Haiti fishermen at Kay Kok, Ãle à Vache are asked to leave their coastal homes to make way for tourist resorts
Tourism is not development, liberate yourself from that idea, Haiti!
Responding to the urgent call for help from local Haitians living on the offshore island, Ilavach (Ãle à Vache), I wrote an article this week to sound the alarm and get the world to pay attention to what’s happening to the people at Ãle à Vache Haiti. The article is titled, US occupiers in Haiti privatizing Ãle à Vache – Chronicles of a massacre.
The article’s Kreyòl companion piece is a Franns Lwi transcription of a RadioVKM interview and Lakou New York re-broadcast of the Haitians telling of their plight, urging for the international authorities, international media, human rights organizations and world citizens everywhere to take action to stop their coming massacre, stop their displacement from their homes and livelihood to make way foreign tourists.
One Haitian, who read the article wrote to me and said:
“(Ezili Dantò) r u out of ur mind with this senseless article? can’t u c the progress n development that is happening in nearby Dominican republic n elsewhere in the Caribbean, the people r not complaining, they r benefiting. u r preaching the impossible that even ur lavalas party “party of doing nothing” did not even care for Haiti. it’s time to stop the hatred n show some love for Haiti. let the government do its job, because they are doing the right thing, only the blind can’t see. “
In response and in defense of the Haiti protestors making the point that the tourism plans the Martelly-Lamothe government is executing is not development for the local people of Ãle à Vache, but wholesale thievery. Our talented Alix Saintil, answered:
“…Migratory patterns are concise criteria when determining socioeconomic developments. Examine this demographic reality in, let us say, New york and it will liberate you from the erroneous notion of tourism as an effective method for development and, worse, the selling off the nation territories. How do you explain the underdeveloped nations making tourism their economic sustenance contribute the most to the number of immigrants swelling the ranks of the developed nations? Tourism has never catapulted underdeveloped nations to a more envious status ever and it is not about to change with an inept and corrupt crew selected to oversee the international gangsters interests in Haiti.”–Alix Saintil
Ezili Dantò Beautifully said Alix Saintil .Will publish and circulate. An nou tout di tchoul blan yo, restavek blan yo. (Let’s tell all the Uncle Toms and Aunt Jemimas): “Liberate (yourself) from the erroneous notion of tourism as an effective method for development and, worse, the selling off the nation territories.”
A job as a maid, butler, busboy, cashier or sexual receptacles for Northern tourists will not create wealth for Haiti. The international hotel chains circulate little of their profits and capital in the Caribbean countries their in. The tourists mostly spend the bulk of their monies in their own countries. Paying travel fees to the international airlines, car rental chains, hotel chains, international vacation package chains. What’s left to spend in Haiti is for small arts and crafts, which is also now big business as the internationals discourage the locals from littering their pristine hotel gift stores.
Haiti wants the world to come and see its riches, but that would be another, more Haitian interaction with foreigners. An interaction that preserves and protects local Haitian interests, values and dignity.
| In Kreyòl – This is a very important interview to listen to Ayisyen!-Tande emisyon Vwa Klodi Mizo sa a, Ti Pèp la di: Ilavach pap vinn tounen yon lòt Labadee. Ayiti pa pou vann! Nou pa vle yon lòt Labadee an Ayiti! Share, circulate, give voice to the terrorized Haitians People of Haiti will NOT allow their offshore islands, including Ile A Vache, to become another Labadee where foreign tourists don’t even know they’re in Haiti and where Haitians are forbidden to enter much less benefit in any way from this foreign presence on their lands! The Haiti public does not even know where the monies paid for the Labadee tourist project goes to! ************************* |
This means we must kick out the US occupational forces out of Haiti first and get our sovereignty back first. First things first.
The Western tourism template doesn’t work for a free Haiti. Like US sweatshops, it does nothing to help with what Haiti really needs, which is more local production, local manufacturing, local agriculture, local distribution, local industries run by local Haitians. (Haiti: Foreign Investment means Death and Repression: A Historical Perspective.)
Responding directly to the guy that spewed the colonial line on Haiti, I said:
- The Dominican Republic is the biggest tourist location in the Caribbean and every other week you’ve got Dominicans getting in dangerous boats to get to Puerto Rico so they can say they’re Americans and get out of the DR, find work, school and a better life in the United States and elsewhere.
