What Haiti does not need: Non-Survival Jobs

2009-04-09T06:09:00.000-07:00

An Honest Assessment of the Current Conditions in Haiti By Ilio Durandis

Our country has been decimated by people who are only interested in ripping it off. Since our existence as a free nation, we have been enduring the pain of our dedication to be our own masters. We are not liked by our neighbors, and we are definitely not liked by our former masters.

The history of our beloved Haiti is comparable to a child that has been raped multiple times by the people who were supposed to love and care for that child. We remain the only country in modern to have officially paid a ransom to our former oppressor, in order for them to recognize our human dignity, our rights to live free in peace.

Today, our country is not at peace. We are not in a civil war or any kind of military war, but yet we are not at peace. It is inconceivable to think of Haiti as a peaceful country as it is presently constituted. When you have 90 percent of your population living in subhuman conditions, you can not expect to be at peace.

The mothers, who are selling their bodies, in order to send ti Joe or ti Cam to school, are only doing it because they are not at peace. The father, who does not even know his children, is turning into an alcoholic because he is not at peace. The aunt, who is mistreating her niece as a restavek, is only doing it because she is not at peace. The young boy on the streets of Port-Au-Prince, who is ready to kidnap or even kill you for what you have without even knowing you, is only doing it because he is not at peace.

I am convinced that a new day is near for Haiti, but it will not come until as a people, we learn to elevate our dignity, and believe that we are somebody like everyone else in the world. We deserve the same chance that a kid who is born in America, France, Canada or any advanced countries because after all, we are somebody just as they are.

It is purely offensive when the people who are responsible for our meager conditions for over two centuries can only think of turning us into a sweatshop country, full of factories and a bunch of non-survival jobs. Yes, we are a poor country, but that does not justify the reasoning of establishing more opportunities for the big gurus to continue to exploit the people.

It has been proven that the industry the imperial power of the world wants to establish in Haiti has been nothing more than opportunities for the exploiters. Haiti is not looking for non-survival opportunities; we need to build a decent country, where everyone could have a chance to make a decent living. Factories and sweatshops do not offer those advantages.

We do not need to look too far to understand why factories and sweatshops are not good model for a small poor country as Haiti. For a country the size of ours, those industries present no clear competitive advantages to our people. It is impossible for Haiti to compete with bigger underdeveloped or developing countries, which are also after those industries. We need to rethink Haiti; we need to be true to ourselves if indeed we want to help Haiti get on the right track.

When I talk of non-survival jobs, I am referring to jobs that people can not really depend on to meet all their daily expenses. I know a job is a job, but some jobs are a ticket to a lifetime of servitude. If you have a job and can not make any real savings, then it is a non-survival job. If you are working, and do not get paid enough to live independently, take care of your family needs, then you have a non-survival jobs. If your bosses are the only ones capable of eating three meals a day, meeting their children tuition, shopping at the grocery shop for their food, having their window rolled up as not to be exposed to dust particles of the city; then rest assured that you are the slave in a non-survival job.

Haiti has endured enough, and if we are serious about its development, then we should not consider polluting it with those non-survival jobs. There is a reason why almost all factories and sweatshops in America have closed or outsourced to a less developed country, and it is because in today’s global market those jobs can offer neither decent wages nor decent working conditions for their workers. If the American people won’t do those jobs, why should we settle for them?

The issue is not so much with the jobs themselves, but the people in charge of those industries. They received cheap labor, and maximized every penny they spent at the expense of the labor’s hard work. In advanced countries where the law is the king, those people could not abuse the workers; hence they have little choice but to prey elsewhere.

They come with a false premise that they are doing our country a favor by establishing those exploitative industries, creating jobs that offer no real learning for sustainable development. The fact to the matter remains, those jobs are only temporary. They should neither be the primary nor the beginning of the true construction that Haiti is so desperately needed.

I look all over the world, and I can not see one example where sweatshops or factories have been the leading cause of development in any country. They are offering us sweatshops because they think very little of our ability to manufacture medicines. They want to give us garment factories because they don’t think we can build cars.

