[MUSIC PLAYING]
MODERATOR: Good evening.
My name is Erica.
And as president of the MIT
Western Hemisphere Project,
I would like to welcome
each and every one of you
for coming to tonight's event
entitled The Uses Of Haiti.
What I would like to briefly
discuss with you right now
is just to mention that
this event was co-sponsored
by the MIT Western Hemisphere
Project, MIT Student
Pugwash, and the MIT's
Technology and Culture Forum.
As you can see up
here on the board,
there's three coming events.
Two are tomorrow.
One is an evening of Latin
American chamber music
and a Pugwash student
conference entitled Technology
in the New Global
Context, Rethinking Social
Responsibility.
I encourage people to
attend those events.
And the Western
Hemisphere Project
will be having an open meeting
within the next two weeks.
Okay, briefly to
discuss, I'd like
to mention that our schedule
for this evening is as follows.
First, I'll give introductions,
introduced Nancy Dorsinville,
who will introduce
our two speakers
this evening, Dr. Paul Farmer
and Professor Noam Chomsky.
Professor Chomsky will speak
for roughly half an hour.
And Professor Farmer will
speak for roughly half an hour
and will be followed
by questions.
And, now, I'd like to
begin with an introduction.
As a research fellow at the
Harvard Center for Population
and Development Studies,
Nancy Dorsinville's work
focuses on health and
social justice issues
within the Haitian diaspora.
As a social anthropologist with
a specialization in migration
studies, she lectures on
women's health and violence
at the Harvard School
of Public Health.
Her research also
includes domestic violence
as a public health concern
among Haitian woman.
She's presented her
work at a wide range
of academic and international
conferences, most recently
at the UN Conference
against Racism in Durban
on the intersection of
migration, xenophobia,
and violence against women.
She is a member of
Partners in Health,
an advisor to women's
program at the UN Academy
and an affiliate at the Harvard
Program in International
Analysis and
Conflict Resolution.
Currently, she is a faculty
advisor for the Harvard Haitian
Students Alliance.
And now with great
pleasure, I would
like to present to
you, Nancy Dorsinville.
[APPLAUSE]
DORSINVILLE: Good
evening, everyone.
I'm very happy to be here.
And I thank you for
being here to join us
in hearing and learning
and expressing concerns
about the present conditions
in our beloved Haiti.
The two people here
with us this evening
don't need much introduction.
Dr. Farmer, as
you know, has been
working in Haiti for the past
20 years in infectious disease,
but fundamentally addressing
issues of the poor.
From a systemic standpoint,
from of spiritual standpoint,
and from an economic
development standpoint,
his work is very much
rooted in the actualization
and the empowerment of the more
marginalized people in Haiti
of which our population
has the highest percentage.
So I take this
opportunity to thank him
for a lifetime of
dedication to my countrymen
and, particularly, the most
disadvantaged of my countrymen.
I then would like to
attempt to introduce
Professor Chomsky, who
has written extensively
on a number of issues.
But, particularly,
our focus this evening
is the impact of American
or US foreign relation
on the current
situation in Haiti,
namely the economic embargo.
I just want to contextualize
our discussion this evening
with some remarks.
And I would like to start by
echoing something that Dr.
Farmer has said consistently
in his writing and his
well-attended lectures on the
other side of the river that
what's happening today in
Haiti, the economic embargo,
is the result of a series of
historical antecedents that
cannot be taken out of the
equation if we are to really
look at what the
circumstances are.
In addition to that, I think
it's important to understand,
as Professor Chomsky
has also said repeatedly
in his writings, that
democracy is a process.
And the outcome of
democracy requires a series
of fundamental
conditions, namely
that the sovereignty of the
people has to be respected.
The agency of people in
making certain choices
about the kind of
governance that they have,
how that governance
will be applied,
and who they will answer to
has to be part of their agency
and has to be part
of their choice.
I think on the eve of our
bicentennial independence,
the question for me is what
does it mean that today we
are under economic embargo.
What does it mean that as the--
I mean, everybody calls
us the poorest country
in the hemisphere.
And a lot of people have
contentions about that.
I would rather say we are
the most impoverished country
in the hemisphere, because it
has happened systematically
with very deliberate,
intentional policies that
have led to the
impoverishment of Haiti.
One of the things that's
very topical today,
people talk about reparation.
Well, not only were
we the first country
to be under embargo when
we became independent--
which that, too, was a process.
But the embargo allowed
the US and its allies
not to recognize our
sovereignty for about 60 years.
