Hello All,
I am going to use this update to write about protesting and Haiti as well as the current political situation, as many of you have expressed that you find that kind of information interesting.
Protests in Haiti are a powerful tool, used by both corrupt politicians and everyday people. Different types of protests have different feels and carry far different levels of danger. On some protest days you can go about your normal day and if you run into a barricade or come upon some people throwing bottles or rocks or getting tear gassed you just kind of re-route and are ok. You can sometimes even go through the barricade and not get anything thrown at you or maybe just a long distance bottle lobbed. On other days you will get shot trying to go through a barricade without permission.
The most common protest technique is to block a major road. Protesters will find some strategic point and block the road with boulders, trees, and mounds of rubble. If they have some money or resources, they might have a tire to burn in the road which creates a pothole. Then they usually have some rock and bottle stashes at said roadblock to throw at cars, moto’s or the police. They also put stashes of rocks and bottles around said road block. Then when the police come in force the protesters scatter and rain rocks and bottles down on the police from afar while the police try to move the boulders, trees or dirt blocking the road. The police usually wont actually move stuff while having bottles and rocks rained down on them so there is a standoff of sorts. Violence at these things tends to be mutually escalating, so if the police start shooting protesters than the protesters go get guns and start shooting at the police.
The last 6 months in Haiti have been relatively turbulent politically and economically. In November and December their were serious anti corruption protests nationwide and also protests in support of a coup or the president stepping down. The price of gasoline in Haiti is artificially high as they have a heavy tax on it to pay back 2 billion USD worth of loans that the Haitian government got from the Venezuelan State oil company, Petrocaribe, from 2008-2013ish. This 2 billion was supposed to be used to undertake massive infrastructure programs in Haiti to help spur development. Instead the politicians and Haitian upper class stole the money through an array of schemes and have almost no works to show for it. The Haitian people are now on the hook to pay back this massive loan, which never actually made it to them, and they are understandably upset. The main slogan of the anti corruption protests is “Where is the Petrocaribe money?”
A Northern City in Haiti changed the Haitian Flag, essentially seceding, this red and black flag is what they want the flag changed to and this is a protest their.
This week there have been student protests in Jacmel and probably other parts of the country as the public school teachers have not been paid in a while and so are not showing up to work. This is pretty common and when it goes on for long enough the high school students go protest to try to get their teachers paid and schools opened. The students were protesting all week, not city stopping protest, everyone was able to more or less go about their day as normal but at one of the student protests 2 high schooler’s got shot, they did not die. To me this in many ways epitomizes the best and worst of Haiti. On the good side you have teenagers who are so desperate to try to improve their lives and get ahead that they will go confront the police and risk their lives to try to force their government to stop impeding their education and personal development. This is a beautiful thing and to me shows the strength, determination and courage that a desperate life can instill in people. On the other hand you have the government, full of men who have become millionaires exploiting the Haitian people, refusing to pay teachers their $120 a month salary and then shooting the kids when they try to force them to. Talking to moto drivers and people in Jacmel everyone agreed it was not right for the UDMO (Haitian marines but part of the police force) to shoot the kids. The guys who shot them had masks on as if the identity of the shooter got out they would probably get lynched or at least hit with a machete. The JRF kids go to a private school so they do not have to deal with the constant stoppages due to pay that the public schools deal with.
2 students after a protest that turned violent to get schools opened
The last couple weeks there have been sporadic gasoline shortages throughout the nation, last week we had 5 straight days of no gasoline at the gas stations. Apparently, the Haitian government buys all the gas from some company before reselling it to the gas station owners throughout Haiti. They owe that company 70 million dollars or something so the company has been refusing to give them more gas and causing these gasoline shortages. I believe after a few days the US government gets involved and requires it as if the shortages went too long there would be massive civil unrest. When the gas station doesn’t have gas people start selling gasoline on the street in front of the gas stations in single gallon containers. Depending on how many days it has been since their was gas the price can range from $5.50 USD to $11 USD per gallon AND you just have to pray that the guy you are buying it from is selling you actual gas and not some half gas/half water mixture. Obviously when the price of gas goes up to 10 dollars a gallon in a place where everyone is already desperate and hungry people get angry and their only real outlet is protesting as they are not going to vote this government into decency.
Anti-corruption protests are often the most serious as they are aimed at those in power, where as protests due to electric shortages or schools closures are aimed at specific issues. On the November 18th protests there were allegedly 60 people by police and armed gangs that are connected to the government in Port Au Prince. In the December protests there were also relatively significant casualties, as the country is so disorganized it is hard to get concrete information but even in Jacmel the protesters and police were shooting at each other a few days and I know in Port Au Prince they had some pitched battles between local gangs, police and protesters. The DHL office that we send stuff to the US from a few times a week had a car drive into a protest and kill 5 people. The car was driven by a government employee but allegedly had a tire blow and so careened into the crowd, again reliable information was hard to come by but their was a video of the dead people in front of DHL and the burned out car, the protesters lit it on fire after the deaths. The Good Threads employee that goes to Port Au Prince to ship stuff also said he saw the police executing a group of people in some field but he might have been lying. On a side that man was literally risking his life for much of the month of December to get people their belts on time, talk about a commitment to customer service.
The protests do sometimes work and bring about small changes but the core problem of the nation, a government that refuses to take care of any of it’s responsibilities, is not changing anytime soon. Fortunately besides logistic headaches we are generally not too affected by these protests and able to do our work in relative peace. As always thank you all for your continued support, together we are making a real difference.
