Geography Archives: Haiti

From Haiti, Lautaro Rivara unpacks the tired trope of “poor rich Haiti,” highlighting the role of foreign capital and local elites in the destruction of life in the countryside.

Haiti Action Committee together with the National Lawyers Guild [NLG] is releasing a new report, The Lasalin Massacre and the Human Rights Crisis in Haiti, about the November 2018 massacre in the neighborhood of Lasalin, Port-au-Prince.

Haiti faces serious political crisis. The country has experienced great political difficulties ever since gaining independent nationhood in 1804. Impaired governance stems in large measure from U.S. meddling over many years. We examine the current crisis and the basis for U.S. zeal to curtail Haiti’s future.

Coast Guard techniques for blocking Haitian asylum seekers have their roots in the slave trade. Understanding these connections can help us disentangle immigration policy from white nationalism.

Haiti’s president’s term has come to an end, but he refuses to step down. Solidarity is urgent.

One way to evaluate the seriousness of the Trudeau government’s stated objectives in seeking to oust Venezuela’s elected government is to examine their policies elsewhere in the region.

Toussaint stressed that freedom was something that had to be fought for and taken from below by the masses themselves.

The originality of the Haitian feminist movement lies in the fact that it can be thought of neither in terms of a wave (first, second or third) nor in terms of a defined current (liberal, black, decolonial, etc.).

In Lebanon, it was a tax on the use of WhatsApp; in Chile, it was the rise in subway fares; in Ecuador and in Haiti, it was the cut in fuel subsidies. Each of these conjunctures brought people to the streets and then, as these people flooded the streets, more and more joined them.

A recent photograph circulating of a Haitian senator shooting an AP reporter is just the tip of the iceberg in Haiti, where an uprising has been simmering for months.

The American occupation of Haiti lasted from 1915–34. The U.S. subjected Haitians to the hated forced labor system of the corvée, seized control over Haitian finance, and rewrote the Haitian Constitution at gunpoint, enabling foreign companies to acquire land in the country. The distorting and oppressive impacts of the U.S. occupation have been felt in Haitian society ever since.

Based on remarks by Mr Luiz Awazu Pereira da Silva, Deputy General Manager of the BIS, at the Conference of the Central Banks and Supervisors Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), Paris, 17 April 2019.

Last week, the people of Haiti erupted in protests over fuel price hikes. Behind the protests lie a story of corruption by the elite, blatantly insensitive IMF policies, predatory pricing by U.S. oil firms and the fallout of the economic war on Venezuela.

In 1980, the magazine Tricontinental, published by the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America (OSPAAAL), dedicated its issue no. 119 to Haiti. The editors wrote, ‘Very little is known about the Haitian people’s struggle,’ as the imperialists have ‘erected a wall of silence around Haiti.’

There is no evidence that Donald Trump has ever in his life performed a single selfless act, let alone any act of heroism. Probably he wouldn’t be able even to imagine the nobility of character I witnessed among Port-au-Prince residents after the earthquake, and among “alien” activists like Ravi and Jean here in New York.

On April 24, 2013, some 1,134 people died in the collapse of the Rana Plaza complex outside Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.  The building housed factories where low-wage workers, largely women, stitched garments for the U.S. and European markets. For several years before the disaster a number of U.S. opinion makers — notably New York […]

Wealthy, powerful heads of state and other bosses high up in the Bavarian Alps, and the vigorous protests from opposing crowds kept out of earshot downhill, largely stole media thunder this past weekend.  Far lower in altitude and attention, with almost no thunder from the media or otherwise, another meeting was held in less scenic […]

  Lloyd D’Aguilar is a freelance journalist, filmmaker, and social critic.  He is also a campaigner for social and economic justice and convener of the Tivoli Committee.  Follow D’Aguilar on Twitter @LloydDAguilar.  H/T to @HaitiAnalysis.

The Ebola epidemic . . . whereas most of the world tightens frontier control and essentially flees from the problem, Cuba opens a new chapter of solidarity and faces the danger.  By sending 255 doctors and nurses to West Africa to deal with the latest Ebola outbreak, the heroic island — with few resources except […]

Tansy E. Hoskins.  Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion.  Pluto Press, 2014.  254 pages. To say that Tansy E. Hoskins‘ Stitched Up deconstructs the garment industry would be a misrepresentation.  What the British activist and journalist does is more like a controlled demolition, using facts and footnotes to strip away the apparel trade’s decorative […]