The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope (42 page)

After the June 28 coup, the OAS immediately suspended Honduras from OAS proceedings and called for Zelaya’s immediate reinstatement. On June 30, the U.N. General Assembly issued a unanimous demand for “the immediate and unconditional restoration of power” for Zelaya.

Likewise, UNASUR, the Union of South American Nations, at its summit in Quito, Ecuador, formally denounced the coup. The OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights traveled to Honduras in late August and reported that demonstrations in support of Zelaya “were broken up by public security forces, both police and military, resulting in deaths, cases of torture and mistreatment, hundreds of injured, and thousands of arbitrary detentions.”

President Barack Obama, on June 29, said clearly, “We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there.” But subsequent action, or inaction, by Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has sent mixed signals. While Obama originally used the word
coup
, official policy pronouncements have avoided the term, which, if used, would trigger mandatory suspension of foreign aid. Instead, the Obama administration has deployed selective punishment of the coup regime, rescinding visas for Micheletti and other key coup figures, and halting a relatively token $30 million in aid.

Clinton said Monday, at a meeting with Costa Rica’s Arias: “We just want to see this matter resolved peacefully, with an understanding that there will be the remainder of President Zelaya’s term to be respected.” The United Nations will most likely take action this week in support of Zelaya. Zelaya said Tuesday from the Brazilian Embassy: “The U.S. should respond and respect the OAS charter. The United States should call for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council. The United States should take every type of trade sanction measure in order to pressure this regime now in power in Honduras.”

Obama is expected to chair a session of the U.N. Security Council, marking the first time a U.S. president has done so. Costa Rica currently has a seat on the Security Council, and could in theory bring up the issue of Honduras. Then in Pittsburgh, where the G-20 is meeting to assess and act on the global financial crisis, Brazil’s support for Zelaya may be a factor. Brazil, a G-20 member, is by far the largest economy in South America, and is a key ally and trading partner of the U.S. With tear gas wafting through the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, and a potential armed assault on it by the coup regime to arrest Zelaya, this week may force Obama and Clinton to finally help the people of Honduras undo the coup.

January 20, 2010

Tè Tremblé—The Haitian Earth Trembled

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti—Tè tremblé is Haitian Creole for “earthquake.” Its literal translation: “The earth trembled.” After the massive earthquake that devastated Haiti, the stench of death is everywhere. At General Hospital, bodies had been stacked four feet high near the morgue. In the community house called Matthew 25, doctors laid out a plastic tablecloth to perform a kitchen-table amputation, aided by headlamps. The injured Haitian man in his twenties might be considered fortunate: He was among the minority of injured people getting medical attention. And, unlike many amputations being performed elsewhere in Haiti, the doctors who arrived Monday were using anesthesia they had brought.

While this grim amputation was happening, an unexpected delivery of food aid arrived. Matthew 25 House typically accommodates thirty-five guests. Now more than 1,000 are there, camped out in the adjoining soccer field. There has been much reporting on the concerns about possible riots and violence that aid distribution might provoke. We witnessed the polar opposite, because an established community group was empowered to distribute the food. People lined up and got their supplies, leaving undisturbed the difficult surgery being conducted nearby. This has been typical as we’ve traveled through the catastrophe: People with nothing—hungry, thirsty, seeking their loved ones, burying their dead, caring for their injured—have shown fortitude, civility, and compassion despite their quiet desperation.

We went to the home of Myriam Merlet, the chief of staff of the Haitian Ministry of Women. She helped draw international attention to the use of rape as a political weapon and worked with playwright and activist Eve Ensler on the V-Day movement to help end violence against women. We found her house, indeed the entire surrounding community, destroyed. “We have just pulled her body out,” they told us Sunday, five days after the earthquake. There is no telling when she died, or whether she might have been rescued. Her sister Eartha brought us to her fresh grave.

