Geography Archives: Haiti

We are here so Haiti can get back to normal, that is to say, to miserable poverty as always. Alfredo Martirena Hernández was born in 1965 in Santa Clara, Cuba.  This cartoon was published by Rebelión on 9 February 2010.   Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | | Print

I liked history, as most boys do. Wars as well, a culture that society sowed in male children. All the toys offered us were weapons. In my childhood they sent me to a city where I was never taken to a movie theater. Television did not exist then, and there was no radio in the […]

The U.S.-led international operation to distribute food, water, and medical supplies in Port-au-Prince after earthquake of January 12 has drawn a good deal of criticism. In contrast, for the past 10 years the Ste. Claire parish in the Petite Place Cazeau (Ti Plas Kazo) neighborhood at the city’s northern edge has operated a very successful food program, started by the late Father Gérard Jean-Juste. This week I asked Margaret Trost, founder and director of the California-based What If? Foundation, to describe by email her experiences with this program in the past and in the current crisis. — DLW

  Statement of Haitian Organizations and Platforms To all our partners On January 12th, 2010 an earthquake of unprecedented force struck our country with dramatic consequences for the people of many areas in the west and south east, and for the country as a whole.  The tremor registered 7.3 on the Richter scale, and the […]

  Haitians’ incredible plight has always been difficult to fully appreciate.  Then the earthquake struck: hundreds of thousands dead, hundreds of thousands more hurt, a million homeless, and two million in need of food.  It defies imagination. And according to a journalist just returned from Haiti, even the heart-rending footage we’ve seen here on television […]

(PU) In an oak-paneled conference room somewhere in Manhattan’s Goldman Sachs building, the Republican National Committee today signed over its soul to the Reverend Pat Robertson. “They had a soul?” asked a reporter at a press conference shortly after the signing.  “Oh yes,” explained RNC chairman Michael Steele.  “You see, the legal reality of corporate […]

When I write about U.S. foreign policy in places like Haiti or Honduras, I often get responses from people who find it difficult to believe that the U.S. government would care enough about these countries to try and control or topple their governments.  These are small, poor countries with little in the way of resources […]

On January 14, two days after the Port-au-Prince earthquake, I finally got a chance to look over my email, courtesy of a small Haitian NGO in a quiet, relatively undamaged neighborhood in the south of the city.  After reading and answering personal messages, I noticed that a lot of my mail consisted of appeals for […]

We are not the quickest on the draw in pulling out humanitarian aid, but when it comes to foreign occupation there is no one ahead of us. Tomás Rafael Rodríguez Zayas (Tomy) is a Cuban cartoonist.  This cartoon was first published by Rebelión on 30 January 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] […]

John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and author of The Great Financial Crisis (2009, with Fred Magdoff) and The Ecological Revolution (2009) — both from Monthly Review Press.  This interview was conducted from Dhaka by Farooque Chowdhury (editor of Micro Credit: Myth Manufactured, 2007) for MRzine and Bangla Monthly Review.  It is part […]

  Peter Hallward: The role that journalists tend to be comfortable with when it comes to talking about Haiti is the role of victim.  If you ask why the Haitians are so poor . . . it has to do with three factors, all of which are functions really of Haiti’s independence and the strength […]

  On January 19, Spanish newspaper ABC, a newspaper of record in Spain, published a story entitled “Chavez Accuses US of Causing Earthquake in Haiti.” The story was quickly picked up by websites around the globe — most quoting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez as saying the U.S. used a new tectonic weapon to induce the […]

One often hears proclamations, or perhaps hopes, that the success of the Green Movement is linked to the decline of the Iranian economy.  The logic is that an economic collapse would bring informal workers, bazaar merchants, wealthy businessmen, once comfortable pensioner widows, perhaps even Afghan migrants, all into the streets along with the current membership […]

“The Yankees expect to send 20,000 troops to Haiti.” “Unbelievable.  Could it be that they found oil in Haiti?” Alfredo Martirena Hernández was born in 1965 in Santa Clara, Cuba.  This cartoon was published by Rebelión on 23 January 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com). | | Print

In my Reflection of January 14, two days after the catastrophe in Haiti, which destroyed that neighboring sister nation, I wrote: “In the area of healthcare and others the Haitian people has received the cooperation of Cuba, even though this is a small and blockaded country.  Approximately 400 doctors and healthcare workers are helping the Haitian […]

Nine days after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January 2010, it’s now clear that the initial phase of the U.S.-led relief operation has conformed to the three fundamental tendencies that have shaped the more general course of the island’s recent history.  It has adopted military priorities and strategies.  It has sidelined Haiti’s […]

In my Reflection of January 14, two days after the catastrophe in Haiti, which destroyed that neighboring sister nation, I wrote: “In the area of healthcare and others the Haitian people has received the cooperation of Cuba, even though this is a small and blockaded country. Approximately 400 doctors and healthcare workers are helping the […]

“Cuba, Venezuela, Spain, and other countries send in the medical brigades; the Yankees send in the troops.” “It must be so they won’t go out of character.” Alfredo Martirena Hernández was born in 1965 in Santa Clara, Cuba.  This cartoon was published by Rebelión on 21 January 2010.  Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi […]

On Monday, six days after the earthquake in Haiti, the U.S. Southern Command finally began to drop bottled water and food (MREs) from an Air Force C-17.  U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates had previously rejected such a method because of “security concerns.” The Guardian reports that people are dying of thirst.  And if they do […]

Republican Scott Brown’s defeat of Democrat Martha Coakley in Massachusetts’ Senate race proves it’s time for real progressives, activists, and independents to dump and jump the Democratic Party’s sinking ship of state.  The definition of insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, expecting a different result.  Every electoral cycle people who consider […]