30779: Burnham: RE: 30753: fragility and (news) Chamberlain: Haiti-Aristide Protest (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

reply to: tburnham@colgate.edu

I watched the tele eclair broadcast on Sunday evening after Brazil slapped 
Argentina around. Lots of celebration after the victory. A couple of people 
died in the resulting celebrations, apparently.  They showed Aristide talking 
about his new book...at great length. It made a lot of people very nervous. 
Film footage of the demonstration showed that there was an awful lot of people 
celebrating/protesting the former president's birthday. His monologue was a 
fluid transition from an academic discussion of language to one of Haitian 
politics. It certainly could be intertpreted in a number of ways.  That being 
said, there is a fragility in the calm, here, it seems to me. While the 
crackdown on rogue elements and criminals continues apace(Le Nouvelliste 
reported several lynchings of suspected criminals in the south by the local 
population and Lavaud in Gonaive has just been arrested but they missed 
Phillippe; big drug arrest yesterday involving DEA), the return to "security" 
needs to be quickly matched by an economic package of some significance. Haiti 
needs a Marshall plan. And quick. There is a tremendous ambivalence about 
MINUSTAH coming from various quarters. Serious resentment exists towards the 
blan who make big salaries and get the prettiest girls on the weekends at the 
beach....i myself find the large UN vehicles irritating, once again. (I'm 
reminded of 1995 again.) On the other hand, they are here for stability and 
security. A bigger question is who is being protected from whom. I am 
continually told of an absence of money in the local markets. Nobody has any 
cash. I'm wondering if economic problems in Florida are hurting the remittance 
market in the same way they've been noted to have decreased for Mexico.  Others 
on this list have noted the urgency of a jobs package/program of some sort. 
School starts in September. Not much time to get things in order and convince 
people that the whole thing was worth it. The tall foreheads better hurry up. 
best,Thor Burnham
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