.9 The facts of inequalities and poverty are clear: The poorest 40 per cent of the population have access to less than 6 per cent of the country’s income, and the richest 2 per cent of Haiti’s people control 26 per cent of national wealth. . . . The overall incidence of poverty in the country is 77 per cent. But in rural areas, which are home to 52 per cent of Haiti’s population, 88 per cent of people are poor and 67 per cent are extremely poor. Rural people have a per capita income that is about one third of the income of people living in urban areas. And a large segment of the rural population has extremely limited access to basic services. Only 10 per cent have access to electricity and less than 8 per cent have access to drinking water.10

These grim statistics are in part the by-product of Haiti’s hierarchical social structure, which has contributed to the development of an authoritarian habitus and the silencing of the moun andeyo.11 Rulers have historically lorded it over the masses who, in turn, have periodically overcome their quiescence to mount rebellions and uprisings. These revolts, however, have failed to effect a radical transformation of Haitian society. They have tended to represent moments of popular explosion, anger, and retribution rather than programmatic attempts at reforming, let alone revolutionizing, the social fabric of the country.12 Moreover, these popular irruptions have traditionally been hijacked by gran negs (the big men). This is not to say that the masses have no political projects of their own or permanently succumb to the manipulations of political entrepreneurs. The problem is that, whenever the masses have risen, they have confronted the repressive apparatus of the state and, frequently, imperial opposition

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too. In addition, they have lacked the financial resources and organizational means to avoid their co-optation into movements that end up being forms of messianic populism.13 The rise and fall of the Lavalas14 movement and its charismatic leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, illustrate how the wrath of the people contributed to ending a despotic regime and ushering in a potentially transformative government on the one hand while failing to change Haiti’s deep economic and political structures on the other. 15 Lavalas’s failure is deeply embedded in the politique du ventre (politics of the belly) that has characterized Haitian history. The realities of scarcity have traditionally meant that politics is a business and a means of social mobility for the overwhelming majority not born into wealth. While it would be wrong to assume that all of Lavalas’s leaders and supporters were opportunistic and without convictions, it is clear that their daily struggles for access to basic necessities and amenities made them ultimately susceptible to self-defeating compromises and mercenary propositions. In other words, confronting domestic opposition from the upper class and hostility from the international community, the popular movement soon found itself exhausted, marginalized, and co-opted into patterns of individualized patronage and clientelism.16 Despite its ultimate failure, Lavalas profoundly transformed Haiti’s cultural politics. While subordinate classes had historically tended to remain silent in the face of authoritarianism and exploitation, their critical role in the overthrow of the Jean-Claude Duvalier dictatorship and the rise of Lavalas itself indicated that their rage was no longer contained in the “hidden transcript,” but had exploded onto the public stage.17 From then on, the moun andeyo would be less willing to simply express their discontent in coded words; their revolt against Duvalierism and their involvement as the “flood” that carried Aristide to power symbolized one of “those rare moments of political electricity when, often for the first time in history, the hidden transcript is spoken directly and publicly in the teeth of power.”18 The moun andeyo’s assertion of their humanity represented a rupture with Haiti’s past. Having long been excluded from the moral community of the nation, the masses gained their voices and claimed their right to be full citizens. Tout moun se moun (every human being is a human being), the slogan Aristide popularized, signified the emergence of the moun andeyo on the political, moral, and cultural stage. 19 Their national presence could no longer be ignored; Tout

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moun se moun entailed a revolutionary prise de conscience, a profound cultural shift that nurtured the idea that all Haitians were in fact equal; they were all citizens. Though the ruling class resisted— and still resists—the democratic logic of the moun andeyo’s irruption on the national stage, popular pressures have compelled the elite to accommodate itself to this new reality. As Franklin Midy explains, “By regaining their freedom of political speech and their right to answer, those who were excluded in Haiti regained their humanity and their citizenship; they became political actors and the subjects of History. Moreover, they broke the monopoly of speech held by the elite.”20 The right to citizenship claimed by the moun andeyo is clearly a major turning point in the history of Haiti, but it has produced few concrete social and economic gains. The rhetoric of equality, social contract, and solidarity has become part of the new narrative of the country’s political life, but it clashes with the continuing realities of inequities, exclusion, and poverty. While the universal franchise is now firmly embedded in the structures of the political system, the transformation of subjects into citizens has certainly not meant that Haitians are in charge of their own affairs or that they exercise their sovereignty as equals. The principle of citizenship embodies a democratic and egalitarian logic that is patently incomplete in the outer periphery and in Haiti, in particular. To be a citizen, as Immanuel Wallerstein explains, means “to have the right to participate, on an equal level with all other citizens, in the basic decisions of the state. To be a citizen [means] that there [are] no persons with statuses higher than that of citizen. . . . To be a citizen [means] that everyone [is] accepted as a rational person, capable of political decision.”21 Clearly, the overwhelming majority of Haitian citizens do not enjoy any of these rights; class, gender, status, wealth, and education divide the population to such an extent that it would be preposterous to claim that citizenship extends to everyone. Moreover, being a citizen is inextricably linked to belonging to a sovereign territorial space, the nation. Without such sovereignty, the very idea of citizenship is moot. Yet as suggested above, Haiti has become a virtual trusteeship of the international community. This process has crystallized amid a wave of humanitarian assistance and reconstruction. But the idea of transforming the country into a trusteeship is not new.22 It is in many ways an extension of a pattern of decades-long interventionism by powerful neighbors. In fact, the

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most significant moments in the past thirty years of Haiti’s history would not have occurred had it not been for some form of imperial interventionism in its internal affairs. This interventionism has varied from covert CIA support for coups, to the International’s23 imposition of economic sanctions and embargoes, and to outright military occupation and heavy-handed “humanitarianism.” The organization and funding of elections, as well as their final outcomes, have also deeply reflected imperial decisions and interests. Thus, for instance, President Aristide’s return to power in 1994,24 as well as his forced departure into exile ten years later,25 would have been impossible without the massive intrusion of the United States. More recently, the election of Michel Martelly as president in 2010 would have been unthinkable had it not been for the controversial involvement of the international community.26 Haitian rulers are the product of their own idiosyncratic milieu, but both their ascendancy to and downfall from positions of power are dependent on external as well as internal forces. The confluence of continuous imperial interferences and domestic forces in the making of Haiti’s predicament explains why treating the country as a failed state is so erroneous. The Fund for Peace, which has placed Haiti seventh among the worst ten failed states on the planet,27 measures failure using indicators that are primarily derived from the internal political economy of a society. In other words, state evisceration, economic decline, social conflicts, and political instability are all traced back to local mismanagement, corruption, and culture. It is as if the unbroken pattern of imperial interventions in Haiti had nothing to do with the country’s massive failures. In reality, it is only by analyzing the opportunistic convergence of the interests of reactionary domestic social forces and the interests of imperial powers that we can begin to understand what is wrong with Haiti. Dependence, agricultural collapse, military coups, and state disintegration are intelligible only through the prism of this convergence of interests, which has ultimately set Haiti in the outer periphery. Haiti’s dire condition is the product of the hierarchical interconnections between local and global political economies that continuously reproduce the massive disparities of power and influence in our current global system. Thus, if Haiti is a failed state, it is because the world capitalist economy is a failed world economy. Haiti’s dependence on the outside world is symbolized not only by its extreme reliance on foreign assistance, but also by the growing

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amount of diasporic remittances, which total about 25 percent of its GNP. In a 2007 survey, the Inter-American Development Bank pointed out that “55% of Haitians have at least one member of their family living abroad and remittances from expatriates to their families in Haiti were estimated at US$1.65 billion in 2006, of which US$1.17 billion was sent from the United States.”28 In addition, Canada ranked second as a source of remittances with US$230 million (14%), followed by France (8%). . . . Of the countries in the Latin American region, Haiti ranks second behind the Dominican Republic in terms of the proportion of its population receiving periodic remittances. In 2006, 31% of Haitians living in Haiti, which represents 1.1 million people, received periodic remittances from abroad.29

While the diaspora plays a crucial role in keeping Haiti afloat, it has a limited impact on policymaking. In fact, the country’s domestic economic policies are largely decided abroad in the headquarters of the major international financial institutions. Similarly, Haiti’s electoral process is heavily funded by foreign powers and under the surveillance of the core’s apparatus of democratic legitimation, which imposes strict limits on political choice. In turn, these limits are protected and enforced by the presence of over 10,000 troops from the United Nations—the Mission des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en Haïti (MINUSTAH). Moreover, the vast majority of Haiti’s citizens are hostage in their own country; they find it extremely difficult to escape their conditions of poverty through migration. Those who try to flee become the boat people repatriated to their destitute home by US vessels plying the high seas. With the complicity of the Haitian government, the United States has the legal right to patrol Haitian waters and compel any Haitian on the high seas to return to his country.30 In September 1981, the JeanClaude Duvalier dictatorship signed a bilateral agreement with the Ronald Reagan administration “for the establishment of a cooperative program of interdiction and selective return to Haiti of certain Haitian migrants and vessels involved in illegal transport of persons coming from Haiti.”31 With this agreement, the US Coast Guard had the right to interdict Haitians on the high seas. As Harold Hongju Koh explains, the coast guard would summarily interview them and “only those few ‘screened-in’ Haitians found to have ‘credible fears’ of political persecution would be allowed to continue to the United

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States.”32 Between 1981 and 1990, 22,940 Haitians were intercepted on the high seas and only 11 of those were deemed qualified to apply for asylum in the United States.33 In the aftermath of the bloody coup of 1991 that led to President Aristide’s first exile, the United States feared that the existing bilateral agreement would not be enough to withstand a flood of Haitian boat people fleeing the repressive military regime of General Raoul Cédras. Searching for a solution to a Haitian exodus, the George H. W. Bush administration tried to establish regional safe havens, but thousands ultimately ended up at the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Confronting this crisis, President Bush issued an executive order from his vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine, on Memorial Day 1992, that empowered the coast guard to intercept all fleeing Haitians and repatriate them to Haiti without any due process. In all likelihood, the order violated international law because it “constituted a textbook case of refoulement, for it effectively erected a ‘floating Berlin Wall’ around Haiti that prevented Haitians from going anywhere, not just to the United States.”34 Then presidential candidate Bill Clinton condemned the Bush administration’s “cruel policy of returning Haitian refugees to a brutal dictatorship without an asylum hearing.”35 Yet once he became president, Clinton embraced the Kennebunkport order. As he put it, “The practice of returning those who flee Haiti by boat will continue, for the time being, after I become President. . . . Those who leave Haiti by boat for the United States will be intercepted and returned to Haiti by the U.S. Coast Guard. Leaving by boat is not the route to freedom.”36 While the United States’ capacity to seize Haitians from the high seas and repatriate them exemplifies a quintessential relationship between a domineering core and a contingent outer periphery, it is a relationship mirrored in the lopsided interactions between the periphery and outer periphery. For example, the Dominican Republic, with the paradoxical assistance of the Haitian government, has exploited Haitian migrant workers for the past ninety years. The story of Haitians laboring as a socially invisible and humiliated people in the Dominican Republic is inextricably connected to sugar, US-owned plantations, Dominican racism, and the predatory governance of the Haitian ruling class.37 The US occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 created the social conditions for the Haitian exodus to the Dominican Republic. The acceleration of this migration began in the 1920s when, in their drive to maximize profits, US plantations began to hire

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the ultracheap labor of Haitian sugarcane cutters. As Michele Wucker explains, For the man-hours they needed, the sugar growers looked to Haiti for desperate men who would accept lower wages than the Dominicans would. In 1920 there had been 28,258 Haitians in the Dominican Republic; by 1935, a year after the Americans left Haiti and eleven years after they had left the Dominican Republic, the number had nearly doubled to 56,657 legal residents. The corporations had relied so heavily on cheap foreign labor that Dominicans no longer considered cutting cane themselves. That was “Haitian work,” unfit for native sons.38

The increased migration of Haitians into the Dominican Republic was also a consequence of the US occupation of Haiti. The occupation, which lasted from 1915 to 1934, was a brutal affair impregnated with a virulent racism. 39 As Hans Schmidt puts it, when the United States took over Haiti, it “came equipped with a store of . . . prejudices to go along with their superior firepower. This was a world apart from ‘civilized’ Western wars and the refinement of European diplomacy.” 40 In fact, the commanding cadres of the US personnel and a large number of the marines operating in Haiti had been engaged in previous imperial ventures and “banana wars,” and many hailed from the segregationist South of the United States. 41 They exhibited deeply contemptuous attitudes toward Haitians that reflected both their experiences and their roots. In fact, racist phobias and stereotypes depicting Haitians as “savages,” “cannibals,” “gooks,” and “niggers” were pervasive among the occupying troops.42 Not surprisingly, the occupiers believed that brutal force was the only way to deal with Haitians, especially those from the peasantry. High Commissioner John H. Russell bluntly expressed the US viewpoint: “Haitian mentality only recognizes force, and appeal to reason and logic is unthinkable.”43 And indeed, repression became the means to squash Haitian opposition and impose the US grip on Haitian society. On September 3, 1915, Admiral William B. Caperton declared martial law in his efforts to compel Haitians into accepting and signing a treaty legalizing the occupation. Moreover, martial law, which lasted until 1929, facilitated both the establishment of a new regime of corvée (forced labor) and the ghastly suppression of guerrilla resistance against the US imperial presence.

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The corvée was an exploitative pattern of forced labor that compelled peasants into building roads that would reach remote areas of the territory. The creation of a viable network of transportation was not merely a means of spurring economic and commercial development; it responded above all to strategic considerations. 44 In the minds of US strategists the repression of the rebellious peasants known as Cacos, who fought the occupation from about 1915 to 1920, required the penetration of the countryside.45 The corvée and the military repression of the rural guerrillas were thus symbiotically connected; the forced labor of the peasants would punish and discipline them into building a more efficient transportation system that, in turn, would serve as a powerful policing network to block their potential participation in the nationalist guerrilla movement. However, the corvée was riddled with abuse and it fueled violent opposition to the occupation.46 Compelled to work as virtual slave gangs, peasants revolted and refused to comply. US authorities eventually abolished the corvée in August 1918, but peasants continued to suffer ill treatment at the hands of US troops. Not surprisingly, popular support for the Cacos grew, as the peasant guerrillas became an increasingly sophisticated movement of national liberation under the leadership of Charlemagne Péralte.47 While Péralte’s rebellion was eventually put down, it reflected Haitians’ resentment over, and opposition to, the US occupation. Moreover, the United States was bent on ridding Haiti of vodou, which it considered a dangerous superstition that cemented peasants into violent bands of insurgents. In the eyes of the United States, “eliminating” vodou was thus an “imperative” policy not only to defeat the guerrillas, but also to “civilize” the country. Captain Bruce Mac-Arthur, a judge advocate for the US military, explained that the occupiers had the opportunity to liberate Haiti from vodou, “its most dangerous and degrading elements” by “delivering . . . [it] from a curse which has been on it from the time of its foundation.” 48 By repressing peasants and negating their culture and beliefs, the United States drove a large segment of them into the Dominican Republic and Cuba as sugarcane cutters. As Laurent Dubois explains, The U.S. occupation thus placed many Haitians before a cruel choice: they could either turn their backs on the lwa or risk harassment, prison, and hard labor. Religion had long represented a refuge in Haitian culture, a source of strength for the oppressed; but

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under the occupation even this realm of life became difficult to defend. Faced with such assaults, many in the rural communities concluded that there was no choice but to leave their ancestral lands behind. For the first time in its history, Haiti—long a magnet for immigrants from the Caribbean, North America, Europe, and the Middle East—became a country of large-scale emigration. In 1912, only about two hundred Haitians had migrated to Cuba. . . . By 1920, there were already 70,000 Haitians in Cuba, and in that year another 30,000 emigrated there. And throughout the 1920s, about ten thousand Haitians a year left for the Dominican Republic. Yet while they went in search of freedom, the migrants who left the countryside often ended up in precisely the kind of place they and their ancestors had been seeking to escape: the plantation.49

The fear of US repression was not, however, the only reason leading to the Haitian exodus; under US tutelage, Haitian authorities began to rationalize the emigration of Haitian labor from which they obtained major revenues. Prior to the US occupation, the recruitment of Haitian braceros to work in the sugarcane fields was a private business done by the paid agents of plantations. By 1924, however, “the Haitian-American ‘joint dictatorship’ . . . also required that each recruiter carry an official license, for which the regime charged a fee of one hundred dollars for Haitians and five hundred for nonHaitians. For a time, emigration fees and recruiting permits became the Haitian government’s largest internal source of revenue.”50 With the passage of time, Haitian rulers transformed the emigration of Haitian labor into a form of state extortion for their own private benefit. In 1952, Haiti and the Dominican Republic signed the first bilateral agreement regimenting the exportation of 16,500 Haitian laborers to work on sugar estates in the Dominican Republic. Renewed in 1959 by François Duvalier, the agreement became a source of illicit gains for his dictatorship. Simon Fass describes these corrupt practices thus: Workers wishing to register for work in the Dominican Republic paid $5 to $10 to government contractors for the privilege between 1957 and 1963. Dominican planters paid $15 per head to the contractors, and half the workers’ wages in U.S. dollars to special accounts of the Haitian treasury. In 1981, the fee of $182 for each of the 16,000 legal migrants permitted almost $3 million to flow into the accounts, and from there to the Duvaliers and their associates.51

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From Antihaitianismo to Economic Domination: The Dominican Republic’s Changing Relations with Haiti With the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986,52 the bilateral treaty ceased to be in force, but the conditions of the Haitian braceros remained miserable. In fact, braceros faced brutal collective deportations to Haiti.53 These deportations were due to the collapse of the Dominican sugar industry in the 1980s and the resulting labor surplus, which transformed Haitian braceros into an “illegal” and “unwanted” population.54 Haitian braceros were not the only ones expelled; Dominicans of Haitian descent who were born in the Dominican Republic and had never set foot in Haiti became undocumented and stateless and suffered the same fate. Moreover, Haiti’s continuous economic decline from the 1980s onward generated an additional illegal influx of Haitians looking for jobs in the growing Dominican economy. Haitian migrants are no longer only agricultural workers in the Dominican Republic; they are also involved in the booming construction and tourist industry. As Bridget Wooding and Richard Moseley-Williams explain, Today, the vast majority of migrant labour is “informal” and uncontrolled, firstly in the process of exit from Haiti, secondly in the crossing of the poorly policed border without visa or permit, and thirdly in the unregulated work which is available in the Dominican Republic to Haitians. A further trend has been for Haitian migrants to remain in the country, moving from job to job and place to place in search of work and greater security against detention and deportation.55

In 2004, the Catholic Institute for International Relations estimated that the number of people of Haitian descent coupled with the recent influx of Haitian immigrants residing in the Dominican Republic totaled about 500,000 people, or approximately 9 percent of the total population. 56 This large presence has exacerbated tensions on the eastern half of the island that the two countries share. In fact, most Dominicans fear what they have called a “peaceful invasion” of Haitians that would rob Dominicans of their jobs, safety, and culture. 57 This fear has been nurtured not only by the memory of the Haitian occupation of the Dominican Republic in the nineteenth century, but also by a history of Dominican racist denigration of Haitians that reached its peak under the long dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo.58

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After regaining its independence from Haiti in 1844, Dominican rulers and cultural entrepreneurs began articulating an “antihaitianismo,”59 which rejected blackness as a sign of primitiveness and espoused a Hispanic and white identity. Trujillo exacerbated this racist ideology for his own political ends. Under his dictatorship, which lasted from 1930 to 1961, Dominicans came to express a fear of the Other, and depicted Haitians as a mortal danger to the survival of the nation. This context helps explain the ugly and violent reaction of Dominicans to the growing presence of Haitian migrant workers in their midst. When the price of sugar fell in the 1930s, and Dominicans began to see Haitian braceros as potential competitors for scarce jobs, Trujillo manipulated racist sentiments to the point of urging a massacre against some 20,000 Haitians. His chilling words left no doubt that he was engineering a small genocide: For some months, I have traveled and traversed the frontier in every sense of the word. I have seen, investigated, and inquired about the needs of the population. To the Dominicans who were complaining of the depredations by Haitians living among them, thefts of cattle, provisions, fruits, etc., and were thus prevented from enjoying in peace the products of their labor, I have responded, “I will fix this.” And we have already begun to remedy the situation. Three hundred Haitians are now dead in Bánica. This remedy will continue.60

The remedy did indeed continue, and it embedded antihaitianismo in the Dominican political psyche. As a dominant ideology, antihaitianismo is “a set of socially reproduced anti-Haitian prejudices, myths, and stereotypes prevalent in the cultural makeup of the Dominican Republic. These are based on presumed racial, social, economic, and national-cultural differences between the two peoples. . . . As a result, Haiti and things ‘Haitian’ are scorned and rejected by Dominican society.” 61 Thus, Dominicans are portrayed as civilized white Catholics while Haitians are black savages who believe in the barbaric superstitions of primitive vodou. This racist and xenophobic state ideology constructed under Trujillo’s dictatorship has left a legacy of seeing Haitians as the permanent outsider, the polluting Other; it still resonates in the collective memory of the Dominican Republic, but it is no longer so pervasively dominant. In fact, there are signs that class consciousness is slowly crystallizing as poor Dominicans and Haitians in the Dominican Republic are making com-

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mon cause on a number of issues.62 Moreover, since the early 1990s, relations between the Dominican Republic and Haiti have improved even though the ill treatment of Haitians persists. According to Wooding and Moseley-Williams, Anti-Haitianism and xenophobia are less virulent and influential. Historical tensions between Haiti and the Dominican Republic have given way to years of good relations and cooperation on cross-border matters, and it is to the credit of both countries that these have been sustained during a protracted period of political crisis in Haiti. Slowly a better understanding is developing of the complex and changing nature of Haitian migration and the ways in which Haitian-Dominicans are assimilating into Dominican society. For the first time the questions of migration law reform and the right to nationality have begun to be seriously addressed. Human rights violations have been reduced, at least to some extent. The human rights movement has become stronger, more focused, more confident and more successful.63

This improvement in relations was particularly evident in the immediate aftermath of Goudougoudou; in fact, the Dominican Republic was the first country to respond to the catastrophic earthquake. In an unprecedented gesture of goodwill, it opened its frontier and hospitals to Haitian victims and provided an essential conduit for humanitarian assistance. As Johanna Mendelson Forman and Stacey White explain, the Dominican Republic “launched a massive crossborder emergency assistance mission, providing critical medical assistance, logistics support, and humanitarian aid. In so doing, the Dominicans served as vital first responders to the crisis, reaching earthquake victims well before the arrival of any other international actors.”64 Thousands of Dominicans crossed into Haiti to heal the injured and help rescue victims from the rubble; finally, the Dominican Republic fulfilled its pledge of $50 million to build a university in the north of Haiti in Limonade. The outpouring of Dominican generosity was such that a Haitian woman declared that “I guess they didn’t hate us as much as we thought.”65 The Dominican assistance was all the more remarkable given that it is still a developing country, a peripheral zone of the global economy. With a Gini coefficient of 48.4, it is a highly unequal society; the top 10 percent of households receive close to 40 percent of GDP. It suffers from high unemployment and underemployment and more than 40 percent of its population lives below the poverty line.

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Not surprisingly, the Dominican Republic still depends heavily on remittances from the United States, which account for about 10 percent of its GDP.66 In spite of these rather grim statistics, the Dominican Republic is much better off than Haiti. While both countries were basically at the same economic level in 1960, things have dramatically changed in the past fifty years. Since then, the GDP of the Dominican Republic has increased 5% per year, the highest growth rate in Latin America, and the GDP per capita has quadrupled. In Haiti, the GDP has grown at an annual rate of only 1%, the lowest in Latin America, and GDP per capita has halved. From the sixties to the nineties, productivity growth was sharply negative in Haiti, while in the Dominican Republic it was positive for most of that period. In Haiti, both the percentage of the population in extreme poverty like the illiteracy rate and the proportion of the labor force engaged in agriculture are about 50%. In the Dominican Republic, only 4.3% of the population lives in extreme poverty, while the illiteracy rate and the share of employment in agriculture are at 18%.67

Moreover, the Dominican Republic’s estimated GDP of $56.7 billion is eight times larger than Haiti’s; similarly, its GDP per capita of $9,700 is over seven times greater than Haiti’s.68 In fact, the World Bank now classifies the Dominican Republic as an upper-middleincome country while Haiti shares with Afghanistan the status of being the poorest country in the world outside sub-Saharan Africa. The economic chasm separating the two countries reflects the difference between the periphery and the outer periphery. Haiti has, in fact, been transformed into an economic satellite of the Dominican Republic, which is in turn dependent on the core powers of the United States and Europe. The Dominican Republic’s altruistic reaction to Goudougoudou should not mask the reality that Haiti has become its periphery. Moreover, it is clear that like many “disaster capitalists,” powerful Dominican economic agents, have been eager to be part of what US ambassador Kenneth Merten called the “gold rush” precipitated by Goudougoudou itself.69 The earthquake had positive effects on the Dominican Republic because its territory was used as a major conduit to provide assistance to Haiti and several major Dominican firms were directly engaged in the reconstruction effort. In fact, it is estimated that in 2010, 2.0 percent of the 7.7 percent rise of the Dominican Republic’s GDP was due to its role in the relief operation.70

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The Dominican Republic’s economic involvement in Haiti actually predates the earthquake. It took off in the early 1990s at the time of the economic embargo imposed by the international community on Haiti as a result of the military dictatorship of General Cédras. Since then, the involvement of the Dominican Republic in Haitian affairs has become significant for both countries, albeit more so for Haiti than vice versa. Haiti is now the second commercial partner of the Dominican Republic, but it is not a vital lifeline for the Dominican economy. On the other hand, Haiti’s dependence on the Dominican Republic is critical, representing 30 percent of its imports and 10 percent of its GNP. Thus, while trade between the two countries has increased significantly since the early 1990s, it is “nearly unidirectional”; the Dominican Republic’s exports to Haiti are estimated to total between $700 million and $1 billion.71 As the World Bank notes, “These data suggest that changes in trade flows arising from events in the Dominican Republic can have a significant impact in Haiti, at least at the macro level. By contrast, changes in trade flows driven by events in Haiti have little impact in the Dominican Republic.”72 Moreover, Dominican firms are playing an increasingly important role in public construction in Haiti. Blanca Antonini remarks that the “involvement of Dominican businesses in Haiti has been significant, as evidenced by the fact that Haiti’s main road connecting the capital to Cap-Haitien was recently inaugurated after three years of rehabilitation by Dominican road-building firm Estrella.”73 Clearly then, Haiti’s growing dependence on the Dominican Republic has all the characteristics of the typical economic relationship between peripheral and core countries. The outer peripheralization of Haiti has been paradoxically accentuated by favorable US trade policies. The Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity Through Partnership Encouragement Act of 2006 (HOPE I), revised as the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity Through Partnership Encouragement Act of 2008 (HOPE II) and further expanded after the earthquake as the Haiti Economic Lift Program Act of 2010 (HELP), extended more generous trade benefits to Haiti than its regional competitors. The expected goal of such preferential policies was that Haiti would become “an exceptionally appealing offshore export platform to the US market.”74 Not to be outdone, Dominican businesspeople managed to extricate important trade concessions from the United States. As Yasmine Shamsie explains,

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When HOPE II was negotiated the Dominican business community lobbied to have its goods qualify for duty benefits if partly produced in Haiti. The border EPZ [export processing zone], which is operated by Compagnie de Dévelopment Industriel (CODEVI), is quite unique since electricity, telecommunications, and transport to and from ports are all provided by the Dominican Republic. In fact, the goods produced in the zone are shipped out of Dominican ports, either Puerto Plata on the northern coast or Rio Haina in the south.75

Economically, Haiti has thus become increasingly subservient to the Dominican Republic, which is now bent on exploiting ultracheap Haitian labor in Haiti itself or near the frontier. The new Dominican strategy has the benefit of limiting the economic costs of a massive inflow of Haitian migrants into its heartland. Moreover, the strategy enhances relations between the two governments by favoring Dominican investments in Haiti and minimizing the politically damaging impact of mass deportations of illegal Haitian migrants. Paradoxically, the Dominican Republic, which is itself a periphery and an originator of migrants, is adopting toward Haitians the same containment policies that its own citizens endure in core nations, particularly in the United States. Exclusionary immigration policies are not, however, applied uniformly on all people; class and wealth matter significantly. In fact, members of the Haitian ruling class are welcome in the Dominican Republic and an increasing number of them have adopted it as a second home and as a pleasurable exit from what they describe as the “stressful daily routine” of Port-au-Prince and Pétionville.76 The Dominican resort cities of La Romana and Puntacana have become preferred destinations for the Haitian elite. As one of its members recently told me, “We exit to the D.R. to get some oxygen from the hellish conditions of Haiti.”77 The Dominican Republic, however, is not merely a tourist destination; it is also a sanctuary for exiled Haitian politicians planning their eventual return to power. In fact, many of the officers of the Armed Forces of Haiti (FAdH) who established a form of dictatorship in the aftermath of Jean-Claude Duvalier’s fall and participated in the bloody 1991 coup that overthrew President Aristide found their way into the Dominican Republic. 78 Similarly, in 2004, the violent insurgency that eventually led to Aristide’s second exile was organized and armed in the Dominican Republic with the covert assistance of key Dominican politicians and members of the military.79 As

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a peripheral state, however, the Dominican Republic was also used as a conduit for the regime change policies of the United States. The destabilization of Aristide’s presidency in the early 2000s was partly engineered from the Dominican Republic where both civil and military opponents of his regime held meetings with conservative US governmental organizations.80 In fact, the right-wing US International Republican Institute (IRI) used the Dominican Republic as a base to forge an anti-Aristide alliance. The IRI encouraged members of the Haitian elite that regrouped around the so-called Convergence Démocratique to cooperate with disgruntled former FAdH and police officers such as Guy Philippe, Louis Jodel Chamblain, Ravix Remissainthe, Jean-Jacques “Jackie” Nau, and Gilbert Dragon. In February 2000, four years before this alliance compelled Aristide to flee the country, some of its leaders announced what eventually became reality: “The CIA should train and equip Haitian officers exiled in the neighboring Dominican Republic so they could stage a comeback themselves.”81

Citizenship and Neoliberal Policies Thus, Haiti’s economic and political subservience to external actors impairs its capacity to forge its own destiny. More than twenty-five years after overthrowing the Jean-Claude Duvalier dictatorship, electing their own parliamentarians and presidents, and voicing their support for democracy, Haitians are confronting the harsh reality that their citizenship—their autonomous ability to act as individual and collective agents—remains an incomplete promise. Paradoxically, the contradiction between the aspirations of citizenship and the reality of its utter incompleteness has nurtured both popular struggles and popular cynicism. When the moun andeyo challenge the status quo and take seriously their role as citizens, they confront domestic opposition from the ruling class and external disciplining from the major powers. The result, as the Lavalas experience demonstrated, is the ultimate exhaustion of the popular forces and the growing opportunism and corruption of their cadres. Cynicism therefore sets in, undermines democratic practice, divides the movement, and favors the rise of providential leaders. After Aristide’s overthrow in 1991, the Lavalas movement endured repression and exile from which it never fully recovered. In

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spite of Aristide’s restoration to power in 1994, Lavalas gradually lost its capacity to pressure both external and domestic powerholders to move the balance of power to its own orbit. Its different components fragmented, and its strength dissipated. Lavalas no longer had a longterm project; the day-to-day management of a permanent crisis of governability consumed it.82 This crisis was not entirely of Lavalas’s own making. Haiti’s dominant classes in concert with the major powers— particularly, the United States and France—continuously nurtured instability.83 They viscerally opposed Aristide, whose persona embodied everything they loathed in le peuple (the masses). The Haitian wealthy elites feared him and defined him as a demonic and unbalanced communist who was bent on destroying the country and taking their possessions and wealth. In reality, however, while the Lavalas movement, and Aristide in particular, developed a radical and messianic rhetoric, their economic policies were conventional and followed the diktat of the major international financial institutions. It is true that prior to its brutal overthrow by the military in 1991, the first Aristide government had reformist tendencies,84 but they were short-lived; upon Aristide’s return from exile in 1994 on the back of 20,000 US Marines, neoliberalism reigned supreme.85 Moreover, Lavalas quickly morphed into the vehicle of Aristide’s messianic presidentialism. The personification of Lavalas contained authoritarian seeds and led to the suppression of any alternative, independent power within the movement itself. As Jean-Claude Jean and Marc Maesschalck argue, Even if “Lavalas” is a popular phenomenon, the “source” of the tendency resides in a personal initiative founded on “charismaticoreligious” leadership. Despite its complexity and contradictions, the entire movement is built on one person, the only one capable of giving it impetus and possibly a new start. There is thus a relationship of complete dependence with respect to the leader. But the latter engages in anti-organizational practices . . . among his entourage, no group has been able to assume an autonomous status and to develop freely. This leader spontaneously opposes any form of control over his power. His action is stimulating for individuals and can produce mass effects, but it has a destructuring effect on a group striving to form and to organize on an objective basis. . . . This religious relationship with the leader has privileged relationships based on personal loyalty . . . while any questioning of the leader, autonomous acting, or critical thinking is perceived as noth-

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ing but treachery. The priest-president has neutralized the development of enlightened political judgment among the masses. He has transformed a contesting people into a docile mass that puts its trust in the occurrence of miracles.86

In his two short presidencies in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, Aristide developed a form of messianic leadership; he monopolized power and eviscerated the coherence, independence, and organizational drive of the Lavalas movement. The moun andeyo surrendered their citizenship to the chief and became a disorganized mass awaiting salvation. While this heightened personalization of Haitian politics was not a new phenomenon, it exacerbated the deinstitutionalization of the state, which in turn was rooted in the neoliberal policies imposed on the country by the IFIs since the late 1970s and early 1980s. Espousing a profound bias against the state and a deep commitment to market rationality, these policies privileged the privatization of the economy that led to the rise of the NGO republic and the dismantlement of the public sector. In the process, governmental institutions that had always been weak collapsed to the point that, at the time of the earthquake of January 12, 2010, the Haitian state was incapable of responding to the catastrophe. It was a powerless shell at the mercy of the international community. Clearly then, Haiti’s status as an outer peripheral country has imposed obdurate limits on what is thinkable, let alone what is possible. The economic strategy put in place during the days of the Jean-Claude Duvalier dictatorship has remained in effect under different names and slogans. Its consistent foundation is based on using the country’s ultracheap labor to export low-end products to US and European markets.87 It has had little positive effect on the vast majority of Haitians. In fact, it has aggravated the pauperization of workers in the assembly industry. The current buying power of workers in the assembly industry is one-third less than what it was in 1982 under the Duvalier dictatorship. The minimum wage in this sector has decreased from “US$3.00 in 1982 (in 1982 dollars) to 150 Gourdes, which is about US$1.61 in 1982 dollars.”88 Thus, to place the assembly industry at the center of Haiti’s economic future, as the dominant policymakers are advocating, does not bode well for any significant improvement in the living standards of the great majority of the population. The reality is that in the era of globalization the assembly indus-

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try is based on systematic patterns of antiunionism and anti–living wages. Export processing zones (EPZs) are successful only when governments intervene forcefully to impose redistributive policies favoring labor. In other words, EPZs reproduce inequalities and poverty on an expanded scale if they are not part of a determined drive to establish more equitable distribution of national resources particularly in terms of wages, education, and health. Reforming EPZs, in turn, requires strong unions that are duly protected and not continuously harassed by company owners and public forces of repression. Evidence shows that, to date, neither Haiti’s government nor the employers have advanced equitable or progressive policies in any significant way. Two recent surveys by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) show that factory owners systematically opposed and subverted labor rights. In 2009, prior to the earthquake, the ITUC concludes that “as a result of political turmoil, a climate of violence, record unemployment and the complicity of a weak state, employers have enjoyed absolute freedom. Those trying to organise workers in a union are constantly harassed or dismissed, generally in breach of the labour legislation. To prevent workers from joining unions, employers give bonuses to those who are not union members.”89 Two years later, in the aftermath of Goudougoudou, the situation had changed little: “Given the lack of jobs in the formal economy, trade union rights only apply to a minute proportion of the active population. In the few workplaces where rights do apply, they are violated, as seen in the Ouanaminthe and Port-au-Prince export processing zones, where eight trade unionists were dismissed in September and October.”90 The antiunionism of the Haitian business class comes as no surprise; in fact, this class, especially owners of the assembly plants, used all their influence to block the René Préval administration from increasing the minimum wage to 200 gourdes or about $5 a day.91 In fact the owners, with the support of the United States, made sure that wages remained sufficiently low to continue to keep profits high and attract foreign firms. As a US deputy chief of mission David E. Lindwall puts it, $5 “did not take economic reality into account”; instead, it was a populist measure aimed at appealing to “the unemployed and underpaid masses.”92 Eventually, workers in the textile factories had to settle for $3 a day. The new minimum salary, however, not only was well below a living wage, but it also was well below salaries paid for similar work

