Dear Haiti Friends,
There are some reports that the police in Mirebalais, reinforced by police and helicopters from the capital and local resistance groups, are gaining the upper hand. Apparently the university hospital is OK. The work of rounding up escaped prisoners is also beginning. I’ve received many phone photos of people from Mirebalais walking cross-country into the hills toward Cange and Hinche in the north. One friend who waited until yesterday to leave because he was watching over his father’s school, said that Mirebalais was like a ghost town – no one there. In addition to the damage at the jail and the police station, houses and businesses have also been destroyed. Here is an Associated Press report from yesterday saying that hundreds were fleeing — Mirebalais has more than 100,000 residents and I think “hundreds fleeing” is quite an understatement:
Gangs strike in Haiti’s heartland as hundreds flee under heavy gunfire
| Gangs strike in Haiti’s heartland as hundreds flee under heavy gunfire Heavily armed gangs have struck the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti and stormed a local prison as hundreds o… |
Below my signature, courtesy of Diane Steinhouse, is information from a group working in Haiti and elsewhere and trying to bring attention to the vast amount of gun trafficking from the US, specifically through Haiti. Stopping that flow would mean lives saved all over the world. Their petition also includes helping Haitians with Temporary Protected Status, which has now been rescinded, remain in the US.
Courtesy of Roger Bowen, here’s a link to last night’s PBS report about food economics in Haiti. Haiti used to be able to feed itself and was a net exporter of food for many years. The rice fields, particularly in the Artibonite Valley and the far north, were once beautifully engineered thanks to the rice farmers consulting with Dutch engineers about managing water flow and retention with a working system of dikes, weirs, and canals. When Haiti was flooded with cheap rice and the local farmers couldn’t compete, the fields were abandoned and the system fell into disrepair. Haitians were hungry not because there wasn’t enough food, but because people were poor — the end of the Duvalier years and the dwindling of the tourist industry because of the (untrue) belief that AIDS came from Haiti brought a lot of poverty, and the cheap rice brought more.
How efforts to send Haiti cheap rice made it hard for the nation to produce its own
How efforts to send Haiti cheap rice made it hard for the nation to prod… |
This is an important reminder that it is always better to purchase items locally, enabling local people to make a living and pay their own bills, helping other local merchants. Projects which involve job creation, education, and increased opportunities for local leadership are the projects that make a lasting difference in individuals and in a community.