Global Embargo a Heavy Burden on Haiti’s Poor

ST. MARC, Haiti — The telltale signs are everywhere--the swollen bellies, the orange hair, the resigned looks in the glazed eyes--all evidence of the severe hunger and malnutrition flowing from the world’s economic embargo of Haiti.

The vegetable fields and the rice plots are empty. There is little gasoline to transport produce, no fertilizer, no money to buy seeds.

Fruit trees and the roadside oleander bushes that provide breaks against eroding winds are being cut down for use as charcoal, the only reliable fuel in a country with no cooking gas and little electricity.

“The embargo is doing an incredible amount of harm,” said a senior official of a major international organization. Choosing the phrases carefully because the organization officially supports the embargo, the official said that “in terms of agricultural and industrial production, they have lost more in the last two months than in the last seven years. Clearly, life has been made much worse.”

The official’s dry assessment, offered in a tastefully decorated, air-conditioned office over perfectly brewed coffee in downtown Port-au-Prince, comes to life in the arid, dusty and deforested wreckage that is the Haitian countryside.

“Here, everyone is hungry, and many are starving,” said a businessman as he drove a reporter through the rural area near St. Marc. Most of Haiti’s 6.5 million people live in similar rural regions.

“If the embargo is to punish 6 million people for the sins of 200, then it is working,” he said. “It isn’t fair, but people are starting to starve.”

The economic war against Haiti was called for by the Organization of American States in late October to punish the country’s military for its violent overthrow of the nation’s first democratically elected government Sept. 30.

The United States, France and Canada, Haiti’s three major trading partners, joined in the punitive move to force the army into recalling the ousted president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

When asked about the wisdom of leveling such destruction against what was already the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country, some diplomats from the boycotting nations respond that the Haitian people brought the misery on themselves.

When pressed, one diplomat expressed concern for the Haitian poor without withdrawing his support for the policy.

“If the embargo and the suffering contributed to a settlement,” he concluded, “you can say it was worth it.”

While the embargo has created economic havoc and is widely credited with forcing the civilian puppets of the military to negotiate with Aristide--who has been in exile in Caracas, Venezuela--it is unclear if the ultimate result will be the restoration of the Roman Catholic priest who won election in 1990 with 67% of the vote.

One reason for doubt is that the ruling military and the rich Port-au-Prince elite who backed the coup are, through a combination of smuggling, bribes and selective allocation of resources, surviving the worst effects of the boycott even as the sufferings of most other Haitians increase.

“They are able to smuggle in enough goods to keep their restaurants in business,” said one Latin American diplomat, “and they are able to buy enough diesel (fuel) to get the buses running here in the capital. So, at least in the city, they are keeping the popular pressure at a manageable level.”

But, he said, “in the country, where you (foreign journalists) don’t often go, the story is different.”

And so it is. “This embargo is genocide. It is creating an Ethiopia in America,” the businessman said during the tour of the devastated Haitian countryside.

This assessment, harsh as it is, is borne out in the drive here from Port-au-Prince, the capital, 60 miles to the south.

People interviewed along the way tell of no work, no food and no hope.

Daniel Louis is a 34-year-old farm worker who has never been paid in cash for his planting and picking of vegetables. “I was given food to eat and some of what I grew to trade for clothes,” he said among a group of friends at a roadside stand.

“But now the owner can’t get fertilizer, and there is no planting. He says there is no gasoline to send the cabbage to the cities. I have nothing to trade and nothing to eat.”

Louis’ ribs show clearly through his taut skin, his fingernails have softened and are peeling off and he complains of severe and constant headaches, all indications of a lack of proper food.

Nearby, scuffling his bare feet in the garbage and excrement that lines the shoulders of Haiti’s roads, is a boy, maybe 10 years old, too shy of the white stranger to talk. His belly protrudes, his legs are matchstick-thin and his hair has an orange tinge--signs of malnutrition, if not the beginnings of starvation.

“I see this everywhere,” said the businessman, who said he voted for Aristide and originally backed the embargo. “I know that there already was malnutrition here, but I can’t justify this. I have had to lay off nearly all my rural employees, and I am closing a major part of my business. I doubt that I will ever restart it.”

Not far from St. Marc and its deceptively tranquil seaside setting is the Hospital Schweitzer, perhaps the only medical facility still open in this part of Haiti.

Most of the staff is gone. The hospital’s small generator is incapable of providing sufficient power for even emergency operations. Besides, it is usually out of fuel.

Because of the lack of electricity, there has been no oxygen available for weeks. One nurse told of holding candles for doctors during operations.

At the same time, however, buses are running on nearby roads, and the houses of the rich, the army officers and the government’s favored few remain lighted.

“Of course, there is gasoline and diesel being smuggled here,” said the businessman. “Cap Haitien (the major city in northern Haiti) received a tanker a few weeks ago. But the price is high (about $4 to $12 dollars a gallon, depending on location), and almost nobody can afford that except the elite.”

A tentative agreement to return Aristide to power has been reached in talks between Haitian lawmakers and the deposed president in Caracas. If it holds up, and the embargo ends relatively soon, much of the immediate effects can be dealt with, diplomatic and international development experts assert.

But the economic war has accelerated the deterioration of what was already a tattered and vulnerable structure.

Not only has Haiti lost an estimated 240,000 jobs due to the closing of assembly plants unable to import parts or export finished goods, but the land itself is also on the edge of total uselessness.

Once residents of one of the Caribbean’s most verdant and fertile lands, Haitians over the decades have deforested their country. Initially it was to provide lumber for export, then to open up land for planting and finally, for the desperate and destitute, to furnish wood for charcoal.

According to international development experts, even before the embargo no more than 7% of the original forest remained, and just 10% of the total land was fertile.

Most of what remains appears to have been scalped and then plowed up. Wind and rain have left ever-deepening and widening gullies, which carry topsoil to the sea in amounts that make the shores appear to be ringed with brown sludge.

To worsen matters, development experts say that even if Aristide is restored, the embargo ends soon and aid is resumed, there is no feeling that Aristide would have the will or the ability to take on the needed reconstruction.

“What is worrisome,” said one such expert, “is the feeling that no one will start to go anywhere or be able to work together in building anything.”