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elsewhere. In fact, the Solidarity Center of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) has shown that workers in the largest Haitian EPZ, the Société Nationale des Parcs Industriels (SONAPI), cannot cover the basic costs of necessities for themselves and their families. According to the Solidarity Center, “The average monthly expenses of a SONAPI worker totaled 29,971 Haitian gourdes (about $749). Therefore, based on the standard 48-hour work week (eight hours per day, six days per week), an employee must receive at least 1,152 Haitian gourdes (about $29) per day, or approximately nine times the current minimum wage, to earn a living wage.”93 In addition, after a thorough analysis of costs and benefits in the apparel industry, Haitian social scientist Fritz Deshommes concludes that there was no competitive reason to deny increasing the minimum wage to $5. Such a salary, he convincingly argues, would neither ruin the firms nor generate massive unemployment.94 Finally, on October 1, 2012, three years after the $3 minimum salary was voted into law, the Martelly administration decided to increase it to 200 gourdes or about $5 a day.95 Bumping the minimum wage to $5 had little to do with populism, as some US observers have maintained. Instead, it was a matter of establishing a modicum of human decency and equity. In reality, however, the imperatives of the world capitalist economy limit drastically what workers of the outer periphery can expect to earn. Unlike global capital, they cannot hop from one location to another to improve their life chances, they are simply not mobile and they are in large measure prisoners of their inherited miserable circumstances. Their lot has little to do with their aspirations or abilities. On the one hand, a biological accident has confined them to the lower classes; on the other hand, they are victims of Haiti’s outer peripheral status in the world capitalist economy. It is difficult to see how the country will extricate itself from the outer periphery given that Haiti has reembarked on the self-same course that put it in that category in the first place. To adopt again the type of export assembly project that has guided Haiti’s economic programs for the past forty years is to invite the same failures and contradictions that have contributed to generalized underdevelopment and poverty. Simply put, the road taken after Goudougoudou cannot generate any type of self-sustaining, let alone equitable, development. As Shamsie argues, to pursue the EPZ model is to take the “low road.” As in the past, such an approach will continue to fuel

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the growth of urban slums where growing masses of poorly paid wage earners and unemployed rural migrants will live in abject conditions.96 This migration into urban areas, especially Port-au-Prince, was one of the perverse effects of Jean-Claude Duvalier’s export assembly manufacturing strategy; it also contributed to the growing marginalization of peasants and agriculture and the ever increasing dependence on food imports. Shamsie summarizes the devastating impact of Haiti’s low-road EPZ program thus: Export-assembly manufacturing also contributed to significant increases in the costs of food and housing, again with adverse effects on the poorest. Food prices soared because of a general rural exodus. As workers from both agricultural production and food distribution were lured to Port-au-Prince’s manufacturing sector by the promise of better wages, “the average price of all foodstuffs more than doubled between 1975 and 1985, with such common items as sweet potatoes leading the increase.” Finally, although large numbers of people were attracted to the capital by the promise of jobs, the EPZs were notorious for substandard working conditions, low pay and anti-union behavior. Because wages were too low to provide workers with decent or safe accommodations, they (and those looking for work) settled onto dangerous insecure hillsides and ravines surrounding the capital. The migration of desperate workers turned a city built for 250,000 into an inhospitable space overflowing with 2 million. In sum, the export assembly industry of the 1980s (coupled with a complete neglect of the rural hinterland by both the government and international donors) led to an uneven or unbalanced development pattern.97

The low-road EPZ strategy suffers from other problems related to the preferential treatment that firms receive from the government. Both foreign and domestic companies expect significant economic incentives to set up shop seeing as the capitalist world economy gives them the ability to choose the most advantageous low-wage areas in the multiple EPZs of the vast periphery and outer periphery. Governments seeking to attract export-oriented assembly industries are thus compelled to maintain low wages and extend to these firms massive tax breaks over long periods of time in the form of free repatriation of profits as well as duty-free import and export. This, in turn, means not only that a disproportionate share of scarce public resources has to be devoted to a rather uncertain strategy of develop-

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ment, but also that the government will lose significant revenues. As Alex Dupuy points out, Even at the height of its operation in the mid-1980s, the assembly industry never employed more than eight percent of the total labor force and did not contribute significantly to the reduction of unemployment of the active urban labor force. The industry had at best a neutral effect on income distribution, but a negative effect on the balance of goods and services because it encouraged more imports of consumer goods. The industry also contributed little to government revenues because of the tax exemptions on profits and other fiscal incentives, which, along with the subsidized costs of public services and utilities, represented a transfer of wealth to the foreign investors and the Haitian entrepreneurs who subcontracted with them.98

In spite of its manifest failure, the low-road EPZ strategy remains the basic plan advocated and adopted by both the main IFIs and the Haitian government. Thus, little has changed in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake except that the strategy has now been recast in the cheery slogan “Haiti is open for business.” Foreign donors and government officials have reactivated the same logic that led to the idea that Haiti under Jean-Claude Duvalier would become the Taiwan of the Caribbean. The logic is based on the exploitation of ultracheap labor, which is described as Haiti’s key comparative economic advantage. The World Economic Forum, whose annual meeting in Davos is attended by some of the most famous and wealthy financiers, politicians, and celebrities on the planet, puts it bluntly, Haiti has a proven competitive advantage in manufacturing, particularly in labour-intensive products. The country has an abundant supply of workers, and training costs related to garments are relatively low. Further, preferential agreements with the US through the HELP Act provide exceptional tariff advantages in the textiles and garment sector. Foreign investors can help stimulate activity in this sector, particularly given the country’s low domestic taxes for producers in free trade zones and industrial parks, among other regulatory advantages. To fully capitalize on the advantages of accessing US consumers through the HELP Act, Haiti can benefit from its proximity to the Dominican Republic, where the garment industry has suffered declines due to high wages. Haiti’s labour costs are fully competitive with China’s, and the nation has the advantage of greater proximity to its target consumer.99

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Not surprisingly, the principal project of the Martelly administration and its foreign partners is the $224 million Caracol Industrial Park in the northeast of the country, which is financed mainly by the United States and the Inter-American Development Bank. The industrial park is being developed by the South Korean clothing firm Sae-A, which decided to set up shop in Haiti because, as one of its executives puts it, “We didn’t have to come in and build our own power plant. We didn’t have to bring in money and buy land and bring in money and build factories.” 100 In fact, Sae-A has a poor record of dealing with unions and has been described as “one of the major labor violators” in Guatemala where it closed its main factory in 2012.101 It is clear that Sae-A is the typical low-road EPZ firm engaged in a race to the bottom; blaming increasing labor costs, it closed unceremoniously its operations in Guatemala to move to Nicaragua and Haiti.102 While Caracol Industrial Park is supposed to create 20,000 jobs and decentralize Haiti’s economic development, it may end up creating vast slums in its environs and exacerbate the country’s agricultural crisis. Caracol was not empty terrain. It was once a fertile area with almost 400 farmers who were evicted—for a promised compensation—to make way for the industrial park. Haitian as well as foreign environmentalists have vigorously criticized the choice of Caracol as the site for a new EPZ, arguing that the industrial park is likely to generate damaging pollution and endanger the fishing industry. In fact, the Caracol Bay had been designated to become the country’s first marine protected area before the government, under pressure from both foreign powers and local businesses, decided to turn it over to industry.103 The recent addition of Peintures Caraibes SA, which will export paint made by Sherwin Williams, as a tenant of the Caracol Industrial Park can only heighten environmental concerns.104 After all, the record of Sherwin Williams in the United States itself is certainly not spotless. For instance, the company was recently forced to clean up the city of Emeryville, California, where it operated a manufacturing firm between 1919 and 2006 that contaminated the soil and groundwater with lead and arsenic. 105 In fact, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) concluded that Sherwin Williams “is one of the primary culprits in the story about how lead paint continues to poison children across America. Their image is that of a friendly, neighborhood paint store, just down the street. This image belies their century-long record of con-

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tributing to serious environmental hazards in communities across the country.”106 Caracol Industrial Park is the type of project that is likely to pollute the environment and create poorly paid jobs that a struggling country like Haiti can ill afford. It is profoundly misguided to build this industrial complex and tout it as some kind of a balanced strategy for poverty alleviation and self-sustaining economic growth.107 Sadly, as inhabitants of an outer peripheral nation whose sovereignty is questionable and whose economy is inextricably bound in service of the core, Haitians have an incomplete citizenship that limits their capacity to mount a counterstrategy for the type of development that would truly improve the lives of the impoverished majority. These constraints became even more obvious in the aftermath of the earthquake when reconstruction efforts have so far largely floundered. In the next chapter, I examine Haiti’s political economy in a time of disaster and crisis when both the government and the International claim that the country is open for business.

Notes 1. Robert Fatton Jr., Haiti’s Predatory Republic (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002); Alex Dupuy, Haiti in the New World Order (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997); Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Haiti: State Against Nation (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990); Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, Haiti: The Breached Citadel, rev. ed. (Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholar’s Press, 2004). 2. Barrington Moore Jr., Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966); Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 3. Fatton, Haiti’s Predatory Republic. 4. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995). 5. Ibid. See also Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Universal History (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009). 6. Alex Dupuy, Haiti in the World Economy: Class, Race, and Underdevelopment Since 1700 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989). 7. Gérard Barthélémy, Le pays en dehors (Port-au-Prince: Editions Henri Deschamps, 1989). 8. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 9. United Nations, Human Development Report 2011 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 126. 10. International Fund for Agriculture, Rural Poverty in Haiti (Interna-

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tional Fund for Agriculture, 2009), http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/web /guest/country/home/tags/haiti (April 26, 2012). 11. Robert Fatton Jr., The Roots of Haitian Despotism (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2007). 12. Alain Turnier documents well these moments of anger and retribution that have marked Haiti’s history since it became an independent nation. See Alain Turnier, Quand la nation demande des comptes, 2nd ed. rev. (Port-auPrince: Editions Le Natal, 1990). 13. Fatton, Roots of Haitian Despotism. 14. Lavalas is the Creole word for flood; it symbolized the vast movement of the poor that overthrew the Jean-Claude Duvalier dictatorship and carried to power Jean-Bertrand Aristide. See Fatton, Haiti’s Predatory Republic. 15. Fatton, Haiti’s Predatory Republic; Alex Dupuy, The Prophet and Power (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); Jean-Claude Jean and Marc Maesschalck, Transition politique en Haiti (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999). 16. Ibid. 17. James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). 18. Ibid., p. xiii. 19. Jean Bertrand Aristide, Tout moun se moun, Tout homme est un homme (Paris: Seuil, 1992). 20. Franklin Midy, “Changement et transition,” in Gerard Barthelemy and Christian Girault, eds., La République Haitienne (Paris: Karthala, 1993), p. 206. 21. Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 51. 22. Don Bohning, “An International Protectorate Could Bring Stability to Haiti,” Miami Herald, November 23, 2004, http://www.lecontact.com /archives_of_editorials_7.htm; Gabriel Marcella, “The International Community and Haiti: A Proposal for Cooperative Sovereignty,” paper presented at the symposium “The Future of Democracy and Development in Haiti,” Washington, DC, March 17–18, 2005. 23. The International (international community) is the word Haitians use to describe the major powers in their collective dealings with their country. It alludes mainly to the United States, France, and Canada. More recently, Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela have been included in the group. 24. Fatton, Haiti’s Predatory Republic. 25. Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment (London: Verso, 2007). See also Randall Robinson, An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2007). 26. Jake Johnston and Mark Weisbrot, “Haiti’s Fatally Flawed Election” (Washington, DC: Center for Economic and Policy Research, February 2011), http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/haiti-2011-01.pdf (March 2, 2011). 27. Fund for Peace, The Failed States Index 2012 (Washington, DC:

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2012), pp. 14–17, http://www.fundforpeace.org/global/library/cfsir1210failedstatesindex2012-06p.pdf. According to the Fund, Haiti’s index of failures improved since the earthquake, though the improvement has made little difference for most Haitians: The third-most improved country, Haiti, continues to languish at 7th place, however this is a significant improvement over its 5th-placed finish in 2011 as a result of the catastrophic January 2010 earthquake. Though Haiti improved by a solid 3.1 points in 2012, this should be interpreted merely as a partial return to pre-earthquake levels, recognizing the harsh conditions experienced by Haitians even when there is not the added calamity of natural disasters. Though Haiti did improve in 2012, we should not forget that Haiti was the most-worsened country for 2011. (p. 14)

28. World Bank, Final Confidential: Mutual Evaluation/Detailed Assessment Report Anti-Money Laundering and Combating the Financing of Terrorism, Republic of Haiti (June 23, 2008), p. 15, https://www.cfat fgafic.org/index.php?option=com_docman&Itemid=414&task=doc_down load&gid=86&lang=en>https://www.cfatfgafic.org/index.php?option=com _docman&Itemid=414&task=doc_download&gid=86&lang=en. 29. Ibid. 30. Harold Hongju Koh, “The ‘Haiti Paradigm’ in United States Human Rights,” Yale Law Journal 103, no. 8 (June 1994): 2391–2435. Paradoxically, Koh, former dean of Yale Law School, joined the Barack Obama administration as legal adviser to the US Department of State in June 2009. In his new function, he defended the US policy of “targeted killing.” As he puts it, “It is the considered view of this administration—and it has certainly been my experience during my time as a legal adviser—that US targeting practices, including legal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war” (Harold Hongju Koh, quoted in Daniel Klaidman, Kill or Capture [Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012], p. 217). See also Ruth Ellen Wasem, “U.S. Immigration Policy on Haitian Migrants,” RS21349 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, May 17, 2011), http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS21349.pdf. 31. Agreement Effected by Exchange of Notes, September 23, 1981, U.S.-Haiti, 33 U.S.T. 3559, quoted in Koh, “The ‘Haiti Paradigm,’” p. 2392. 32. Koh, “The ‘Haiti Paradigm,’” p. 2393. 33. Wasem, “U.S. Immigration Policy on Haitian Migrants,” p. 3. 34. Koh, “The ‘Haiti Paradigm,’” p. 2396. 35. Elaine Sciolino, “Clinton Says U.S. Will Continue Ban on Haitian Exodus,” New York Times, January 15, 1993, http://www.nytimes.com/1993 /01/15/world/clinton-says-us-will-continue-ban-on-haitian-exodus.html? pagewanted=print&src=pm. 36. Ibid. 37. Barbara L. Bernier, “Sugar Cane Slavery: Bateyes in the Dominican Republic,” New England Journal of International and Comparative Law 9, no. 1 (2003): 17–46; see also Human Rights Watch, “Illegal People”: Haitians and Dominico-Haitians in the Dominican Republic, B1401, April

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4, 2002, http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3cf2429a4.html (August 28, 2012); Amnesty International, “Dominican Republic: A Life in Transit—the Plight of Haitian Migrants and Dominicans of Haitian Descent,” AMR 27/001/2007, March 1, 2007, http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR 2 7 / 0 0 1 / 2 0 0 7 / e n / a d 4 4 4 c 4 8 - d 3 a d - 11 d d - a 3 2 9 - 2 f 4 6 3 0 2 a 8 c c 6 / a m r 270012007en.pdf. 38. Michele Wucker, Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians and the Struggle for Hispaniola (New York: Hill & Wang, 1999), p. 102. 39. This short section on the US occupation draws heavily from Fatton, Roots of Haitian Despotism. 40. Hans Schmidt, The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934, foreword by Stephen Solarz (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), p. 7. 41. Ibid., pp. 8–9. Schmidt writes, Major Smedley D. Butler, first commandant of the American-sponsored Gendarmerie d’Haïti, had previously campaigned in the Philippines, China, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, and Mexico; and Colonel Littleton W. T. Waller, commander of the Marine Expeditionary Forces in Haiti in 1915, had commanded the marine landing in Cuba in 1906 and before that had achieved notoriety in connection with the Samar atrocities in the Philippines. Many American civilian administrators also came to Haiti with previous colonial experience; three of the four financial advisers, the most important civilian officials, had held similar posts in Peru, Persia, and Liberia, and the head of the agricultural-technical service had held a similar position in Indochina. (The United States Occupation of Haiti, p. 8)

42. Ibid. See also David Healy, Gunboat Diplomacy in the Wilson Era: The U.S. Navy in Haiti, 1915–1916 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), pp. 216–220. 43. Ibid. 44. Ulysses Weatherly, “Haiti: An Experiment in Pragmatism,” American Journal of Sociology 32, no. 3 (November 1926): 358–359. 45. Brenda Gayle Plummer, Haiti and the United States (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992), pp. 95–96. 46. Arthur C. Millspaugh, Haiti Under American Control 1915–1930 (Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1931), pp. 88–89. Lieutenant Colonel A. S. Williams’s testimony to Congress acknowledges the dire consequences of the corvée: The results of this exploitation of labor were two: First, it created in the minds of the peasants a dislike for the American occupation and its two instruments—the marines and the gendarmerie—and second, imbued the native enlisted man with an entirely false conception of his relations with the civil population. As the corvée became more and more unpopular, more and more difficulty was experienced in obtaining men; and this difficulty caused the gendarme to resort to methods which were often brutal but quite consistent with their training under Haitian officials. I soon realized that one of the great causes of American unpopularity among Haitians was the corvée. (Millspaugh, Haiti Under American Control 1915–1930, footnote 149, p. 89)

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47. Suzy Castor, L’occupation Américaine d’Haïti (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Henri Deschamps, 1988), pp. 127–158; Roger Gaillard, Les blancs débarquent (1918–1919): Charlemagne Péralte le Caco (Port-au-Prince: Imprimerie Le Natal, 1982). 48. Captain Bruce Mac-Arthur, quoted in Kate Ramsey, The Spirits and the Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 146; see also Laurent Dubois, Haiti: The Aftershocks of History (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012), pp. 272–273. 49. Dubois, Haiti, pp. 273–274. 50. Samuel Martinez, “From Hidden Hand to Heavy Hand: Sugar, the State, and Migrant Labor in Haiti and the Dominican Republic,” Latin American Research Review 34, no. 1 (1999): 68. 51. Simon M. Fass, Political Economy in Haiti (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1990), p. 50. 52. Apparently, Jean-Claude Duvalier flew into exile stealing the $2 million that the Dominican Republic had paid to ensure the work of 19,000 Haitian braceros. According to Bridget Wooding and Richard MoseleyWilliams, The bilateral agreements involved the payment to the Haitian government of an agreed amount (in US dollars) per worker delivered to specific reception points on the border. In the last year of the agreements the payment was US$2 million for 19,000 labourers, paid in cash to the Haitian ambassador on January 18, 1986. The money disappeared with the flight of “Baby Doc” on 7 February and the braceros never arrived, ruining the 1986 harvest. (Bridget Wooding and Richard Moseley-Williams, Needed but Unwanted Haitian Immigrants and Their Descendants in the Dominican Republic [London: Catholic Institute for International Relations, 2004], p. 40)

53. As Human Rights Watch points out, [In the 1990s,] the Dominican government has deported hundreds of thousands of Haitians to Haiti, as well as an unknown number of Dominicans of Haitian descent. On several occasions, most recently in November 1999, the Dominican authorities have conducted mass expulsions of Haitians and Dominico-Haitians, rounding up thousands of people in a period of weeks or months and forcibly expelling them from the country. Snatched off the street, dragged from their homes, or picked up from their workplaces, “Haitian-looking” people are rarely given a fair opportunity to challenge their expulsion during these wholesale sweeps. The arbitrary nature of such actions, which myriad international human rights bodies have condemned, is glaringly obvious. The country’s daily flow of deportations follows a similar pattern. Suspected Haitians are targeted for deportation based on the color of their skin, and are given little opportunity to prove their legal status or their claim to citizenship. (Illegal People: Haitains and DominicoHaitians in the Dominican Republic, B1401, April 4, 2002, http://www .unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3cf2429a4.html, p. 3)

54. Wooding and Moseley-Williams, Needed but Unwanted Haitian Immigrants.

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55. Ibid., p.16. 56. Ibid. The estimates vary widely, however; they range from 240,000 to 2 million (see ibid., pp. 32–35). 57. Amnesty International, “Dominican Republic,” p. 5. See also Richard Lee Turits, “A World Destroyed, a Nation Imposed: The 1937 Haitian Massacre in the Dominican Republic,” Hispanic American Historical Review 82, no. 3 (August 2002): 599–600. 58. Turits, “A World Destroyed, a Nation Imposed.” 59. Ernesto Sagás, Race and Politics in the Dominican Republic (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2000). 60. Rafael Trujillo, quoted in Turits, “A World Destroyed, a Nation Imposed,” p. 613. 61. Sagás, Race and Politics in the Dominican Republic, p. 4. 62. According to Wooding and Moseley-Williams, Discrimination against Haitians is closely linked to class, race (directed against black Dominicans), and gender discrimination, in a highly unequal society in which a large proportion of the population exists at the “informal” limits of the economy and is barely reached by the state and the political system. To focus only on discrimination against Haitians is to address only a part of the wider problem of inequality and injustice. The fact that poor and working class Dominicans often make common cause with Haitians and Haitian-Dominicans offers hope for the future. (Needed but Unwanted Haitian Immigrants, p. 89)

63. Ibid., pp. 88–89. 64. Johanna Mendelson Forman and Stacey White, The Dominican Response to the Haiti Earthquake: A Neighbor’s Journey (Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 2011), p. 6. See also John Burnett, For Haiti, Some Neighborly Help from Next Door, National Public Radio, January 20, 2010, http://www.npr.org/templates /story/story.php ?storyId=122733557; Simon Romero and Marc Lacey, “In Disaster, Tensions Ease Between an Island’s Rivals,” New York Times, January 28, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/world/americas/29relief.html. 65. Romero and Lacey, “In Disaster, Tensions Ease Between an Island’s Rivals.” 66. US Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook, Dominican Republic (Washington, DC: CIA, August 2012), https://www.cia.gov /library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/dr.html. 67. Quotation in text translated by the author from the original Spanish: el PIB de la República Dominicana ha aumentado al 5% anual, la mayor tasa de crecimiento de América Latina, y el PIB per cápita se ha cuadruplicado. En Haití, el PIB ha crecido a una tasa annual de sólo el 1%, la menor de América Latina, y el PIB per cápita se ha reducido a la mitad. Desde los años sesenta la década de los noventa, el crecimiento de la productividad fue marcadamente negativo en Haití, mientras que en la República Dominicana fue positivo en la mayor parte del período. En Haití, tanto el porcentaje de la población en situación de pobreza extrema como la tasa de

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analfabetismo y la proporción de la fuerza laboral dedicada a la agricultura son de aproximadamente el 50%. En la República Dominicana, sólo el 4,3% de la población vive en condiciones de pobreza extrema, mientras que la tasa de analfabetismo y la proporción de empleo en el sector agrícola se sitúan en el 18%. (Banco Mundial, Haití, República Dominicana: Más que la suma de las partes [Santo Domingo: Banco Mundial, 2012], p. 3)

68. US Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook, Haiti (Washington, DC: CIA, August 2012), https://www.cia.gov/library/publications /the-world-factbook/geos/ha.html. 69. Kenneth Merten, From US Embassy, Port-au-Prince, “TFHA01: EMBASSY PORT AU PRINCE EARTHQUAKE SITREP as of 1800” (10 PORT AUPRINCE 110), WikiLeaks, February 1, 2010, http://wikileaks.org/cable /2010/02/10PORTAUPRINCE110.html#. 70. Blanca Antonini, Relations Between Haiti and the Dominican Republic (Oslo: Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre, February 2012), p. 6. 71. Ibid., p. 3. 72. Quotation in text translated by the author from the original Spanish: Estos datos sugieren que los cambios en los flujos comerciales derivados de acontecimientos en la República Dominicana pueden tener un impacto significativo en Haití, al menos en el nivel macroeconómico. Por el contrario, los cambios en los flujos comerciales impulsados por los acontecimientos en Haití tienen un impacto menor en la República Dominicana. (Banco Mundial, Haití, República Dominicana, p. 7)

73. Antonini, Relations Between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, p. 3. 74. Yasmine Shamsie, “Time for a ‘High-Road’ Approach to EPZ Development in Haiti,” paper prepared for the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum, Social Science Research Council, New York, January 24, 2010, p. 7. 75. Ibid., p. 8. 76. Personal interviews with members of the Haitian elite, Port-auPrince, July 15, 2012. 77. Haitian businessman, interviewed by the author, Port-au-Prince, July 15, 2012. 78. For instance, General Henry Namphy, who inherited power from Jean-Claude Duvalier and led the military junta that violently suppressed the elections of 1987, eventually ended up in exile in the Dominican Republic. 79. Hallward, Damming the Flood; Jeb Sprague, Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012). 80. Ibid. 81. Edward Cody, “Haiti Torn by Hope and Hatred as Aristide Returns to Power,” Washington Post, February 2, 2001, p. A1. 82. Jean and Maesschalck, Transition politique en Haiti. 83. Hallward, Damming the Flood. 84. Dupuy, Haiti in the New World Order, pp. 93–113. 85. Dupuy, The Prophet and Power, pp. 101–134. 86. Jean and Maesschalck, Transition politique en Haiti, pp. 47–92 (author’s translation).

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87. Yasmine Shamsie, “The Economic Dimension of Peacebuilding in Haiti: Drawing on the Past to Reflect on the Present,” in Yasmine Shamsie and Andrew S. Thompson, eds., Haiti: Hope for a Fragile State (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006), pp. 37–48. 88. Haiti Grassroots Watch, “Salaries in the ‘New’ Haiti,” November 29, 2011, http://haitigrassrootswatch.squarespace.com/11. 89. International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)–Confederación Sindical Internacional (CSI)–Der Internationale Gewerkschaftsbund (IGB), Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights, 2010 (2010), http://survey.ituc-csi.org/Hostility-toward-union-organising.html. 90. International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)–Confederación Sindical Internacional (CSI)–Der Internationale Gewerkschaftsbund (IGB), ITUC, Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights, 2012 (2012), http://survey.ituc-csi.org/Haiti.html?edition=336 (September 9, 2012). 91. Carlin Michel, “Le salaire minimum, d’une rencontre à l’autre,” Le Nouvelliste, June 12, 2009, http://www.lenouvelliste.com/article4.php ?newsid=71159. 92. Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives, “WikiLeaks Haiti: Let Them Live on $3 a Day,” The Nation, June 3, 2011, http://www.thenation.com /article/161057/wikileaks-haiti-let-them-live-3day; Adam Clark Estes, “America’s Awful Treatment of Haiti, According to WikiLeaks,” The Atlantic Wire, June 7, 2011, http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/06 /us-haiti-wikileaks-minimum-wage-petrocaribe/38579. 93. American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) Solidarity Center, “A Post-Earthquake Living Wage Estimate for Apparel Workers in the SONAPI Export Processing Zone” (Portau-Prince: AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, March 3, 2011), p. 2. 94. Fritz Deshommes, “Haiti: La sous-traitance peut-elle supporter un salaire minimum de 200 gourdes? (II),” AlterPresse, November 27, 2009, http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article9034. 95. Amos Cincir, “Le salaire minimum passe à 200 gourdes dans la soustraitance, le 1er octobre,” Le Nouvelliste, September 13, 2012, http:// www.lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid=109015. 96. Shamsie, “Time for a ‘High-Road’ Approach”; Shamsie, “The Economic Dimension of Peacebuilding in Haiti.” 97. Shamsie, “Time for a ‘High-Road’ Approach,” p. 6. 98. Alex Dupuy, “Class, Power, Sovereignty: Haiti Before and After the Earthquake,” paper presented at the 23rd Annual Conference of the Haitian Studies Association, Kingston, Jamaica, November 11, 2011. 99. World Economic Forum in Partnership with the World Bank, InterAmerican Development Bank, and International Finance Corporation, Private Sector Development in Haiti: Opportunities for Investment, Job Creation and Growth (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2011), p. 13. 100. Deborah Sontag, “Earthquake Relief Where Haiti Wasn’t Broken,” New York Times, July 5, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/world /americas/earthquake-relief-where-haiti-wasnt-broken.html?_r=1&page wanted=all.

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101. Ibid. 102. Ibid. 103. Ibid. See also Haiti Grassroots Watch, “The Case of Caracol,” November 29, 2011, http://haitigrassrootswatch.squarespace.com/11_6_eng. 104. Trenton Daniel, “Haitian Company Added to US-Backed Assembly Park,” Associated Press, July 17, 2012, http://www.businessweek.com/ap /2012-07-17/haiti-adds-1-of-its-own-to-us-backed-assembly-park. 105. City of Emeryville, California, “Sherwin Williams” (2012), http:// www.ci.emeryville.ca.us/index.aspx?NID=253. 106. Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), “Sherwin-Williams: Covering Our Communities with Toxics,” Synthesis/Regeneration, no. 41 (Fall 2006), http://www.greens.org/s-r/41 /41-05.html. 107. Haiti Grassroots Watch, “Haiti Open for Business,” November 29, 2011, http://haitigrassrootswatch.squarespace.com/haiti-grassroots-watch -engli/2011/11/29/haiti-open-for-business.html. See also Jacqueline Charles, “New Industrial Park in Northern Haiti Sparks Controversy,” Miami Herald, June 4, 2012, http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/15/v-fullstory/2833118 /new-industrial-park-in-northern.html#storylink=cpy; Sontag, “Earthquake Relief Where Haiti Wasn’t Broken.” The Caracol Industrial Park website is at http://www.ute.gouv.ht/caracol/en/park.

4 Political Economy in the Aftermath of the Quake

THE CRUEL IRONY OF THE REPACKAGED PLANS OF THE 1970S

and 1980s that were behind the opportunistic “Haiti is open for business” pronouncement is that capital itself does not believe in the slogan. In reality, the country’s political instability and lack of infrastructure—characteristics of an outer periphery created by world capitalism in the first place—have discouraged foreign investors. For instance, while direct foreign investments may have increased to a record high in 2011, they amounted to only $181.0 million 1 compared to the $2.371 billion that the Dominican Republic received. 2 Moreover, in the 2012–2013 Global Competitiveness Index of the World Economic Forum, Haiti ranked a miserable 142 out of 144 nations. 3 Similarly, in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index, Haiti ranks 174 out of 183.4 Despite Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe’s recent declaration that the country has to move into the top fifty by the end of 2013, it is hard to see how Haiti can do much to improve its image in the eyes of potential investors over the short term.5 Lamothe’s optimism is patently unrealistic given that the basic framework of the reconstruction amounts to little more than a repackaging of old, failed policies. In fact, reconstruction plans actually accentuate Haiti’s dependence, firmly enclosing the country in the outer periphery. The wave of humanitarian interventionism that followed the earthquake and the nature of the subsequent foreign assistance have aggravated Haiti’s outer peripheral condition and effectively turned the country into a trusteeship. Haiti was supposed to receive over $5 billion in aid by 2012, and close to $10 billion for the 89

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following year and beyond.6 As Haiti’s past experience demonstrates, however, pledges of foreign assistance guarantee nothing. Unless its traditional methods, goals, and ideological underpinnings are drastically reversed, foreign aid will not change the basic structures of the country.

The Interim Haiti Recovery Commission and International Assistance: Undermining Sovereignty Haiti’s already weak and ineffective government has become like a mendicant beggar surrendering its sovereignty to the International. In the immediate aftermath of the quake, it was supplanted by a civilian supranational body called the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC),7 which was conceived by the US State Department under the leadership of Cheryl Mills, counselor and chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.8 In March 2010, Haitian legislators who sensed that Haiti’s recovery program had not only been devised by foreign powers, but that it would be implemented by these very powers, questioned then prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive about the extent of the country’s dependence. “I hope you sense the dependency in this document,” Bellerive responded. “If you don’t sense it, you should tear it up!” And in a rare moment of candor he added, “I am optimistic that in 18 months, yes, we will be autonomous in our decisions, but right now I have to assume, as Prime Minister, that we are not.”9 Ultimately, legislators acquiesced to this reality and, before dissolving Parliament in April 2010 to organize new elections, they passed a state of emergency law giving the IHRC complete authority to determine the country’s future until October 2011. The IHRC aimed to achieve “the coordinated, effective and efficient planning and implementation of priorities, plans and projects in support of Haiti’s recovery and development in the wake of the 12 January 2010 earthquake.” Moreover, it received the mandate to “be responsible for continuously developing and refining development plans for Haiti, assessing needs and gaps and establishing investment priorities.” Finally, the IHRC was to “operate within the framework of the State of Emergency Law and [was] vested with all the power and authority necessary to conduct its activities.”10 Cochaired by the Haitian prime minister and “a prominent non-

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Haitian official involved in the reconstruction effort” 11 who happened to be former US president Bill Clinton, the IHRC was unaccountable to any Haitian representative body. All decisions made by the IHRC were “deemed confirmed” unless vetoed by Haiti’s president within ten business days after formal notification. 12 Thus, the IHRC maintained a legal façade of ultimate Haitian authority but, in reality, it placed the country under the International. The twenty-four voting members13 of the IHRC were equally divided between a number of Haiti’s government officials and civil society organizations on the one hand, and foreign powers and organizations on the other. Apart from the representative of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the other foreign voting members came from institutions or countries that “pledged to donate at least US$100,000,000 for the reconstruction of Haiti over a period of two consecutive years, or that [had] pledged at least US$200,000,000 in debt relief to Haiti.”14 Haiti’s dependent status was further aggravated by the presence of the MINUSTAH contingent of some 13,000 foreign troops—the primary organized coercive force operating in the country. Both the IHRC and MINUSTAH were conceived with little national debate or discussion. They defied the nation’s sovereignty and were unrepresentative of Haitian aspirations. For instance, the IHRC had neither a refugee camp representative nor a representative from the beleaguered farming sector on its board. This symbolic absence of the latter was a clear indication that rural communities were insignificant in the eyes of domestic rulers and international powers. The IHRC was a body comprised of urbanites, elites, and outsiders pretending to speak for the countryside and the poor. The IHRC is now dead because Parliament failed to renew its mandate. In fact, it is no longer accessible through its web page; it is as if the IHRC had never existed. After consulting a number of international partners, the Michel Martelly administration seems to have decided that a new agency under the authority of the Ministry of Planning should replace the IHRC.15 An organization composed entirely of Haitians, the Cadre de Coordination de l’Aide Externe (CAED), was established for this purpose.16 The president nominates the members of CAED and there is the possibility that foreign donors could be invited to join. It would be wrong, however, to believe that CAED’s creation has altered the reality of Haiti’s utter dependence on the external community for its security and financial survival. The inadequacies of both the IHRC

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and MINUSTAH in their attempts to reconstruct the country damaged their reputation. In fact, Haitians resented both institutions and nationalistic sentiments have nurtured an increasingly powerful disenchantment with the international community as a whole.17 The presidential and parliamentary elections of November 28, 2010, took place within this charged political climate. In principle, if countries jettison their authoritarian past and move forward with the regular electoral ritual, it should bode well for their political life and the likelihood that they might consolidate democratic forms of governance. However, the climate of instability and devastation within which Haiti conducted the 2010 elections exacerbated tensions, created organizational chaos, and aggravated uncertainties. This was all the more predictable given that every election since the fall of the Jean-Claude Duvalier dictatorship in 1986 had entailed dramatic displays of popular protest, political confrontations, and disputed outcomes. In addition, the level of corruption existing in the Electoral Council was such that to expect anything but a fraudulent election was naïve. In fact, the international community was fully aware of this reality. As the documents posted on WikiLeaks reveal, the United States, Canada, and France lamented the lack of transparency of the electoral council and its decision to exclude the Lavalas movement from the electoral process. The International was convinced that the Electoral Council “almost certainly in conjunction with President [René] Préval,” had “emasculated the opposition.”18 Not surprisingly, the elections of November 2010 were an utter fiasco with limited popular participation.19 In fact, barely five hours after the polls had opened, Martelly the popular entertainer and singer, Myrlande Manigat of the conservative Rassemblement des Démocrates Nationaux Progressistes (RDNP), and all the other presidential candidates except Jude Célestin, protégé of then president Préval, rejected the elections as a masquerade and called for their cancellation. Twenty-four hours later, however, both Martelly and Manigat changed their minds when rumors circulated that they may have come in at first and second place. Their political opportunism suggested that the zero-sum politics that had characterized Haitian history for so long was unlikely to end. The widespread perception that the earthquake had changed nothing in the rulers’ habits was reinforced when the incompetent and corrupt Electoral Council published dubious results on December

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7, 2010. It placed Célestin in second place, behind Manigat and in front of Martelly. The elections themselves, as well as the announcement of the results, generated popular protests, especially from Martelly’s supporters. It became clear that the polls had little legitimacy.20 In a search for a compromise, President Préval requested the Organization of American States (OAS) to create the so-called Expert Verification Mission of the Vote Tabulation of the November 28, 2010, Election in the Republic of Haiti, which was charged with examining the “irregularities” that marred the first round of the presidential elections.21 The mission, along with key actors in the international community, found the results unacceptable and the whole process deeply flawed, but they rejected Haitians’ call for new and clean elections. According to the final report of the mission, On Election Day, international and national observers witnessed a number of problems: disorganization, irregularities as well as instances of ballot stuffing, intimidation of voters and vandalism of polling stations. These problems were further exacerbated by the precipitous decision of many candidates to call for the cancellation of elections, hours before the polls closed. In the days following Election Day, the OAS-CARICOM Joint Election Observation Mission received numerous allegations of ballot-box stuffing and alterations to the official result sheets (“Procès-Verbaux”) of the individual polling stations. By any measure, these were problematic elections.22

The mission, however, claimed that the balloting could be salvaged provided that the Electoral Council and the government agreed to implement a few recommendations to minimize the effects of the fraud and improve the administration of the second electoral round. The principal and most controversial recommendation was that “the position of the candidate in third place would change to second. The candidate now in second place would move to third.”23 The international community, which had become disenchanted with President Préval, was not prepared to accept a potential victory of Célestin, his chosen dauphin; it was thus bent on altering the outcome of the elections.24 Not surprisingly, Préval expressed “reservations” about the report. He pointed out “that six of the seven members of the OAS team came either from the United States, Canada, or France, countries which had raised early public objections to the pre-

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liminary Haiti election results,”25 implying that the team was trying to manipulate the outcome to its liking. In fact, Préval had good reasons to be cynical about the International’s role in Haitian politics; it had pressured him—without success—to go into exile on November 28, the very day of the first round of the elections. Ricardo Seitenfus, former OAS special representative in Haiti who was fired for criticizing the international community for its systematic failure in Haiti, recounts the meeting at which the International considered expelling Préval from his own country: On . . . the day of the elections, there was discussion in a meeting of the Core Group (donor countries, OAS and the United Nations) of something that seemed to me simply frightening. Some representatives suggested that President René Préval should leave the country and that we should think about an airplane for that purpose. I heard that and I was horrified. The Prime Minister of Haiti, JeanMax Bellerive, arrived and immediately said not to count on him for any solution outside the constitution and he asked if President Préval’s mandate was being negotiated. And there was silence in the room. Beside me was Albert Ramdin, adjunct secretary of the OAS, so I could not speak because he was representing the OAS. But faced with his silence and that of the others, I asked to be able to speak and reminded them of the existence of the Inter-American Democratic Charter [of the OAS] and that I thought any discussion of President Préval’s mandate would be a coup. I was very surprised by the fact that the adjunct secretary of the OAS remained silent in the face of the possibility of shortening the term of a legitimately elected president.26

Préval himself corroborated Seitenfus’s story when he declared in an interview with Amy Wilentz that he rejected the Core Group’s “offer of a plane.” According to Préval, on November 28, 2010, “at around noon, they called me; it’s no longer an election, they told me. It’s a political problem. Do you want a plane to leave? I don’t know how they were going to explain my departure, but I got rid of that problem for them by refusing to go. I want to serve out my mandate and give the presidency over to an elected president.”27 This type of gross interference in the domestic politics of Haiti was not new; it had profoundly shaped the recent history of the country. However, the blatant determination of the OAS to alter the deeply flawed vote of November 28 generated nationalist reactions against what Haitians saw as unwarranted foreign intrusions into their affairs. The OAS report was also challenged for the dubious statistical methods that it

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used to reverse the finishing order of the first round. Martelly, the report asserted, came in second with 22.2 percent of the votes, and Célestin was third with 21.9 percent.28 Given the extent of the fraud, however, the minimal difference of 0.3 percent that separated Martelly from Célestin seemed arbitrary. In fact the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), which had recommended the organization of new, fair, and free elections because it deemed the first round “fatally flawed,” condemned the OAS report as “inconclusive, statistically flawed, and indefensible.”29 The CEPR concluded that the OAS’s “analysis does not provide any basis statistical or otherwise for changing the result of the first round of the presidential election.”30 Placing Martelly in second place by the narrow margin of 0.3 percent of the vote, or about 3,200 votes, had no basis in a proper statistical inquiry of the tally sheets. According to the CEPR, this move represented “a purely arbitrary result.” Moreover and most critically, the CEPR claimed that the OAS “failed to take into consideration the missing/quarantined tally sheets,” which if they had not been “excluded would likely have put Celestin in second place.”31 Ultimately, however, the fundamental flaw in the OAS report was that it “failed to provide any sound basis for a credible vote count in the first round of the election.”32 Nevertheless, after long weeks of negotiations, the international community led by the United States and France compelled the Electoral Council and the Préval administration to capitulate and reverse the results. Martelly was thus placed ahead of Célestin who was eliminated from the second and decisive electoral round that was held on March 20, 2011. In spite of logistical problems, the second round was much better organized than the first. In a smart and well-funded campaign, Martelly successfully portrayed himself as the antisystem candidate and the new face of Haitian politics. He engineered the so-called rose wave named for his party’s color and defeated Manigat in a landslide with over 67.0 percent of the vote. This landslide, however, was not a popular mandate; in fact, that 67.0 percent represented only 4.3 percent of the potential voters.33 Martelly’s candidacy was initially perceived as a hoax; but his bad boy image, as well as his capacity to portray himself as the ultimate outsider who could sweep away the vestiges of a decaying and corrupt state, resonated with the electorate. 34 He simultaneously embraced and distanced himself from “Sweet Micky,” the self-proclaimed “Prézidan Kompa” (president of

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Kompa) who dropped his pants on stage and mooned his audience.35 On the one hand, he declared that these burlesque performances embodied the persona of the artist and had nothing to do with Martelly the principled man and politician. On the other hand, he claimed that the Haitian political class as a whole had figuratively dropped its pants to never put them back on as it literally screwed the Haitian people without shame and without pity for as long as he could remember.36 In a sense, Martelly’s ascendancy to the presidency was a fitting reflection of Haiti’s profound systemic crisis. The earthquake let loose an unpredictable and confusing political climate fed by widespread popular sentiments that the existing state was incompetent, self-serving, and unaccountable. Haitians were fed up with Préval, who had looked impotent and lost in the wake of Goudougoudou; they were not prepared to accept his candidate, Célestin, and they were denied the opportunity to vote for former president JeanBertrand Aristide’s banned Lavalas. The minority who voted chose Martelly. Paradoxically, although he was an anti-Lavalas singer, he appealed to Lavalas’s populist base while his ebullient personality and celebrity status appeared untainted by the past twenty years of unfulfilled promises.37 In a bizarre convergence of opposites, supporters of Martelly celebrated his victory armed with his picture as well as that of former president Aristide. The two had suddenly become marassa—twins joined by a supposed common interest in improving the lot of the moun en deyo, the marginalized majority.