The policy towards Haiti are not only discriminatory or racist, they are simply inhuman. Whenever a fellow human being thinks they are better than another, it should be considered a crime against humanity. We are all created with the same molecules. In the 21st century, there is no room for accepting mediocre proposals for the weak. Throughout human history, it is the acceptance of such proposals that have allowed exploitation to continue to dominate the less fortunate.

The leading economists could dissect all the different ways that sweatshops and factories could be beneficial to Haiti, and I would defy them time after time. Unless they, themselves, are willing to spend their entire life working the sweatshops or factories, I would not believe them.

The days of the blind are over; we are entering the age of neuron-vision. We must learn to see the future with our mind before we could see it with our eyes. For years, the oppressors have been able to do it, now with the advance of technology, and its ease of use by the day, the age of neuron-vision is becoming a reality.

No longer can you tell a peasant that the only way to survive is by cultivating the land. It is not possible to deny people access to information any longer. The library of the world is only a click away, and with that click is the emergence of knowledge, which we all know is power.

Now to the Haitian business people, they must be ashamed of themselves. How could they possibly think that opening their door to sweatshops and factories would make them any wealthier? Yes, they have been able to feel superhuman in Haiti, but the moment they set foot on a foreign soil, they resemble a nobody, just as they considered their workers in Haiti.

For all the talk about how wealthy they are in Haiti, they are obscured to the elite class of the world. So, I guess, it is only in Haiti that they want to feel as if they are somebody. What a shame! They are excluded on the table, where true wealthy people are assembled. Their inputs are not asked for and are not of interest to the rest of the world. If I were them, I would be really ashamed of my status, but again, those are people with no sense of human dignity.

Our Haitian business people are only doing the dirty work for their masters, and in the process they lost their souls and their independence. Our country can not rely on those people to represent it or make decision on its behalf.

Our people are among the less educated academically in the world, which is a known fact. But what is hidden, is that we are a people of great generosity, and courage. Without either of those two, daily life for the poor would have been unsustainable.

Anyone taking a trip in downtown Port-Au-prince, or a remote area in the countryside would quickly observe the engine of our society. It is not those business people who refused to pave the roads on which their drive their luxurious vehicles, but instead, it is those courageous and generous little merchants selling boiling eggs, cooked meals, candies, peanut, used clothes, planting the bean seeds who are driving our society.

In their eyes, we can see the hope of tomorrow. In their struggles, we can find solace, which reminds us that our life is not that bad. Even though they do not have enough goods to survive; they refuse to give up on life. Those people are already engaging in non-survival jobs, but at least in those jobs they are the masters of their destiny. They do not need the pittance of a businessman, whom before offering them a non-survival job at the sweatshop or factory, would expect to violate their human dignity.

Haiti is at the crossroads of development and complete chaos. It is either, we make it out a developed country, or we go back to pre-historic era, regardless of what will happen, we are set to be better than we are today.

A new wave of leadership must arise. Haiti does not need to remain a country where fear of those in power is the only growing industry. As a people, we have a right to speak our mind and at the same time follow through with actions, as long as it is legal and beneficial to the country.

Getting near to home is not the same as being home; the time has come when we must end all hypocrisy towards Haiti. Haitians, we have a duty to partake in this battle for freedom that our ancestors started 205 years ago. We should not disappoint them by settling for less, and agreeing that sweatshops and factories or even old fashion land cultivation are the answers to our misery, we are betraying the sacrifice of 1804.

Haiti deserves better, and we can do better. We must enter the neuron-vision age with a clear perspective on our future: One indivisible Haiti belonging to all Haitians, who believe in the welfare of Haiti. This is what Haiti needs; the power of knowledge is what we seek.

Ilio Durandis is the founder of Haiti 2015 movement. He can be reached at ilio@zanmi.com

The Haitian League

What Haiti does not need: Non-Survival Jobs

An Honest Assessment of the Current Conditions in Haiti By Ilio Durandis