It was standing room only at New College last Thursday, as students and community members gathered to hear a panel discussion about how recent political events have seen the island of Haiti descend into chaos after its former President, Jean Bertrand Aristide, was recently toppled by insurgent rebel forces.
The evening began with the screening of the documentary film, “Port-au-Prince is Mine” by director Rigoberto Lopez. The film chronicled the city’s population explosion over the last several decades, and how a lack of urban planning and environmental degradation has led to sprawling, sordid, slums throughout the nation’s capital.
Following the film each guest spoke for approximately 10 minutes about the crisis.
Dr. Elizabeth Abbot, the Dean of Women at Trinity College, began the discussion by talking about her experiences living in Haiti in the mid-1980s. Abbot sees the current situation as “a political manifestation of something much greater…” She focused her talk mainly on the consequences of Haiti’s environmental ruin. “Haiti has 30 watersheds, and 25 of them are now empty…and the reason for this is massive deforestation,” she noted. According to Abbot, the inaccessibility of clean drinking water in the country forces many children to walk great distances to obtain it, and catastrophic mudslides are common when it rains in Port-au-Prince. She urged Canada to get involved to help Haiti find alternative energy sources to reduce its rapid rate of deforestation.
Anton Derose followed Dr. Abbot. The president of the Haitian Cultural Network of Toronto, he discoursed about how France and the United States have exploited Haiti historically and treated the country like “an abused child.”
“The people of Haiti are living in ‘manufactured poverty,'” said Derose. He felt that it was “not a coincidence” that Haiti descended into chaos on its 200th anniversary as an independent republic.
Dr. Yves Antoine, an essayist and poet, also stressed the historical oppression of Haiti at the hands of France. He traced the country’s history as a slave colony, and how its independence influenced other slave-trading nations.
Dr. Melanie Newton focused her speech on the “regional and hemispheric equations” of the crisis, “specifically for Latin America and the Caribbean.” The U of T assistant professor of Caribbean History criticized the “French and American arrogance in placing Aristide under house arrest on the other side of the Atlantic.” She noted that the tendency of large powers to interfere in the affairs of smaller nations across the Americas has had “devastating consequences for democratic governance.” She also placed part of the blame for the current situation in Haiti on the shoulders of the Caribbean Community, or CARICOM, and the inability of this international organization to prevent the crisis despite attempted negotiations.
Frank Voltaires was the final speaker of the evening. The director of the Center for International Documentation and Information on Haiti, he spoke about how “nobody was addressing the problems of the people in Haiti.” He also touched on Haiti’s far-ranging environmental problems, from industrial pollution and deforestation.
After the panelist concluded, the floor was opened up, and a litany of questions for the panelists ensued. Anti-American sentiment ran high, and many individuals who approached the microphone did not ask questions, but simply spoke their minds about the crisis and how they felt the American military removed an elected leader illegitimately.