President Martelly: Hoping for a New Start with Hands Tied In spite of a short honeymoon period, Martelly’s presidency soon became turbulent and is likely to remain so. With three more years in power, he will confront unforeseen but far from implausible events. In spite of his electoral landslide and his apparent popularity, he may well face a plunge into the unknown. The inability of the IHRC and the Préval administration to deliver the promised foreign assistance pledges amounting to more than $5 billion has nurtured a sense of despair and exasperation that could easily turn into anger and revolt. Moreover, it is not unthinkable to fear another natural catastrophe, or a further deterioration in the global economy with all of the devastat-

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ing consequences that would entail for the country’s welfare. The political landscape thus could change dramatically in a flash. What is clear, however, is that Martelly’s victory implied a rejection of the political class that had both governed and mounted the opposition since the fall of Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986. While Martelly’s presidential style is quite different from Préval’s, he will confront huge political and economic obstacles if he attempts to transform the existing system for the benefits of the masses. Martelly inherited a country hovering over the abyss with a destroyed infrastructure and an alarming level of poverty. The economy was and still remains in shambles; the vast challenge of finding adequate housing for over 1 million displaced individuals persists; the cholera epidemic that has killed more than 7,000 people still haunts the country; and the deep political divisions aggravated by the fraudulent election show no signs of abating. Moreover, Martelly has to deal with the reality that he has little room to maneuver since Haiti’s sovereignty is at bay. For good or ill, he is thoroughly dependent on external financial assistance. The question for the president, then, is whether he can renegotiate Haiti’s dependence on better terms. Domestically, his connections with the old Haitian army and neo-Duvalierist individuals have generated fears of an authoritarian streak; on the other hand, his popular base among the urban youth may force him to try to meet the needs of the residents of the slums. Moreover, his rural support may contribute to a revival of Haitian agriculture and better times for the peasantry. So, the current conjuncture is contradictory; there is a sense that plus ça change plus c’est la même chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same), but there is also a sense that Martelly has fueled great expectations for a new Haiti. So, what can be expected from the Martelly presidency? We have on the one hand his electoral promises ranging from agrarian reform to free access to education and from political reconciliation to reconstruction. But then we have also his call for the reconstitution of the Haitian army and for opening up Haiti for business. Electoral promises should never be taken too seriously, but they do give a flavor of what is to come. Moreover, given existing political and economic structures, and the constellation of domestic and international power, certain promises are more likely to materialize than others. In fact, the fundamental question is not about personalities or whether Martelly has good or bad intentions, but rather what strategic objectives are thinkable and feasible in the current conjuncture.

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In other words, the question of who occupies the National Palace does matter, but it will not determine Haiti’s future. Powerful domestic and international interests constrain presidential leadership into embracing old strategies and reflexes. The political class and the traditional ruling elite that have contributed to the country’s current crises have remained politically and economically dominant. La politique du ventre (the politics of the belly) that has characterized Haiti’s mode of governance since its inception continues to undermine the rise of a collective sense of civic obligation. Moreover, the state’s institutional incapacity makes it impossible for it to carry the very policies that it promulgates. These difficulties are compounded by the reality that Haitians are not really in charge of their own affairs; it is the dominant international financial institutions that have elaborated the country’s economic plans for development and reconstruction. The government is at best weak, and at worst an empty shell whose sovereignty is challenged by the simple fact that close to 70 percent of its budget is funded by external donors and that foreign assistance was far greater than its own revenues by 130 percent and 400 percent in 2009 and 2010, respectively.38 Haitians have little ownership in the process of reconstruction, which is, not surprisingly, faltering. While there was a 75 percent reduction in camp dwellers, two and one-half years after the earthquake 390,276 people were still living in destitute conditions in 575 camps.39 Moreover, few permanent housing complexes have been built, and temporary lodging quarters are likely to become the new slums of Haiti’s chaotic urban landscape. In fact Corail, which the World Bank considered the country’s best site for an integrated economic zone and a model new community for refugees resettling from the earthquake, has become a huge shantytown providing neither employment nor safe housing. As Haiti Grassroots Watch points out, Three years after its star-studded launch by President René Préval, actor Sean Penn and various other Haitian and foreign dignitaries, the model camp for Haiti’s 2010 earthquake victims has helped give birth to what might become the country’s most expansive— and most expensive—slum. Known as “Canaan,” “Jerusalem” and “ONAville”—the new shantytown, spread across 1,100-hectares (11 square kilometers or 2,718 acres), is here to stay, Haitian officials told Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW). Taxpayers and foreign donors will likely spend

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“many hundreds of millions” to urbanize the region, and as much as another US$64 million to pay off the landowners who are threatening to sue the government and the humanitarian agencies. Three years after the launch of the temporary model camp located about 18 kilometers northeast of the capital and known as “Corail-Cesselesse” after the habitation or plantation once home to sugarcane and sisal fields the landscape is radically different from the orderly camp visited by celebrities. Surrounded by tens of thousands of squatters’ shacks and homes, today it is a cause of embarrassment for local and international actors alike.40

Thus, while it is true that the task of rebuilding Haiti is immense and will take a long time, little has been accomplished since the earthquake. It is not far-fetched to say that 2010, 2011, and 2012 have been wasted years and that 2013 will be no better. Most Haitians perceive those in charge of this reconstruction as a self-serving group of distant foreign powers and ineffective government officials. Moreover, so far, the moun andeyo continue to be left out of any meaningful participation in the decisionmaking process. This exclusion can only aggravate the extreme social polarization and zero-sum politics that have traditionally characterized Haiti’s history. Nonetheless, reconstruction provides to the Martelly regime and the international community an opportunity to change this situation and reverse more than thirty years of failed policies that have emasculated the Haitian state and undermined the local economy. A new strategy bent on privileging massive public works for infrastructural development, agricultural transformation, and food self-sufficiency is desperately needed. The fundamental goals should be creating public employment, alleviating poverty, and bridging the obscene divide between the small privileged minority and the poor majority. If Haiti is to achieve these goals, donors need to jettison their neoliberal dogmas and make good on their pledges while the Haitian state needs to use that assistance in a productive way.

The NGO Republic For the past forty years, fears of corruption and a blind ideological commitment to the market have led foreign donors to bypass the state and emphasize NGO-led development. The results of this experience

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have been at best meager. It is time to change the trajectory. Seitenfus denounced donors and NGOs for their own corruption and lack of transparency: We have hundreds of millions of dollars in the hands of the NGOs without any sort of social control, without any transparency, or government management. And we are accusing the government of Haiti of being corrupt when the government of Haiti doesn’t even have money in their hands to be corrupt with! We can not demand from Haiti what we do not demand for ourselves. . . . We can attempt to create a new model of state and to make Haiti a laboratory of experiences but we have to stop Haiti becoming “Haiti-NGO,” that means a country of NGOs. . . . All projects that come in to Haiti that weaken even more the weak Haitian state, should be discarded. We should accept only projects that bring resources for the institutions of Haiti to be strengthened, and for Haiti to effectively respond to the needs of dealing internally with their inequities. . . . We cannot make of Haiti a “Disneyland” of the NGOs.41

It is clear that local institutions remain extremely fragile; moreover, at this point it would be difficult for them to function but for the largesse of external donors that control the country’s development agenda. In truth, what passes for Haiti’s civil society is largely made up of foreign organizations funded by foreign sources and controlled by foreign agents. Most so-called local NGOs are linked to transnational entities that are not accountable to the local population. Moreover, while NGOs may not be part of the state, the networks they form have acquired a power that can in fact challenge state policies themselves. This poses again the question of Haiti’s sovereignty since the majority of NGOs form a parallel and mostly internationalized force that undermines Haitians’ control of their own politics and economics. In short, the NGO model of development that international financial institutions have imposed on the country with the complicity of Haitian rulers is bankrupt. The earthquake set in relief the obdurate limitations of this development paradigm. Thus, instead of pumping its resources into NGOs, the international community must shift its priorities and concentrate on helping Haitians build durable state institutions. The emasculation of the state is no accident; it is partly the consequence of the policies implanted in the country by the major IFIs. By advocating the withdrawal of the state from its social and regulating obligations, these policies have contributed to an economic, political, and social disas-

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ter. In my view, the objective should be to change course and build state capacity instead of continuing to favor the development of Haiti as the NGO republic. The international community should concentrate its resources on helping Haitians build a coherent and functioning state with an effective public bureaucracy capable of channeling foreign assistance to productive ends. But such a state cannot begin to be imagined without a broad national and international consensus on the necessity of reversing and rejecting past practices. Starving the government of funds can only enfeeble an already weak state and prevent it from assuming its responsibility. Surely, Haitian and foreign authorities and institutions can devise mechanisms of control and accountability minimizing corrupt practices. There is no reason why independent auditors cannot oversee spending and curb the excesses of public corruption. To date the IFIs’ economic plans, which stress the development of export-oriented urban enclaves dependent on ultracheap labor, have contributed to the neglect of agricultural production as well as the inevitable population exodus to the cities. Port-au-Prince, built for 250,000 people, now has over 3 million inhabitants with most living in poverty and squalor. The programs of reconstruction elaborated by the IFIs in the aftermath of January 12, 2010, pay lip service to agricultural renewal, economic decentralization, and building state capacity; in reality, however, they are “old wine in new bottles.”42 These programs continue to privilege the development of the assembly industry sector because of Haiti’s ultracheap labor as well as agricultural exports that are principally mangoes and coffee. In fact, they echo the policies of Jean-Claude Duvalier in the late 1970s and early 1980s as well as Paul Collier’s 2009 economic report on Haiti for the UN Secretary-General. For Collier and former president Clinton, the UN special envoy to Haiti and cochair of the IHRC, export processing is the heart of Haiti’s economic revival. This is especially the case for garments, as Collier puts it: “In garments the largest single component of costs is labour. Due to its poverty and relatively unregulated labour market, Haiti has labour costs that are fully competitive with China, which is the global benchmark. Haitian labour is not only cheap it is of good quality.”43 While garments, mangoes, and coffee should not be neglected, they cannot be the priority of a balanced strategy of poverty alleviation and self-sustaining economic growth.

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Garments over Food: The Misguided Strategy of Neglecting Agriculture In my view, a strategy of development for Haiti should promote an alternative model based on the protection and reinvigoration of domestic production that satisfies basic needs and privileges the development of the rural areas where two-thirds of Haitians live. The fundamental objectives of this agrarian-based strategy should be the promotion of food self-sufficiency, the curbing of obscene class and regional inequalities, and the development of a sense of national cohesion. Unless priority is given to agriculture and food production, Haiti will remain in crisis, having to beg for assistance from outsiders. In fact, food scarcity has worsened for the majority of the population: In 1997 some 1.2 million Haitians didn’t have enough food to eat. A decade later the number had more than doubled. Today, that figure is 6.7 million, or a staggering 67 percent of the population that goes without food some days, can’t afford a balanced diet or has limited access to food, according to surveys by the government’s National Coordination of Food Security. As many as 1.5 million of those face malnutrition and other hunger-related problems.44

It is difficult, however, to contemplate an increase in domestic food production without a major policy shift from the neoliberal regime imposed on Haiti by the major foreign financial institutions. Unfortunately, such a shift is unlikely given the constellation of forces advocating continued reliance on the old garment export model of development. An explicit antirural bias runs through the policies favored by the international community. A recent report on Haiti by the influential RAND Corporation states, Some of Haiti’s best prospects for growth are to attract foreign and domestic investment to the garment industry. Haiti has too many people engaged in agriculture. The country is heavily populated, and more land is cultivated than is ecologically sustainable. In contrast, labor-intensive industries, such as garment manufacturing, provide an attractive source of jobs and income, especially given Haiti’s competitive, low-cost labor force.45

The problem with this view is that, for the past thirty-five years or so, it has been tried without success. The country simply cannot

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afford more economic liberalization lest its domestic economic base disintegrate completely. Indeed, the collapse of domestic food production—particularly rice—can be traced back to the policies of trade liberalization introduced in the mid-1980s and 1990s under the guidance of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank.46 Former president Clinton himself has acknowledged the destructive consequences of these policies. Years later, as the special envoy of the United Nations to Haiti, he offered his mea culpa for imposing such policies: Since 1981, the United States has followed a policy, until the last year or so when we started rethinking it, that we rich countries that produce a lot of food should sell it to poor countries and relieve them of the burden of producing their own food, so, thank goodness, they can leap directly into the industrial era. It has not worked. It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. It was a mistake that I was a party to. I am not pointing the finger at anybody. I did that. I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did. Nobody else.47

When he was president, Clinton did indeed contribute to the transformation of Haiti into one of the countries with the most open trade regimes,48 a change that resulted in the massive reliance on imported food to the total neglect of agriculture. As Oxfam points out, In 1995 the IMF forced Haiti to cut its rice tariff from 35 per cent to 3 per cent, with the result that imports increased by more than 150 per cent between 1994 and 2003. Today, three out of every four plates of rice eaten in Haiti come from the USA. This is good news for Riceland Foods of Arkansas, the biggest rice mill in the world. Riceland’s profits jumped by $123m form [sic] 2002 to 2003, thanks, in large part, to a 50 per cent increase in exports, primarily to Haiti and Cuba. But it has devastated farmers in Haiti, where rice-growing areas now have some of the highest levels of malnutrition and poverty.49

The neglect of rural areas was clearly reflected in the 2007 budget of the Ministry of Agriculture, which was a measly $1.5 million, a figure that contrasts sharply with the $69 million spent on the UN World Food Program (WFP). According to the Haiti Support Group,

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There has been a chronic lack of investment in farming in Haiti. Agriculture, despite long term decline, has actually been a remarkably stable economic base, never accounting for less than 25% of GDP and, just as crucially, employing more than 50% of the working population in Haiti. Yet typically, in 2012, the sector has been allocated a mere 6% of the national budget. Foreign development aid spending has been even worse, with agriculture getting a miserable 2.5% of total foreign assistance in the five years ending 2005, despite farming being, in the World Bank’s words, “by far the most important social and economic activity in Haiti.”50

Thus, instead of reconstructing its rural sector and promoting domestic food production, Haiti has remained a country of malnourished and hungry people alarmingly dependent on external charity and at the mercy of the weather. The Haiti Support Group describes the country’s declining food security: “Haiti, considered very food secure just 30 years ago, now has the third worst level of hunger in the world, according to the current Global Hunger Index (GHI). Haiti’s status is considered ‘extremely alarming,’ with 57% of the population under-nourished and 18.9% of children under 5 underweight, the key factor in a mortality rate of 16.5% amongst this group.”51 Clearly then, the neoliberal regime imposed on Haiti’s agriculture has had disastrous results. Neither Martelly administration officials nor the IFIs, however, have indicated a significant change of policy. When agriculture is addressed in the postearthquake programs, it is the agricultural export model, based on the support of agribusiness, that is promoted. The Haiti Support Group again describes well the current conjuncture: The government’s agricultural vision seems overwhelmingly exportoriented, focusing on coffee, cocoa, mangoes and vetiver. It stresses co-operation with multinationals such as Coca-Cola in production of a new “Mango-Tango” soda or the need to supply Starbucks with specialist Haitian coffee. The emphasis is large, localized, distinct, foreign-investor-led projects, rather than a small farmer oriented, departmental and national, agricultural support programme. While some of these new schemes may benefit family farmers and the internal market—both mangoes and coffee are grown on small plots as well as larger commercial holdings—small farmers are, at best, marginal to the plans. The clear emphasis is getting Haiti’s agricultural exports up, rather than Haitian hunger down.

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“We’re changing the dynamics of how we do agriculture in Haiti,” Luiz Almeida of the IDB boasted to one journalist as recently as August, adding: “When I say agriculture, I say agribusiness.”52

Transforming the rural sector into a vast agribusiness zone is bound to have a deleterious impact on the peasantry. Farmers and their families will be compelled to abandon their homes and land. Without land, they will continue their mass migration to the slums of the major urban areas where jobs will remain scarce. The future of the peasantry therefore looks bleak: As such, Haiti’s small food producers could face a slew of new threats: contract farming to produce high-value vegetables for export; biofuels, such as jatropha, which many foreign experts believe will thrive in Haiti, or even GMO [genetically modified organism] seeds and the agro-industrial corporate dependence they entail. It is exactly the sort of model that leads to even greater malnutrition and poverty in the midst of plantation of plenty, as in so much of the Americas.53

State Corruption and the Aid Regime It is true that Haiti embarked on the neoliberal path because foreign donors sought to bypass the corruption and incompetence of successive governments, but such corruption and incompetence are not inevitable. In fact, they are to a large extent the product of the IFIs’ policies that have eviscerated the state and of foreign support for regimes that adopted these very policies. For instance, the International’s open and covert backing of the Jean-Claude Duvalier dictatorship exacerbated the corrupt and authoritarian system that has characterized Haitian politics. But while undesirable, corruption and authoritarianism are not necessarily synonymous with economic regression, weak institutions, and state managerial incompetence. The examples of China, Taiwan, and South Korea clearly demonstrate that the takeoff of poor countries is quite compatible with repressive political structures and high levels of venality.54 Thus, while state corruption and predation are critical problems, they are not by themselves the main cause of Haiti’s impoverished conditions. In reality, the deliberate choice of both Haitian and foreign policy makers to bypass the state in the developmental process

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has destroyed key governmental institutions and caused the current impasse. For decades, only a limited amount of foreign assistance actually ended up in governmental hands. For instance, according to a 2011 report of the UN special envoy for Haiti, Of the $2.43 billion committed or disbursed in humanitarian funding: • 34 percent ($824.7 million) was provided to donors’ own civil and military entities for disaster response; • 28 percent ($674.9 million) was provided to UN agencies and international NGOs for projects listed in the UN appeal; • 26 percent ($632.5 million) was provided to other international NGOs and private contractors; • 6 percent ($151.1 million) was provided (in-kind) to unspecified recipients; • 5 percent ($119.9 million) was provided to the International Federation of the Red Cross and national Red Cross societies; • 1 percent ($25.0 million) was provided to the Government of Haiti.55

All told, approximately 99 percent of postearthquake relief aid was disbursed to non-Haitian actors. Moreover, Haitian NGOs were virtually excluded from relief or recovery funds. Only two— Perspectives pour la Santé et le Développement (Prospects for Health and Development) and Adventist Development and Relief Agency Haiti—received funding that amounted to only an embarrassing $0.8 million. 56 In fact, a significant portion of both relief and recovery assistance remains in the donor countries. For instance, more than “75 percent of USAID funds went to private contractors inside the Beltway (located in Washington, DC, Maryland, or Virginia).” 57 Finally, “at least 75 percent of bilateral recovery aid [was channeled] through multilateral agencies and non-state service providers.”58 In short, the bulk of foreign assistance circumvents the Haitian government and contributes to its emasculation. This aid regime simply is not conducive to the self-sustaining reconstruction and development of Haiti. It is true, however, that any thought of recovery would have been unthinkable if donors had not forgiven Haiti’s more than $1 billion debt in October 2009 and then cancelled the outstanding balance in the aftermath of the earthquake.59 Such financial relief, however, will ultimately be insufficient since Haiti’s debt is bound to rise again given the vast resources required for the country’s reconstruction. As an analysis by the International Monetary Fund and Interna-

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tional Development Association concludes, “The outlook is for a significant build up of new external debt. The narrow export base remains the Achilles’ heel of Haiti’s debt sustainability: the PV [present value] of debt to export ratio exceeds the 100 percent sustainability threshold from 2017 onwards. Thus, Haiti’s debt situation still remains vulnerable, and, consequently, the staffs continue to assess Haiti’s risk of debt distress as being high.”60 Haiti’s debt vulnerability reflects also the decay of its state institutions, which is in turn a consequence of international aid policies that have bypassed the state itself. These policies have not changed in the aftermath of the earthquake, as Paul Farmer points out: “With over 99 percent of relief funding circumventing Haitian public institutions, the already challenging task of moving from relief to recovery which requires government leadership, above all becomes almost impossible.”61 Thus, international funding marginalizes the state and replaces it with omnipresent foreign NGOs. The country has been transformed into a laboratory for the new humanitarianism dispensed by wellfunded and ineffective NGOs. More than 10,000 NGOs have been doing “development work” for the past thirty years in Haiti, and their record shows that they cannot save the country.62 Uncoordinated among themselves and having no national coherence, they are a palliative agent in the struggle against poverty. Moreover, the assumption that NGOs are necessarily better than the state at managing development is highly questionable. NGOs can be as corrupt and inefficient as the state. In fact, when the major IFIs imposed their structural adjustment program on Haiti, they inevitably contributed to the retrenchment of the state and the privileging of civil society. This in turn precipitated the paradoxical exit from the state bureaucracy of competent and honest civil service agents, as well as corrupt and unaccountable ones, to the profitable business of creating or working for NGOs. It is true that, under the current neoliberal regime, Haiti would not necessarily be better off without NGOs; in fact, NGOs provide desperately needed funds, health care, and basic necessities. Nonetheless, we must be clear-eyed about the deleterious cycles of corruption and dependency that this involvement engenders. While there is no way to eradicate the NGOs’ role in consolidating Haiti’s position in the outer periphery, the process could perhaps be mitigated if the Haitian government were to effectively regulate their

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work. The problem is that NGOs are largely unaccountable to Haitians who have little control over their activities. More critically, NGOs unwittingly absolve the state from performing its fundamental social role toward its own citizens. The conclusion reached by Vijaya Ramachandran and Julie Walz is worth quoting at length: The available evidence suggests that NGOs and private contractors provide almost four-fifths of social services in Haiti. One study conducted before the January 2010 earthquake found that NGOs provided 70 percent of healthcare while private schools, mostly run by NGOs, accounted for 85 percent of education. Whether this involvement is an “infusion” or an “invasion” of NGOs is contested. International non-profit organizations bring much-needed expertise, human and financial resources, and a stable stream of funding to the country. Yet it is likely that the strength of NGOs further constrains the limited capacity of the Haitian government. NGOs have built an alternative infrastructure for the provision of social services, creating little incentive for the government to spend scarce resources on the social sector. A “brain drain” from the public sector to the private, non-profit sector is also observed, pulling talent away from government offices. NGOs provide almost one-third of all formal sector jobs, often the most well-respected and well-paying positions. This has resulted in the Haitian concept of the “klas ONG” (NGO class). Often, money spent by the NGOs does not stay in the local economy as many non-profits provide contracts to larger international businesses and service providers. There is consequently little contribution to the generation of value added in Haiti.63

Civil society and NGOs do not spring from midair and cannot magically detach themselves from the old structures of power, privilege, and wealth. They are embedded in these structures and they reflect all the contradictions that the interaction between global capitalism and Haiti’s state and society embodies. This is not to demonize NGOs, but to correctly understand their role in perpetuating Haiti’s crisis. Not all NGOs are the same; some do a better job of living up to their triumphalist characterizations. Some are capable of generating autonomous local initiatives and challenging prevailing patterns of hierarchy and subordination. For instance, NGOs like Fanm Tet Ansanm (Women United)64 and Zanmi Lasante (Farmer’s Partners in Health’s sister organization in Haiti)65 have grounded their governance in the local terrain even though they received foreign funding. As suggested above, what makes the difference here is that they

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sought the input of the community that they intended to serve and, thus, generated effective Haitian leadership and “ownership” of these organizations.66 While virtually all NGOs claim that their objective is to share with and eventually surrender to the local population their decisionmaking process and resources, few achieve this goal. Moreover, in practice, most NGOs fail to abandon the dominant assumptions that the poor are incapable of knowing what is best for them and that only foreign-educated experts can bring them rationality and the drive to achieve. Such assumptions breed perverse patterns of dependence and serve only their donors’ strategic interests. As Mark Schuller contends, If a particular NGO empowers local recipient communities to participate in all aspects of their work, from setting priorities to evaluation, and is autonomous from not only the state but also donor agencies, then communities can use this NGO to solve local problems. Conversely, if an NGO lacks local participation and autonomy, international donors can use it to establish foreign priorities and maintain foreign control over the country.67

It is clear that few NGOs have been able or willing to achieve Schuller’s ideal in Haiti. In fact, the IFIs and major powers have tended to use the NGOs to bypass the state and fulfill their neoliberal agenda. NGOs have thus reproduced the hierarchic and unaccountable patterns of foreign-induced programs imposed on local populations. In fact, the Disaster Accountability Project (DAP) found that most NGOs operating in Haiti lacked transparency and failed to assess the result of their work. 68 It requested 196 relief groups to respond to a questionnaire evaluating their transparency; only 38 agreed to answer. Those that responded received “over 1.4 billion US dollars in cash donations, and government/foundation funds and grants.” They reported “spending approximately 730 million dollars, or 52% on Haiti relief efforts.”69 Only eight of these NGOs regularly updated their activities reports and over 60 percent had no reports, posting only anecdotal evidence of their work. The DAP concluded that the transparency and accountability of relief organizations operating in Haiti were thoroughly lacking: In the year since the Haiti earthquake, DAP has considered an acceptable level of transparency to be frequent provision of detailed

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and specific information; or, otherwise stated, not information that is anecdotal, infrequent, aggregate-heavy, or lacking in factual details of activities. Of the 38 survey respondents, 35 reported that they provide factual, public information on their websites. Although those and many other organizations do provide some information on their websites, only 1 of the 196 organizations that the DAP research team investigated . . . provided what DAP considers, based upon a reasonable assessment of the standard mentioned above, to be an acceptable level of information.70

The lack of transparency of relief organizations is matched by private contractors, which receive the bulk of USAID money for Haiti. There is little oversight of how they spend their resources and there are few serious evaluations of the projects and programs financed by these resources. For instance, a 2011 audit by the USAID inspector general found that Chemonics, the largest recipient of USAID contracts in Haiti, “had inadequate results with their cashfor-work projects in Haiti, a lack of oversight, and no financial reviews of their implementing partners.”71 As Ramachandran and Walz put it, “There are no publicly accessible reports on what private contractors are doing, and whether or not their efforts have worked.”72 It is no surprise, therefore, that Haitians see NGOs as rather corrupt, even when communities receive valuable and needed assistance from them. A few weeks after Goudougoudou, Farmer rightly remarked, “There’s graffiti all over the walls in Port au Prince right now saying, ‘Down with NGOs.’ I think people in the NGO sector need to read the writing on the wall.”73 One of the key problems facing many NGOs is their incapacity to empower Haitians or strengthen their organizational structures; they tend to view local people as passive recipients of their charity. Moreover, NGOs are inclined to reproduce the patterns of hierarchy and inequality that define their sources of funding and inform the mission that they undertake. Schuller describes this chain of subordination between donors’ interests and objectives, particularly state-driven assistance from the major powers and NGOs, as a form of “trickle-down-imperialism.” 74 In other words, NGOs respond to the structure of rewards and incentives built into the world capitalist economy; ultimately, they consolidate that structure and unwittingly undermine the capacity of the Haitian state and its citizens to make their own history. Ramachandran and Walz put it succinctly: “The dominance of international NGOs and private contractors in Haiti has created a parallel state more powerful than

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the government itself. These entities have built an alternative infrastructure for the provision of social services, but do not have much accountability to the Haitian government or people.”75 This lack of accountability may explain why well-intentioned, but completely inexperienced and young, humanitarians land in Haiti and use the opportunity as a training ground for future careers elsewhere. In some instances, this becomes a short exotic journey for well-to-do university students in their quest to discover and save the helpless Other. As Seitenfus bluntly says, “Since the earthquake, Haiti has become an inevitable crossroads. For international NGOs, Haiti represents a place of forced passage. I would venture to say that it is even worse: of professional formation. . . . And Haiti, I can tell you, is not a place for amateurs.”76 And yet Haiti has also attracted the ever expanding brigades of celebrity humanitarianism. Actors, models, singers, and fashion designers fly in and out of the country to highlight devastation and promise salvation. In an attempt to elicit the sympathy of donors, they are pictured in the slums smiling with the poor, the handicapped, and the victims of natural disasters. It is difficult not to see these temporary images of dazzlingly wealthy individuals catapulted into communities experiencing abject distress as anything but a gross farce of a united humanity. There is something disturbing when fame-seeking Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, and Charlie Sheen join the glamorous parade of Haiti’s saviors. It is true that some celebrities, like Sean Penn,77 have genuinely committed themselves to bring a modicum of relief to the victims of Goudougoudou. There is also designer Donna Karan, whose philanthropic ideals seek to transform Haitian things into desirable commodities for industrialized nations. One need not be a victim of utter cynicism, however, to have doubts about her Urban Zen’s vision of helping “Haiti help itself by utilizing and organizing its artisans, natural resources and production potential to create business models that can be properly marketed and distributed throughout the US and Europe. As an American designer and businesswoman, I have a good sense of what makes a product desirable to the western consumer.”78 It is difficult to envisage how transforming a few Haitian commodities into objects of desire for wealthy people of the core will truly extricate the country from its current predicament. Simply put, Haiti cannot be branded like an exotic perfume for foreign consumption. This is not to deny the generosity of people; in the aftermath of Goudougoudou, Haiti became the recipient of an extraordinary

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global outpouring of support. The tragedy of January 12, 2010, awakened among people everywhere a short-lived, but genuine, cosmopolitanism. The victims of the quake were simply not alone. In fact, half of US households donated to the relief effort, and a single US telethon raised more than $60 million.79 For several weeks, the country remained the center of attention of the most powerful media. While there is no doubt that in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake Haiti was the object of global kindness and munificence, it is also important to remember that the country for too long has been a “laboratory” for all “forms of humanitarian experiences.”80

The Militarization of Humanism One of the most controversial and contested new developments in relief operations is their militarization. In other words, the major powers and particularly the United States are no longer prepared to leave relief efforts in the hands of civilian organizations, be they governmental or voluntary. The fusion of militarism and humanism has generated fears in some quarters that bringing relief to victims of natural disasters is now part of more sinister imperial designs. Not surprisingly, the dramatic landing of some 22,000 US troops on Haitian soil in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake fueled accusations of a new US occupation of the country. Calling for “a whole-of-government effort,” President Barack Obama ordered the US military to take charge of the relief operation.81 While Obama claimed that his order was issued “at the request of the Haitian Government,” it was clear that he acted unilaterally in the face of an acute crisis. In fact, the French minister for international cooperation, Alain Joyandet, accused the United States of “occupying” Haiti after US military controllers at Port-au-Prince airport denied landing rights to a French plane carrying a field hospital.82 Many on the left were quick to point out that the US military presence was part of its “shock therapy” to impose a form of disaster capitalism on an utterly traumatized and disoriented population.83 In short, critics argue that the United States was seizing the opportunity created by the catastrophic earthquake to assert its full control on Haiti. After all, as the US military itself points out, the essential function of the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which was the lead agency in relief operations in Haiti, is “to conduct joint and combined full-spectrum military operations and support whole-of-

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government efforts to enhance regional security and cooperation.”84 While SOUTHCOM’s whole-of-government efforts comprise humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions, they are above all intended to serve the national security interests of the United States. The militarization of the humanitarian intervention in Haiti in the context of past and recent imperial intrusions prompted inevitable fears that it would serve “as a pretext and justification to establish a more permanent US military presence in Haiti.”85 The problem with this argument is that in truth the United States did not even need the massive crisis created by Goudougoudou to establish its hegemony over Haiti. It had already transformed the island into its virtual trusteeship long before the earthquake. Moreover, neither the financial nor strategic cost of a military takeover was politically sustainable over the longue durée. Thanks to the deployment of MINUSTAH as a de facto force of occupation, the United States has preserved its interests in Haiti without incurring the risks and vicissitudes of a costly and more permanent military presence. As then US ambassador to Haiti Janet Sanderson put it in a 2008 cable, MINUSTAH has been “an indispensable tool in realizing core USG [US government] policy interests in Haiti.” It created “domestic security and political stability” in the country, which were necessary to block “populist and anti–market economy political forces” and an “exodus of seaborne migrants.”86 In my view, the massive US intervention responded more to considerations of how best to deliver the assistance required to relieve human suffering in conditions of widespread devastation than to economic or strategic concerns. US interests in Haiti are limited; they are based on the desire to contain any significant wave of illegal immigration onto US shores and to preserve relative political stability on the island. As Louise Ivers, chief of mission for Partners In Health in Haiti, explains, The choice of military actors to assist in humanitarian assistance was controversial, but in pragmatic terms, the budget, human resources, and logistic assets of the U.S. military are well beyond those of USAID. . . . The sheer devastation of the earthquake, the flattening of infrastructure, logistics capacity, and medical care, and the loss of key leaders in governmental and nongovernmental sectors required a huge, multifaceted effort. In the face of such catastrophe, we could not afford to ignore military assets. If military cannot by definition be humanitarian actors, they can surely accomplish humanitarian tasks.87

