By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. After more than a century sailing along as an independent black nation, Haiti collided with the Monroe Doctrine in the person of U.S. kingmaker Roger L. Farnham in 1915. He soon met his match in Haitian hero Charlemagne Peralte.
Interview of Drew Aiken, Defend Haiti | stophaitideportations.org | Press TV, YouTube. The U.S. has resumed the deportation of about 50 Haitians per month to Haiti since January 2011. Some of the deportees get detained in Haiti, including 34 year-old Wildrick Guerrier who died in prison of cholera. Many deportees have medical conditions for which they cannot get care or have U.S.-citizen children in the States whom they cannot support. Human Rights groups are calling for a consideration of humanitarian factors and a stop to the deportations.
By Staff, Dominican Today | Editorial comment by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. As the Dominican Republic’s flooded Santiago province erupted in protest against a poorly-built bridge and a scarcity of functional storm drains during the recent rains, the country’s President Leonel Fernandez celebrated the ground breaking for a U.S. $293 M inter-mountains road that is part of grander plan for highway construction throughout the country.
By Staff, Terra Daily (AFP) | Haiti Chery. Latin America accounts for 45 percent of global copper production, 50 percent of silver and 20 percent of gold. But several commercial mining projects have been put on hold in Chile, Peru and Argentina, as local communities have fought for their rights to prior consultation under the International Labor Organization’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention.
By staff, AHP | Translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery | AlJazeera, YouTube. Nineteen year-old Johnny Jean from Port-Salut was heard on Thursday May 10 by Uruguayan Judge Guido Alejandro. Jean identified in court the soldiers he accuses of having raped him in a Port Salut base of the U.N. Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). (English | French)
By Gerard Maxineau, Le Nouvelliste | Editorial comment by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. The National Federation of Haitian Mayors (FENAMH) has fingered the executive and some lawmakers as having recently drafted a plan to dissolve 140 municipal councils and replace them with municipal boards at the service of the parliamentarians, but this plan was drafted abroad in the prefab constitution that came along with Haiti’s prefab president and its prefab parliament exactly one year ago. It is a plan especially designed to grab lands in northern Haiti.
By Marcela Valente, Tierramerica | Rebelion. A number of Latin American countries have achieved economic growth by an extractivist model of production that increases the gross domestic product (GDP) at the cost of the intensive use of gradually exhausted natural resources such as: large-scaling mining with cyanide to cause major environmental impacts, or monoculture plantations for export, at the expense of diversified rural production.
By Nocles Debreus, Le Matin | Translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Haiti’s agricultural sector creates 50% of the country’s employment overall and 80% in rural areas. Agronomist Phito Blémur and many others believe that policies toward development and poverty reduction must take into account the vital role this sector played immediately after Independence when it accounted for 95% of the GDP (instead of the current 26%). Revival of this sector will require a departure from neoliberalism and the establishment of serious fiscal and monetary policies.
By Staff (EJ), Radio Metropole | Editorial comment and translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. The mandates of one third of the Haitian Senate and various municipal executives expired in mid-January 2012, and the mandate of another third of the Senate expired on May 8. Mayors and local officials have been dictatorially replaced by presidential decree, and no administrative provision has been made to assemble a new electoral body to organize new elections so as to replace the elected parliamentarians whose terms have expired. (English | French)
By Staff, Huffington Post. More than 5,100 children were living in foster care in January 2012 because their parents were detained or deported, according to a study released by the Applied Research Center, which advocates for immigration reform.
Poor Little Rich Haiti to Be Fleeced of Copper-Silver-Gold Via Caracol Deep-Water Port (UPDATED)
By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Plans are under way for Canadian corporations to mine Haiti’s northeast area near Caracol, which has been discovered to contain a wealth of silver and gold, in addition to copper. As in the Dominican Republic’s Pueblo Viejo project, construction of the mines will involve dynamiting of mountains, and the ore will be extracted by an opencast (or open-pit) mining process that contaminates large volumes of water with cyanide. In addition a deep-water port is slated for construction in Caracol. UPDATES: May 7 (Le Matin) Martelly formally announces construction of a “modern port” in Fort Liberte, near Caracol.
By Emmanuel Bruno Marino, AlterPresse | All-India Drug Action Network | Translations by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Within two months of the start of a campaign of vaccination with pentavalent vaccine in India by the World Health Organization (WHO), four healthy inoculated children died. Nevertheless, on April 16, 2012 Haiti announced that it would introduce pentavalent vaccine into its national immunization program at a cost U.S. $11 million. According to Expanded Vaccination Program Director Dr. Ronald Jean Cadet, this program will make up for “a lack of sanitary control over foreigners who can travel with these viruses into the country.” (English | French)
By Amos Cincir, Le Nouvelliste | Translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. A tripartite agreement of collaboration was signed at Haiti’s National Palace on Wednesday, April 25, 2012 between Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Lamothe, Deputy Foreign Minister of Venezuela Temir Porras, and Ambassador of Argentina to Haiti Marcelo Sebaste. The aid will consist of agricultural tools, an identification system, and literacy education. (English | French)
By Wilson Bigaud | Introduction by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. A distinguishing feature of Bigaud’s work is that his tableaux took everyday aspects of Haitian life and lovingly chronicled them. Although Bigaud was born in Port-au-Prince, he spent most of his life about 70 km south-west of the capital in the village of Vialet, near the town of Petit-Goâve. He liked to walk in the countryside, hike little trails, talk to villagers, and return home to paint his day.