We ventured beyond Port-au-Prince, to the earthquake’s epicenter, past Carrefour to Léogâne. A United Nations assessment put the level of destruction in Léogâne at 80 percent to 90 percent of structures destroyed, with no remaining government buildings. On the way, a young man hailed our car, saying: “Please, we see some helicopters overhead, but they don’t stop here. We have no aid. We have no food.”

One man covered in dust was using a mallet to break the cement that had entombed his grandfather. A father nearby had just dug out his one-year-old baby, dead in his playpen. According to Agence France-Presse, the U.N. warned it cannot “extend their aid operation to outlying areas until security there can be confirmed.” Traveling to Léogâne, we felt no threat; we only saw people in dire need of help. While we were in Léogâne, a missionary helicopter landed, then inexplicably lifted off again, and the crew began hurling loaves of bread to the ground. Young Haitian men grew incensed. One cried, tearing up the rolls and yelling, “We are not dogs for you to throw bones at!”

We spoke with the mayor of Léogâne, Alexis Santos, who seemed almost helpless before the near-total destruction around him. I asked him, in light of the unified front offered by the U.S. government, with President Barack Obama naming former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to lead the U.S. response, what he thought about the offer of Jean-Bertrand Aristide—the ousted former president of Haiti—to return to Haiti from exile in South Africa to stand with Haitian President René Préval, a united front to help the recovery. Santos, by no means an Aristide supporter, told me he thought it would be a good idea.

Back at Matthew 25 House (named after the biblical verse “Whatever you do for my least brothers and sisters, you do for me”), I spoke with one of the surgeons. Dr. Jennifer Bruny, who flew down with other doctors from Children’s Hospital in Denver, performed the amputation earlier. The nature of the disaster, with thousands of crushing injuries, and the lack of care for so much time make amputation one of the only means available now to save lives. “This amputation should not have been necessary,” she told me. “This could have been easily treated earlier. These people needed help sooner.”

January 27, 2010

Let the Haitians In

Jean Montrevil was shackled, imprisoned, about to be sent to Haiti. It was January 6, days before the earthquake that would devastate Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Montrevil came to the U.S. with a green card in 1986 at the age of seventeen. Twenty years ago, still a teenager, he was convicted of possession of cocaine and sent to prison for eleven years. Upon release, he married a U.S. citizen; he has four U.S.-citizen children, owns a business, pays taxes, and is a legal, permanent resident. He is a well-respected Haitian New York community activist. But because of his earlier conviction, he was on an immigration supervision program, requiring him to check in with an immigration official every two weeks. On December 30, during his routine visit, he was immediately detained and told he would be deported to Haiti. A fellow detainee bound for Haiti had a fever. That man’s illness halted the flight, and then the earthquake struck.

The devastating toll of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti continues to mount. Most efforts to rescue people from the rubble have ended. More than 150,000 people have been buried, some in makeshift graves near the ruins of the homes where they died, but many in unmarked, mass graves at Titanyen, the site of massacres during previous dictatorships and coups. More than 1 million people are homeless out of Haiti’s population of 9 million. The stench of decaying bodies is still pervasive in the capital city of Port-au-Prince as well as in outlying towns, which, two weeks out, have seen little outside help. It was painful to see the mass of aid stockpiled at the airport. The Haitians need it now. For example, I saw pallets with thousands of bottles of Aquafina water there. Hopeful when a truck arrived to load up, I asked where it was headed. “To the U.S. Embassy,” I was told.

One of the principal sources of national income in Haiti is the flow of remittances from the Haitian diaspora, whose cash, wired to family members back in Haiti, amounts to one-third of Haiti’s gross national product. For years, after four major hurricanes and massive flooding, the Haitian community has simply been asking to be treated like Nicaraguans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans in similar circumstances, to receive Temporary Protected Status (TPS). TPS allows people to stay in the U.S., and legally work, during times of armed conflict or natural disaster, and is a critical element of any humane policy. Finally, following frantic grassroots lobbying after the earthquake, the U.S. government extended TPS to Haitians.