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That said, we should not be blind to the fact that the massive deployment of the US arsenal also served the Obama administration’s geopolitical objectives of curtailing the influence of Venezuela and Cuba on a postearthquake Haiti. In fact, the United States strongly opposed the further development of Haitian relations with both countries. Between 2006 and 2008, the United States sought to block, and then undermine, the so-called PetroCaribe agreement that former president Préval signed with Venezuela. 88 This agreement gave preferential and advantageous terms to Haiti if it bought Venezuelan oil; as the US embassy itself acknowledged at the time, the agreement “would save [Haiti] USD 100 million per year.” 89 Not only did the US embassy support the major private multinationals like Chevron and ExxonMobil in their efforts to sabotage the agreement, but it was also determined to “continue to pressure Préval against joining PetroCaribe.”90 Ambassador Sanderson warned Préval and his senior advisers that “a deal with Chavez would cause problems with us.” She cautioned them against “the larger negative message that [the PetroCaribe deal] would send to the international community at a time when the GOH [Government of Haiti] is trying to increase foreign investment.”91 Ultimately, the Préval administration defied the United States and implemented the PetroCaribe plan. In addition, to the dismay of Sanderson, Préval decided to attend the “ALBA [Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas] summit in [Venezuela] as a ‘special observer’ for the express purpose of finalizing a tri-lateral assistance agreement between Haiti, Venezuela, and Cuba, whereby Venezuela [would] finance the presence of Cuban doctors and other technicians in rural Haiti.” 92 Not surprisingly, Préval’s determination to defend Haiti’s national interests contributed to the deterioration of his relations with the United States. Sanderson lamented that Haitian officials did not understand that the United States was not willing to tolerate a greater regional role for Venezuela and Cuba.93 This geopolitical context partly explains the massive deployment of US forces in Haiti in the days following the earthquake. The United States feared that the destructive impact of Goudougoudou would unleash a wave of violence in the country that would create the conditions for Venezuela and Cuba to foment a potential revolution. Barely a week after the quake, then US secretary of defense Robert Gates told journalists that, “until we can get ample supplies of food and water to people, there is a worry that in their desperation

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some will turn to violence. And we will work with the UN in trying to ensure that the security situation remains good.”94 The US intervention demonstrated the complete helplessness of the Préval administration. The Haitian state had neither the institutional capacity nor the resources to deal with the catastrophe. Once more, the country was turned into a “laboratory” for humanitarian assistance and worldwide charity. In his inaugural speech on May 14, 2011, President Martelly himself acknowledged this bleak reality and declared his intention to reverse it: “We are going to change Haiti. We are going to remake this country. . . . We cannot continue with this humiliation of having to extend our hand for help all of the time.’’95 As of now, however, neither President Martelly nor his political entourage is likely to promote this alternative model despite their rhetorical commitment to change Haiti. Martelly’s own financial backers represent the urban sectors benefiting from the expansion of the garment industry and the import business, and have no interest in seeing the country embrace a populist agenda or distance itself from the United States. Moreover, even if Martelly were determined to change economic strategies, he lacks the means to compel the international community to allow him to do so. Martelly may have sought the support of Venezuela, Cuba, Brazil, and other southern countries to counterbalance US and French hegemony, but this is unlikely to suffice and may in fact contribute to the destabilization of his own regime. The example of his predecessor, President Préval, whose good relations with Venezuela and Cuba led to US disenchantment with his rule, is a clear disincentive to the development of a truly independent Haitian foreign policy. In fact, Martelly understood well that he could not do as he pleased once he became president. For instance, his electoral promise to disband the IHRC was quickly forgotten; he rebuked his first prime minister designate, Daniel-Gérard Rouzier, for declaring that the commission was “dysfunctional” and should “not continue.” Maintaining that he did not “mean to crucify the people who came up with the concept,” but simply wanted to suggest that “sometimes when something doesn’t work you have to fix it,” he was nevertheless forced to eat his words hours after his declarations went public. He and Martelly were compelled to sign a joint communiqué announcing that both were “very open and willing to begin discussions” with former president Clinton and the International to make the IHRC “more efficient.”96

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While President Martelly was quick to recognize the limits of his foreign policy, he somehow seemed to believe that domestically he embodied a providential, charismatic leader capable of saving Haiti. He portrayed himself as rising above any particular interest. Instead, deep down, he believed God had chosen him to save Haiti and that his divine mission had yet to fully unfold. As Rony Gilot explains, [Martelly] does as he pleases and obeys only his impulses, driven by the certainty that he succeeds in everything he does in life; he likes to say that even his most absurd decisions often become staggering successes. Every human being is invested with a particular function, often unknown to himself. His nature, his impulses, his relations with others, the accidents and contingencies of his life lead him to fulfill this mission unbeknown of himself, with the illusion of free will and of freedom of choice. So it is of Michel Martelly who seems carried away by the flow of a secret mission and free from the dictates of his entourage.97

Choosing a Prime Minister: Race, Class, and US Interference in Haiti’s Dysfunctional Politics In reality, however, whether President Martelly thinks so or not, he obviously is not an unfettered being who can float above society. He is constrained by his environment as well as the powerful forces and interests that have shaped it. He may occasionally bend the systemic structures within which he operates, but ultimately he is no more the master and maker of Haitian history than the Louis Bonaparte of Karl Marx’s “Eighteenth Brumaire.” Like Bonaparte, Martelly “would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all classes” but, to quote Marx, a leader “cannot give to one class without taking from another.”98 Not surprisingly while Martelly, the candidate, harshly condemned the international community and its development projects, Martelly, the president, has praised and embraced them. He understood quickly that he could not free himself from the foreign and domestic financiers who had backed his candidacy. And yet governing Haiti is not simple. Martelly has to keep the core powers happy, but he also has to face the high expectations of the poor majority for a better life as well as a series of privileged forces at home that seek to preserve their privileges. This constellation of obstacles was evident in the complicated

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selection and ratification of Martelly’s choices for prime minister. As indicated above, his first choice, Rouzier, did not endear himself to the International; his comments on the IHRC could only have generated doubts among Martelly’s foreign backers. More problematic, however, was the domestic political environment and Martelly’s incapacity to come to terms with it. The most obvious difficulty was that Martelly had to confront the attacks from INITÉ, the party of former president Préval, which had opposed Martelly and which enjoyed a majority in both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. By contrast, Martelly’s party, Réponse des Paysans, had only three seats in the Chamber of Deputies and not a single seat in the Senate. In spite of his weak position, Martelly decided that he would neither enter into serious negotiations, nor accept a grand compromise with a majority of disgruntled legislators. Unwilling to concede key cabinet positions or offer large prebends to INITÉ, Martelly soon found out that Rouzier had little chance of becoming prime minister. In the end, he left Rouzier alone to fend for himself in a fight that was doomed to fail.99 By refusing to engage in prebendary politics, Martelly gave no incentives to legislators to ratify Rouzier. Instead, they engaged in demagogic and opportunistic attacks against the prime minister designate for being a member of the traditional and exploitative mulatto elite and for espousing strong conservative economic views that were supposedly at odds with INITÉ’s self-proclaimed antineoliberal agenda. And yet in the recent past when these same legislators received material and political largesses from the executive, they had no qualms about voting for neoliberal policies that subordinated the nation’s economic future to the IHRC. Without these largesses, the Chamber of Deputies felt entitled to use Rouzier’s nomination to wage a veiled attack against mulattoes as an exploitative, racist class responsible for Haiti’s economic and political woes. In its official report to the Chamber of Deputies on Rouzier’s ratification, a special committee dominated by INITÉ members sought to discredit Rouzier as a corrupt representative of the small light-skinned minority. It questioned whether Rouzier identified with the nineteenth-century racist mulatto ideology that “power should be given to the more qualified”100 to justify the political and economic supremacy of the mulattoes. The special committee went on to contend that “Daniel Gérard Rouzier is the archetype of the elitist bourgeoisie. . . . Some see the class he represents as the main obstacle to the development of a strong middle

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class because it controls all economic and financial levers. Moreover, during the last twenty years, this class has been closely associated with various attempts at overturning the democratic order.”101 Using the race card is part of the old noiriste ideology, which depicts the plight of the Haitian majority as the direct consequence of mulatto hegemony. While historically the mulatto elite has enjoyed a privileged economic position and exhibited class and racial contempt for the poor majority, the black elites and middle classes have behaved in a similar fashion once they have acquired power. The paradigmatic example of the demagogic effects of noirisme is Francois Duvalier’s violent dictatorship that engulfed the country in poverty and exacerbated, rather than lessened, the social and moral exclusion of the moun andeyo from the nation.102 On the other hand, noirisme is spot on in claiming that the mulatto elite has historically exhibited contempt for the black majority. Mulattoes have tended to believe that their color entitles them to their privileges and gives them a natural right to govern. A recent incident between Senator Edo Zenny, a supporter of President Martelly, and Judge Bob Simonis illustrates the continuing significance of color in Haitian society. In September 2012, Zenny, who is light skinned, stormed into a radio station to disrupt an interview with Judge Simonis and allegedly spit on his face while accusing him of corruption.103 According to Simonis, who is black, Zenny yelled at him that he “had to respect a mulatto.” Moreover, Zenny added, “I am White, and you, you are a Negro.”104 While Zenny initially apologized for his behavior, he defended himself by arguing that he was a “descendant of the Zenny dynasty and that he was very rich.”105 He maintained that he was not a racist since both his “wife and his best childhood friends are dark skinned” and in “France [he] would be considered a Negro.”106 Whatever excuses Senator Zenny may have offered, his behavior betrayed either remnants or resurgent elements of mulatrisme—the doctrine of mulatto superiority that insists that mulattoes “occupy the top of the system and all the positions of command.”107 And yet there is no doubt that its opposite, noirisme, also leads to a dead end. Noirisme is little more than a strategy for unseating and preventing mulatto supremacy without transforming the exploitative foundations of Haiti’s political economy. Far from being the emancipatory medium of the black masses, this racialist ideology is a moralistic mask hiding the aspirations of a small black middle class to capture

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wealth, privilege, and power for itself. To a large degree, the charged, but nontransformative, rhetoric of noirisme is the legacy of three corrupt and dictatorial decades of Duvalierism.108 Noirisme, however, continues to resonate with the black middle class, especially in these times of crisis coinciding with the reemergence of light-skinned political actors. Expressing a form of black power, and offering an easy, simplistic racial explanation of what is wrong with Haiti, noirisme has always masked the rule of a selfserving aspiring black elite and there is no reason to believe this has changed. As Etzer Charles puts it, If, in principle, Noiriste philosophy can be summarized as wanting to give power to the blacks, that means giving power to its defenders—that is to a few of the upper black bourgeois and a significant part of the petty black bourgeoisie, and defending their class interests or personal ambitions. That petty bourgeoisie, by its situation in the fields of social activity, is simply dreaming of power and opulence.109

Not surprisingly, given both Martelly’s own light complexion and the presence of a large mulatto contingent in his entourage, the race question has resurfaced to be used as an ideological weapon against his regime. Indeed, the opposition to, and the eventual rejection of, Rouzier as prime minister can partly be explained by the manipulation of noirisme by black-middle-class legislators in search of popular support from the overwhelmingly black majority.110 Martelly’s second nominee for prime minister, Bernard Gousse, was not a mulatto, but he fared no better than Rouzier. Gousse’s nomination defied political realities; not only had legislators announced their hostility to him even before Martelly picked him, but the president himself was not prepared to invest any political capital into the struggle for Gousse’s nomination. Moreover, Gousse’s controversial role as minister of justice in the highly unpopular and foreignimposed interim government of Gérard Latortue from 2004 to 2006 poisoned the political climate111 and led to an inevitable defeat. 112 The failure of the ratification was all the more predictable given the international community’s disdain for Gousse’s managerial abilities. In fact, a secret US embassy cable depicted him as a “complete failure both on the security and justice fronts” during his stint as minister of justice in Latortue’s administration.113 Faced with two consecutive rejections and his incapacity to form

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a government after more than three months in office, Martelly decided to change strategy.114 This shift was partly prompted by increasingly intense foreign pressures. As MINUSTAH pointedly reminded Haitian politicians, it was concerned “about the absence of a government,” which limited “the State’s ability to implement its programmes, to guide the reconstruction process, and to meet its responsibilities towards the people of Haiti.” MINUSTAH urged “all political actors to negotiate and search for a consensus which would lead to the good governance of Haiti.”115 Martelly and his opponents in Parliament were thus compelled to settle on a prime minister who would reconcile their conflicting interests and attract the support of foreign powers and institutions. They settled on Garry Conille, chief of staff in former president Clinton’s office in the IHRC. The selection of Conille was not without its share of difficulties; he was depicted as Clinton’s choice and perceived as someone imposed on both Martelly and the legislators. He had no domestic political base, and was not one of Martelly’s “men.” Martelly’s closest advisers thought he was too independent and might prove unreliable or disloyal. In fact, in an attempt to derail his nomination, the advisers asked Conille to sign an undated letter of resignation that would have given Martelly carte blanche to fire him at any time during his tenure.116 Far from producing its intended effect, the undated letter provoked Conille’s indignation and he threatened to withdraw his candidacy. He ultimately decided to remain the nominee and was eventually ratified as the first prime minister of the Martelly regime. The ratification of Conille would not have been possible without the intervention of the international community, principally the United States, which prompted Martelly to assuage Conille and guarantee him of his support. While Haiti finally had a prime minister, it had hardly resolved its crisis of governability. In fact, the process leading to Conille’s ratification was deeply flawed and exhibited all the contradictions and weaknesses of the political system presided over by Martelly. In the first place, the executive resorted again to prebendary methods to obtain the legislators’ votes. Rony Gilot, an intimate friend and adviser of Conille, understood well the necessity of engaging in patronage to become prime minister: [From] the day of their swearing into office, politicians are obsessed with their reelection, and to win this reelection the fundamental thing to do is not so much to pass laws, but rather to bring to

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their hometown jobs for past and future voters, projects to beautify their city, and procure their constituents’ educational and health services as well as drinking water, public sanitation, etc. To achieve this, the legislator is compelled to negotiate, to literally “sell” his ratification vote. If the PM does not promise him anything, the legislator gives him nothing: he will instead narrow the corridor leading to the PM’s ratification to such an extent that he will never be ratified. It is always give and take. It is as simple as that.117

Belly politics was inevitably returning with a vengeance to the center of Haitian governance. Occupying the position of prime minister was ultimately a matter of selling and buying parliamentary votes. This pattern decidedly is not new; it is rooted in the patronage system that has traditionally characterized Haitian society. Moreover, blinded by their eagerness for a functioning regime, Haiti’s powerful international partners publicly applauded this thoroughly dysfunctional process.118 The methods leading to Conille’s confirmation prefigured the growing pervasiveness of a corrupt prebendary model for adjudicating power. The influence of money on determining Haiti’s future has reached a new peak under Martelly. Most offices are simply up for sale, and moneyed interests are more than willing to buy them.119 It is now estimated that becoming a senator requires $500,000 while the cost of a seat in the Chamber of Deputies is about $300,000. These resources are well beyond the means of the vast majority of candidates who tend to come from struggling middle-class sectors; to get elected requires either the patronage of wealthy families or the illicit accumulation of capital through drug trafficking. Gilot argues astutely that a critical question now is whether the moneyed interests will merely continue to use la politique de doublure120 (a form of politics in which those who hold public office are not those who hold real power) and rule the country by buying themselves senators and deputies, or take over the reins of governance directly without bothering to use intermediaries.121 Given the relative resurgence of noirisme, it is more likely that these moneyed interests—composed of predominantly light-skinned Haitians regrouped around a small number of “big families”—will seek to elaborate a new doublure strategy rooted in the realities of electoral politics. Families such as the Vorbes, Baussans, Boulos, Brandts, Coles, Madsens, Brauns, Mevs, Apaids, and Khawlys dominate the Haitian economy and have an overwhelming influence on the making and unmaking of presidents, prime ministers, and legisla-

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tors. Office seekers simply cannot ignore them. Conille understood this reality and described it to his confidant, Gilot: [The economic sectors of the big families] have developed a fine strategy to divide among themselves in style and magnanimity the ownership of parliamentary members. If each of the eight or ten powerful financial families succeeded in gaining the active friendship of four senators and seven or eight deputies, one can imagine that all parliamentary majorities would more or less come under the control of the wealthy, since the wealthy and the bourgeoisie have this habit, unfortunately unknown to the middle classes and the common people, to agree, to help themselves, and to use their individual influence in defense of their common cause. It is clear that some lawmakers stoically accept to walk in the most pitiful and undignified independence. The choice is painful and rare, but it exists.122

It is true that the Haitian ruling class has traditionally united to defend its interests when confronting major crises and forces that rise up from below. But in times of relative normalcy, its different factions have taken distinct and contradictory positions depending on how particular conjunctures affected their immediate interests. In fact, the ruling class has neither a social nor national project, except the day-to-day political management of retaining its position of power, wealth, and prestige. Its time horizon never extends beyond the short term, and its factions form uneasy alliances that coalesce only to serve an opportunistic convergence of interests.123 During the process of his confirmation, Conille discovered that he had to navigate through a complicated maze of legislators who had linkages to different factions of the big families who all were giving contradictory instructions. However, both domestic moneyed interests and foreign powers were losing patience with months of a governmental vacuum and paralysis. In response to increasing complaints and pressures, Martelly and the legislators engaged in prebendal politics and confirmed Conille as prime minister. The road leading to this outcome was thus paved with old and corrupt materials that had always blocked reform and were bound to prevent the systemic rupture promised by Martelly. The internal and external forces that contributed to Haiti’s unending crises remained as powerful as ever, and la politique du ventre continued to inflict its corroding dysfunctionalities. In fact, many of Martelly’s bureaucratic appointments as well as key advisers and cabinet members, including Prime Minister

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Conille himself, have close family relations with former Duvalierists. These sons and daughters of the old Jean-Claudiste coalition may not have inherited the corrupt and authoritarian reflexes of their fathers, but they are symptomatic of a potential revival of the past. Martelly has even integrated into his regime Jean-Claude Duvalier’s son, Nicolas, as well as the offspring of key figures of the Duvalier dictatorship such as Claude Raymond, Adrien Raymond, Edner Day, Serge Conille, and Pierre E. Gousse.124 This Duvalierist bent is mitigated by the presence of technocrats who have served in the major IFIs. The composition of Martelly’s administration therefore indicates not only continuity with la politique du ventre of the past, but also that Haiti’s economic policies will not mark a rupture from those elaborated by the IFIs in the aftermath of the earthquake. On the contrary, everything points to continuity with, rather than departure from, neoliberalism. In reality, President Martelly seems to have neither the desire nor the means to free himself from the demands of those who locally and externally catapulted him to power.

Haiti and the Outer Periphery What relevance does my account of Haiti’s political economy in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake have for our understanding of the outer peripheral zone of global capitalism? I have attempted to show that every key development over the past two years—from the creation and failure of the IHRC, to the rebranding of discredited policies into “Haiti is open for business,” to the transformation of the country into the NGO republic, to the agricultural crisis leading to increased food insecurity, to the zero-sum political system and dysfunctional Electoral Council, to the militarization of relief operations and continued patterns of foreign interference—reflects Haiti’s confinement to the outer periphery of the world capitalist economy as an export-oriented enclave of ultracheap labor. This confinement is the result of the neoliberal programs that the IFIs’ and the core’s apparatus of occupation has imposed with the complicity of Haitian rulers on the crisis-ridden nation for over three decades. In spite of their occasional bursts of populist yearnings and beleaguered graspings for true sovereignty, Haitians remain stuck in the outer periphery like their counterparts in the failed states. 125 To that extent, Haiti can

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serve as a heuristic case study for countries such as Somalia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, East Timor, Liberia, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, and the Central African Republic. While all of these countries have varied historical trajectories, different cultural values, and distinct geopolitical positions and political traditions, they are plagued by similar external and internal constraints that have relegated Haiti to the outer periphery. These constraints reflect the intersection of local and global political economies, and the coincidence of class privilege between domestic rulers and dominant core agents. In the next chapter, I return to Haiti’s internal dysfunctions and how the military presence of the United Nations has exacerbated them.

Notes 1. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2011 (Santiago, Chile: United Nations, 2012), p. 30. 2. Ibid., p. 10. 3. Klaus Schwab, ed., The Global Competitiveness Report 2012–2013 (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2012), p. 13. 4. World Bank, Doing Business 2012, Doing Business in a More Transparent World, October 20, 2011, http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings. See also Junia Barreau, “Investissements directs étrangers: La difficile équation haïtienne,” Le Nouvelliste, August 28, 2012, http://www.lenouvelliste.com /article4.php?newsid=108334. 5. Dieudonné Joachim, “Lamothe exige un meilleur classement dans doing business,” Le Nouvelliste, August 21, 2012, http://www.lenouvel liste.com/article4.php?newsid=108302. 6. Rory Carroll, “Haiti Promised $10bn in Aid Double What It Asked For,” The Guardian, April 1, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010 /apr/01/haiti-earthquake-10-billion-aid (April 1, 2010). 7. See the website of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission at http://en.cirh.ht/about-us.html (April 12, 2012). 8. Cheryl Mills, “Concept Note: Haiti Development Authority,” US Department of State (unpublished document, February 4, 2010). 9. Martin Kaste, “After Quake in Haiti, Who’s Boss?” Morning Edition, National Public Radio, March 31, 2010, http://www.npr.org/templates/story /story.php?storyId=125328026. 10. See Bylaws of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), Effective as of 17 June 2010, p. 5, http://en.cirh.ht/files/pdf/ihrc_bylaws _20100615.pdf (April 1, 2012). 11. Ibid., p. 2.

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12. Ibid., p. 23. 13. Haiti Libre, “Haïti-CIRH: Liste officielle et complète de tous les représentants,” June 18, 2010, http://www.haitilibre.com/article-390-haiti -cirh-liste-officielle-et-complete-de-tous-les-representants.html. 14. Ibid., p. 9. 15. Radio Metropole, “La commission intérimaire est définitivement enterrée,” June 22, 2012, http://www.metropolehaiti.com/metropole/full _une_fr.php?id=21003. 16. Carlin Michel, “Le CAED remplace la CIRH, des organisations sont à l’avant garde,” Le Nouvelliste, November 29, 2012, http://www.lenouvel liste.com/article4.php?newsid=111227; Dieudonné Joachim and Carl-Henry Cadet, “CAED: Des habits neufs pour l’aide externe,” Le Nouvelliste, November 26, 2012, http://www.lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid=111099; Michel Martelly, “Discours de Michel Joseph Martelly, au lancement du cadre de CAED,” Le Nouvelliste, November 26, 2012, http://www.lenouvel liste.com/article4.php?newsid=111128. 17. Mats Lundahl, The Political Economy of Disaster (London: Routledge, 2013), pp. 250–265. 18. Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives, “WikiLeaks Haiti: Cable Depicts Fraudulent Haiti Election,” The Nation, June 8, 2011, http://www.thenation .com/article/161216/wikileaks-haiti-cable-depicts-fraudulent-haiti-election. 19. As Jake Johnston and Mark Weisbrot explain, “The participation rate was also extremely low, with just 22.8 percent of registered voters having their vote counted. If we remove the additional tally sheets that we have highlighted as irregular, the participation rate drops to 20.1 percent. As a comparison, presidential elections in 2006 saw a participation rate of 59.26 percent” (Jake Johnston and Mark Weisbrot, “Haiti’s Fatally Flawed Election” (Washington, DC: Center for Economic and Policy Research, January 2011, updated February 2011), p. 2, http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/haiti-2011 -01.pdf. 20. Ibid. 21. Organization of American States (OAS), Final Report, Expert Verification Mission of the Vote Tabulation of the November 28, 2010 Election in the Republic of Haiti (Port-au-Prince: OAS, January 13, 2011). 22. Ibid., p. 3. 23. Ibid., p. 4. 24. Mary Beth Sheridan, “In Haiti, Hillary Clinton Meets with Candidates, Pushes Preval on Elections,” Washington Post, January 30, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/30/AR 2011013003516.html. 25. Joseph Delva and Tom Brown, “Haiti Leader Has ‘Reservations’ over OAS Report,” Reuters, January 13, 2011, http://www.reuters.com /article/2011/01/13/us-haiti-elections-idUSTRE70C6SH20110113 (January 14, 2011). 26. Fabricia Peixoto, “Afastado, representante da OEA critica ONGs e missão de paz no Haiti,” BBC Brasil, reproduced in Folha de S.Paulo, December 29, 2010 (author’s translation), http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/bbc

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/852201-afastado-representante-da-oea-critica-ongs-e-missao-de-paz-no -haiti.shtml. 27. Amy Wilentz, “Haiti: Not for Amateurs,” The Nation, February 17, 2011, http://www.thenation.com/article/158091/haiti-not-amateurs#. See also Roberson Alphonse, “Edmond Mulet voulait la tête de René Préval,” Le Nouvelliste, April 3, 2013, http://lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid=115203; Catherine Porter, “Haiti’s René Préval Says UN Tried to Remove Him,” The Star, May 13, 2013, http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/05/13/haitis _ren_prval_says_un_tried_to_remove_him.html. 28. Organization of American States, Final Report, p. 15. 29. Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), “CEPR Examines OAS Report on Haiti’s Election, Finds It ‘Inconclusive, Statistically Flawed, and Indefensible,’” January 11, 2011, http://www.cepr.net/index.php/press -releases/press-releases/cepr-examines-oas-report-on-haitis-election-finds-it -inconclusive-statistically-flawed-and-indefensible. 30. Mark Weisbrot and Jake Johnston, “Analysis of the OAS Mission’s Draft Report on Haiti’s Election,” Issue Brief, January 2011, p. 4, http://fr.scribd.com/doc/47037329/Analysis-of-the-OAS-Mission’s-Draft -Final-Report-on-Haiti’s-Election (February 1, 2011). 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Lundahl, The Political Economy of Disaster, p. 221. 34. Martelly had actually considered running for president in the late 1990s. While he was fond of calling himself “prézidan” and sang about it, most observers thought that he would simply remain Prézidan Kompa, president of Haitian music. For Martelly’s views on his role in politics and music, see Elise Ackerman, “His Music Rules in Haiti: Sweet Micky’s Provocative Music Moves Haitians with an Infectious Beat and Political Overtones,” Miami New Times, May 29, 1997, http://www.miaminewtimes .com/1997-05-29/news/his-music-rules-in-haiti/. 35. In his campaign speeches, Martelly always mentioned that he used to drop his pants on stage, but he maintained that he had no regrets and that his new life as a politician would demonstrate that he “would surprise the world” and change Haiti. See, for instance, videos of his campaign: Hribi.net, “Michel Martelly Visit at Amazura on 9/5/2010,” September 5, 2010, http://www.hikingtrail.net/video_youtube/Michel%20Martelly%20 visit%20at%20Amazura%20on%209/5/2010/D05Xm3gZ5VA; Hribi.net, “Le candidat présidentiel Michel Martelly aux Cayes, October 2010 (Haïti 2011) (1),” October 30, 2010, http://www.hiking-trail.net/video_youtube/Le %20candidat%20présidentiel%20Michel%20Martelly%20aux%20Cayes,%2 0octobre%202010%20(Haïti%202011)%20(1)/Q2yOjwY4X4U (November 20, 2010); YouTube, “Opening of the Campaign Michel Martelly Sound Bites!” February 11, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RcZWU3 qpT8 (October 28, 2010). 36. Emily Troutman, “Colorful Haitian’s Campaign Is in the Pink,” AOL News, November 27, 2010, http://www.aolnews.com/2010/11/27/colorfulhaitians-presidential-campaign-is-in-the-pink/. 37. Patrick Sylvain, “Martelly’s Election: Shades of Populism and Au-

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thoritarian Rule,” Boston Haitian Reporter, April 14, 2011, http://www .bostonhaitian.com/node/471. 38. Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, Has Aid Changed? Channeling Assistance to Haiti Before and After the Quake (New York: Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, June 2011), p. 4. 39. International Federation for Human Rights, Haiti: Human Security in Danger (Paris: International Federation for Human Rights, 2012), p. 7. 40. Haiti Grassroots Watch, “Reconstruction of Haiti Slum to Cost Hundreds of Millions of Dollars,” June 17, 2013, http://haitigrassrootswatch .squarespace.com/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2013/6/17/reconstructions -massive-slum-will-cost-hundreds-of-millions.html. 41. Gabriel Elizondo, “An Insider’s Critique of What Went Wrong in Haiti,” Al Jazeera, January 8, 2011, http://blogs.aljazeera.com/blog/americas /insiders-critique-what-went-wrong-haiti. 42. Government of the Republic of Haiti, Action Plan for National Recovery and Development of Haiti (April 1, 2010), http://www.haitirecon structionfund.org/sites/haitireconstructionfund.org/files/Haiti%20 Action%20Plan.pdf. See also Gouvernement de la République d’Haïti, “Haïti—PDNA du Tremblement de Terre Évaluation des dommages, des pertes et des besoins généraux et sectoriels, Préparé par le Gouvernement de la République d’Haïti avec l’appui de la Communauté Internationale Rapport provisoire, mars 2010,” http://www.ipred-iisee.org/gtfbc/Haiti%20 PDNA%20Document%20de%20Travail.pdf (March 2010). 43. Paul Collier, Haiti: From Natural Catastrophe to Economic Security: A Report for the Secretary-General of the United Nations (Oxford, January 28, 2009), p. 6, http://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/{65BFCF9B -6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9}/Haiti%20Collier%20report.pdf. See also Mats Lundahl, Sources of Growth in the Haitian Economy, Economic and Sector Study Series (Washington, DC: Inter-American Development Bank, 2004); Mats Lundahl, Poverty in Haiti: Essays on Underdevelopment and Post Disaster Prospects (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 44. Trenton Daniel, “2 Out of 3 People Face Hunger as Haiti Woes Mount,” Miami Herald, June 10, 2013, http://www.miamiherald.com/2013 /06/10/3443000/2-out-of-3-people-face-hunger.html#storylink=cpy. 45. Keith Crane et al., Building a More Resilient Haitian State (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2010), p. 84, http://www.rand.org/pubs /monographs/2010/RAND_MG1039.pdf (May 8, 2011); see also Lundahl, The Political Economy of Disaster. 46. Timothy T. Schwartz, Travesty in Haiti: A True Account of Christian Missions, Orphanages, Food Aid, Fraud and Drug Trafficking (Lexington, KY: BookSurge Publishing, 2010). 47. William Jefferson Clinton, Testimony Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Building on Success: New Directions in Global Health, March 10, 2010, http://www.foreign.senate.gov/hearings/hearing /?id=3f546a93-d363-da0b-b25f-f1c5d096ddb1 (June 25, 2010). 48. International Monetary Fund, Haiti Staff Report (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund, 1999). 49. Oxfam, Kicking Down the Door: How Upcoming WTO Talks

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Threaten Farmers in Poor Countries, Briefing Paper No. 72 (Oxfam, April 2005), p. 3, http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/kicking.pdf. See also Josiane Georges, Trade and the Disappearance of Haitian Rice, Ted Case Studies No. 725 (June 2004). 50. Haiti Support Group, “Disastrous Food Policy Bites Hands That Feed: Haiti’s Hunger Games,” Haiti Briefing, no. 72 (October 2012), pp. 1–2. 51. Ibid., p. 1. 52. Ibid., p. 3. 53. Ibid. 54. Gary Gereffi and Donald Wyman, eds., Manufacturing Miracles: Paths of Industrialization in Latin America and East Asia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Adam Przeworski, Michael E. Alvarez, Jose Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 55. Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, Has Aid Changed? p. 15. 56. Ibid., pp. 15–16. 57. Vijaya Ramachandran and Julie Walz, “Haiti: Where Has All the Money Gone?” Policy Paper No. 004 (Washington, DC: Center for Global Development, 2012), p. 13, http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications /detail/1426185 (May 21, 2012). See also Martha Mendoza and Trenton Daniel, “US Pledge to Rebuild Haiti Not Being Met,” Associated Press, July 21, 2012, http://news.yahoo.com/us-pledge-rebuild-haiti-not-being-met -170346036 .html. 58. Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, Has Aid Changed? p. 21. 59. Agence France-Presse, “World Bank Cancels Haiti’s Debt,” May 28, 2010, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hCK-vVem jKRHTm0wfzIcLFXBgdnA; CNN, “World Bank Cancels Haiti’s Debt,” May 28, 2010, http://articles.cnn.com/2010-05-28/world/haiti.world.bank .debt.canceled_1_world-bank-haiti-billion-in-debt-relief?_s=PM: WORLD. 60. Gilbert Terrier, Taline Koranchelian, Rodrigo A. Chaves, and Jeffrey D. Lewi, “Joint Bank-Fund Staff Debt Sustainability Analysis 2012: Haiti” (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund and International Development Association, February 23, 2012), http://www.imf.org/external/pubs /ft/dsa/pdf/2012/dsacr1274.pdf. As the report indicates, however, Haiti still has a significant debt that has shifted from traditional core nations and financial organizations to principally Venezuela: Haiti’s nominal external public debt as of end-2011 was US$657 million. . . . In present value (PV) terms, the external public debt was US$479 million or the equivalent of 48 percent of exports, 50 percent of government revenue, and 7 percent of GDP. Haiti’s external creditors are Venezuela (71 percent of total nominal debt), Taiwan Province of China (14 percent), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) (10 percent), the IMF (4 percent) and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) (2 percent). The structure of external debt has undergone a significant change in recent years: the share of debt owed to traditional development partners has dropped

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owing to debt relief, while the share of debt owed to non–Paris Club bilaterals has increased reflecting continued new disbursements from Venezuela. (pp. 1–2)

61. Office of the Special Envoy for Haiti, Has Aid Changed? p. 2. 62. The exact number of NGOs operating in Haiti is unknown. Estimates vary from 343 to over 20,000. Most Haitians, however, believe that at least 10,000 are in the country. See Ramachandran and Walz, “Haiti: Where Has All the Money Gone?” p. 15. 63. Ibid., pp. 19–20. 64. Mark Schuller, Killing with Kindness: Haiti, International Aid, and NGOs (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012). 65. Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World (New York: Random House Trade, 2004). 66. Jennie M. Smith, When the Hands Are Many (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001). 67. Schuller, Killing with Kindness, p. 9. 68. Disaster Accountability Project, “One Year Follow Up Report on the Transparency of Relief Organizations Responding to the 2010 Haiti Earthquake” (Disaster Accountability Project, December 2010/January 2011), http://www.scribd.com/doc/46320380/OneYear-Followup-Report-Transparency-of-Relief-Organizations-Responding-to-2010-Haiti-Earthquake (September 16, 2013). 69. Ibid., p. 33. 70. Ibid., p. 35. 71. Ramachandran and Walz, “Haiti: Where Has All the Money Gone?” p. 24. 72. Ibid., p. 25. 73. Tim Elfrink, “Paul Farmer at Barry: NGOs Aren’t Doing Enough to Help Haitian People,” Miami New Times Blogs, March 30, 2010, http://blogs .miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2010/03/paul_farmer_at_barry_ngos_aren.php. 74. Schuller, Killing with Kindness, pp. 174–176. 75. Ramachandran and Walz, “Haiti: Where Has All the Money Gone?” p. 37. 76. Ricardo Seitenfus, Interview in Arnaud Robert, “Haiti est la preuve de l’echec de l’aide internationale,” Le Temps, December 20, 2010, http:// www.letemps.ch/Page/Uuid/2a1b8ad0-0bb8-11e0-91f4-4e4896afb502/Haïti _est_la_preuve_de_léchec_de_laide_internationale. 77. Ben Fox and Trenton Daniel, “Actor-Activist Sean Penn Says He’s in Haiti for the Long Haul,” Associated Press, April 23, 2012, http://www . c s m o n i t o r. c o m / Wo r l d / M a k i n g - a - d i ff e r e n c e / C h a n g e - A g e n t / 2 0 1 2 /0423/Actor-activist-Sean-Penn-says-he-s-in-Haiti-for-the-long-haul. See also Trenton Daniel, “Sean Penn’s Haiti Nonprofit to Demolish National Palace,” Associated Press, August 28, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost .com/2012/08/22/sean-penn-haiti-nonprofit_n_1821072.html. 78. Donna Karan, “Haiti,” Donna’s Journals, April 2011, http://www

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.donnakaran.com/editorial/detail/cb625e21-1b18-42a5-aae2-9e8 81f670e14/haiti (September 24, 2012). 79. Charity Navigator, Haiti Earthquake, 1 Year Later, Key Facts & Figures, January 2011, http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content .view&cpid=1186 (August 20, 2012). 80. Seitenfus interview in Robert, “Haiti est la preuve.” 81. White House, “United States Government Haiti Earthquake Disaster Response Update 1/21/10,” January 21, 2010, http://www.whitehouse.gov /the-press-office/united-states-government-haiti-earthquake-disaster -response-update-12110. 82. Hugh Schofield, “Sarkozy Quells Haiti Rift with US,” BBC News, January 19, 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8468211.stm. 83. Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2007); Beverly Bell, “The Shock Doctrine in Haiti: An Interview with Patrick Elie,” Huffington Post, April 16, 2010, http://www.huffingtonpost .com/beverly-bell/the-shock-doctrine-in-hai_b_541031.html; Michel Chossudovsky, “The Militarization of Emergency Aid to Haiti: Is It a Humanitarian Operation or an Invasion?” Global Research, January 15, 2010, http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-militarization-of-emergency-aid-to-haiti -is-it-a-humanitarian-operation-or-an-invasion/; Charles Vorbe, “Earthquake, Humanitarianism, and Intervention in Haiti,” in Mark Schuller and Pablo Morales, eds., Tectonic Shifts (Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2012), pp. 59–63. 84. US Southern Command, “Missions Main,” http://www.southcom.mil /ourmissions/Pages/Our-Missions.aspx (September 30, 2012). 85. Chossudovsky, “Militarization of Emergency Aid to Haiti.” 86. Dan Coughlin, “WikiLeaks Haiti: US Cables Paint Portrait of Brutal, Ineffectual and Polluting UN Force,” The Nation, October 6, 2011, http://www.thenation.com/article/163846/wikileaks-haiti-us-cables-paint -portrait-brutal-ineffectual-and-polluting-un-force. See also Justin Podur, Haiti’s New Dictatorship (London: Pluto Press, 2013). 87. Louise Ivers, “Humanitarian Aid, Impartiality, and Dirty Boots,” in Paul Farmer, Abbey Gardner and Cassia Van Der Hoof Holstein, eds., Haiti After the Earthquake (New York: Public Affairs, 2011), pp. 305–306. 88. The PetroCaribe agreement served the interests of Haiti well, as Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives explain: “Under the terms of the deal, Haiti would buy oil from Venezuela, paying only 60 percent up front with the remainder payable over twenty-five years at 1 percent interest” (Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives, “WikiLeaks Haiti: The PetroCaribe Files,” The Nation, June 1, 2011, http://www.thenation.com/article/161056/wikileaks-haiti-petrocaribe -files?page=0,0). 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid. 91. Ibid. 92. Ibid. 93. Ibid.

