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30610: Gilles (reply) Re : Spinelli (reply) Jacmel Film Festival (fwd)




From: Emmanuelle Gilles <manugi28@yahoo.fr>

The poorest does not mean that everyone is poor even if the majority may be considered as such. I would prefer the word "impoverished" as it was once the richest island in the caribbean. The country needs to be developed in all spheres not just economically and socially but also in art and music. If you knew Haiti, you would also realize that music and art are an essential part of people's life. Talking about films and music is very much "a propos".

To reconstruct Haiti, first of all is to focus on building infrastructures and invest in social development. So far no foreign assistance has been focusing on infrastructures except in small insignificant projects. What we need is to build housing for low income people and poorer communities and gradually eliminate the "bidonvilles" on the mountains and plant trees instead.

Build a Huge University with campus (one in the north, one in the south and one in Port-au-Prince)

Build Hotels with international standard (why not a sheraton, a Hilton etc... with conference facilities (bring the international meetings over)

Developing the infrastructures mean reviving tourism, increasing the service sector;

So far, Haiti reconstruction advocates, nothing of those magnitudes have been envisaged by foreigners - world bank loans or IMF do not allow any social investments from the part of the government. The loan has to be spent their way, not to feed the poorest. This is the time for France to pay its debt to the Haitian People.

It seems that foreigners enjoy starting their story with "the poorest of the caribbean" as an echo for the world to hear - Also according to some, Haitians should not be speaking french - they should be speaking creole. they are too black. The bottomline is that they are not given opportunities to be educated in the same manner as the middle class and the upper class. Again, you would hear that there is no middle class - it does not end what others think of us. There is a Haitian context. It cannot be linked to the US way of life. When I reminisce about my childhood in Haiti - the values with which I grew up - the great time that we will never have again - I would not trade that for anything in the first or second or third world since the Haiti advocates cannot figure in what world to classify Haiti.