- The Dominican Republic is the biggest tourist location in the Caribbean but this tourism is unabashedly SEXUAL TOURISM. Dominican women have to sell themselves to feed their families. The DR is FOURTH in the world for prostitution trafficking.
“The United Nations Population Fund ranks the Caribbean country fourth worldwide in the number of women who are trafficked to other nations.”
- Is that what you’re calling development?
- If tourism is DEVELOPMENT for the DR – how do you explain the women that are leaving the DR to go sell themselves all over the world; how do you explain Dominicans taking boats to go to Puerto Rico and past themselves off as Puerto Ricans in order to get to the US. So many of the DR people are going to work in Haiti as prostitutes. DR women and now more and more Eastern women people the upscale brothels in the Haiti. If tourism is so good in DR why are all the construction workers in Haiti Dominicans who can’t find life and work in their own country.
Perhaps, life in Haiti is not as bad as the international gangsters with less IMF/WB grip on it then they have in the DR, Jamaica, Bahamas, et al. Watch, “Life and Debt” regarding Jamaica’s situation.
The “Life and Debt” documentary on the Jamaica situation illustrates why tourism is not development for local Haitians. Shows why tourism, an export economy, sweatshops and privatization of pubic assets are not development for Haiti, Africa, the Caribbean. The Dominican Republic would not be able to oppress its masses this way without the 70,000, mostly US trained military, running around daily silencing protest, protecting some filthy, perverted resorts and communes hiding pathology. Protecting the one percent there – the local overseers servicing the international bankers and warmongers ruling our planet.
Only this force, along with the IMF/WB economic hit men death policies, keeps the people in the DR, in the entire Caribbean, from taking back their coastlines and sovereignty back.
Jamaica, like the Dominican Republic is a tourist haven. But there’s more violence and crime in these countries than in Haiti. Their people own less land than Haitians. The land is what the enslavers have come to take in Haiti. That’s why the UN is there and not in the Dominican Republic or Jamaica. They already own those nations. Haitians are still fighting. The people of Ãle à Vache are not going to give up their lands.
- Ezili, anyone with functioning brain cells ought to know of the social dangers, the economic irrelevance and political restraints as a consequence of an economy based on tourism.
Indeed, the newest assault on the Ãle à Vache islanders is a dangerous situation, a sophisticated international crime that has been planned for the unknowing people by the US plunderers for decades. (Haiti’s Doctored Elections, Seen from the Inside: An Interview with Ricardo Seitenfus)
It’s a certainty the US intelligence folks have already scoped out who on the Island they’ve got to silence, bribe, or co-opt to take this Haiti territory. With probable plans and counterplans to the counterplans. The old Western ruse they’ll use is that displacing the fisherman, farmers and craftsman to bring in tourists is “helping Haitians”.
Citizens and more privileged residents in the West could decide to help stop the coming massacres. Read the article at our website. Make sure you scroll down and read: WHAT HAITI HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS AT THE EZILI NETWORK EXPECT WILL HAPPEN.
The people of Ãle à Vache and the other offshore Haiti islands whose properties have been illegally taken through eminent domain by a US-selected puppet president ask you to help them block the international gangsters from taking over their homes and access to food sovereignty. You can do this by spreading the truth, expose and block the lies the mainstream media will be spewing out soon. Go to:
US occupiers in Haiti privatizing Ãle à Vache – Chronicles of a massacre
AND,
Gaye toupatou: Koukouwouj Pou Nou Bloke Masak Mateli-Lamòt sou Popilasyon Ilavach La
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Thank you for sharing these truths to enlighten our people.
I spent a night in Santo Domingo, on my way from Punta cana to PauP. The taximan to the hotel warned me not to go out till day break, as it was too dangerous. But that just added to my curiousity. So I tried to dress and look as local as everybody. I didn’t get my throat but the spectacle was worth the while. In the park right to the other side of the street, there was a girl wandering absolutely naked. At first I thought she was mad, so I decided to cross the street. The park was rather crowded, some in couples. When my eyes met the girl’s she bore the usual commercial smile, then I understood. I just ran to the nearest bar for a Presidente to drawn the vision.