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94. Ansel Herz, “WikiLeaks Haiti: The Earthquake Cables,” The Nation, June 15, 2011, http://www.thenation.com/article/161459/wikileaks-haiti -earthquake-cables. 95. Michel Martelly, “Discours d’investiture du Président Michel Joseph Martelly,” Le Nouvelliste, May 14, 2011, http://www.lenouvelliste.com/article .php?PubID=&ArticleID=92507 (May 15, 2011). 96. BBC, “Haiti Government Seeks Talks About Reconstruction Panel,” May 26, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13555743. 97. Quotation in text translated by the author from the original French: [Martelly] fait à sa tête et n’obéit qu’à ses impulsions, dopé par la certitude que tout lui réussit dans la vie; il dit même que les décisions les plus saugrenues se transforment souvent en succès ahurissants. Chaque être humain est investi d’une fonction particulière, souvent inconnue de luimême. Sa nature, ses élans, ses rapports avec ses semblables, les accidents et les impondérables de son existence le portent à remplir cette mission à son insu, avec l’illusion du libre arbitre et de la liberté du choix. Ainsi en est-il de Michel Martelly qui semble emporté par le flux d’une mission secrète et échapper a la dictée de son entourage. (Rony Gilot, Garry Conille ou le passage d’un météore [Port-au-Prince: Imprimeries des Antilles, 2012], p. 98)

98. Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: Norton, 1972), p. 437. 99. Frantz Duval, “Premier ministre: Quelle alchimie!” Le Nouvelliste, July 5, 2011, http://www.lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid=94584. 100. Radio Scoop, “Rapport de la Commission des Députés chargée d’analyser les pièces de Daniel Rouzier,” June 22, 2011, http://www .scoopfmhaiti.com/actualites/1786-haiti-politique-rapport-de-la-commission -des-deputes-chargee-danalyser-les-pieces-de-daniel-rouzier. 101. Quotation in text translated by the author from the original French: “Monsieur Daniel Gérard Rouzier représente l’archétype de la bourgeoisie élitiste. . . . Certains voient la classe sociale qu’il représente comme étant le principal obstacle au développement d’une classe moyenne forte car elle contrôle tous les leviers économiques et financiers. D’ailleurs, durant les vingt dernières années, cette classe sociale a été intimement associée aux différents reversements de l’ordre démocratique.” (Ibid.) 102. Lemoine Bonneau, “Entre noirs et mulâtres à l’instar de droite et gauche,” Le Nouvelliste, August 11, 2011, http://www.lenouvelliste.com /article4.php?newsid=95993; see also Robert Fatton Jr., The Roots of Haitian Despotism (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2007), pp. 99–100, 175–181; Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Haiti: State Against Nation (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990). 103. La Redaction, “Edo Zenny crache au visage d’un juge,” Radio Television Caraibes, September 9, 2012, http://www.radiotelevisioncaraibes .com/nouvelles/haiti/edo_zenny_crache_au_visage_d_un_juge.html.

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104. Tout Haiti, “Tu dois respecter un mulâtre, Edo Zenny te connais, mais pas le sénateur Zenny: Je suis blanc, et toi tu es nègre,” September 11, 2012, http://www.touthaiti.com/touthaiti-actualites/853-tu-dois-respecter-un -mulatre-edo-zenny-te-connais-mais-pas-le-senateur-zenny-je-suis-blanc-et -toi-tu-es-negre. 105. Eddy Jackson Alexis, “L’amnésie d’Edo Zenny,” Le Matin, September 9, 2012, http://www.lematinhaiti.com/contenu.php?idtexte=32535. 106. Translated by the author from the original French: “ma femme . . . tous mes amis d’enfance . . . ont leur peau foncée comment pourrais-je être un raciste. . . . En France je serai un nègre’’ (La Redaction, “Edo Zenny: Je ne suis pas raciste, ma femme, mes amis d’enfance ont leur peau foncée,” Radio Television Caraibes, September 15, 2012, http://www.radiotelevision caraibes.com/nouvelles/haiti/je_ne_suis_pas_raciste_ma_femme_mes_amis _d_enfance_ont_leur_peau.html). 107. Claude Moïse, Constitutions et luttes de pouvoir en Haïti, vol. 2: 1915–1987: De l’occupation etrangère à la dictature Macoute (Montreal, QC: Editions CIDIHCA, 1990), p. 264 (author’s translation). 108. Robert Fatton Jr., Haiti’s Predatory Republic (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002); Trouillot, Haiti: State Against Nation. 109. Quotation in text translated by the author from the original French: Si, en principle, l’idéologie noiriste se résume à vouloir donner le pouvoir aux Noirs, il s’agit en fait pour ses defenseurs, c’est-à-dire pour quelques grands bourgeois noirs et une partie importante de la petite-bourgeoisie noire, de défendre leurs intérêts de classe ou leurs ambitions personnelles. Celle-ci, par sa position sur le terrain des pratiques sociales, ne rêve que de pouvoir et d’opulence. (Etzer Charles, Le pouvoir politique en Haiti de 1957 a nos jours [Paris: Karthala, 1994], pp. 253–254)

See also Micheline Labelle, Idéologie de couleur et classes sociales en Haïti (Montreal, QC: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1978). 110. Rouzier was rejected by an overwhelming majority of deputies: forty-two voted against him, three abstained, and nineteen voted for him. 111. AlterPresse, “Haiti: Faut il attendre des changements au sein du gouvernement?” June 15, 2005, http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php ?article2672 (September 29, 2012). Gousse’s unpopularity was a logical consequence of his relentless prosecution of Lavalas’s cadres in the Latortue administration that replaced the deposed Aristide government in 2004. 112. Frantz Duval and Claude Gilles, “Sans surprise, Gousse échoue devant le Sénat,” Le Nouvelliste, August 2, 2011, http://www.lenouvelliste.com /article4.php?newsid=95666. 113. Dan Coughlin, “Haiti WikiLeaks Sparks Political Furor and Elite Drama,” The Nation, July 29, 2011, http://www.thenation.com/article /162431/haiti-wikileaks-sparks-political-furor-and-elite-drama. 114. Robenson Geffrard and Carl-Henry Cadet, “Le président Martelly change de stratégie,” Le Nouvelliste, August 9, 2011, http://www.lenouvel liste.com/article4.php?newsid=96233.

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115. UN Daily News, no. DH/5957 (August 4, 2011), http://www.un .org/news/dh/pdf/english/2011/04082011.pdf. 116. Gilot, Garry Conille ou le passage d’un météore, pp. 57–58. 117. Quotation in text translated by the author from the original French: [Dès] le jour de leur prestation de serment, les élus sont obsédés par leur réélection et pour la gagner, le principal ne consiste pas tant a voter des lois qu’à ramener dans leur patelin des projets á haute intensité de main d’oeuvre pour leurs électeurs passés et futurs, des projets qui embellissent leur cité et prodiguent aux populations les services de l’éducation, de la santé, de l’eau potable de l’assainissement public, etc. A ce compte, le parlementaire est obligé de négocier, de “vendre” littéralement son vote de ratification. Si le PM ne lui promet rien, il ne lui donne rien: il rétrécit au contraire le corridor de la ratification qui devient d’une étroitesse infranchissable. C’est toujours du donnant-donnant. Aussi simple que cela. (Ibid., p. 65)

118. United Nations, “Haiti,” Spokesperson’s Noon Briefing, October 5, 2011, http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs/2011/db111005.doc.htm; see also Embassy of the United States, Port-au-Prince, “The Embassy of the United States Welcomes the Ratification of Dr. Garry Conille as Prime Minister,” October 5, 2011, http://haiti.usembassy.gov/pr-pm-conille-october-5 -2011.html. 119. Gilot, Garry Conille ou le passage d’un météore, pp. 66–70. 120. Politique de doublure is the expression Haitians use to explain that the constitutionally elected officeholders are not in fact ruling the country. These politicians are simply running the country on behalf of foreign or moneyed interests. In the specific vision of noiristes, politique de doublure implies that black officeholders owe their positions to the mulatto elite, which is in fact the power behind the throne. 121. Gilot, Garry Conille ou le passage d’un météore, pp. 68–70. 122. Quotation in text translated by the author from the original French: [Le secteur économique des grandes familles] a élaboré une fine stratégie, celle de se partager en toute élégance et magnanimité l’appropriation de la clientèle parlementaire. Si chacune des huit ou dix familles financières réussit à gagner l’amitié agissante de quatre sénateurs et de sept ou huit députés, on peut imaginer que toutes les majorités parlementaires sont plus ou moins acquises et sous contrôle, les nantis et les bourgeois ayant cette particularité, malheureusement inconnue des classes moyennes et du petit peuple, de s’entendre, de s’entraider et d’additionner leurs influences individuelles ou sectorielles pour la défense de la cause commune. Il est clair que certains parlementaires acceptent stoïquement de cheminer dans la plus pénible et indigne indépendance. Le choix est douloureux et rare, mais il existe. (Ibid., p. 68)

123. Robert Malval, L’année de toutes les duperies (Port-au-Prince: Editions Regain, 1996), pp. 98–99. 124. Associated Press, “Martelly’s Links to Duvalier Regime Cause Some to Worry,” CTV News, October 14, 2011, http://www.ctvnews.ca/martelly-s

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-links-to-duvalier-regime-cause-some-to-worry-1.711488#ixzz290bJbgQZ; Haitian Times, “Haiti’s New Comedians,” May 5, 2012, http://www .haitiantimes.com/haitis-new-comedians/. 125. Fund for Peace, The Failed States Index 2012 (Washington, DC: Fund for Peace, 2012), http://www.fundforpeace.org/global/library/cfsir1210 -failedstatesindex2012-06p.pdf.

5 The Unending Politics of Crisis

AS WE HAVE SEEN, MICHEL MARTELLY IS NOT A FREE AGENT.

His presidency is circumscribed by his lack of a parliamentary majority and by the reality that the popular mandate he received came from a small fraction of eligible voters. His party, Réponse des Paysans, has virtually no power or presence in Parliament. Moreover, Martelly is still learning to manage a complicated cohabitation with the gelatinous and opportunist INITÉ that has retained a majority in both the Senate and Chamber of Deputies. In fact, Martelly’s relations with the legislative branch are extremely tense and uneasy.

The Strange Quest for a Prime Minister The tensions that marred the process leading to the ratification of Prime Minister Garry Conille and contributed to the rejection of President Martelly’s first two choices, Daniel-Gerard Rouzier and Bernard Gousse, reached a boiling point with the so-called Bélizaire affair. On October 12, 2011, Arnel Bélizaire, a member of the Chamber of Deputies who represents the capital’s Delmas and Tabarre Districts, was involved in a profanity-filled encounter with Martelly that took place at the National Palace.1 An enraged Martelly threatened to send Bélizaire to prison and yelled at him: “Si yon nonm vin mankem’ dega nan palè pa m-nan, ou pap sòti vivan” (If a man does not respect me in my own palace, he will not depart from it alive).2 Despite his parliamentary immunity, Bélizaire was arrested a few days later at the airport upon returning from an official trip to 135

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France.3 While Bélizaire was quickly released from jail, his temporary detention outraged legislators and many citizens alike. Under intense parliamentary pressure, the minister of justice resigned to avert what could have become a major constitutional crisis. The resignation, however, did not stop several members of the legislative branch from claiming that Martelly was leading the country toward a new despotism. While the full denouement of this political crisis remains uncertain, the fiasco exacerbated tensions between the executive and legislative branches. These relations deteriorated further when President Martelly stormed the private residence of Prime Minister Conille to curse a group of lawmakers who had been meeting there.4 This confrontation, coupled with Conille’s public allegations that between November 2010 and October 2012 the Haitian government had signed illegal contracts with several building firms for the reconstruction of the country, generated bad blood between the prime minister and the president. Conille had never been Martelly’s first choice for prime minister. Compelled by circumstances to accept him, the president and his entourage maneuvered from the very day of the prime minister’s ratification to undermine him. In fact, in the final weeks of his administration, Conille was openly challenged by his cabinet, which refused to accept his orders. The resignation of Conille on February 24, 2012, was inevitable and anticipated by most observers. Faced with continuous humiliation, Conille had no option but to depart. However, both the Bélizaire affair and the storming of the prime minister’s residence reminded Haitians that their president was incapable of distancing himself from his “Sweet Micky” persona. He could not always restrain his penchant for the vulgar and burlesque, or mask his authoritarian tendencies. In an interview with reporter Elise Ackerman in the late 1990s, Martelly the singer and entertainer made remarks that are as troubling as they are telling. He expressed his desire to change Haiti, but advocated using an iron fist to do so: I think Haiti would change under someone like me. . . . You have to believe in what you are doing. You need to know where you are coming from and where you are going. You need to know the problems, and I do. My message is simple. I just want the country to be prosperous. I don’t want the kids to beg in the street. I want people to care about the environment. . . . First thing, after I establish my power, which would be very strong and necessary, I

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would close that congress thing. La chambre des députés. Le sénat. . . . Out of my way.5

Martelly added that, if he ever became president, he would ban all strikes and protests during his first year in office.6 While as president he has respected civil rights and tolerated protests and public criticism, Martelly’s opponents fear that his authoritarian tendencies will ultimately degenerate into dictatorial rule. The events surrounding Conille’s resignation barely four months after he assumed the office of prime minister reinforced these fears. For Conille’s departure opened a crisis of governability that has yet to be fully resolved despite the ratification of Laurent Lamothe as prime minister on May 14, 2011. Unlike his predecessor who was to a large extent imposed by the international community, Lamothe is Martelly’s man and an old friend; he should thus enjoy a less tumultuous relationship with the president.7 On the other hand, recent history suggests that Haitian presidents do not tolerate forceful prime ministers with the potential to eclipse the head of state. So while Lamothe may not be plagued by the constant menace of being dismissed, there is no guarantee that he will be given the freedom to govern. In spite of the 1987 Constitution, which restrains the power of the president by creating a supposedly robust office of prime minister and a strong legislative branch, the reality is that all of the leaders who have occupied the National Palace over the past twenty-five years have behaved as presidential monarchs. It is unlikely that Martelly will do otherwise. The prime minister, after all, serves a particular political purpose; he or she becomes the fall person in times of crisis. Presidents can thus buffer themselves from popular discontent by firing the prime minister. While dismissing the prime minister can only be a temporary solution for a president, it is a strategic move that buys the latter time to reshuffle their political cards. Given Haiti’s unending political crises, it is not surprising that prime ministers under the 1987 Constitution have had short and fraught tenures, even when they have been close friends and collaborators of the president. This is not to say that the prime minister is not a critical figure in the Haitian political system, but rather to point out that he or she tends to be overwhelmed by the omnipresence of the presidential monarch. Even if prime ministers ultimately have little control over how the country is governed, their nominations and ratifications have

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tended to be moments of high drama. These are typically periods of intense negotiations, which exacerbate la politique du ventre as the executive offers incentives in exchange for legislative votes. Lamothe’s ratification embodied these political practices; in fact, several deputies accused each other of receiving large sums of money for supporting Lamothe’s confirmation.8 Moreover, three powerful senators (Joseph Lambert, Youri Latortue, and Michel Clérié), all of whose term in office was ending and who had been extremely critical of President Martelly, joined him as his new special political advisers after endorsing Lamothe’s ratification.9 These rather sudden and dramatic volte-faces illustrate how prebends generate the most opportunistic alliances. Such unprincipled circulation and co-optation of leaders from one sector to another is hardly novel; indeed, the spectacle of ever shifting alliances and of legislators discussing publicly how corruption determined their vote seem to have shocked few Haitians. Yet all of the major international actors applauded the process as a victory for democracy; the United Nations, the United States, France, and Canada all hailed the confirmation as a sign of progress and good governance.10 Meanwhile, Haitian politicians who had lost their seats, or were out of government, openly criticized the unpalatable corruption surrounding Lamothe’s ascendancy to prime minister.11

Foreign and Local Perceptions and the Constitution in the Balance A chasm separates foreign perceptions from the local understanding of Haiti’s political realities. This disconnect is evident in the remarks the Ambassador Susan E. Rice, US permanent representative to the United Nations, made to the Security Council on October 3, 2012, praising Parliament’s confirmation of Lamothe as prime minister. She also commended President Martelly for publishing “a series of constitutional amendments that strengthen democracy and the rule of law in Haiti.” And she added that these amendments “[paved] the way towards an independent judiciary under a Superior Judicial Council and [mandated] the formation of a Permanent Electoral Council (CEP).” 12 Rice was applauding the very policies and decisions that were generating a new season of popular discontent and political uncertainties in Haiti.

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For instance, it can be argued that in the wake of the corrupt ratification of Lamothe, widespread unease and misgivings about the viability of Martelly’s leadership emboldened Senator Moïse JeanCharles to accuse the president and several members of his administration of having multiple nationalities. Jean-Charles’s call that they all vacate their offices further inflamed political passions.13 The president’s contemptuous refusal to accept a parliamentary commission’s demand that he submit documents that would dispel these explosive allegations did not help matters. In fact, while attending the Jacmel carnival in February 2012, Martelly asserted in an impromptu response to questions about his citizenship that, “even if he were Chinese, it would not matter because he is working for the people who love him.”14 In a press conference, however, Martelly displayed eight of his Haitian passports and had Kenneth Merten, then US ambassador to Haiti, declare that he was not an American and that he was what he had always proclaimed, a “Haitien natif natal!” (a Haitian born in Haiti).15 This press conference did not play well with many lawmakers who were still angry at the president’s earlier cavalier dismissal of their demands.16 The point is that tensions remain high and there is a sense that another serious crisis is brewing. This is especially so given that other critical issues have yet to be fully resolved such as the controversial and confusing constitutional amendments 17 introduced by Parliament in the last hours of the René Préval administration. These amendments expand presidential power and represent a major transformation of the Haitian political system. By signing an executive order endorsing these changes, Martelly empowered himself to establish a CEP (Permanent Electoral Council), to nominate the Superior Judicial Council, and to restore the armed forces. But, all of these steps are likely to generate significant conflicts between the executive, Parliament, and civil society. In fact, the complicated process leading to Martelly’s executive order amending the constitution—the most dramatic political act of his presidency thus far—was itself a source of tensions. It began in October 2007, with President Préval’s speech commemorating the 201st anniversary of Jean Jacques Dessalines’s death, in which he declared that political instability was the “violent poison” endangering Haiti’s development. 18 He claimed that establishing stability had been his obsession and single most important goal since assuming power in 2006. Préval contended, however, that the 1987 Con-

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stitution undermined this goal. He complained that the president is at the mercy of an omnipotent Parliament. While the president chose a prime minister, it was Parliament—both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate—that had the power to ratify and fire the prime minister. The process of ratification under the 1987 Constitution was not only complicated and burdensome, but it also gave Parliament the power to approve both the prime minister selected by the president and the subsequent “general policy” of the government formed by this prime minister. As Article 158 stated, “With the approval of the President, the Prime Minister shall choose the members of his Cabinet of Ministers and shall go before Parliament to obtain a vote of confidence on his declaration of general policy.” Thus, a prime minister could be ratified only to be quickly dismissed by a vote of no-confidence in his or her government. While Article 129-6 limited Parliament’s power to the extent that the “Legislature may not pass more than one vote of censure a year on a question concerning a Government program or declaration of general policy,” the constitution imposed more obdurate constraints on executive authority. The president had no right to dissolve Parliament and, not surprisingly, Préval described this parliamentary supremacy as a thoroughly unbalanced division of power that was likely to generate an impotent president and dangerous political deadlock. In his eyes, the country was facing permanent ungovernability and, therefore, the constitution had to be reformed. In July 2009, Préval created a presidential commission, Groupe de Travail sur la Constitution de 1987, headed by the well-known journalist and scholar, Claude Moïse, which recommended a series of amendments that were clearly favorable to a notable emasculation of the legislative branch and a significant empowerment of the office of the president.19 Amending the constitution was no easy task; the constitution was itself a major obstacle to constitutional reforms.20 In a series of maneuvers, however, President Préval managed to get his party, INITÉ, to engineer the feat. In a deeply flawed process, Parliament amended the constitution on May 13, 2011. Barely twenty-four hours before the inauguration of Martelly as president, Préval had the amendments published in Le Moniteur, the official journal of the government. Soon, however, a scandal exploded as legislators claimed that the amendments appearing in Le Moniteur did not correspond to those they voted for. Upon his inauguration as president, Martelly was thus

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confronted with the reality that Haiti had a constitutional crisis; it was without its manman lwa (the mother of all law). Initially, Martelly issued a decree suspending the amendments but, under strong foreign pressure, he decided to create a commission to analyze the circumstances of the amendment process and make a recommendation on its constitutionality. Eventually, the president changed his mind and published in Le Moniteur what was, for many Haitians, a series of fraudulent reforms.21 These amendments may well precipitate a crisis since significant sectors of the opposition and civil society groups have vigorously rejected them. 22 Changing the constitution is not just a matter of respecting the constitutional game itself; it also entails the ability to mobilize a huge political majority that can transcend ideology, class, and private interests. Such a task was clearly beyond Préval’s and Martelly’s statecraft; they realized it only through dubious and unorthodox means. This is not to say that the 1987 Constitution was ideal. Far from it; it was elaborated in the aftermath of Jean-Claude Duvalier’s forced departure and its purpose was to emasculate the presidency while empowering Parliament, and, to a lesser degree, the office of the prime minister along with political parties. The goal was the creation of a framework to prevent the rise of personal rule; above all, the constitution was an antidictatorial charter. As Louis Aucoin puts it, “The drafter’s intent [was] to limit executive power by creating a system based upon Parliamentary supremacy.”23 In practice, however, the 1987 Constitution did not assure parliamentary supremacy; under the two abbreviated presidencies of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the executive was clearly dominant. This was not merely the consequence of Aristide’s charismatic leadership and overwhelming popularity, but also the product of his capacity to mobilize the streets to compel Parliament into submission. In other words, presidents with strong followings can use constitutional and extraconstitutional means to emasculate the powers of the legislative branch and impose their supremacy.24 The reality remains, however, that the 1987 Constitution had a pronounced parliamentary bias. This bias was problematic because the constitution could lead—and in fact led—to political gridlock. Over the past twenty-five years, successive presidents, prime ministers, and Parliaments have blocked each other’s policy initiatives and paralyzed Haitian politics. For instance, in the late 1990s, during Préval’s first term as president, Haiti had no working government for

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over a year. It was only after Parliament rejected three of Préval’s candidates for prime minister, and only when he maneuvered to introduce some controversial constitutional measures, that Préval managed to form an effective government. On January 11, 1999, he declared not only the termination of Parliament’s term in office, but also that for all practical purposes he would run the country by decree while organizing new elections.25 Similarly, as argued above, President Martelly has had to confront the determined opposition of Parliament to his initial attempts at forming a government and naming a prime minister. Clearly, the division of power between the executive and legislative branches remains a potential source of systemic crisis. A president lacking a working majority in Parliament simply may not be able to appoint a prime minister of his choice, and may be compelled to share the reins of government with one from the opposition. The president can therefore become politically paralyzed in spite of being the only governmental official enjoying the legitimacy of having been elected by universal franchise. Furthermore, after serving a five-year term, the president, however popular and effective he or she may be, cannot serve a second consecutive term. The president must exit the seat of power for the next five years before having the opportunity to run for a second and final term. This requirement generates discontinuity and undermines any potentially coherent long-term development. The 1987 Constitution was not merely antipresidentialist, it fragmented authority by engendering regional and local assemblies; power is so dispersed that rational national planning becomes difficult. Moreover, the constitution called for a system of multiple elections scheduled at different dates that are inordinately costly for a poor country like Haiti. Last but not least, the constitution failed to reflect the increasing economic and political significance of the Haitian diaspora whose members were denied dual nationality and, thus, all the privileges of citizenship. It is not surprising that Préval called for redressing the constitution’s multiple flaws, and Martelly made the case that he signed on to the amendments in the interest of national stability. While the constitution was and remains quite imperfect, it is not the fundamental problem confronting Haiti. In fact, the constitution’s inherent weaknesses are not the cause, but rather the symptom of a much wider and profound crisis of underdevelopment. This crisis is rooted in the material structure of power, the imbalance of class forces, and the inherited authoritarian habitus.26 Changing the consti-

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tution will not alter these obdurate realities. Constitution making requires knowledge, engineering skills, and political imagination, but such faculties do not override the fact that there is a fundamental difference between writing a manman lwa, and adhering to its norms and rules. Having a good constitution is not the same as embracing constitutionalism. Typically, constitution making takes place in what might be termed a “moment of exception.” This moment enshrines on paper a framework of governance reflecting a balance of power between contending social classes and actors, or the total victory of a particular social segment of society. It expresses nothing more than this immediate reality; constitution making, therefore, is no guarantee that the conditions under which the document materialized will persist. While a constitution may ultimately frame patterns of political behavior and the rules of the game, for the longue durée, there is good reason to believe—in the Haitian context at least—that it is more likely to be short lived and have no lasting impact on structures of governance. Constitution making can engender constitutionalism only when it comes to embody an enduring balance of power that compels political actors into conforming to an institutionalized set of practices and behaviours. Constitutionalism habituates the key players into accepting limits to both defeat and victory. On the one hand, defeat leads neither to jail, exile, nor death; it merely forces the defeated onto the sidelines with the full expectation that, in the next round, they will have the opportunity to become full players and winners. On the other hand, victory implies neither absolute power nor the annihilation of the opposition; it comprises a temporary capacity to run the show, which everyone knows will be contested in future and regular electoral intervals. Constitutionalism minimizes the potential for arbitrary and personalized authority as well as the tyranny of the majority. It embodies civility, which is the basis on which democratic stability is established. Constitutionalism also requires a coming to terms with the political unpredictability of democracy—a form of uncertainty intrinsic to, but contained within, a structured system of rules. Political actors have—at a minimum—to be convinced that the uncertainties of defeat do not outweigh the gains of a possible future victory. The precondition for forming such convictions is the institutionalization of uncertainty within a predictable framework providing for electoral outcomes that are neither permanent nor arbitrary. In the Haitian con-

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text, the fundamental question, then, is whether the 1987 Constitution or the new amended one can in fact engender constitutionalism. Clearly, the 1987 Constitution failed to do so and, unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that its newly amended version will achieve this objective. The problem is that, while constitutional knowledge, civic competence, the desire for a good society, and an ease with measured uncertainty are all important in democratic transitions and consolidations, they cannot obliterate class interests, dependence on foreign power, and the quest of privileged groups to maintain their dominant position in the existing order. The 1987 Constitution simply proved incapable of changing the winner-take-all behavior of the political class. Winners sought absolute control of the political system while losers never accepted their defeat; the latter opposed the former and challenged the legitimacy of the victors. This struggle between winners and losers had the unintended consequence of producing a stalemate that ultimately favored the status quo of the dominant classes. Not surprisingly, the stultifying immobilism of the political system undermined adherence to and nurtured partisan attacks against the constitution itself. In fact, all of the political forces, as well as the imperial powers, engaged in constant violations of the constitution while claiming their full compliance to it. It is true that many of the empowering elements of the 1987 Constitution were ignored, but their very existence played a restraining role on the rulers’ most egregious authoritarian temptations. The amended constitution27 does away with key elements of grassroots participation while enhancing presidential prerogatives. For instance, the new rules for the selection of the nine-member Electoral Council bypass popular organizations and centralize control from above by giving the president, the Supreme Court, and Parliament the power to appoint three Electoral Council members each.28 In practice, as Charlie Hinton points out, this new method enhances the capacity of the executive branch to manipulate the selection process, thus, assure itself favorable electoral outcomes.29 Moreover, the new constitution increases the president’s autonomy vis-à-vis Parliament; whereas the 1987 Constitution required the latter to ratify the choice of the former for prime minister, now the president is allowed to appoint the prime minister after merely consulting the heads of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies.30 The recent amendments to Article 149 strengthen the role of the

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prime minister, who is now called on to assume the presidency in case of “presidential vacancy,” and organize new elections within four months. On the other hand, a sitting president could manipulate this very provision to secure himself or herself a de facto second consecutive term, which had hitherto been prohibited. After forming a pact with the prime minister, the sitting president could opt to step down during his or her last four months in office, and then run for a second consecutive term once the prime minister, acting as the provisional president, organizes new elections. While this is a rather fantastic scenario, it is not unthinkable in Haiti’s political environment, which is deeply rooted in the personal rule of a single individual. Less controversial are the new rights that the amended constitution grants to members of the Haitian diaspora. People of Haitian descent who have taken another nationality may file for Haitian citizenship. They are given the right to vote, own land, and run for lower levels of office, but the constitution bars them from higher offices such as the presidency, Senate, Chamber of Deputies, and governmental cabinet. These higher offices are reserved only for Haitianborn individuals who have never renounced their Haitian citizenship. Under the new reforms, members of the Haitian diaspora who live abroad and have acquired the nationality of their host countries are given limited rights of Haitian citizenship, but once they set foot on Haitian soil they are subjected to the full force of Haitian laws. 31 There is little doubt that members of the Haitian diaspora will continue to struggle for full citizenship, rather than settle for such limited rights. In this respect, the amended constitution thus is an inadequate and incomplete achievement. There is also the question of language. The amended constitution was published in Le Moniteur in French only, leaving the Creole version of the 1987 Constitution untouched. Creole is an official language of Haiti, and yet no amendments were introduced in the Creole version. At the moment, Haiti seems to have two distinct and contradictory constitutions.32 Not all sectors of Haitian society share Martelly’s belief that the problems raised by the constitutional amendments have been settled once and for all. Yet another issue that created controversy was the question of whether the amended constitution granted President Martelly the right to call for the creation of a CEP. After long and acrimonious negotiations, the executive and legislators reached a compromise with the help of religious and civil society figures. The compromise of

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December 24, 2012, created a College Transitoire du Conseil Electoral Permanent (CTCEP), a transitional college of the CEP, which was officially inaugurated on April 19, 2013.33 As its name suggests, the CTCEP is not quite the CEP that President Martelly wanted, but its structure and composition are derived from Article 192 of the amended constitution. The CTCEP is thus composed of nine members who are no longer approved by the municipal assemblies, but are instead nominated by the three branches of government—executive, legislative, and judicial. While each branch selects three members, those picked by Parliament have to be approved by a two-thirds majority in each chamber. The latter stipulation had to be modified in the current conjuncture because the Senate could not achieve the two-thirds majority required to select its three counselors since the terms of a third of its members expired in May 2012.34 In addition, Haiti’s major civil rights and civil society organizations accused both President Martelly and the Conseil Supérieur du Pouvoir Judiciaire (CSPJ) of violating the rules and procedures guiding the appointment of their six CEP members in a number of ways, including selecting members who were too old.35 In spite of these political conflicts, the executive and Parliament managed to create a hybrid body that could pretend to be both permanent and transitional. It remains to be seen, however, whether the CTCEP can organize free and fair senatorial and municipal elections by the end of 2013. The legitimacy of these elections will be critical for the stability of Haiti’s political system; the Martelly administration can ill afford a bungled and corrupt process that could endanger its very own survival.36 A political and constitutional crisis thus may loom in the not too distant future. President Martelly and his foreign supporters, however, have a completely different view of the current conjuncture. It is as if Martelly’s Haiti embodies a fresh development paradigm when, in reality, its politics and economic policies are deeply embedded in the dysfunctional practices of the past. For instance, on October 22, 2012, then US secretary of state Hillary Clinton hailed the recently built Caracol Industrial Park as representing “a new day for Haiti and a new model for how the international community practices development.”37 Similarly, Martelly seems to inhabit a world of illusions, as he appears to believe that Haiti is on the move and that he can address any crisis by creating an imaginary national reconciliation.38

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Martelly Dreams of Reconciliation and a New Army At the inauguration of the Caracol Industrial Park, Martelly embraced former president Préval as if his display of affection would end political animosities and infightings. 39 This is the same logic that led Martelly to meet with all of the country’s former heads of state, including Jean-Claude Duvalier, Leslie Manigat, Prosper Avril, and Jean-Bertrand Aristide. These symbolic gestures orchestrated in the name of national unity are unlikely to satisfy demands for justice and reparation. 40 While it would be wrong to ignore the relative significance of symbolic acts of reconciliation, it would be naïve to believe that, by themselves, they can heal the wounds of a brutal dictatorial past. In fact, the widespread outrage that followed Judge Carves Jean’s 2011 indictment of Jean-Claude Duvalier on corruption charges only, and not on crimes against humanity, suggests that reconciliation without justice will be difficult to achieve.41 At the time, Human Rights Watch called for a thorough investigation and trial in the hopes of strengthening respect for the law and helping Haiti come to terms with the past: A fair and transparent prosecution of Duvalier in Haiti—in which victims are able to tell their stories and participate as “parties civiles” for one of the first times in history, and in which Duvalier’s lawyers present a vigorous defense—could help to build Haitians’ confidence in the justice system. It could also provide a civics lesson about a particularly dark period of Haitian history which most Haitians today are too young to remember. In confronting its history head-on, Haiti has the opportunity to end the cycle of impunity that has left the majority of its citizens outside the protection of the law.42

Judge Jean’s ruling essentially gave Jean-Claude Duvalier a free pass and demonstrated, once more, the sway of the executive over Haiti’s corrupt and weak legal system; it was, in the words of the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH), “a shameful ruling.” 43 While the Martelly administration has claimed that the Duvalier case was in the independent hands of the Haitian legal system, there is little doubt that the judge’s decision was influenced by Martelly’s talk of pardoning the country’s former dictator.44 Despite multiple views on the matter, the president has generally urged Haitians to look to the future and try to forgive, if not forget, past crimes against humanity.45 At times, Martelly has suggested that

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he might offer a presidential pardon; on other occasions, he has spoken of seeking general amnesty. Ultimately, however, Martelly’s wish for rallying everyone together without justice might be expedient, but it does not make for genuine reconciliation. Moreover, it is hard to see how the cause of reconciliation is to be served by Martelly’s determination to reestablish the disbanded military corps. In a document that was leaked to the press in August 2011, the Martelly administration called for the creation of a Conseil National de Défense et de Sécurité (CNDS), a national council of defense and security, that would unify the civil, intelligence, and military components of a new public force under the president’s authority.46 The two key organs of this public force would be on the one hand the Service d’Intelligence Nationale (SIN), a domestic spying agency, and on the other hand a reconstituted Haitian army of some 3,500 soldiers. The initial cost of the CNDS is estimated at $95 million, to be underwritten by Haiti’s international donors. While the international community has tended to oppose the restoration of the armed forces, this opposition seems to be for public consumption.47 In fact, France has offered to rebuild them while Ecuador and Brazil have offered to train them.48 This international support reflects changes introduced by a presidential commission to the original plan suggested by the document; the army would now not only be small and defensive, but it would also become an engineering corps to help in the reconstruction of the country and in future emergencies. The objective is to have this army ready and functioning before the end of Martelly’s five-year term.49

The Dilemma of MINUSTAH’s Unwanted Presence Powerful sectors in the elite and political class have welcomed the idea of the return of the national army, as most Haitians are fed up with MINUSTAH.50 It is not far-fetched to say that there is a general consensus that MINUSTAH’s presence should be terminated as soon as possible. MINUSTAH has never been popular in Haiti; it was initially tolerated as a necessary evil to prevent a descent into hell but, from inception, it violated the sense of sovereignty so cherished by Haitians. Soon the people saw MINUSTAH as an occupying force rather than a peacekeeping contingent. MINUSTAH’s alleged human rights violations in its fight against the so-called Chimères in

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the slums of Port-au-Prince, its clear connections with the cholera epidemics,51 and its soldiers’ infamous rape of a young Haitian have exacerbated its already tense and difficult relations with the local population.52 The UN’s dismissive reaction to the cholera outbreak that killed over 7,500 people has aggravated matters further. By claiming against overwhelming evidence that “it was impossible to establish the origins of the disease,”53 the UN reinforced Haitian contempt for its operations. The world body went so far as to ignore the findings of its own consultant, Daniele Lantagne, who investigated the origins of the epidemics. She stated that the “most likely” source of the cholera was a barracks for Nepalese soldiers. She added, “We now know that the strain of cholera in Haiti is an exact match for the strain of cholera in Nepal,” a country where the illness is pervasive.54 The destructive and violent impact of MINUSTAH on the country is bitterly attested by Haitians in a variety of vivid ways as Jessica Hsu, a US researcher, recently discovered. Working in the coastal town of Abricots in the Grande Anse, Hsu learned that local fishermen had named an invasive species of lionfish “MINUSTAH.” These voracious fish are depleting Haitian waters of many indigenous species. As the fishermen put it, the lionfish are like MINUSTAH because “li gen anpil koule e li dezod anpil” (they have many colors and they are extremely destructive).55 For the people of Haiti, MINUSTAH has clearly outlived its welcome. But the absence of a competent and legitimate Haitian security organ poses a serious problem. As Martelly put it in his first speech at the United Nations as Haiti’s president, while MINUSTAH committed “unacceptable blunders . . . there was nothing more irresponsible and dangerous than have the mission leave without an effective national alternative.”56 Thus, the question is no longer whether MINUSTAH can morph into a new role to stay in the country for the longue durée—popular sentiment will not allow that—but rather what kind of national alternative will be created in the courte durée to replace it. The nature of this national alternative has become a critical and controversial concern for Haiti’s immediate future. Before examining this issue, it is important to briefly analyze the traditional role that the Haitian army has played in the country’s history as well as the consequences of its emasculation and dissolution in 1994. The dissolution of the armed forces in the wake of Aristide’s USsupported return to power in 1994 has limited the possibility of

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coups d’état and restrained the despotic power of the dominant class from reasserting itself. Indeed, when threatened from below, this class has always tried to use the armed forces to reestablish order and stability. Moreover, the military itself has historically placed its corporate interests above those of the population. Coups and countercoups are the heavy legacy of the armed forces seeking to defend its interests. Civilian presidential monarchs bent on imposing their authority have frequently sought to create their own paramilitary forces and bypass the army. For instance, the Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale, better known as the Tontons Makouts, played a fundamental role in unleashing state violence and keeping François Duvalier in power throughout the 1960s and early 1970s.57 Not only did they come to counterbalance the armed forces and neutralize the traditional capacity of the military to wage a coup d’état, but they also represented significant popular support for his regime. In this sense, the Tontons Makouts were more than terrorizing storm troopers. Like the mafia, they extracted resources and distributed them to their community of disciples. In so doing, they bought people’s allegiance and gangsterized political life. Haiti’s dire poverty facilitated the development of this perverse environment, which was supportive of violent extortions. François Duvalier understood how to exploit scarcity to enhance his popularity. Minuscule payoffs with promises of larger gains for a chosen few became an attractive proposition for many who would otherwise confront a life of utter destitution. François Duvalier’s creation of the Tontons Makouts initiated a phenomenon that would recur on different scales again and again, becoming part of the fabric of Haiti’s recent history. For instance, when Raoul Cédras overthrew President Aristide in a bloody coup in 1991, the general created his troupes de choc, the attachés (the attachments), and the Front pour l’Avancement et le Progrès Haïtien (FRAPH), to smother supporters of Aristide’s movement Lavalas.58 And when Lavalas returned to power in 1994 and disbanded the army, it began to unleash its own gangs, the Chimères, to intimidate, harass, and brutalize its opponents.59 Thus, the army’s dissolution back in 1994 had contradictory effects; on the one hand it debilitated the authoritarianism of the dominant classes, but on the other hand it failed to generate the construction of democratic institutions. In fact, the dissolution of the army contributed to a vacuum of state power that came to be filled by a se-

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ries of paramilitary groups that had uncertain, murky, and ever changing allegiances and chains of command. The official disappearance of the army was not matched by a corresponding pattern of disarmament; former soldiers simply went underground with their weapons only to resurface as dangerous criminal insurgents. In the meantime, particularly during Aristide’s second political term from 2000 to 2004, the Lavalas administration armed its own Chimères to counter these insurgents and intimidate the opposition. Ultimately, the multiplication of armed groups emasculated the state to the point of obliterating its institutional and territorial control of society. It is this institutional decay that contributed to both the forced departure of President Aristide in 2004 and the eventual introduction of MINUSTAH into Haiti. While MINUSTAH represents an affront to Haitian nationalism and a somber reminder of Haitian political failures, it is at the moment the only force capable of keeping a relative sense of security in the country. It would not be far-fetched to argue, for example, that President Préval was able to complete his term in office and reestablish a modicum of stability in spite of food riots, major hurricanes, the earthquake, and the cholera epidemic because of both MINUSTAH’s presence and the Haitian army’s absence. Had it not been for the former, the situation would have easily degenerated into a chaotic Hobbesian world. And had the latter not been disbanded, it is likely that a coup and internal repression would have materialized. Nevertheless, as I have argued, MINUSTAH’s time in Haiti is ending and it has to be replaced by a new Haitian body. Yet the plan put forward by the Martelly administration is dangerous; the specter of past despotism and repressive practices haunts its deployment. A new army and a potential spy agency (Martelly’s proposed SIN) are likely to revive the seeds of authoritarianism that are still germinating in the Haitian political terrain. In truth, it is difficult to envisage a professional, impartial military in present-day Haiti. The legacy of both the distant and immediate past simply weighs too heavily. In spite of elections, a free press, and the development of many grassroots organizations, the reality is that the deep structures of Haitian politics have changed little since the collapse of the Jean-Claude Duvalier regime in 1986. Authoritarian reflexes persist, la politique du ventre continues to overwhelm a civic culture, and the social and material divide between rulers and the privileged on the one hand and the vast majority of the population on the other remains as profound as ever.