But TPS is not enough. Haitians need to be allowed into the United States, legally, compassionately, and immediately. I visited hospitals and clinics in Port-au-Prince, with thousands of people waiting for care, and amputations happening with ibuprofen or Motrin, if patients were lucky. Ira Kurzban, a Miami-based attorney who represented Haiti for years, says the U.S. must let in those immediately who need medical care, that far too few of the injured have been brought to the U.S. In addition, he told me, the U.S. should bring many more people from Haiti, including all those people who had approved petitions by family members. It’s about 70,000 people. These people have been approved, but are essentially in a multiyear waiting line to move to the U.S. Kurzban compared the historical willingness and ability of the U.S. to accept Cuban refugees with what he calls a policy of “containment” with Haiti, preventing people from leaving and blocking the shores with the Coast Guard. The first thing I saw when flying in to Port-au-Prince days after the earthquake were the Coast Guard cutters. They weren’t bringing aid in, or carrying people out. They were preventing Haitians from leaving.

National Nurses United, the largest nurses union in the U.S., has 12,000 registered nurses willing to travel to Haiti to help, but they say they can’t get assistance from the Obama administration. So they called filmmaker Michael Moore. He told me this week: “This is pretty pathetic if you’re having to call me. I mean, you are the largest nurses union . . . and you can’t get a call in to the White House?” The NNU is seeking individual sponsors through its website.

Grassroots and church groups in New York City demanded freedom for Jean Montrevil, and he was released. It is that kind of solidarity that is now needed by millions of Haitians, here and in Haiti, suffering the greatest catastrophe in their history.

February 10, 2010

Haiti, Forgive Us

The tragedy of the Haitian earthquake continues to unfold, with slow delivery of aid, the horrific number of amputations performed out of desperate medical necessity, more than a million homeless, perhaps 240,000 dead, hunger, dehydration, the emergence of infections and waterborne diseases, and the approach of the rainy season, which will be followed by the hurricane season. Haiti has suffered a massive blow, an earthquake for which its infrastructure was not prepared, after decades—no, centuries—of military and economic manipulation by foreign governments, most notably the United States and France.

Haiti was a slave plantation controlled by France. In 1804, inspired by Toussaint L’Ouverture (after whom the now barely functioning airport in Port-au-Prince is named), the slaves rebelled, founding the world’s first black republic. Under military threat from France in 1825, Haiti agreed to pay reparations to France for lost “property,” including slaves that French owners lost in the rebellion. It was either agree to pay the reparations or have France invade Haiti and reimpose slavery. Many Haitians believe that original debt, which Haiti dutifully paid through World War II, committed Haiti to a future of poverty that it has never been able to escape. (While France, as part of the deal, recognized Haiti’s sovereignty, slave-owning politicians in the United States, like Thomas Jefferson, refused to recognize the black republic, afraid it would inspire a slave revolt here. The U.S. withheld formal recognition until 1862.)

The U.S. Marines occupied Haiti from 1915 until 1934. In 1956, François “Papa Doc” Duvalier took control in a military coup and declared himself president for life, initiating a period of brutal, bloody dictatorship, with U.S. support. Papa Doc died in 1971, at which point his nineteen-year-old son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, took over, maintaining the same violent dictatorial control until he was driven into exile by popular revolt in 1986. Jubilee USA, a network calling for elimination of debt owed by poor countries, estimates that Baby Doc alone diverted at least $500 million in public funds to his private accounts, and that 45 percent of Haiti’s debt in recent decades was accumulated during the corrupt reign of the Duvaliers.

Loans from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) imposed “structural adjustment” conditions on Haiti, opening its economy to cheap U.S. agricultural products. Farmers, unable to compete, stopped growing rice and moved to the cities to earn low wages, if they were lucky enough to get one of the scarce sweatshop jobs. People in the highlands were driven to deforest the hills, converting wood into salable charcoal, which created an ecological crisis—destabilizing hillsides, increasing the destructiveness of earthquakes, and causing landslides during the rainy season.