Politics of the Stomach

The food riots in Haiti were also a result of policies and actions of the international community. Haiti has lost its food sovereignty as a result of decades of foreign-imposed neoliberal measures. (See Neoliberalism in Glossary.) This is a concrete example of what longtime Haiti advocate Paul Farmer calls "structural violence" — the long-term underdevelopment and inequalities in the world system.

Many people in Haiti point to the first trigger being the USAID eradication of the Haitian pig population following an outbreak of swine fever. Peasants counted on pigs as "bank accounts" (Diederich 1985) so the action amounted to Haiti's "great stock market crash" (Smith 2001:29), contributing to Duvalier's ouster on Feb. 7, 1986. Under U.S. military supervision, Duvalier was replaced by an army junta, the CNG, whose finance minister Delatour imposed a series of neoliberal measures, including currency devaluation, trade liberalization, and opening Haiti's agricultural markets to U.S. producers. Today, Haiti is the most "open" economy in the hemisphere.

In the 1990s, responding to humanitarian crises following the violent 1991-94 coup period, USAID gave millions of dollars in direct food aid (PL-480). The implementation of this aid weakened Haiti's economy with conditions such as still lower tariffs and further trade advantages for U.S. businesses. The free or heavily subsidized U.S. rice undersold the local peasantry, and the grains and the food-for-work programs arrived during the peak of harvest season when farmers sold their crops and needed hired help the most (Richardson 1997).

While it can be argued that Haitian governments can choose to refuse this aid, the majority of their funding comes from international institutions. People in Haiti call this dependency on foreign aid a "politics of the stomach" (e.g., Fatton 2004). Not surprisingly, U.S. assistance to Haiti is still laced with conditions that benefit U.S. corporate interests. For example, the HOPE Act passed in December 2006 was designed to create jobs and cut tariffs on sub-contracted textile productions. While the estimates are way lower than projections, 2,000 to 3,000 instead of 50,000 jobs according to an industry lobbyist, the rationale is that saving $1.50 on a pair of pants spurs foreign investment, sorely lacking in Haiti. Nonetheless, the strings attached to HOPE give even more benefits to U.S. business. HOPE contains a condition that Haiti must not "engage in activities that undermine United States national security or foreign policy interests" —Section (d)(2). In order for private, often foreign, companies to receive tax benefits in the bill, the Haitian government must establish or make progress toward "elimination of barriers to United States trade and investment."

In addition to bilateral aid, international agencies also imposed neoliberal conditions on Haiti through negotiations on foreign debt. By 1991, when Aristide — Haiti's first democratically-elected president — took office, the official debt was $785 million (IMF 2005b:27-28) , more than half of what was claimed in 2006 of $1.463 billion (IMF 2007:73).

Debt drains resources that could otherwise be invested in national production. For example, in 2003 Haiti's scheduled debt service was $57.4 million, whereas total foreign pledges for education, health care, environment and transportation added up to $39.21 million (IMF 2005a:88; World Bank 2002:vii). The scheduled debt service for 2009 is $78.7 million. Debt also is the leverage for imposing what used to be called "structural adjustment programs" (SAPs), including privatization, trade liberalization, and forced reduction in services such as health care, education, or rural credit.

Some argue that competition and free trade bring prosperity to all. In this logic, barriers to trade such as protective tariffs need to be removed. Many of the proposals to respond to the crisis still depart from this logic.

But Haitian peasants cannot "compete" with the United States under a free trade system. First of all, under the U.S. Farm Bill, U.S. agribusiness and some individual farmers received $13.4 billion in subsidies in 2006, a total of $177 billion over the previous decade. At the same time, the World Trade Organization (WTO) repeatedly strikes down tariffs and other subsidies in Southern countries as "impediments to free trade." Even without the subsidies, the average U.S. farm — individual or corporate — benefits from what we now take for granted as public responsibilities: building and maintaining roads, irrigation canals, water treatment, pumps and pipelines and federally-insured credit, etc. These public investments cost money, which high debt payments and reduction in social spending mandated by structural adjustment programs have prevented in Haiti.

Occasionally, international institutions directly contribute to the increase in prices, as in January 2003, when the IMF demanded that the government stop subsidizing the cost for fuel, triggering immediate hikes in taptap (public bus) fares as well as protests. Very efficient in economic terms because timachann (street vendors) operate on very slim profit margins, the informal market immediately saw a rise in prices for staple goods as a result.

As a result of all these factors, Haiti is almost entirely dependent on foreign food production. Once an exporter of rice, now Haiti imports an estimated 82 percent of total consumption, $200,000,000 per year (MOREPLA and PAPDA 2004). Haiti has lost its food security and food sovereignty. As Préval recently stated in his effort to calm the populace: "In 1987, when rice began being imported at a cheap price, many people applauded. But cheap imported rice destroyed locally grown rice. Today, imported rice has become expensive, and our national production is in ruins. That's why subsidizing imported food is not the answer."

It is therefore not surprising that prices for basic foodstuffs in Haiti are tied to the global market where rising petroleum costs and inflation in grain prices because of its increasing use as biofuel have driven up prices. Thirty-seven year old community leader and timachann Linda Thibault explains, "You have to buy Miami rice. Do the math: if a bag of Haitian rice costs 150 goud, and a bag of U.S. rice costs 65 goud, I can buy two bags of U.S. rice and still have money left over for the cost of one bag of Haitian rice. I am forced to fill my body with U.S. rice. My children can eat more."