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Moreover, the country faces no military threats and, even if it did, a reconstituted army would hardly stave them off. The strong likelihood is that the proposed army and spying agency would end up devouring scarce resources, stamping out dissent, silencing opponents, and ultimately becoming a tool of internal repression. Martelly, however, is intensely committed to the restoration of the army not only because he wishes to respond to a widespread nationalistic reaction to the continued presence of foreign troops on Haitian soil, but also because of his past and present association with key figures of the military.60 This association cannot be ignored. Time will tell whether it prefigures the revival of the old authoritarianism and the birth of a new presidential absolutism. In his inaugural speech, Martelly already warned that he would not tolerate any social and political troubles; as he put it, “If people think they can create disorder . . . loot and burn, or foment instability, I am sorry for them because justice will deal with them.”61 Moreover, he is clearly not at ease with criticism as he has the tendency to accuse the press of fabricating and publicizing bad news about Haiti and his government.62 The danger is that Martelly may be assuming that his electoral victory, popularity, and image as a man of action will give him carte blanche to do as he pleases. He may be confusing the present with his recent past when, as the self-proclaimed Prézidan Kompa, he sang “nou tout sé Martelly!” (we are all for Martelly!)63 His style and electoral campaign were those of the archetypal populist politician whose charisma inspires and mesmerizes large followings, and may entice them into embarking on disastrous adventures. To that extent, Martelly’s rise to the presidency fuels worries about Haiti’s democratic future.

Insecurity and Creating a Police Force The country cannot remain between the Scylla of a potential return to the despotic past and the Charybdis of a debilitating and chaotic vacuum of power. Neither should Haiti remain the virtual trusteeship that it currently is. So what is to be done? MINUSTAH will and should withdraw, but the withdrawal should be neither sudden nor immediate. President Martelly was right when he declared that the UN mission has to stay until a national alternative is prepared to replace it, but he was wrong when he called for the reconstitution of

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the army and the creation of an internal surveillance agency. Haiti’s security problem is crime, and crime is the business of a police force. While drug gangs, burglary, and kidnapping are serious concerns, especially in Haiti’s urban areas, they are not so rampant that they cannot be managed by a beefed up, professionally trained police force. In fact what has been remarkable, especially since the earthquake, is the overwhelming peaceful resilience of the Haitian people. The international community’s fears of heightened criminal and political violence never materialized. As Robert Muggah reports, The incidence of lethal and non-lethal violence in key neighbourhoods of Port-au-Prince declined between 2007–2009 and appears to be well below the regional average and only slightly higher than the global average. . . . Contrary to media claims of widespread looting and organised theft, the vast majority of Port-au-Prince residents reported that neither they nor any members of their household have had property stolen from them or intentionally destroyed by others since the earthquake.64

Moreover, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Haiti’s homicide rate was one of the lowest among the Caribbean nations. It stood at 6.9 per 100,000 people and compared well with Jamaica at the highest level of 52.0, followed by Trinidad at 35.0, the Bahamas at 28.0, and the Dominican Republic at 24.0. Haiti’s rate was barely higher than the US homicide rate, which was 5.0.65 These figures, however, should not hide the fact that violence against women and girls, particularly among the residents in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps, has been extensive. The lack of security and basic amenities in the camps has left women exposed to sexual assaults. A survey of Port-au-Prince households conducted in the summer of 2009, and again in 2010 after the earthquake, estimated that 10,813 . . . individuals in Port-au-Prince were sexually assaulted in the six weeks after the earthquake. Of those assaults, 69.6 per cent . . . of the attackers were identified by the respondents as “criminals.” The next largest groups identified were spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend or ex-partner, with 13.6 per cent . . . neighbours at 11.7 per cent, and friend or former friend at 5.1 per cent. The incidence of sexual violence appears to affect both women and girls almost exclusively and in equal measure. We estimate that 5,280 women . . . and 5,209 girls under the age of 18 . . . were sexually assaulted after the earthquake. . . . Nevertheless, these findings

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should be interpreted with caution. . . . [The] true rates may be much higher than reported here.66

Women suffered not only from this type of sexual predation; they confronted also the disintegration of family structures, the high levels of unemployment, and the daily reality of utter scarcity that compelled many of them to engage in survival sex. Survival sex is defined by feminist organizations as “the exchange of sex in circumstances where those exchanging sex for survival lack other options. . . . [It] includes the exchange of sex for food, clothes, money, shelter, the ability to attend school, make rent, or other survival needs.”67 Women therefore confront a form of institutionalized violence caused by a system that confines them to lives of exploitation and degradation. Though physical security will not end survival sex, which is symptomatic of conditions prevailing in the outer periphery, it will limit the frequency of direct sexual violence. To that extent, the building and professionalization of an effective police force is becoming essential to protect the weakest segments of the population. While this process has been desperately slow, uneven, and full of failures, a renewed commitment to its eventual success is indispensable if Haiti is to have a democratic future.68 In fact, in spite of its manifest weaknesses and corrupt practices, the Haitian National Police (HNP) seems to be the most trusted protective institution in the country. As Athena Kolbe and Robert Muggah point out, There also appears to be widespread agreement among Haitians that the HNP should be the primary security entity in the country. When asked in 2010, “Ideally, who should be responsible for security?”, almost two-thirds (63.6 per cent) of the general public named the police. Meanwhile, the “community” was cited by more than onequarter (27.2 per cent), and the remainder chose MINUSTAH, the family, local government, the Ministry of the Interior, or private security firms. Not one respondent opted for the former members of the armed forces.69

The Martelly administration initially downplayed the role of the police to the benefit of a restored military; however, it has now decided to consolidate the HNP into a larger, well-trained, and betterequipped force of over 15,000 officers by 2016. Keeping that body autonomous and nonpoliticized is essential to prevent it from developing into an antidemocratic and repressive institution similar to the

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armed forces. In fact, while the size of the police force should increase, it should not be equipped with anything but small weapons; otherwise, temptation of coups d’état will flourish. Dedicating every security resource to the expansion of the police, rather than the restoration of the military and the creation of a domestic spying agency, is the only hope for charting a course toward greater peace and stability. The deepening of democracy and the development of greater political accountability require taking this alternative path that is unencumbered by the military debris of the despotic past. Whatever may be its final configuration, a reconstituted military risks reviving the old and repressive politics of coups and countercoups. The past reveals that the military has always been at the center of the political chessboard in Haiti, and that antidemocratic forces consistently appealed to the armed forces to silence dissent and overthrow elected regimes. Not surprisingly, in the spring of 2012, civil society organizations were alarmed when a rogue paramilitary force masquerading as veterans of the Haitian armed forces began to move freely in the country in spite of repeated governmental calls that it disband.70 Under domestic and foreign pressure, the government finally asserted its authority, dislodging the force from public buildings and prohibiting it from roaming in the streets of Haiti. It is unclear whether this rogue group has truly disbanded. While President Martelly has condemned it, his connections with officers of the old armed forces and his commitment to restore the army have fueled rumors that it was the government itself that funded and emboldened this newest paramilitary specter. Haitians wisely feared that this rogue group might resurface as militias in the service of the Martelly regime. Haiti’s syndromes of political dysfunctionality ranging from fragile domestic security, continued constitutional uncertainties, foreign military usurpation of national sovereignty, and total disconnect between international perceptions and local understandings of the nation’s realities are not unique. They are all symptomatic of the typical outer peripheral state; Haiti’s case can thus serve as a heuristic paradigm to analyze other societies suffering from a similar fate. Notes 1. Arnel Bélizaire wrote a letter to the president of the Chamber of Deputies and the president of the Senate that detailed the encounter. A copy of the letter can be found at Defend.ht, “Deputy Arnel Belizaire Letter on

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Altercation with Martelly,” October 25, 2011, http://www.defend.ht/politics /articles/legislative/1842-dep-arnel-belizaire-letter-on-altercation-with -martelly. 2. Rony Gilot, Garry Conille ou le passage d’un météore (Port-auPrince: Imprimeries des Antilles, 2012), p. 132. 3. Yves Pierre-Louis, “The Arrest of Deputy Arnel Bélizaire: Parliament Chief Charges Martelly ‘Is Plunging into Dictatorship,’” Haïti Liberté, November 2–8, 2011, http://www.haiti-liberte.com/archives/volume5-16/The% 20Arrest%20of%20Deputy.asp. 4. Gilot, Garry Conille ou le passage d’un météore, pp. 163–164. 5. Elise Ackerman, “His Music Rules in Haiti: Sweet Micky’s Provocative Music Moves Haitians with an Infectious Beat and Political Overtones,” Miami New Times, May 29, 1997, http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1997-05 -29/news/his-music-rules-in-haiti/. 6. Ibid. 7. Frantz Duval, “Le premier gouvernement Tèt Kale,” Le Nouvelliste, May 14, 2012, http://www.lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid=105141. 8. Radio Kiskeya, “Fortes tensions et accusations de corruption à la séance de ratification de Laurent,” May 3, 2012, http://radiokiskeya.com /spip.php?article8795; Radio Vision 2000, “Haïti/parlementaires—Corruption: Le député Patrick Joseph exige que la lumière soit faite,” May 11, 2012, http://radiovision2000haiti.net/public/haitiparlementaire-corruption -le-depute-patrick-joseph-exige-que-la-lumiere-soit-faite/; Kim Yves, “How Lamothe Clinched Senate Approval by Distributing Money and Jobs,” Haïti Liberté, May 2–8, 2012, http://www.haiti-liberte.com/archives/volume5 -42/How%20Lamothe.asp; Defend.ht, “Deputies Were Bribed to Vote for Laurent Lamothe, Says Deputy Bourjolly,” May 5, 2012, http://www.de fend.ht/politics/articles/legislative/3013-deputies-were-bribed-to-vote-for -laurant-lamothe-says-deputy-bourjolly. 9. Radio Kiskeya, “Martelly et ses Trois Mousquetaires ex-sénateurs,” May 14, 2012, http://radiokiskeya.com/spip.php?article8817. 10. Robenson Geffrard, “La communauté internationale salue, la classe politique dénonce,” Le Nouvelliste, May 4, 2012, http://www.lenouvelliste .com/article4.php?newsid=104838. 11. Ibid. 12. Susan E. Rice, “Remarks by Ambassador Susan E. Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations, at a Security Council Debate on MINUSTAH” (New York: US Mission to the United Nations, October 3, 2012), http://usun.state.gov/briefing/statements/198611.htm. 13. AlterPresse, “Haïti-politique/nationalité: Situation complexe, selon le Sénateur Moise: Un rapport préliminaire attendu cette semaine,” March 12, 2012, http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article12517; AlterPresse, “Haïtidouble nationalité: Prochain episode?” March 11, 2012, http://www.alter presse.org/spip.php?article12511; AlterPresse, “Haïti-nationalité: ‘Nous sommes à quelques mètres du Palais national,’ dixit Moise Jean-Charles,” February 24, 2012, http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article12420; Gilot, Garry Conille ou le passage d’un météore, pp. 174–177.

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14. Haiti Press Network, “Haiti-carnaval: La question du passeport s’invite au carnaval,” February 12, 2012, http://www.hpnhaiti.com/site/index .php/politique/5461-haiti-carnaval-la-question-du-passeport-sinvite-au -carnaval. 15. Radio Kiskeya, “Martelly exhibe ses passeports Haïtiens, il n’est pas Américain, selon l’ambassadeur Américain,” March 8, 2012, http://radio kiskeya.com/spip.php?article8615. 16. Haiti Press Network, “Haiti-Politique: L’enquete sur la nationalite du president se poursuit,” March 19, 2012, http://www.hpnhaiti.com/site/index .php/nouvelles/haiti-parlement/5767-haiti-politique-lenquete-sur-la-nation alite-du-president-se-poursuit. 17. Georges Michel, “Le président Martelly a commis une infraction qui est définie par les auteurs Anglo-Saxons comme une ‘dereliction of duty,’” Radio Kiskeya, July 28, 2012, http://radiokiskeya.com/spip.php?article9006; Charlie Hinton, “Haiti’s Constitutional Horror Show,” Haiti Action Committee, September 30, 2012, http://www.haitisolidarity.net/article.php?id=567. 18. René Préval, “Diskou prezidan repiblik la, 17 Oktòb 2007, anivèsè lanmò anperè Jean Jacques Dessalines,” Radio Kiskeya, October 18, 2007, http://www.radiokiskeya.com/spip.php?article4295&var_recherche=Claude %20Moïse. Préval’s speech was inspired by a report on the “constitutional question” written in March 2007 by two prominent Haitian intellectuals, Claude Moïse and Cary Hector. The report submitted to President Préval criticized the antipresidentialism and parliamentary supremacist tendencies of the 1987 Constitution. 19. See Commission Présidentielle, Groupe de Travail Sur La Constitution de 1987, Rapport au Président de la République M. René Préval (Portau-Prince: Commission Présidentielle, July 10, 2009), http://www.radio kiskeya.com/IMG/pdf/COMMISSION_PRESIDENTIELLE.pdf. 20. Amending the constitution is difficult as some of its key articles make abundantly clear: Article 282 declares that “on the recommendation . . . of one of the two (2) Houses or of the Executive Branch, the Legislature may declare that the constitution should be amended.” Article 283 requires that “this declaration . . . be supported by two-thirds (2/3) of each of the two (2) Houses.” Moreover, it says the declaration “may be promulgated only in the course of the last Regular Session of the Legislative period.” Article 283 also stipulates that it is only “at the first session of the following legislative period” that the Houses shall meet in a National Assembly to “decide on the proposed amendment.” In addition, Article 284 states that the “National Assembly may not sit or deliberate on the amendment unless at least two-thirds (2/3) of the members of each of the two (2) Houses are present.” It also specifies that “no decision of the National Assembly may be taken without a majority of two-thirds (2/3) of the votes cast.” And finally, Article 284 decrees that “the amendment passed may enter into effect only after the installation of the next elected President. In no case may the President under the Government that approved the amendment benefit from any advantages deriving there from.” 21. Radio Kiskeya, “Martelly promulgue l’amendement constitutionnel: CEP permanent et double nationalité à l’horizon,” June 19, 2012, http://

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radiokiskeya.com/spip.php?article8905; Charlie Hinton, “Martelly Slowly Returning Haiti Back to Dictatorship,” African Globe, October 9, 2012, http://www.africanglobe.net/headlines/martelly-slowly-returning-haiti -dictatorship/; Yves Pierre-Louis, “Constitution Haïtienne de 1987: 25 ans de non-respect,” Haïti Liberté, April 4–10, 2012, http://www.haiti-liberte .com/archives/volume5-38/Constitution%20haïtienne.asp; Robert BerrouëtOriol, “Les amendements constitutionnels: Un coup d’etat contre le Créole et une violation de l’art 40 de la Constitution de 1987,” Haiti-Konstitisyon .overblog.com, July 10, 2012, http://haiti-konstitisyon.overblog.com/les -amendements-constitutionnels-un-coup-d-etat-contre-le-creole-et -une-violation-de-l-art-40-de-la-constitution-de-1987; Fritz Deshommes, “Haiti: Et si la Constitution de 1987 etait porteuse de refondation?” AlterPresse, May 6, 2011, http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article11007#nb2. 22. Ibid. See also Franck Laraque, “Haïti: La Constitution de 1987, bouc émissaire,” AlterPresse, August 6, 2009; Georges Michel, “La Constitution de 1987 est-elle vraiment amendée?” Le Nouvelliste, July 24, 2012, http://lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid=107334; Georges Michel, “Georges Michel met en garde contre la publication de l’amendement constitutionnel,” Radio Metropole, December 27, 2011, http://www.metropole haiti.com/metropole/full_une_fr.php?id=20140; Groupe de Juristes Indépendants, Haïti—Amendements de la constitution: Rapport du Groupe de Juristes Indépendants (texte intégral) (February 28, 2012), http://haiti -konstitisyon.overblog.com/haiti-amendements-de-la-constitution-rapport -du-groupe-de-juristes-independants-texte-integral. 23. Louis Aucoin, “Haiti’s Constitutional Crisis,” Boston University International Law Journal 17, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 116–117. See also Le Nouvelliste, “Préval tire à boulets rouges sur la constitution,” October 18, 2007, http://www.lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid=49906; Claude Moïse, “Le bicamérisme parfait est-il un danger?” Le Matin, July 11, 2008, http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Soc/soc.culture.haiti/2008-07 /msg00053.html; Claude Moïse and Cary Hector, “Rapport sur la question constitutionnelle,” Radio Kiskeya, October 17, 2007, http://www.radio kiskeya.com/spip.php?article4295&var_recherche=Claude%20Moïse; Claude Moïse and Ollivier Emile, Repenser Haïti (Montreal, QC: Editions du CIDIHCA, 1992), pp. 104–106, 141–145. 24. Claude Moïse, Une constitution dans la tourmente (Montreal, QC: Les Editions Images, 1994), pp. 51–81. 25. Aucoin, “Haiti’s Constitutional Crisis.” 26. Robert Fatton Jr., Haiti’s Predatory Republic (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002); Robert Fatton Jr., The Roots of Haitian Despotism (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2007). 27. Gouvernement de la République d’Haïti, “Loi constitutionnelle portant amendement de la Constitution de 1987 (reproduction pour erreurs matérielles) correspondances y attachées,” numéro extraordinaire, Le Moniteur, no. 96 (June 19, 2012), http://fr.scribd.com/doc/97931300/Amendement-Fraud uleux-de-la-Constitution-D-Haiti-Paru-dans-le-Moniteur-du-12-Juin-2012. 28. Charlie Hinton, “Haiti’s Constitutional Horror Show,” Haiti Action

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Committee, September 30, 2012, http://www.haitisolidarity.net/article.php ?id=567. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Gouvernement de la République d’Haïti, “Loi constitutionnelle portant amendement de la Constitution de 1987”; Haiti-Konstitisyon, “La question de la nationalité et les amendements constitutionnels,” Haiti-Konsti tisyon.overblog.com, August 6 2012, http://haiti-konstitisyon.overblog .com/la-question-de-la-nationalite-et-les-amendements-constitutionnels; Haiti-Konstitisyon, “Lettre ouverte au journal ‘Le Monde,’” Haiti-Konsti tisyon.overblog.com, July 10, 2012, http://haiti-konstitisyon.overblog.com /lettre-ouverte-au-journal-le-monde. 32. Georges Michel, “Le Président Martelly a commis une infraction qui est définie par les auteurs Anglo-Saxons comme une ‘dereliction of duty,’” Radio Kiskeya, July 28, 2012, http://radiokiskeya.com/spip.php?article9006; Berrouët-Oriol, “Les amendements constitutionnels.” 33. Radio Kiskeya, “Installé comme prévu, le CEP des six promet des elections démocratiques,” August 21, 2012, http://radiokiskeya.com/spip .php?article9069; Jacqueline Charles, “Constitutional Changes to Become Law in Haiti a Year After Vote,” Miami Herald, June 19, 2012, http://www .miamiherald.com/2012/06/18/v-fullstory/2857805/constitutional-changes -to-become.html#storylink=cpy; Haiti Press Network, “Haiti-elections: Le College transitoire du Conseil electoral permanent mis en branle,” April 19, 2013, http://www.hpnhaiti.com/site/index.php/politique/9261-haiti-elections -le-college-transitoire-du-conseil-electoral-permanent-mis-en-branle. 34. Charles, “Constitutional Changes to Become Law in Haiti.” 35. AlterPresse, “Haiti-CEP: ‘Vives préoccupations’ des organisations de la société civile et des droits humains,” August 21, 2012, http://www.alter presse.org/spip.php?article13272. Anel Alexis Joseph was appointed president of the CSPJ at the age of seventy-two, even though the law clearly stipulates that all CEP members must be aged sixty-five years and younger. The fact that one of the most important legal institutions of the country violates its own norms and rules is indicative of the government’s contempt for the law. 36. Sadrac Dieudonné, “Le député Sadrac Dieudonné au Président Martelly au sujet du CEP,” Le Nouvelliste, September 14, 2012, http://www .lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid=108961. 37. Jacqueline Charles, “U.S. Secretary Clinton Hails ‘New Day’ in Haiti, Champions U.S. Foreign Policy,” Miami Herald, October 22, 2012, http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/22/3062289/u-s-secretary-clinton -hailsnew.html#storylink=cpyhttp://www.miamiherald.com/2012/10/22 /3062289/u-s-secretary-clinton-hails-new.html#storylink=cpy. 38. Jacqueline Charles, “Two Years into His Presidency, Michel Martelly Says Haiti Is on the Move,” Miami Herald, May 26, 2013, http://www .miamiherald.com/2013/05/26/3418228_p2/two-years-into-his-presidency .html#storylink=cpy. 39. Roberson Alphonse, “René Préval a de nouveau la cote,” Le Nouvel-

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liste, October 22, 2012, http://lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid= 110179. 40. Radio Kiskeya, “Michel Martelly rencontre Aristide, Duvalier et Avril,” October 12, 2011, http://www.radiokiskeya.com/spip.php?article8157; HaitiXchange, “Martelly Meets Aristide, Duvalier, and Avril,” October 13, 2011, http://www.haitixchange.com/index.php/hx/Articles/martelly -meets-aristide-duvalier-and-avril/; NTN24, “Haiti’s Martelly and Aristide Say It’s Time to Work Together,” October 12, 2011, http://www.ntn24.com /news/videos/haitis-martelly-and-aristide-says-its-time-work-together-6075. 41. Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH), Dossier Jean Claude Duvalier: Une ordonnance de la honte a été rendue par le juge d’instruction (Port-au-Prince: RNDDH, February 3, 2012), http://rnddh.org /content/uploads/2012/04/Dossier-Jean-Claude-Duvalier.pdf; Wadner Pierre, “Haitian Judiciary Denies Duvalier’s Crime Against Humanity,” HaitiAnalysis, February 18, 2012, http://haitianalysis.blogspot.com/2012/02/haitian -judicial-denies-duvaliers-crime.html. 42. Human Rights Watch, Haiti’s Rendezvous with History: The Case of Jean-Claude Duvalier (New York: Human Rights Watch, April 2011), p. 46. 43. Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains, Dossier Jean Claude Duvalier. 44. AlterPresse, “Haïti-Duvalier: L’ordonnance du Juge Carvès Jean est une décision politique, selon la pohdh,” January 30, 2012, http://www.alter presse.org/spip.php?article12295; Niko Price, “AP Interview: Haitian Leader Could Pardon Duvalier,” Associated Press, January 26, 2012, http://news . y a h o o . c o m / a p - i n t e r v i e w - h a i t i a n - l e a d e r- c o u l d - p a r d o n - d u v a l i e r -140930500.html. 45. Martelly declared that “my way of thinking is to create a situation where we rally everyone together and create peace and pardon people, to not forget about the past—because we need to learn from it—but to mainly think about the future.” He added, “You cannot forget those who suffered in that time, but I do believe that we need that reconciliation in Haiti” (Price, “AP Interview”). 46. Commission de Défense et de Sécurité Nationales, Politique de défense et de sécurité nationales, les grands axes (Port-au-Prince: Commission de Défense et de Sécurité Nationales, August 2011). 47. Joseph Guyler Delva and Pascal Fletcher, “Analysis—Haitian Army: Ghost of Bloody Past Set for Revival,” Reuters, November 17, 2011, http:// www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/17/us-haiti-army-idUSTRE7AG2EY 20111117. 48. Agence France-Presse, “France to Help Haiti Create Security Force,” Dialogo, February 2, 2012, http://dialogoamericas.com/en_GB/articles/rmisa /features/regional_news/2012/02/02/feature-ex-2853; TVNZ, “Ecuador, Brazil to Help Set Up Haiti New Military,” Reuters, July 31, 2012, http:// tvnz.co.nz/world-news/ecuador-brazil-help-set-up-haiti-new-military -4997492. 49. International Crisis Group, “Towards a Post-MINUSTAH Haiti: Making an Effective Transition,” Report No. 44 (Brussels: Crisis Group

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Latin America/Caribbean, August 2, 2012), http://www.crisisgroup.org/en /regions/latin-america-caribbean/haiti/044-towards-a-post-minustah-haiti -making-an-effective-transition.aspx; Robenson Geffrard, “Nouvelle armée, Martelly avancera avec ceux qui le veulent,” Le Nouvelliste, July 12, 2012, http://www.lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid=107106; Frantz Duval, “Pour le retour de l’armée, Martelly donne et prend,” Le Nouvelliste, July 11, 2012, http://www.lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid=107065. 50. Kevin Edmonds, “MINUSTAH’s Upcoming Renewal: A Setback for Democracy in Haiti” (New York: North American Congress on Latin America, October 11, 2012), http://nacla.org/blog/2012/10/11/minustah’s -upcoming-renewal-setback-democracy-haiti. 51. Michael Higgins, “UN Peacekeepers to Blame for 7,500 Cholera Deaths in Devastated Haiti: Public Health Expert,” National Post, October 24, 2012, http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/10/24/haiti-cholera-that-has -killed-7500-blamed-on-un-troops-from-nepal/. 52. Edmonds, “MINUSTAH’s Upcoming Renewal.” See also Justin Podur, Haiti’s New Dictatorship (London: Pluto Press, 2013). 53. Higgins, “UN Peacekeepers to Blame.” 54. Ibid. 55. Jessica Hsu, US researcher, personal communication with the author, December 13, 2011. 56. Michel Joseph Martelly, “Premier discours du Président Martelly aux Nations Unies,” Haitian Groove Media, September 24, 2011, http://www .haitiangroovemedia.com/?p=3108. 57. See Fatton, Haiti’s Predatory Republic; Alex Dupuy, Haiti in the New World Order (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997); Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Haiti: State Against Nation (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990); Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, Haiti: The Breached Citadel, rev. ed. (Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholar’s Press, 2004). 58. Fatton, Haiti’s Predatory Republic. 59. Alex Dupuy, The Prophet and Power (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). The violence of the Tontons Makouts and FRAPH was clearly more pervasive and devastating than that of the Chimères. See Peter Hallward, Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment (London: Verso, 2007). 60. Michael E. Miller, “Michel Martelly Is Haiti’s New President: But the Former Palm Beach County Resident Has a Dark Side,” New Times Broward Palm Beach, June 9, 2011, http://www.browardpalmbeach .com/2011-06-09/news/michel-martelly-is-haiti-s-new-president-10-but-the -former-palm-beach-county-resident-has-10-a-dark-side/. See also Ackerman, “His Music Rules in Haiti”; Jeb Sprague, Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012), pp. 270–273. 61. Michel Joseph Martelly, “Discours d’investiture,” May 15, 2011, http://jfjpm-politique.blogspot.com/2011/05/discours-dinvestiture-du -president.html. 62. Radio Kiskeya, “Michel Martelly se moque royalement de la presse

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Haïtienne, un 3 Mai!” May 3, 2012, http://radiokiskeya.com/spip.php ?article8796. 63. Martelly’s popularity may have suffered from his close association with General Raoul Cedras’s military dictatorship. See Gage Averill, A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. 202. 64. Anastasia Moloney, “Major Survey Debunks Perceptions About Crime and Police in Haiti,” AlertNet, November 12, 2011, http://www .trust.org/alertnet/news/major-survey-debunks-perceptions-about-crime-and -police-in-haiti (June 13, 2012). 65. UN Office on Drugs and Crime, The 2011 Global Study on Homicide (Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2011), p. 93. 66. Athena R. Kolbe et al., “Mortality, Crime and Access to Basic Needs Before and After the Haiti Earthquake: A Random Survey of Port-au-Prince Households,” Medicine, Conflict and Survival 26, no. 4 (October–December 2010): 289. 67. Komisyon Fanm Viktim Pou Viktim (The Commission of Women Victims for Victims (KOFAVIV), MADRE, International Women’s Human Rights Clinic, Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, Global Justice Clinic of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, “Struggling to Survive—Sexual Exploitation of Displaced Women and Girls in Port au Prince, Haiti” (New York: June 13, 2012), pp. 2–6, http://www.madre.org/images /uploads/misc/1326210740_Haiti%20SE%20Report%20FINAL%20pub%20 011012.pdf. 68. International Crisis Group, “Towards a Post-MINUSTAH Haiti”; Timothy Donais, “Reforming the Haitian National Police: From Stabilization to Consolidation,” in Jorge Heine and Andrew Thompson, eds., Fixing Haiti (New York: United Nations University Press, 2011), pp. 97–114; Robenson Geffrard, “Entre Martelly et Andrésol, ça roule,” Le Nouvelliste, March 28, 2012, http://www.lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid=103794; Valéry Daudier, “Pour une police plus efficace et plus professionnelle,” Le Nouvelliste, June 29, 2012, http://www.lenouvelliste.com/article4.php ?newsid=106630. 69. Athena Kolbe and Robert Muggah, “Securing the State: Haiti Before and After the Earthquake,” in Eric G. Berman et al., eds., Small Arms Survey 2011: States of Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 242–243, http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/A-Yearbook /2011/en/Small-Arms-Survey-2011-Chapter-08-EN.pdf. 70. Miami Herald, “Disband Haiti’s Rogue Army: Haiti’s Government and Its Supporters Must Act Quickly to End Threat,” April 4, 2012, http:// www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/21/2759921/disband-haitis-rogue -army.html; New York Times, “Haiti: Rogue Force Refuses to Disband,” April 25, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/world/americas/haiti -rogue-force-refuses-to-disband.html?_r=1.

6 Corruptions of Power

SINCE THE EMERGENCE OF ROGUE PARAMILITARY GROUPS

seeking to fill the shoes of a new army, many Haitians have dreaded a return to the authoritarian past under the dictatorships of François and Jean-Claude Duvalier. Yet during his presidential campaign, Martelly staked his success on a comprehensive, if fuzzy, renegotiation of Haiti’s dependence on foreign powers and international financial institutions. He vociferously supported the call for the country’s food security and sovereignty. He was outraged by the incapacity of both the Haitian state and the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission to move displaced people from their faded tents to permanent housing. He questioned the supremacy of the NGOs as the prime agents of Haiti’s development and reconstruction. And he supported free education as a right for all children. These political predispositions are difficult to criticize. They embody the stuff of a progressive agenda of change and represent an aspiration to extricate Haiti from the outer periphery. Does President Martelly in fact have the skills and political will to mobilize his supporters and bend the internal and external structures of power to carry this agenda forward? Or will his government instead take on Martelly’s former cavalier persona and sink the country into a nightmare while chanting his popular song, “I Don’t Care”?

Bribes and Banditry Unfortunately, the latter alternative seems more likely given not only what I have argued so far in this book, but also because of persistent 163

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rumors of governmental corruption. The revelations of the wellknown Dominican investigative journalist, Nuria Piera, that President Martelly himself has received over $2 million in bribes since assuming office have damaged the image of honesty that Martelly the candidate sought to portray.1 Piera claims that the president accepted this money from Felix Bautista, a powerful senator in the Dominican Republic, whose companies were in return awarded contracts for the reconstruction of Haiti. While Martelly has denied these allegations, he has not refuted the evidence presented by Piera. The atmosphere of political and moral decay generated by the scandal was recently compounded by allegations that the president’s family has had illicit access to government resources.2 According to Haitian lawyers Newton Saint-Juste and André Michel, Sophia Martelly and Olivier Martelly, the wife and son of the president, have embezzled significant amounts of money through their respective control of two statefunded organizations: the Aba grangou (Down with Hunger) program and the Commission to Support the Coordination of Infrastructures for Sports and the Mentoring of Haitian Youth (CACISAJH).3 While the Martellys deny any impropriety, Saint-Juste and Michel are pursuing legal avenues, in both Haiti and the United States, to bring the first family to justice.4 Whatever may be the outcome of these particular cases, many indicators suggest that corruption seems to envelop the government. Consider the remarks of Joseph Lambert,5 a powerful former senator with a remarkable capacity to remain influential with successive regimes over many years. Appointed special adviser to the president, after initially opposing Martelly’s administration, Lambert went on the airwaves of Radio Vision 2000 to tell tales of bribery among the highest officers of the land. He accused Levaillant Louis Jeune, president of the Chamber of Deputies, of receiving an armored car and $15,000 in cash from Martelly in exchange for supporting the appointment of three members of the Permanent Electoral Council. Jeune countered by claiming that, while he had received $10,000 from Martelly, it was not a bribe but state assistance for organizing an annual fair in his district. Moreover, Martelly used an additional $5,000 to pay his son’s orchestra to perform at the fair.6 That officeholders at the highest levels have no compunction about incriminating each other over the airwaves is a clear indication of the degree to which a sense of civic virtue is lacking and the extent to which sleaze has become an accepted method of governance.7

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The infamous Brandt affair indicates that the corrupt quest for easy money has penetrated the highest echelons of the bourgeoisie, which can in turn enlist high-ranking police officers or gangs of the urban lumpen proletariat to do its dirty work. 8 The affair, masterminded by Clifford Brandt, a member of one of the wealthiest families of Haiti, entailed the abduction and kidnapping of two young members of the Haitian elite in October 2012, Nicolas Moscoso and Coralie Moscoso, who were eventually rescued unharmed. Banditry has become a means of acquiring capital not only to escape poverty and build new fortunes, but also to sustain established wealth. It betrays a decaying society in which the absence of productive investments, moral norms, and social solidarity invites the development of criminal networks joining atomized members of every class.9 The Brandt affair is actually the mere tip of the iceberg of a wider and more insidious international web of narco-trafficking and money laundering. The power of this criminal network is such that President Martelly has acknowledged that it endangers his own regime and that he is incapable of curbing its expansion without external assistance. As he put it in a speech to the European Parliament, “This is the first time in Haiti that we dismantle a criminal network of this magnitude. I tell you bluntly: that network is stronger than the state itself. Before my trip to Europe I thus had to make a formal request to the United States of America and France for assistance. I did so because if this network decides to overthrow the government, it can do it in a minute.”10 This sobering statement makes clear that the decline in criminal activities brought about by the massive destruction of the earthquake has now ended. In fact, while Haiti ceased to serve as a significant drug transit site in the immediate aftermath of Goudougoudou, the country is rapidly regaining this dubious status. As a US Senate report points out, “Haiti is extremely susceptible to drug trafficking in the near future. . . . An increase in clandestine drug flights and maritime drug movements is likely in the coming years. While the United States and the international community must continue to support Haitian redevelopment, U.S. investments in Haiti’s infrastructure should be coupled with strong support of Haitian counternarcotics efforts.”11 Haiti is part of the central corridor route through which cocaine passes from South America to the United States. Inevitably, it has also become a place for money laundering; while there are no reli-

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able estimates, recent criminal cases indicate that the volume is substantial. For instance, according to the US State Department, In the spring of 2011, concerns were raised on the effectiveness of law enforcement and customs in the wake of a U.S.-Panamanian law enforcement operation which traced over $100 million in cash arriving annually from Haiti to Panama via scheduled commercial airline flights. Neither the Haitian banking sector nor customs officials at Port-au-Prince’s international airport were aware of these transfers that averaged $25,000 per passenger and over $1 million per flight.12

The magnitude of this single Panamanian operation seems to indicate that money laundering is a major contributor to the growth of Haiti’s easy money economy. In fact, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that money laundering represents a substantial percentage of the GDP of the region: The Caribbean . . . appears to be affected by laundering attempts by traffickers in North America (US$3.3 bn), South America (US$2.5 bn) and, to a lesser extent, by traffickers from West and Central Europe (US$0.2 bn). Countries in the Caribbean would thus be the most important destination for the laundering of cocaine-related trafficking income with annual net inflows of around US$6 billion, equivalent to some 2.3% of GDP.13

Haitians would certainly not be surprised to learn that the business of narco-trafficking has created fortunes for a small minority of their compatriots. The sudden erection of enormous luxurious mansions overlooking Port-au-Prince has changed the topography of the hills of Kensckoff and Laboule so dramatically that the only logical explanation for this ostentatious display of new wealth is the growing drug economy. While corruption, banditry, and the narcotics trade have enriched a few, the general population has seen little improvement in its standard of living in the three years since the earthquake.

Popular Disillusionment The promises of both the government and its foreign supporters to transform Haiti’s development paradigm have not been fulfilled. In fact, according to the International Federation for Human Rights, “It is

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clear that alarming threats face the human security of the population, more than 80% of whom live below the poverty threshold. These threats constitute the major problem in Haiti today, an indication that the policies applied by the Haitian authorities and international organizations that intervened massively in Haiti have so far largely failed.”14 And the International Federation for Human Rights adds that the “causes of this failure . . . are attributable to those in power in Haiti for not meeting the needs of the majority of the population, but also to various international actors, both public and private, who have imposed their ‘solutions’ in a confused and incoherent manner without concerting with those mainly concerned by their decisions.”15 Most Haitians have been excluded from the process of planning their own future. Conceived and imposed from abroad, with little true concern for those who will suffer their consequences, the policies of reconstruction have little hope of succeeding. Not surprisingly, the relative honeymoon that President Martelly enjoyed in the immediate aftermath of his election is now over; he has yet to establish an effective government, ensure political stability, and put viable structures in place for rebuilding the country.16 In fact, Haitians are in times of great uncertainty, where hope and optimism coexist alongside cynicism and pessimism. Whether Martelly can invigorate the former and vanquish the latter, remains an open question. But he has a short window of opportunity in which to do so, as Haitians have become impatient with the slow pace of reconstruction and the harsh vicissitudes of daily life. The country is entering a new era of discontent. In the latter half of 2012, large protests in Port-au-Prince, Cap Haitien, Gonaives, and Les Cayes indicate an increasing divide between rulers and ruled.17 Poor people are tired of unfulfilled promises and can no longer put up with la vie chère (high cost of living). In fact, “since August [2012] the price of a 25-kilogram sack of rice has risen from 900 to 1,150 gourdes ($21.35 to $27.28); a sack of flour went from 1,100 to 1,300 gourdes ($26.10 to $30.84); and a gallon of cooking oil rose from 300 to 450 gourdes ($7.12 to $8.07).” 18 Popular sectors and some civil society organizations are beginning to voice their complete disenchantment with President Martelly and his administration. In the streets they sing “Bann mechan, Yon aransò ap vann 50 G; Vle pa vle, fòk l-ale” (You are a cruel band, fish is selling for 50 gourdes; whether Martelly likes it or not, he has to go).19 It is not just the moun andeyo who are expressing their exasper-

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ation with Martelly’s regime; some influential members of the moneyed class are warning the government that they are running out of patience with its policies, authoritarian bent, and apparent corruption.20 In fact, in its demagogic attempts to compel the dominant economic families to pay their taxes and prohibit those that had allegedly failed to comply from leaving the country, the Martelly administration may have alienated some of its best allies in the business community.21 Led by Charles-Henri Baker and André Michel Apaid, the dominant families expressed their exasperation with Martelly’s rule, warning him that they would oppose the climate of fear he is creating and challenge whatever dictatorial temptations he may entertain. In an open letter to the president, an angry Apaid family member condemned Martelly and his government for trying to humiliate him by falsely accusing him of not paying his taxes22 and by preventing him from traveling abroad: Mr. President, when I sense such fear overwhelming my colleagues, that they are no longer at ease to play their role, when fear and flattery are becoming so pervasive in other sectors, then I believe that everything will go wrong and that we will be moving backward to the detriment of the country and our brothers and sisters. By following this path you will not get the level of investment required to change the lives of the Haitian people, especially if fear is “institutionalized.”23

While the different factions of the dominant class are not unanimous in their condemnation of the Martelly regime, it is clear that they are no longer convinced that it represents their best interests. In the unprincipled world of Haitian politics where alliances are ever shifting, Martelly runs the danger of uniting old enemies against his rule. In fact, the future may portend of an opportunistic convergence of interests between Lavalas and key elements of the ruling class; forces that fought violently against each other in the 1990s and 2000s, but which may temporarily unite against a new common enemy. After all, Haiti is the place where, as Gary Victor puts it, history meets “at the angle of parallel roads.”24

Haiti and the Outer Periphery Haiti is not alone in its predicament; it shares the fate of those living in the outer periphery of a hierarchic, cruel, and exploitative world sys-

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tem. Indeed, my grim conclusion in this study is that the imposition of the most extreme form of neoliberalism on already poor and dependent societies has created an outer periphery, a zone of catastrophe and suffering. Domestic political structures and historical legacies play a decisive role in the making of the outer periphery, but mostly insofar as they accede to and facilitate imperial interventions and interferences. These interventions take many forms; they range from military occupation to humanitarian deployment, from regime change to forced elections, and from duty to protect to nation building. They unleash a machinery of occupation that emasculates the local state, empowers international NGOs, and, in the end, creates de facto trusteeships placed under the tutelage of the international community. In this book, I have concentrated on a single paradigmatic outer peripheral country—Haiti. Since the fall of the Jean-Claude Duvalier dictatorship in 1986, this island nation has been occupied twice by US forces that quickly gave way to UN peacekeepers. These occupations consolidated neoliberal policies, aggravated the weakening of state institutions, reinforced the NGOs’ takeover, and undermined local production. Ultimately, these occupations have relegated Haiti to the outer periphery of the world capitalist economy as an exportoriented enclave of ultracheap labor. With the complicity of its rulers, the country has been transformed into a hapless beggar, dependent on the international community. With little control over their economy and territory, Haiti’s politicians are compelled to rely on foreign countries for their continued hold on office. In the post-Duvalier era, rulers of such different political persuasions as Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Raoul Cédras, Gérard Latortue, René Préval, and Martelly rose to, remained in, and fell from positions of power depending on their respective relations with France, Canada, and the United States. There is little doubt, for instance, that Martelly became president because of the massive interference of the international community, especially the United States, in organizing and funding the 2010–2011 elections, to the extent of ultimately choosing the victor. In October 2012, Martelly acknowledged that his presidency was in essence “coup proof” precisely because he is the man of the international community. In an interview on the French cable television station, France 24, Martelly declared, Today, there is this peace-keeping unit maintaining order, this force of the United Nations, the international community that watches

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over Haiti and has already recognized our commitment, our desire to make this fight against corruption, and that supports the democracy we are implanting in Haiti. . . . Even if there were a coup d’etat against my government, I think it would not be tolerated. Thus, from this perspective, the opposition is discouraged.25

While the presence of MINUSTAH may well protect Martelly from being overthrown, it will not ease the crisis of governance that has besieged Haiti’s unending transition to democracy. Haitians perceive the UN troops as an unwelcome occupation force that has caused a deadly cholera epidemic, perpetrated sexual abuse, and failed to create the security that it promised. MINUSTAH is thus contributing to the growing popular discontent with the status quo. This discontent is stoked by a sense that reconstruction is nothing but a long trail of unfulfilled promises; that the political system is paralyzed in futile opportunistic battles; and that the cost of living, which has spiked with the massive influx of foreign NGO staff and humanitarian aid workers, is prohibitively high for the average Haitian. Moreover, food, health, and environmental insecurities threaten the vast majority of citizens. Simply put, the scourge of neoliberal policies is plaguing the country and getting worse. In the aftermath of the earthquake, the international community pledged to “build better”26 by introducing a paradigm shift in Haiti’s developmental planning. The reality is that neither building better nor paradigm shifting has occurred; what has taken place is a mere repackaging and renaming of the same old neoliberal policies favoring enclave-exporting development based on ultracheap labor. Persisting along this road will lead to more urban squalor and expanded slums as peasants exit a neglected rural sector to join the growing lumpen proletariat of jobless and hungry city dwellers.27 Until Haitian rulers defy the neoliberal orthodoxies of the IFIs and the international community, the country will continue its decline into a deformed and nightmarish simulacrum of modernity.

The Need for—and Resistance to— Agricultural Reform The first and critical step in forging a different model entails adopting a strategy that privileges achieving food security through domestic production for the local market. As Steven Stoll points out,

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Haiti’s peasants are the only people in the nation’s history who have ever produced for domestic consumption. Progress for Haitians means invigorating the countryside under their ownership, their cultivation, their control; it means helping the government help its smallholders. This is the low-impact, antidevelopment solution for Haiti’s future: a program of land reform that would give the provision grounds back to households, allowing them first to sustain themselves and then to create surpluses. The elite now own large, unproductive estates throughout the countryside. The challenge of development must be to make that land socially as well as economically productive. As for the food supply, imports will be necessary, but exports will follow when Haitians begin to meet their own critical needs.28

Clearly, such a development model would not serve the interests of the ruling urban comprador coalition that benefits from the maintenance of the current import-export economy. The urban comprador class, which serves as subordinate petty traders of the major core capitalist firms, is thus likely to oppose any fundamental shift of resource expenditures from the industrial sector to the rural areas. It is this class that would suffer the material consequences of the agrarian reform required to redistribute land and empower smallholder production. Small-scale farmers are critical to generate domestic food security. As the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) explains, Historically, smallholders have proved to be key players in meeting food demand. In Asia during the Green Revolution, smallholder farmers adopted new technical innovations, increased productivity, and produced enough food to lower the real prices of staple foods for consumers. The demand for labour in rural areas increased, generating jobs for the rural poor and increasing wages for unskilled workers. This combination of factors helped to improve food security for all. Many of the development success stories of the past 20–40 years were based on smallholder production. . . . During this time, smallholders were also typically more efficient than largescale farmers.29

It is true that, in the short term, smallholder production may not lead to high levels of economic growth, but it would diminish poverty and inequalities by providing jobs and food security to the rural areas themselves. Again, it is worth quoting at length the FAO’s report: Overall, the role of agricultural growth in reducing poverty is likely to be greater than its role in driving economic growth. This is likely

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to be the case because the share of the labour force that works in the agriculture sector is much larger than the share of economic output that comes from agriculture. For the least-developed countries, the share of the total economically active population in agriculture was 66 percent in 2009, more than double the share of agriculture in GDP. The implication is that the people who work in agriculture tend to have lower incomes, which is consistent with the fact that poverty is concentrated in rural areas. Because so many of the poor work in agriculture, agricultural growth is more likely to involve and benefit the poor than is non-agricultural growth.30

In short, a program of poverty alleviation that equalizes life chances is not unthinkable, but the existing power alignments—both local and international—conspire against its implementation. The international community has always identified with Haiti’s ruling classes and used the machinery of occupation to protect their shared interests and choke any popular uprisings. The international community has elaborated policies that have systematically undermined food production and encouraged the creation of one of the most open economies in the world. In so doing, the agricultural sector has been consistently neglected: “Between 1995 and 2006, for example, only 7 percent of donor allocations went toward agriculture. In 2007, this dropped to 2 percent, representing only $12 million out of $624 million of donor support.”31 Because of its comprador nature and urban bias, Haiti’s ruling class has hardly opposed the policies of the international community, which have destroyed domestic agriculture and privatized public enterprises. The elite has preferred to accumulate wealth via subcontracting assembly firms situated in export processing zones and the easy money of a gangsterized economy. The bourgeoisie has no national project apart from accepting dependence on outside forces for its own political survival and material well-being. Therefore, little has changed since the earthquake: the ruling class and the international community have chosen to continue on the old economic trajectory that led to the current impasse. Haiti’s current conjuncture, which “comprises the most motley mixture of crying contradictions,” resembles that of mid-nineteenth-century France as described by Karl Marx: an executive power that finds its strength in its very weakness and its respectability in the contempt that it calls forth; passions without

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truth, truths without passion; heroes without heroic deeds, history without events; development, whose sole driving force seems to be the calendar, wearying with constant repetition of the same tensions and relaxations; antagonisms that periodically seem to work themselves up to a climax only to lose their sharpness and fall away without being able to resolve themselves.32

Without a dramatically different development strategy, Haiti’s future will look like its immediate past. Political instability and popular protests will continue in the face of growing inequalities and hunger while imperial intrusions will keep Haiti in the outer periphery with a modicum of internal order.

Suffering from a Permanent Emergency Syndrome Sadly, a seemingly unending series of major natural disasters has overwhelmed Haiti and eviscerated state capacity. Recurring recovery efforts have devoured scarce resources and plunged the country into deeper forms of dependence. They have also exacerbated the plight of rural areas; for instance, Hurricane Sandy, which devastated southern areas of the island in October 2012, destroyed an estimated 70 percent of Haiti’s annual harvest.33 Such levels of destruction are bound to aggravate food insecurity and fuel popular dissatisfaction. Martelly has sought to ease this dissatisfaction, boost national morale, and hide continued policy failures by staging numerous carnivals.34 This bacchanal strategy has allowed the president to redeploy his persona of an entertainer and rekindle some of his popularity at home and abroad. But this tactic also suggests that Haiti’s deep and persistent systemic crisis “created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part.”35 How else can we explain the throng of international diplomats and celebrities heaping praises on Haiti for its accomplishments since the earthquake? How else can we comprehend the fashion designer turned philanthropist, Donna Karan, celebrating “the remarkable progress of President Martelly and his team,” and naïvely exclaiming, “Hope is all over Haiti. Hope is Haiti.” 36 In fact, three years after the earthquake, the country is entering a season of discontent. Popular anger against public corruption, general insecurity, and policies enacted by the government under the tutelage of the interna-

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tional community is again resurfacing. Protesting students are now yelling, “Yo konseye, yo kidnapè, yo kriminèl, nan palè nasyonal yo ye! Yo dilè dwòg, nan palè yo ye!” (The advisers, the kidnappers, they are in the national palace itself! The drug traffickers, they are in the National Palace!).37

A Possible—but Already Tarnished—Silver Lining The recent discovery of gold and silver in exploratory drillings in the north of Haiti has given hope to some that mining may offer a way out of Haiti’s downward spiral. With an estimated $20 billion worth of gold, copper, and silver in its subsoil, the country could indeed use this bonanza to extricate itself from its most pressing social problems. However, the process whereby the government has granted access to, and potential ownership of, mineral-rich areas to US and Canadian firms bodes poorly for the future. Haiti Grassroots Watch has found that the country’s gold rush has been marked by neither transparency nor governmental accountability: “So far, permits have been issued behind closed doors, deals have been sealed secretly, and the test drilling has been carried out with no public scrutiny and little government oversight, by the state mining agency’s own admission. . . . In addition, Haiti has one of the lowest royalty rates in the hemisphere, collecting only 2.5 percent of the value of each ounce of gold extracted.”38 Moreover, the environmental record of the North American mining corporations involved in this gold rush—Eurasian Minerals, Newmont, Majescor, and VCS Mining—inspires serious doubts, especially in a country like Haiti where the government is completely incapable of regulating and enforcing strict codes of conduct. Environmental damage is not the only concern generated by mineral drilling and digging; there is also a strong likelihood that peasants will be evicted from their land without any compensation. Such unjust dispossession can compound Haiti’s agricultural crisis by utilizing arable land for mining activities. In fact, “about 15 percent of Haiti’s territory is under license to North American mining firms and its partners” already.39 Once again, neither the international community nor the government has shown much interest in developing gold rush policies that would promote equity and transparency, much less alleviate poverty and food insecurity. There is thus no guarantee that

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a resource bonanza would help resolve Haiti’s acute social and economic problems. In fact, the experience of other dependent nations indicates that gold, silver, copper, and oil prevented neither decay nor full descent into the outer periphery.40 In this book, I have proposed the concept of the outer periphery to help understand Haiti’s plight. Yet the complex and contradictory zone of the outer periphery, and the integral marginality it entails, is not restricted to the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. The outer periphery comprises more than a dozen other nations in which the evisceration of state capacity is pervasive, zero-sum politics dominant, life chances deeply unequal, and sovereignty virtually nonexistent.41 Unlike the conventional wisdom, the outer peripheral framework that I have developed sees these characteristics as more externally induced than internally determined. This is not say that local structures, history, and culture are unimportant but rather that, since the ascendancy of neoliberalism and globalization, they have been overshadowed by the power of foreign military, economic, and humanitarian interventions. The concept of the failed state that informs much of the current political science literature is based on twelve key indicators that primarily measure internal conditions. Moreover, the reigning analytical perspective posits that those internal conditions are the very cause provoking such foreign interventions. Thus, according to the failed state paradigm, when societies are acutely dependent on foreign assistance and reliant on external peacekeeping operations, it is because of their own domestic incapacity to provide material well-being and security for their citizens.42 That these societies’ domestic incapacity might instead be the product of pervasive interferences and manipulations of their political economy by neoimperial powers is never considered. In the name of a fictional cosmopolitanism, conventional wisdom sings the praises of humanitarian militarism, neoliberal rationality, and nongovernmental governance. The dominant paradigm remains silent, however, on the realities of imperialism and its collusions with small and reactionary local elites. It is precisely this silence that the outer peripheral framework seeks to break. By living in the outer periphery in times of catastrophe, Haitians are dwelling in a state of complete insecurity.43 They are exposed to visible and invisible forms of violence, to policies over which they have no control, to imported diseases, to foreign occupation, and to the humiliations of governmental beggarhood. Jacques Roumain’s

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fictional description of Haitian peasants still haunts us more than a half century later: “They were fed up with poverty. They were worn out. The most reasonable among them were losing their senses. The strongest were wavering. As for the weak, they had given up. ‘What’s the use?’ they said. One could see them stretched out, sad and silent, on pallets before their huts, thinking about their hard luck, stripped of all their will power.”44 Haitians, however, are not merely resilient in the face of hardship, or resigned in the face of oppression. At its best, the Haitian character embodies a recurring fight for freedom, as evidenced in the world’s only successful black revolution against slavery and the successive revolts against foreign occupations and dictatorships. If Haitians are to alter the present trajectory of their country and build a better tomorrow, they must rekindle this spirit of resistance and defiance. Haiti’s so-called international partners will not change course on behalf of the island nation because their interests, as the outer peripheral model makes clear, are served too well by existing neoliberal policies. In 1804, at a time of unchallenged white supremacy, Haitians did the “unthinkable.”45 Against all odds, they freed themselves from slavery and created the first independent black republic. Perhaps once more, Haitians will muster the courage and energy to bend seemingly unshakable global structures and begin their long march away from the outer periphery. Somehow, they must reclaim their capacity to make their own history on their own terms.

Notes 1. Acento.com, “Nuria revela que Félix Bautista y amigos regalaron millones de dólares a Martelly,” April 2, 2012, www.acento.com.do/index .php/news/14740/56/Nuria-revela-que-Felix-Ba (April 2, 2012). See also acento.com, “Lea aquí los documentos presentados por Nuria Piera sobre Félix Bautista,” April 8, 2012, www.acento.com.do/index.php/news/14762 /56/Lea-aqui-los-documentos-presentados-por-Nuria-Piera-sobre-Felix -Bautista.html (April 8, 2012). See also Le Nouvelliste, “Martelly et Manigat indexés dans une affaire de corruption,” April 2, 2012, http://www .lenouvelliste.com/article.php?PubID=&ArticleID=103912 (April 2, 2012); Kim Ives, “Spectacular Corruption Charges Rock Martelly Regime,” Haiti Liberté, April 4–10, 2012, http://www.haiti-liberte.com/archives/volume5-38 /Spectacular%20Corruption.asp. 2. Isabelle L. Papillon, “La famille Martelly nage dans la corruption,” Haiti Liberté, September 5–11, 2012, http://www.haiti-liberte.com/archives /volume6-8/La%20famille.asp.

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3. Yves Pierre-Louis, “The National Palace, a Den of Corruption,” Haiti Liberté, September 12–18, 2012, http://haiti-liberte.com/archives/volume6-9 /The%20National%20Palace.asp; Radio Kiskeya, “Présumé scandale de corruption dans la famille présidentielle: Olivier Martelly dément,” September 3, 2012, http://www.radiokiskeya.com/spip.php?article9108. 4. Tout Haiti, “Des poursuites pour blanchiments des avoirs seront initiées contre la famille présidentielle lors du voyage aux États-Unis des avocats Newton Saint Juste et André Michel,” October 28, 2012, http://touthaiti .com/touthaiti-actualites/1224-des-poursuites-pour-blanchiments-des-avoirs -seront-initiees-contre-la-famille-presidentielle-lors-du-voyage-aux-etats -unis-des-avocats-newton-saint-juste-et-andre-michel; Radio Kiskeya, “Les avocats Newton St-Juste et André Michel aux Etats-Unis pour poursuivre leur campagne contre la corruption au niveau de la famille Martelly,” October 27, 2012, http://radiokiskeya.com/spip.php?article9240. 5. Jean Pharès Jérôme, “Lambert, des déboires aux succès,” Le Nouvelliste, December 9, 2011, http://www.lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid= 100003. 6. The exchange can be heard at SoundCloud.com, “Attaques de Levaillant Louis Jeune et réponse de Joseph Lambert,” http://soundcloud.com/haiti -politique/attaques- -levaillant- de louis; Jean Pharès Jérôme, “Spectacle inédit de deux hommes d’état,” Le Nouvelliste, September 5, 2012, http://lenouvel liste.com/article4.php?newsid=108758; Radio Kiskeya, “Deux dirigeants politiques se donnent en spectacle à la radio,” September 6, 2012, http://www .radiokiskeya.com/spip.php?article9115; Lionel Edouard, “Lambert vs Levaillant: Le duel des frères ennemis,” Le Matin, September 7, 2012, http://www .lematinhaiti.com/contenu.php?idtexte=32432&idtypetexte=1. 7. The weekly newspaper Haïti-Observateur also accused Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe of corruption in the transactions involving the selling of the phone company Haitel; in turn, Lamothe sued the newspaper for defamation. See Léo Joseph, “La téléco victime de la corruption internationale: La global voice et alliés dans l’echec de la compagnie d’etat,” Tout Haiti, October 12, 2012, http://touthaiti.com/economie/1109-haiti-observateur -enquete-laurent-lamothe-et-global-voice-artisans-de-la-decheance-de-la -teleco-ancienne-compagnie-nationale-de-telecommunication; Léo Joseph, “Laurent Lamothe dans le collimateur de la justice Américaine pour evasion fiscale et blanchiment d’argent,” Tout Haiti, September 23, 2012, http://touthaiti.com/touthaiti-actualites/945-haiti-observateur-laurent -lamothe-dans-le-collimateur-de-la-justice-americaine-pour-evasion-fiscale -et-blanchiment-d-argent; Léo Joseph, “Le doute s’installe entre le president et son premier ministre,” Tout Haiti, n.d., http://touthaiti.com/economie/879 -haiti-observateur-affaire-haitel-laurent-lamothe-le-doute-s-installe-entre-le -president-et-son-premier-ministre; Léo Joseph, “L’affaire etat Haitien contre Franck Ciné se Corse,” Tout Haiti, n.d., http://touthaiti.com/economie /660-telecommunication-scandale-vente-de-la-haiti-la-part-du-lion-a -laurent-lamothe; Jennifer Kay, “Haiti’s Lamothe Sues US Newspaper for Defamation,” Associated Press, September 12, 2012, http://bigstory.ap.org /article/haitis-lamothe-sues-us-newspaper-defamation-0. 8. Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH), “Affaire

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Brandt: Le RNDDH exige l’aboutissement de l’enquête ouverte et le jugement de tous les membres du gang,” November 13, 2012, http://rnddh.org /content/uploads/2012/11/Affaire_Brandt-nov2012.pdf; Lyonel Trouillot, “L’affaire Brandt ou le prix symbolique du fonctionnement social et économique de la bourgeoisie,” Radio Kiskeya, November 8, 2012, http:// www.radiokiskeya.com/spip.php?article9265. 9. Trouillot, “L’Affaire Brandt ou le prix symbolique.” 10. Quotation in text translated by the author from the original French: “C’est la première fois en Haïti qu’on démantèle un réseau de bandits de cette envergure. Je vous le dis carrément: ce réseau est plus fort que l’État lui-même. Au point que j’ai dû, avant mon voyage ici en Europe, faire une demande formelle aux États-Unis d’Amérique et à la France, afin de trouver une assistance. Car ce réseau, s’il décide de renverser le gouvernement, il peut le faire en une minute” (Eddy Jackson Alexis, “Insécurité: L’equipe Martelly presque dos au mur,” Tout Haiti, November 25, 2012, http://www .touthaiti.com/touthaiti-actualites/1406-insecurite-l-equipe-martelly -presque-dos-au-mur). 11. US Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, “Preventing a Security Crisis in the Caribbean,” 112th Congress, 2nd session, September 2012, pp. 5, 20. 12. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, US Department of State, 2012 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (Washington, DC: US Department of State, March 7, 2012), http://www .state.gov/j/inl/rls/nrcrpt/2012/vol2/184116.htm. 13. UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Estimating Illicit Financial Flows Resulting from Drug Trafficking and Other Transnational Organized Crimes, Research Report (Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, October 2011), p. 20. 14. International Federation for Human Rights, Haiti: Human Security in Danger (Paris: International Federation for Human Rights, 2012), p. 4. 15. Ibid. 16. Since becoming prime minister in May 2012, Lamothe has changed his government twice and has been unable to stop constant rumors of further changes in his cabinet. Moreover, Lamothe had to confront the resignation of Marie Carmelle Jean-Marie, minister of economy and finance. Jean-Marie left her position by claiming that she no longer enjoyed the “solidarity” of her fellow ministers in her struggle to stop corruption and cut public spending. In the same vein, Regine Godefroy, communications minister, quit her job because she claimed that she was unable “to perform my duty with rigor, honor and integrity.” See Jacqueline Charles, “More Changes in Haiti’s Young, Inexperienced Government,” Miami Herald, April 12, 2013, http:// www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/12/3339976/more-changes-in-haitis-younginexperienced.html#storylink=cpy. Another cabinet member, Bernice Fidélia, minister for Haitians living abroad, was forced to resign amid accusations that she was a US citizen and, thus, illegally holding her position. Finally, there were growing rumors of a major rift between President Martelly and Prime Minister Lamothe himself. See Associated Press, “Haiti Official

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Quits Amid Reports She’s American,” Miami Herald, June 11, 2013, http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/11/3445158/haiti-official-quits-amid -charges.html#storylink=cpy; Pierre-Raymond Dumas, “Cette transition qui n’en finit pas: Un quatrième remaniement, pour quoi faire?” Le Nouvelliste, June 7, 2013, http://www.lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid=117994; Lemoine Bonneau, “Y a -t-il un malaise entre le président et son premier ministre?” Le Nouvelliste, June 17, 2013, http://www.lenouvelliste.com /article4.php?newsid=118045. 17. BBC, “Haitians Protest Against President Martelly,” October 14, 2012, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-19943222; Radio Kiskeya, “Mobilisation anti-Martelly: Le nord s’apprête à récidiver,” September 26, 2012, http://radiokiskeya.com/spip.php?article9175; Radio Kiskeya, “Des milliers de partisans d’Aristide manifestent contre Martelly,” February 29, 2012, http://radiokiskeya.com/spip.php?article8589; Kevin Edmonds, “Welcome Back? Martelly Returns to Widespread Protests” (New York: North American Congress on Latin America, October 4, 2012), https:// nacla.org/blog/2012/10/4/welcome-back-martelly-returns-widespreadprotests. 18. Edmonds, “Welcome Back?” 19. Leslie Péan, “Les manifestations contre la politique du ridicule et de la derision,” Le Nouvelliste, October 19, 2012, http://lenouvelliste.com /article4.php?newsid=110092. 20. Agence France-Presse, “Vie chère, corruption, le président Haïtien Martelly contesté dans la rue,” Le Parisien, October 18, 2012, http://www .leparisien.fr/flash-actualite-monde/vie-chere-corruption-le-president -haitien-martelly-conteste-dans-la-rue-18-10-2012-2244919.php. 21. Danio Darius, “Entrepreneurs humiliés: Charles-Henri Baker n’est pas pour qu’on passe l’éponge,” Le Nouvelliste, September 26, 2012, http://lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid=109412; Roberson Alphonse, “Interdictions de départ effectives, les protestations pleuvent,” Le Nouvelliste, September 3, 2012, http://lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid =108689. 22. Ultimately, the government proved its utter incompetence when it had to admit that its own probusiness policies exempted Apaid from paying taxes for fifteen years. The attacks on the private sector were nothing but the demagogic demonstrations of a regime whose existence rested on the goodwill and financing of that very sector. See Valéry Daudier and Carl-Henry Cadet, “La DGI s’est ‘trompée’ sur le cas d’André Apaid,” Le Nouvelliste, September 9, 2012, http://lenouvelliste.com/article4.php?newsid=108817. 23. Quotation in text translated by the author from the original French: Monsieur le Président, que quand je sens la peur s’installer chez mes confrères, qu’ils ne sont pas mis à l’aise pour jouer leur rôle, que la peur et la flatterie commencent à s’installer de manière rampante dans les autres secteurs, je suis convaincu que tout va malheureusement mal se passer et que nous allons encore reculer pour le malheur du pays et de nos frères et sœurs. Sur ce chemin, vous n’amènerez pas le niveau d’investissement nécessaire à changer les conditions de vie du peuple haïtien surtout si la

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peur s’ “institutionnalise.” (André Michel Apaid, “Apaid écrit au président Martelly,” Le Nouvelliste, September 5, 2012, http://lenouvelliste.com /article4.php?newsid=108755)

24. Gary Victor, A l’angle des rues parallèles (Port-au-Prince: Bibliotheque Nationale d’Haiti, 2000). 25. Quotation in text translated by the author from the original French: Aujourd’hui, il y a cette force de maintien de l’ordre qui est là, cette force des Nations Unies, la communauté internationale qui veille sur Haïti et qui a déjà reconnu notre engagement, notre volonté de bien faire ce combat contre la corruption, et qui supporte la démocratie qui s’installe en Haïti. . . . Même s’il y avait un coup [d’État] contre mon gouvernement, je pense que ça ne passerait pas. Donc, il y a, à ce niveau-là, un découragement du côté de l’opposition. (Marc Perelman, “L’entretien: Michel Martelly, président Haïtien,” France 24, October 29, 2012, http://www.france24.com/fr /20121027-2012-lentretien-michel-martelly-president-haiti-seisme-crise -alimentaireeconomique)

See also Djems Olivier, “Haïti-politique: Martelly s’estime à l’abri des coups d’etat, la communauté internationale “veille” sur le pays, dit le président,” AlterPresse, November 1, 2012, http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php? article13624. 26. “Build better” became a slogan of many policymakers and NGOs in their effort to explain how they envisaged the future of a postearthquake Haiti. The slogan meant helping Haitians to learn earthquake- and hurricaneresistant techniques for building new houses and the country’s overall infrastructure. Moreover, it entailed a paradigmatic departure from policies that engendered dependence to programs that would train Haitians to become masters of their own destiny. 27. Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (London: Verso, 2006). 28. Steven Stoll, “Toward a Second Haitian Revolution,” Harper’s Magazine, April 2010, p. 10. 29. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Food Programme (WFP), and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012: Economic Growth Is Necessary but Not Sufficient to Accelerate Reduction of Hunger and Malnutrition (Rome: FAO, 2012), p. 30. 30. Ibid., p. 28. 31. Robert Maguire, Haiti After the Donors’ Conference: A Way Forward, Special Report No. 232 (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, September 2009), p. 5. 32. Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” p. 20, Marxist Internet Archives, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works /1852/18th-brumaire/. 33. Emmanuel Marino Bruno, “Haïti/post-Cyclone Sandy: Des actions en perspective pour la relance de la production agricole,” AlterPresse, October 31, 2012, http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article13621; Robenson Geffrard, “Avec plus de 51 morts, Sandy laisse une Haïti ravagée,” Le Nou-

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velliste, October 29, 2012, http://www.lenouvelliste.com/article4.php ?newsid=110284; Anne-Julie Contenay, “Après Sandy, le pire est à venir à Haïti,” Europe 1, October 31, 2012, http://www.europe1.fr/International /Apres-Sandy-le-pire-est-a-venir-a-Haiti-1294439/; Sipa-AP, “L’ouragan Sandy a détruit 70% des récoltes dans le sud d’Haïti,” Romandie.com, November 1, 2012, http://www.romandie.com/news/n/L039ouragan_Sandy_a_ detruit_70_des_recoltes_dans_le_sud_d039Haiti011120120002.asp. 34. The Independent, “Haiti’s Carnival of Flowers Draws Crowds,” July 30, 2012, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news /haitis-carnival-of-flowers-draws-crowds-7987762.html. 35. Marx, “Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” p. II. 36. Donna Karan, “Haiti: A Story of Resilience, Creativity and Passion,” Huffington Post, January 11, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com /donnakaran/haiti-a-story-of-resilien_b_1200582.html. 37. Thomas Péralte, “Où va aboutir l’affaire Brandt-Phébé?” Haiti Liberté, November 28–December 4, 2012, p. 4. 38. InterPress News Agency, “Haiti’s ‘Gold Rush’ Promises El Dorado— but for Whom?” Haiti Grassroots Watch, June 27, 2012, http://www .ipsnews.net/2012/06/haitis-gold-rush-promises-el-dorado-but-for-whom/. 39. Ibid. 40. The so-called curse of natural resources has affected countries like Nigeria, Zambia, and Democratic Republic of the Congo whose respective populations have seen limited benefits from the exploitation of their mineral-rich societies. See, for instance, Jeffrey D. Sachs and Andrew M. Warner, “Natural Resources and Economic Development: The Curse of Natural Resources,” European Economic Review 45 (2001): 827–838, http://www.earth.columbia.edu/sitefiles/file/about/director/pubs/Euro EconReview2001.pdf. 41. The countries I have in mind are the following: Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, East Timor, South Sudan, Chad, Afghanistan, Yemen, Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Niger, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Mali. Countries like Pakistan, Iraq, and Libya have some of the characteristics of outer peripheral states, but their relative military power situates them in the periphery. 42. Fund for Peace, The Failed States Index 2012 (Washington, DC: Fund for Peace, 2012), http://www.fundforpeace.org/global/library/cfsir1210 -failedstatesindex2012-06p.pdf. 43. Erica Caple James, Democratic Insecurities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). 44. Jacques Roumain, Masters of the Dew, Langston Hughes and Mercer Cook, trans. (Coconut Creek, FL: Caribbean Studies Press, 2012), pp. 92–93. 45. The notion of “unthinkability” was developed by Michel-Rolph Trouillot. See his important book: Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), pp. 70–107.

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Vidal, Gore, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002. Vorbe, Charles, “Earthquake, Humanitarianism, and Intervention in Haiti,” in Mark Schuller and Pablo Morales, eds., Tectonic Shifts. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2012, pp. 59–63. Wallerstein, Immanuel, The Capitalist World-Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979. ———, European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power. New York: The New Press, 2006. ———, World-Systems Analysis. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004. Wasem, Ruth Ellen, “U.S. Immigration Policy on Haitian Migrants,” RS21349. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, May 17, 2011, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RS21349.pdf. Weatherly, Ulysses, “Haiti: An Experiment in Pragmatism,” American Journal of Sociology 32, no. 3 (November 1926): 353–366. Weisbrot, Mark, and Jake Johnston, “Analysis of the OAS Mission’s Draft Report on Haiti’s Election,” Issue Brief, January 2011, http://fr.scribd.com/doc/47037329/Analysis-of-the-OAS -Mission’s-Draft-Final-Report-on-Haiti’s-Election (February 1, 2011). White House, “Readout of Vice President Biden’s Call with President Michel Martelly of Haiti,” Office of the Press Secretary, June 20, 2013, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/20/read out-vice-president-biden-s-call-president-michel-martelly-haiti. ———, “United States Government Haiti Earthquake Disaster Response Update 1/21/10,” January 21, 2010, http://www.white house.gov/the-press-office/united-states-government-haiti-earth quake-disaster-response-update-12110. Wilentz, Amy, “Haiti: Not for Amateurs,” The Nation, February 17, 2011, http://www.thenation.com/article/158091/haiti-not-amateurs#. Wolf, Martin, Why Globalization Works. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Wood, Ellen Meiksins, The Empire of Capital. London: Verso, 2003. Wooding, Bridget, and Richard Moseley-Williams, Needed but Unwanted Haitian Immigrants and Their Descendants in the Dominican Republic. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations, 2004. World Bank, Doing Business 2012, Doing Business in a More Transparent World. October 20, 2011, http://www.doingbusiness.org /rankings.

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INDEX

Aba grangou (Down with Hunger) program, 164 Ackerman, Elise, 136 ACORN. See Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now Adventist Development and Relief Agency Haiti, 106 Afghanistan, 2, 181(n41) Africa, 2, 28, 36, 39, 181(nn 40,41) Agriculture, 102–105; and discovery of mineral deposits, 174; exports, 101, 104; fate of small food producers, 105; and food selfsufficiency, 102, 170–173; marginalization of sector, 7–9, 76, 101–105, 172; recommendations for agrarian reform, 9, 102, 170–173; resistance to reform, 171–173 Allende, Salvador, 51(n88) Anderson, Perry, 37 Angola, 39 Antihaitianismo, 66, 84(n62) Antonini, Blanca, 69 Apaid, André Michel, 168, 179(n22) Apparel industry, 7–9, 73–79, 101; and core-periphery relations, 16; failure to alleviate poverty, 73–74, 102–103; and Martelly’s backers,

115; wages, 73–75. See also Export-assembly manufacturing Aristide, Jean-Bertrand: and Chimères, 151; and Constitution of 1987, 141; coup against, 150; and Dominican Republic, 70–71; and Martelly administration, 147; messianic leadership, 72–73; relations with foreign powers, 169; return to power (1994), 59, 72, 149; rise to power, 57, 80(n14) Armed Forces of Haiti (FAdH), 70–71 Arrighi, Giovanni, 49–50(n69) Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), 78–79 Aucoin, Louis, 141 Baker, Charles-Henri, 168 Balibar, Etienne, 34 Banditry, 6–7, 163–166 Bautista, Felix, 164 Becker, Jo, 42 Bélizaire, Arnel, 135–136 Bélizaire affair, 135–136 Bellegarde-Smith, Patrick, ix Bellerive, Jean-Max, 90, 94 Bhagwati, Jagdish, 22–23

213

214

INDEX

Biden, Joseph, 4 Blowback, 32–34 Bosnia, 36 Brandt, Clifford, 6, 165 Brandt affair (kidnapping ring), 6, 165 Brazil, 148 Brennan, John O., 42 Bribery, 163–166 Buck-Morss, Susan, 45 “Build better” slogan, 170, 180(n26) Bush, George H. W., 61 Butler, Smedley D., 82(n41) CACISAJH. See Commission to Support the Coordination of Infrastructures for Sports and the Mentoring of Haitian Youth Cacos, 63 Cadre de Coordination de l’Aide Externe (CAED), 91–92 Canada, 138, 169, 174 Caperton, William B., 62 Capital, movement of, 23–24, 28, 35 Capitalism, 30–31. See also Globalization; Neoliberalism; World systems analysis Caplan, Richard, 34 Caracol Industrial Park, 78–79, 146 Cédras, Raoul, 61, 69, 150, 162(n63), 169 Celebrity humanitarianism, 111 Célestin, Jude, 92–96 Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), 95 Central African Republic, 181(n41) CEP. See Conseil Electoral Permanent CEPR. See Center for Economic and Policy Research Chad, 181(n41) Chamblain, Louis Jodel, 71 Charles, Carole, ix Charles, Etzer, 119 Chemonics, 110 Chimères, 148–151, 161(n59)

China, 22–23, 51(n93) Cholera, 4, 149, 170 Citizenship, 55–87; in core states, 31–32; and elections, 142; and Haitian diaspora, 142, 145; and Haitian relations with Dominican Republic, 65–71; and moun andeyo, 57–58; and neoliberalism, 71–79; and sovereignty, 58–59; Wallerstein on, 58. See also Immigration Clérié, Michel, 138 Clinton, Bill, 61, 91, 101, 103, 115 Clinton, Hillary, 90, 146 CNDS. See Conseil National de Défense et de Sécurité Cocaine, 165–166 Cocoa, 104 Coffee, 101, 104 Colas, Alejandro, 26–27 College Transitoire du Conseil Electoral Permanent (CTCEP), 146 Collier, Paul, 29–30, 101 Colonialism, 20, 27; national liberation movements, 49–50(n69); and responsibility to protect, 43–44; status of postcolonial states, 49(n69); and “white man’s burden,” 36, 44. See also Imperialism; Military interventions Commission to Support the Coordination of Infrastructures for Sports and the Mentoring of Haitian Youth (CACISAJH), 164 The Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels), 21 Conille, Garry, 120–123, 136–137 Conille, Serge, 123 Conseil Electoral Permanent (CEP), 145–146, 159(n35) Conseil National de Défense et de Sécurité (CNDS), 148 Conseil Supérieur du Pouvoir Judiciaire (CSPJ), 146, 159(n35)

INDEX

Constitution of 1987, 138–146; amendments to, 138, 141–146; Aristide and, 141; difficulties of amending, 140, 157n(20); executive and legislative power under, 141–142, 144; flaws of, 141–144; and language, 145; Martelly and, 138, 141–142, 144–146; potential for constitutional crisis, 146; Préval and, 139–140; and prime ministers, 137 Constitutionalism, 143–144 Cooper, Richard, 36–37 Corail, 98–99 Core states, 112–116; assumptions about remedies for failed states, 29–30; characteristics of, 16; citizenship in, 31–32; and doctrine of state of exception, 42; Europe, Japan, and the United States as core states, 20; immigration policies, 18, 34, 35, 61; and production processes, 16; relations with outer periphery, 27–28; role in maintaining supremacy of their economies, 17–18; ruling class, 17; selfprotective measures and containment strategies, 34–46, 113; and sovereignty, 18, 32, 43; and value of life, 40–41; and WMD, 37–38 Corruption, 163–181; bribes, 163–166; and Duvalier dictatorship, 8, 83(n52), 105; and elections of 2010, 92; and exportation of Haitian laborers to Dominican Republic sugar estates, 64–65; and governance, 55; Lamothe and, 177(n7); and Martelly administration, 121, 164; and Martelly’s choices for prime minister, 121, 138, 139; and NGOs, 100, 107, 109–111; and peripheral states, 17; sale of offices, 121; state corruption and

215

the aid regime, 105–112. See also Criminality Corvée (forced labor), 62–63, 82(n46) Côte d’Ivoire, 181(n41) Coughlin, Dan, 130(n88) Creole, 145 Criminality: banditry, 6–7, 163–166; Brandt affair (kidnapping ring), 6, 165; crime rate, 153; drug trafficking, 121, 165–166; money laundering, 165–166; and peripheral states, 17; and recommendations for police force, 153–155; sexual assaults after earthquake of January 2010, 153–154. See also Corruption CSPJ. See Conseil Supérieur du Pouvoir Judiciaire CTCEP. See College Transitoire du Conseil Electoral Permanent Cuba, 63–64, 114–115 DAP. See Disaster Accountability Project Day, Edner, 123 Debt, 106–107, 128–129(n60) Democracy: and citizenship, 31; and constitutionalism, 143–144; simulacrum of democracy in outer peripheral states, 3, 14, 26. See also Constitution of 1987; Elections Democratic Republic of Congo, 2, 181(nn 40,41) Deshommes, Fritz, 75 Desmangles, Leslie, ix Development projects: agriculture neglected, 7–9, 76, 101–105, 172; “build better” slogan, 170, 180(n26); earthquake relief aid disbursed to non-Haitian actors, 106; failure of postearthquake reconstruction strategies, 7, 89–90, 98; Haitians excluded from planning process, 167; and Martelly, 98–99; negative impact

216

INDEX

of NGO-led development, 99–101, 107–108; popular disillusionment with, 166–168; promotion of apparel industry/export-assembly manufacturing, 7–9, 75–79, 101–103, 170; recommendations for agrarian reform, higher tariffs, and reforestation, 9; state corruption and the aid regime, 105–112 Diaspora: and constitutional amendments, 145; and elections, 142; remittances from, 6, 60 Disaster Accountability Project (DAP), 108–109 Dominican Republic: antihaitianismo, 66, 84(n62); changing relations with Haiti, 65–71; deportation of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent, 65, 83(n53); and earthquake of January 2010, 15, 67–68; exploitation of Haitian migrant workers, 61–65; and ruling class of Haiti, 70–71, 85(n78); socioeconomic conditions, 67–68; US sugar plantations in, 61–64 Douzinas, Costas, 42 Dragon, Gilbert, 71 Droit d’ingérence, 43, 44, 53(n115) Drone strikes, 41–43, 81(n30) Drug trafficking, 121, 165–166 Dubois, Laurent, ix, 63–64 Dupuy, Alex, ix, 77 Duvalier, François, 64–65, 118 Duvalier, Jean-Claude: and Constitution of 1987, 141; and corruption, 83(n52), 105; economic policies, 8, 76, 101; indictment of, 147; and Martelly administration, 123, 147–148; and military power, 150; overthrow of, 57, 80(n14); and refugees, 60 Duvalier, Nicolas, 123

Eakin, Emily, 19 Earthquake of January 2010 (Goudougoudou), vii, 1; and “build better” slogan, 170, 180(n26); and control of Haiti by NGOs and international community, 15; destruction and casualties, 13, 15; and Dominican Republic, 15, 67–68; earthquake relief aid disbursed to non-Haitian actors, 106; and election of 2010, 4; failure of postearthquake reconstruction strategies, 7, 89–90, 98–99; “Goudougoudou” name origin, 46(n1); and “Haiti is open for business” slogan, 77, 89; lack of transparency and accountability of relief organizations, 109–111; and militarization of humanitarianism, 112–116; outpouring of international aid following, 112; political economy of Haiti following, 89–134; and Préval administration, 115 East Timor, 2, 181(n41) Economy of Haiti: and Aristide administration, 72; control by IFIs, 60; debt, 106–107, 128–129(n60); dependence on foreign assistance, 6, 59, 89–90, 98, 107–111, 173; and Dominican Republic, 69–70; and Duvalier dictatorship, 73, 101; earthquake relief aid disbursed to non-Haitian actors, 106; and foreign investment, 89; and “Haiti is open for business” slogan, 77, 89; HELP, 69, 77; HOPE I, II, 69–70; impact of occupations and interventions, 169; mineral deposits, 174–175; recommendations for, 102–105, 170–173; remittances from diaspora, 6, 60; state corruption and the aid regime, 105–112; statistics on inequalities, 13, 56,

INDEX

167. See also Agriculture; Apparel industry; Corruption; Criminality; Development projects; Export-assembly manufacturing; Neoliberalism Ecuador, 148 Edney, Bud, 41 Effer, John, 41 Elections: and Constitution of 1987, 142; and constitutional amendments, 144–145; electoral councils (CEP/CTCEP), 145–146; and elite families, 121–122; and simulacrum of democracy in outer peripheral states, 3. See also Elections of 2010 Elections of 2010, 92–96; and earthquake of January 2010, 4; and interventions of international community, 59, 169; Lavalas banned from, 4, 92, 96; participation of voters, 125(n19); sanctioned by international community in spite of shortcomings, 3–4, 92–95; victory of Michel Martelly, 4, 95–96 Elite class of Haiti: and Aristide, 72; and banditry, 6–7, 165; disillusionment with Martelly administration, 167–168; and Dominican Republic, 70–71, 85(n78); elite families and electoral politics, 121–122; and Haitian military corps, 148; and hierarchical social structure, 55–56; and IHRC, 91; lack of social or national project beyond retaining its position, 122, 172–173; and land ownership, 171; and race, 118–119, 121–122; and taxation, 168, 179(n22); and travel abroad, 168 Elite classes: in core and semiperipheral states, 17; and origins of peripheral and outer peripheral status, 28; and postcolonial states, 49(n69)

217

Empire (Negri), 19 Engels, Friedrich, 21 EPZs. See Export processing zones Eurasian Minerals, 174 Europe, as core of world system, 20 Expert Verification Mission of the Vote Tabulation of the November 28, 2010, Election in the Republic of Haiti, 93–94 Export processing zones (EPZs), 74–79 Export-assembly manufacturing: Caracol Industrial Park, 78–79, 146; and Martelly’s backers, 115; negative consequences of, 75–79; and neglect of agriculture, 101; promotion of, by international community, 7–9, 75–79, 101–103, 170; and rural migrations to urban areas, 76, 101, 170; tax breaks for firms, 76–77; and unions, 74, 78. See also Apparel industry FAdH. See Armed Forces of Haiti Failed state paradigm, 2, 29–30, 59, 175. See also Outer periphery Fanm Tet Ansanm, 108 Fanon, Frantz, 49(n69) FAO. See Food and Agriculture Organization Farmer, Paul, 107, 110 Fass, Allison, 25 Fass, Simon, 64 Feinstein, Lee, 38 Ferguson, James, 28, 39, 40 Fidélia, Bernice, 178(n16) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 171–172 Food production, 7–9; collapse of domestic production, 103; declining food security, 7, 76, 103–104; food self-sufficiency, 102, 170–173; high cost of food, 76, 167; Lundahl on, 8. See also Agriculture France, 138, 148, 169, 172–173 FRAPH. See Front pour

218

INDEX

l’Avancement et le Progrès Haïtien Friedman, Thomas, 24, 45 Front pour l’Avancement et le Progrès Haïtien (FRAPH), 150, 161(n59) Fund for Peace, 29, 59 Garment industry. See Apparel industry; Export-assembly manufacturing Gates, Robert, 114 Giddens, Anthony, 23 Gilot, Rony, 116, 120, 121, 122 Globalization, 18–32, 47(n27); and aggravation of inequalities, 24–26; and assembly industry, 73–74; assumptions about positive effects of, 21–24; and failed state paradigm, 2; Giddens’s definition, 23; and imperialism, 20, 24–32, 45; and indirect rule, 26–27; Martin’s definition, 21–22; and Marx and Engels, 21; and movement of capital, 23–24; and racism, 34–35; and shift to profitmaximizing behavior at the expense of collective welfare, 23–24; and stringent immigration policies of core states, 18; and Washington Consensus, 21; Wolf on, 48(n43) Godefroy, Regine, 178(n16) Gold, 174–175 Goudougoudou, 46(n1). See also Earthquake of January 2010 Gousse, Barnard, 119, 136 Gousse, Pierre E., 123 Gran negs (big men), 56 Guinea, 1, 181(n41) Guinea Bissau, 181(n41) Haiti: causes of conditions, 105–106, 142–143; and Cuba, 114–115; current conditions, 13, 55–56, 97, 167, 170, 173–174; dependence

on diasporic remittances, 6, 60; dependence on food imports, 76, 103; dependence on foreign assistance, 6, 59, 89–90, 98, 107–111, 173; difficulty of emigrating from, 60–61, 113; and Dominican Republic, 15, 65–71; and failed state paradigm, 59; Haitian exceptionalism, 5; and Hobbesian transformation, 6–7, 151; inequalities in, 13, 56, 167; mineral deposits, 174–175; natural disasters, 4–5, 173; as outer periphery state, 2, 9–10, 55, 69, 123–124, 168–170, 175–176; and permanent emergency syndrome, 173–174; recommendations for, 9, 99–105, 152–155, 170–173; refugees, 60–61, 113; social services, 108, 111; social structure, 5, 55–56; stereotypes of, 5; US occupation (1914–1934), 62–64, 82(n46); and Venezuela, 114–115; as virtual trusteeship of the foreign community, 14, 58–59, 90–96, 113. See also Citizenship; Development projects; Economy of Haiti; Haitian government; Humanitarianism; Military, Haitian; NGOs; Sovereignty Haiti Grassroots Watch, 98–99, 174 “Haiti is open for business” slogan, 77, 89 Haiti Support Group, 104 Haitian diaspora. See Diaspora Haitian Economic Lift Program Act of 2010 (HELP), 69, 77 Haitian government: and amendments to Constitution of 1987, 138–146; and corruption, 55, 105–112, 163–166; decay of state institutions, 107–108; foreign and local perceptions, 138–146; and Martelly’s choices for prime minister, 116–123, 135–138; need for building state

INDEX

capacity, 100–101; and negative impact of NGO-led development, 107–108; political gridlock, 141–142, 144; politics as a zerosum game, viii, 55, 92, 99, 123, 175; and politique de doublure, 121, 133(n120); and politique du ventre (politics of the belly), 57, 98, 121–123, 138, 151; powers of, 5; role of prime minister, 137–138; sale of offices, 121; state bypassed in favor of NGOs by international community, 99–100, 105–108. See also Constitution of 1987; Elections of 2010; Parliament; Presidency; Prime minister; specific presidents Haitian Hemisphere Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act of 2006 (HOPE I), 69 Haitian Hemisphere Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act of 2008 (HOPE II), 69–70 Haitian National Police (HNP), 154–155 Hardt, Michael, 19 Hazardous waste disposal, 40–41 HELP. See Haitian Economic Lift Program Act of 2010 Hilton, Paris, 111 Hinton, Charlie, 144 HNP. See Haitian National Police Hobson, John, 44 HOPE I, II. See Haitian Hemisphere Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act of 2006, 2008 Hopkins, Terence K., 49–50(n69) Hsu, Jessica, 149 Human Rights Watch, 147 Humanitarianism: Cadre de Coordination de l’Aide Externe (CAED), 91–92; celebrity humanitarianism, 111; and imperialism, 44–45; Interim Haiti

219

Recovery Commission, 90–91; lack of transparency and accountability of relief organizations, 109–111; militarization of, 112–116; motivations of aid workers, 111, 112, 115; negative consequences of, 89–96; state bypassed in favor of NGOs by international community, 99–100, 105–108; state corruption and the aid regime, 105–112; and trusteeships, 44–45, 89–90. See also International community; NGOs Huntington, Samuel, 5 Hurricanes, 5, 173 Ignatieff, Michael, 45 IHRC. See Interim Haiti Recovery Commission Immigration: difficulty of emigrating from Haiti, 60–61, 113; exploitation of Haitian migrant workers in Dominican Republic, 61–65; stringent policies of core states, 18, 34, 35 Imperialism: blowback, violence, and security issues, 32–46; and extractive enclaves, 39–40; and globalization, 20, 24–32, 45; and humanitarianism, 44–45; NGOs and “trickle-down imperialism,” 110; and private military and security companies (PMSCs), 39–40; and responsibility to protect (R2P), 44–45; and world systems analysis, 19–20, 24–32, 175. See also Trusteeships India, 22–23 INITÉ, 117, 135, 140 Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC), 90–91, 115, 117 International community: and blowback, 32–34; and debt relief, 106–107; and election of Martelly, 59, 169; and failed state

220

INDEX

paradigm, 2, 29–30; Haiti as virtual trusteeship under control of, 14, 58–59, 90–96, 113; and Haitian military corps, 148; and marginalization of agriculture, 7–9, 102–105, 172; and Martelly’s choices for prime minister, 116–123; occupation and control of outer peripheral states by self-appointed peacekeepers and NGOs, 28; perceptions of Haitian government, 138–146; promotion of export-assembly manufacturing, 7–9, 75–79, 101–103, 170; and responsibility to protect (R2P), 44–45; state bypassed in favor of NGOs, 99–100, 105–108; types of interventions in Haiti, 59; and value of life, 40–41. See also Core states; Development projects; Globalization; Humanitarianism; NGOs; Trusteeships; World systems analysis International Federation for Human Rights, 166–167 International financial institutions (IFIs): and marginalization of agriculture, 9, 102–104; and marginalization of the state, 107; and NGOs, 100–101; and promotion of export-assembly manufacturing, 77; and value of life, 40–41. See also Neoliberalism Iran, 51(n88) Iraq, 39, 52(n98), 181(n41) IRI. See US International Republican Institute Ivers, Louise, 113 Ives, Kim, 130(n88) Japan, 20 Jean, Carves, 147 Jean, Jean-Claude, 72–73 Jean-Charles, Moïse, 139

Jean-Marie, Marie Carmelle, 178(n16) Jeune, Levaillant Louis, 164 Johnson, Paul, 43 Johnston, Jake, 125(n19) Joseph, Anel Alexis, 159(n35) Joyandet, Alain, 112 Karan, Donna, 111, 173 Kardashian, Kim, 111 Kidnapping, 6, 165 Klein, Naomi, 30 Koh, Harold Hongju, 60, 81(n30) Kolbe, Athena, 154 Kouchner, Bernard, 53(n115) Krasner, Stephen, 2 Kroll, Luisa, 25 Labor. See Agriculture; Apparel industry; Export-assembly manufacturing; Sugar plantations; Unions Lambert, Joseph, 138, 164 Lamothe, Laurent, 89, 137–139, 177(n7), 178(n16) Language, and constitutional amendments, 145 Lantagne, Daniele, 149 Latortue, Gérard, 119, 169 Latortue, Youri, 138 Lavalas, 57, 80(n14); and Aristide’s messianic presidentialism, 72–73; banned from elections of 2010, 4, 92, 96; and Chimères, 150–151; and Martelly administration, 168; repression and exile, 71–72; rise of, 57 Liberalism, 31. See also Capitalism; Neoliberalism; World systems analysis Liberia, 181(n41) Libya, 181(n41) Lindwall, David E., 74 Locher, Uli, 8 Lundahl, Mats, 7–9 Lutzenburger, Jose, 41 Mac-Arthur, Bruce, 63

INDEX

Maesschalck, Marc, 72–73 Maguire, Robert, ix, 13 Majescor, 174 Mali, 181(n41) Mangoes, 101, 104 Manigat, Leslie, 147 Manigat, Myrlande, 92, 95 Martelly, Michel: and agriculture policies, 104; and amendments to Constitution of 1987, 138, 141–142, 144–146; ascendancy to the presidency, 95–96; authoritarian tendencies, 135–137, 152; background of, 4, 92, 95–96; and Bélizaire affair, 135–136; and Brandt affair, 6; and CAED, 91; candidacy of, 4, 95–96, 126(nn 34,25); and Caracol Industrial Park, 78–79; carnivals, 173; and Cédras, 162(n63); composition of administration, 122–123; and Conille’s resignation, 136–137; conjectures about presidency of, 97–99, 146, 152, 163; constraints on, 96–99, 115, 116, 135; and corruption, 121, 164; and creation of CEP/CTCEP, 145–146; and dangers from drug trafficking, 165; difficulties in choosing a prime minister, 116–123, 135–138, 142; and Duvalier dictatorship, 147–148; and elections of 2010, 4, 92–93, 95–96, 169; foreign backers of, 59, 115, 169–170; foreign perceptions of, 138; Lamothe and, 137, 178(n16); and minimum wage, 75; and MINUSTAH, 149, 152, 170; plans for reestablishing military corps, 148, 151–152, 155; and police force, 154–155; and politique du ventre (politics of the belly), 121–123; popular disillusionment with, 167–168, 173–174; progressive agenda, 163; and race, 119; recognition of negative effects of

221

humanitarianism, 115; and reconciliation, 147–148, 160(n45); and rogue paramilitary groups, 155; self-perception of, 116 Martin, Peter, 21–22 Marx, Anthony, 31 Marx, Karl, 21, 116, 172–173 Mayer, Arno, 33 Merten, Kenneth, 68, 139 Michel, André, 164 Middle class of Haiti: difficulties of middle class candidates for public office, 121; and race, 118–119; wealth gained and maintained through proximity to state power, 7 Midy, Franklin, 58 Milanovic, Banko, 27–28 Military, Haitian: Cédras’s attachés and FRAPH, 150, 161(n59); and coups, 150–151; dissolution following Aristide’s return to power, 149–151; Duvalier’s Tontons Makouts, 150, 161(n59); Haitian National Police (HNP), 154–155; Lavalas’s Chimères, 148–151, 161(n59); Martelly’s plans for reestablishing military corps, 148, 151–152, 155; recommendations for police force, 152–155 Military interventions, 32–46; assassinations, 42; dilemma of MINUSTAH’s unwanted presence, 148–152, 170; militarization of humanitarianism, 112–116; and Obama administration, 41–42, 81(n30), 112; private military and security companies (PMSCs), 39–40, 52(n98); and responsibility to protect (R2P), 44–45; SOUTHCOM, 112–113; statistics on, 51(n88) Miller, Christian, 36 Mills, Cheryl, 90

222

INDEX

Mineral deposits, 174–175 MINUSTAH. See Mission des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en Haïti Mission des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en Haïti (MINUSTAH), 60, 91–92, 113; and cholera outbreak, 149, 170; and Martelly administration, 149, 152, 170; and Préval administration, 151; and prime minister of Haiti, 120; and sexual assaults, 149, 170; unpopularity of, 148–152, 170 Money laundering, 165–166 Moorehead, Caroline, 35 Moscoso, Coralie, 165 Moscoso, Nicolas, 165 Moseley-Williams, Richard, 65, 67, 83(n52), 84(n62) Mossadegh, Mohammed, 32, 51(n88) Moun andeyo (subordinate social class): and Aristide’s messianic presidentialism, 73; and citizenship, 57–58, 71–79; and corvée (forced labor), 62–63, 82(n46); disillusionment with Martelly administration, 167; lack of participation in decisionmaking about reconstruction, 99; and Lavalas, 57; and racism, 118; rebellions and uprisings, 56–57, 62–63; statistics on inequalities, 13, 56, 167; as sugarcane cutters, 61–65. See also Agriculture; Rural population Muggah, Robert, 154 Mulatrisme, 118 Namphy, Henry, 85(n78) Natural disasters, 4–5, 173. See also Earthquake of January 2010 Nau, Jean-Jacques “Jackie,” 71 Negri, Antonio, 19 Neoliberalism, viii; and citizenship, 71–79; and Duvalier dictatorship, 8; failures of, 1–3, 8, 13–14,

73–79, 102–103, 169; and imperialism in the age of globalization, 24–32; introduction following military or natural shocks to outer peripheral states, 30; and promotion of apparel industry, 7–8, 101–103; and state corruption and the aid regime, 105; and Washington Consensus, 21 Newmont, 174 NGOs. See Nongovernmental organizations Niger, 181(n41) Nigeria, 181(n40) Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs): assumptions of, 109; and civil society, 107–108; and control of Haiti, 14; corruption and lack of transparency, 100, 107, 109–111; earthquake relief aid disbursed to non-Haitian actors, 106; and empowerment of local communities, 108–109; estimates of numbers, 129(n62); examples of effective NGOs, 108–109; and failures of neoliberalism, 3; Haiti as training ground for future careers of aid workers, 111; Haitians’ perceptions of, 110; negative impact of NGO-led development, 99–101, 107–108; and occupation and control of outer peripheral states, 28; state bypassed in favor of, 99–100, 105–108 Noirisme, 118–119, 121–122 NPT. See Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Nuclear Non-Poliferation Treaty (NPT), 37–38 OAS. See Organization of American States Obama, Barack, 41–42, 81(n30), 112 Oil. See PetroCaribe agreement Organization of American States (OAS), 93–95

INDEX

Outer periphery, 13–54; characteristics of, vii, 3, 9, 14, 26; and core states’ self-protective measures and containment strategies, 34–46; extractive enclaves, 39–40; and failed state paradigm, 29–30, 175; and failures of neoliberalism, 3; Haiti as state of the outer periphery, 2, 9–10, 55, 69, 123–124, 168–170, 175–176; and hazardous waste disposal, 40–41; and humanitarianism, 89–90; and imperialism in the age of globalization, 24–32; and indirect rule, 26–27; introduction of neoliberalism following military or natural shocks, 30; lack of benefit from mineral deposits, 175, 181(n40); low wages in, 75; and movement of capital, 28; negative consequences of integration into existing world system, 3; origins of conditions, 26–27; paradox of, 3; population’s lack of mobility, 60–61, 75; and production processes, 26; and regime change, 29; relations with core states, 27–28; and simulacrum of democracy, 3, 14, 26; and sovereignty, 26, 32; states listed, 1–2, 181(n41); status of postcolonial states, 49(n69); value of life, 40–41 Oxfam, 103 Pakistan, 181(n41) Panama, 166 Paramilitary groups, 150, 151, 155, 163 Parliament: and Aristide administration, 141; and Bélizaire affair, 135–136; and Constitution of 1987, 140–142; and corruption, 121–122; and CTCEP, 146; and Martelly administration, 117,

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119–121, 135–138; and Préval administration, 140–142. See also Politique de doublure PDNA. See Post-Disaster Needs Assessment Peacekeeping troops, 28. See also Military interventions Peasants. See Moun andeyo; Rural population Peintures Caraibes SA, 78 Penn, Sean, 6, 98, 111 Péralte, Charlemagne, 63 Peripheral states: capital accumulation in, 17; characteristics of, 17; and corruption/criminality, 17; Dominican Republic as peripheral state, 68; lack of upward movement to the core, 30; and production processes, 16–17; status of postcolonial states, 49(n69); and WMD, 37–38 Perspectives pour la Santé et le Développement, 106 PetroCaribe agreement, 114, 130(n88) Philippe, Guy, 71 Piera, Nuria, 164 Pierre-Louis, Francois, ix PMSCs. See Security companies, private Polanyi, Karl, 30 Police force, 152–155 Politique de doublure, 121, 133(n120) Politique du ventre (politics of the belly), 57, 98, 121–123, 138, 151 Pollution, 40–41 Port-au-Prince, 13, 76. See also Urban population Post-Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA), 15 Poverty, 13; statistics on inequalities, 13, 56, 167. See also Moun andeyo; Outer periphery; Rural population; Urban population Presidency: and amendments to

224

INDEX

Constitution of 1987, 144–145; and Constitution of 1987, 141, 142, 144; and role of prime minister, 137–138. See also Aristide, Jean-Bertrand; Cédras, Raoul; Duvalier, François; Duvalier, Jean-Claude; Martelly, Michel; Préval, René Préval, René, 74; and Constitution of 1987, 139–140; and earthquake of January 2010, 115; and elections of 2010, 93–96; and MINUSTAH, 151; and PetroCaribe agreement, 114; and political gridlock, 141–142; relations with foreign powers, 114, 115, 169 Prime minister of Haiti: and Bélizaire affair, 135–136; Conille’s resignation, 136–137; and Constitution of 1987, 137; and constitutional amendments, 145; difficulties in choosing and ratifying, 116–123, 135–138, 142; role in Haitian politics, 137–138. See also Conille, Garry; Gousse, Bernard; Lamothe, Laurent; Rouzier, Daniel-Gerard R2P. See Responsibility to protect Race, racism: antihaitianismo, 66, 84(n62); and black middle class, 118–119; and elite class, 118–119; and globalization, 34–35; mulatrisme, 118; noirisme, 118–119, 121–122; and politique de doublure, 133(n120); and US occupation of Haiti (1914–1934), 62 Ramachandran, Vijaya, 108, 110–111 Ramdin, Albert, 94 RAND Corporation, 102 Rape, 149, 153–154, 170; survival sex, 154 Rawls, John, 43 Raymond, Adrien, 123 Raymond, Claude, 123 Reagan, Ronald, 60

Reconciliation, 147–148, 160(n45) Reforestation, 9 Refugee camps, conditions in, 36 Refugees, Haitian, 60–61, 113 Religion, 63–64 Remissainthe, Ravix, 71 Réponse des Paysans, 117, 135 Responsibility to protect (R2P) concept, 44–45 Rice, Susan, 138 Roberts, Alasdair, 27 Roumain, Jacques, 175–176 Rouzier, Daniel-Gerard, 115, 117–119, 132(n110), 135 Ruling class. See Elite class Rural population: and discovery of mineral deposits, 174; and food security, 8, 102–103; migrations to urban areas, 7, 76, 101, 170; poverty of, 13, 56. See also Agriculture; Moun andeyo Russell, John H., 62 Sae-A, 78 Saint-Juste, Newton, 164 Sanderson, Janet, 113, 114 Schmidt, Hans, 62 Schmitt, Carl, 42 Schuller, Mark, 109, 110 Security companies, private, 39–40, 52(n98) Seitenfus, Ricardo, 94, 100, 111 Semi-peripheral states, 16, 17 September 11, 2001, 33 Shamsie, Yasmine, 69–70, 75–76 Shane, Scott, 42 Sheen, Charlie, 111 Sherwin Williams, 78–79 “Shock and Awe” strategy, 41 Sierra Leone, 1, 181(n41) Silver, 174–175 Simmons, Ann, 36 Simonis, Bob, 118 Slaughter, Anne-Marie, 38 Social class: and banditry, 6–7, 165; and rebellions and uprisings, 56–57; social structure of Haiti,

INDEX

55–56; statistics on inequalities, 13, 56, 167; wealth gained and maintained through proximity to state power, viii, 5, 7, 57. See also Citizenship; Diaspora; Elite class of Haiti; Middle class of Haiti; Moun andeyo Social services, 108, 111 Société Nationale des Parcs Industriels (SONAPI), 75 Somalia, 2, 181(n41) SONAPI. See Société Nationale des Parcs Industriels Soros, George, 23 South Sudan, 181(n41) SOUTHCOM. See US Southern Command Sovereignty: and citizenship, 58–59; and core states, 18, 32, 43; and globalization, 24; and NGOs, 100–101; undermined by international assistance and foreign troops, 90–96, 110–116, 148–152; violations of, in outer periphery, 26, 43; and WMD, 37–38 Stoll, Steven, 170–171 Sugar plantations, 61–65 Summers, Lawrence, 40–41 Survival sex, 154 Tariffs, 9, 22, 103 Taxation, 168, 179(n22) Terrorism, 33–34 Textiles. See Apparel industry; Export-assembly manufacturing Tontons Makouts, 150, 161(n59) Trouillot, Lyonel, 7, 181(n45) Trujillo, Rafael, 65–66 Trusteeships, 14; and core states’ self-protective measures and containment strategies, 34–46; and failed state paradigm, 2; Haiti as virtual trusteeship under control of the international community, 14, 58–59, 90–96, 113; and humanitarianism, 44–45, 89–96; and imperialism, 44–45;

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and militarization of humanitarianism, 112–116 Unions, 74, 78 United States: as core state, 20; and drug trafficking, 165; and Haiti as a virtual trusteeship, 113; and Haitian refugees, 60–61, 113; interests in Haiti, 113–114; interventions in Haiti, 59, 62–64, 82(n46), 169; and marginalization of agriculture, 103; and Martelly’s choices for prime minister, 120–121, 138; and militarization of humanitarianism, 112; military interventions and worldwide military network, 20–21, 41–43, 51(n88); and mineral deposits in Haiti, 174; 9/11, 33; occupation of Haiti (1914–1934), 62–64, 82(n46); occupation of Iraq, 39, 52(n98); and Préval administration, 114, 115; sugar plantations in the Dominican Republic, 61–64 Universalism, 31, 34–35, 45, 54(n125) Urban population: rural migrations to urban areas, 7, 76, 101, 170; squalor exacerbated by exportassembly manufacturing, 7, 76, 101, 170 US Agency for International Development (USAID), 103, 110 US International Republican Institute (IRI), 71 US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), 112–113 USAID. See US Agency for International Development VCS Mining, 174 Venezuela, 114–115, 130(n88) Vetiver, 104 Victor, Gary, 168 Vodou, 63–64

226

INDEX

Waller, Littleton W. T., 82(n41) Wallerstein, Immanuel, 15–21, 47(n27), 49–50(n69), 54(n125), 58 Walz, Julie, 108, 110–111 Washington Consensus, 21 Waste disposal. See Hazardous waste disposal Weapons of mass destruction (WMD), 37–38 Weisbrot, Mark, 125(n19) “White man’s burden,” 36, 38, 44 Wilentz, Amy, 94 Williams, A. S., 82(n46) WMD. See Weapons of mass destruction Wolf, Martin, 22, 48(n43) Women: sexual assaults after earthquake of January 2010, 153–154; sexual assaults by foreign troops, 149, 170; survival sex, 154 Wood, Ellen Meiksins, 18 Wooding, Bridget, 65, 67, 83(n52), 84(n62) World Bank, 3, 21, 40–41, 103 World Economic Forum, 77

World systems analysis: and blowback, violence, and security, 32–46; buffering middle sector, 16; contrast between Wallerstein’s capitalist world economy and world empire, 17; division into core, semi-periphery, periphery, and outer periphery, 14–25; and globalization, 18–32, 45, 47(n27); gradation of “stateness,” 18–19; and imperialism, 19–20, 24–32, 175; and “logic of discipline,” 27–28; and movement of capital, 28; and production processes, 16, 26; and social polarization, 16; Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis, 15–21. See also Core states; Outer periphery; Peripheral states; Semi-peripheral states Wucker, Michele, 62 Yemen, 181(n41) Zambia, 181(n40) Zanmi Lasante, 108 Zenny, Edo, 118

ABOUT THE BOOK

THE INABILITY OF THE HAITIAN STATE TO DEAL WITH THE DEV-

astation of the January 2010 earthquake brought into sharp focus Haiti’s desperate social and economic conditions—and raised perplexing questions. What accounts for the country’s continuing predicament? Why have repeated attempts at democratic governance failed so abysmally? And what role has the international community played? Addressing these questions, Robert Fatton focuses on Haiti’s long history of predatory rule and also introduces the concept of the outer periphery to explore the impact of a world economy shaped by neoliberal policies. The result is an insightful analysis of contemporary Haitian politics and society with significant implications for the broader study of comparative politics. Robert Fatton Jr. is Julia A. Cooper Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia. His numerous publications include Predatory Rule: State and Civil Society in Africa; Haiti’s Predatory Republic: The Unending Transition to Democracy; and The Roots of Haitian Despotism. Professor Fatton was awarded the Haitian Studies Association Award for Excellence in 2011.

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