And yet during that
time, selectively, there
were trade agreements
that benefited
the countries of the
north, while beginning
what we see today as the
most impoverished nation
in the hemisphere.
A lot of prerequisites
have been put
on why we haven't
gotten the $500 million
in loans and grants
that were approved.
A lot of it has been relegated
to, allegedly, problems
with elections.
Well, I think the other oldest
republic in the Americas
also understands
what it means to have
problems with elections.
The other issue that's
been put forward
is that our cabinet was
not pluralistic enough.
And in the name of
democracy and in the name
of diversity in
our cabinet, it was
important to change
certain senators.
Every time they came up with
a different prerequisite
which we fulfilled
as a sovereign state,
something else came up.
So I've thought about
this a great deal.
And I thought, you know, this
is becoming like a kaleidoscope
of democracy.
And the colors are changing.
The shapes are changing.
The demands are changing.
And we're not getting
a fixed picture
from the powers of
the north as to what
it is that they want in order
to release the funds, which
are hampering any
humanitarian endeavors,
any humanitarian initiatives,
and any real fundamental
systems and building
blocks for the democracy
that we've fought for
from the very beginning.
2004 is just around the corner.
And our struggle for democracy
began way back 200 years ago.
And we have had a fixed picture
about what democracy means.
We still have a fixed picture.
The people of Haiti have spoken.
We have heeded the
prerequisites of the changing
shapes of the changing demands.
And, now, in the name
of Democracy with big D
in the name of humanitarian
concerns, which
seems to be the epitaph
for everything that's
being done today
in the world, we
demand the release
of these funds.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
So, now, Professor Chomsky
is going to talk to us
and share his thoughts
about the implications
of American foreign policy on
the economic embargo imposed
on our country today.
[APPLAUSE]
CHOMSKY: Glad to learn what
I'm supposed to talk about.
That's fine.
Well--
DORSINVILLE: Anything will do.
CHOMSKY: Anything will do.
I understand.
[LAUGHTER]
Well, let me lead in from
the last talk I gave,
which was last night in New
York where I had to be taken out
under police protection.
You can guess what
the topic was.
It was about the Middle East.
Tonight, if anything
controversial comes up,
I'm going to hand it
over to Paul, so he can--
[LAUGHTER]
Well, a word about
the Middle East--
[LAUGHTER]
--maybe, just so I can
have some continuity--
[APPLAUSE]
--a very short word.
You may have seen kind of an
interesting article in The New
York Times Magazine
a couple of weeks
ago by Deborah Sontag
on the Palestinians.
In it, she made a good point.
She was talking about the
difficulties of discourse
between Palestinians
and the West
and why it never seems to work.
And the problem that she
pointed to is quite real.
She said, the Palestinians
keep harping on history,
where history means anything
that happened more than about
5 minutes ago.
And the West doesn't
want to waste time
on all this sort of old
fashioned boring nonsense,
but just get on, so
that the West can lead
the way to a glorious future.
And that makes
discourse really hard.
And, actually, that point
generalizes all over the world.
Those who have their
boot on somebody's neck
never want to know
how it got that way.
That's boring, old
fashioned, dusty, old stuff.
Let's just go on with
our boot on the neck
and make it even better.
But the ones who have
their neck under the boot,
they somehow have a
different view of things.
Because they're
backward and uncivilized
and, you know, that sort
of savage, you know.
Well, I was asked to
say a couple of words
about the background, including
the history, meaning what
happened more than
5 minutes ago,
which puts me on the
side of the victim.
So that's good.
I'm happy to take that position.
That's a position we ought to
take, not necessary to say.
As far as democracy
is concerned,
I think it's very
clear why Haiti doesn't
meet the standards of democracy,
the same reason it didn't meet
the standards 10
years ago when it had
its first democratic election.
The election just came
out the wrong way.
The US was certain, confident,
that the election would
be won by its candidate,
a World Bank official, who
would lead the country,
you know, on to this brand
new era of neoliberalism
that had already
had a certain history in Haiti.
He got 14% of the vote.
And out of the woodwork,
came a populist priest
who got 2/3 of the vote without
any funds or any publicity
or anything else.
Because things had been
going on in the country
that nobody paid
any attention to.
They were in the
slums or, you know,
in the hills and places
where no real people live.
But they had
organized, you know,
a vibrant democratic society,
maybe the most democratic
society in the hemisphere
or maybe in the world,
but on their own, you know,
without control from above.
And that doesn't fly.
You know, that's not democracy.
It's not for us or anyone else.
And, furthermore, this
is pretty official.
So instead of quoting myself,
I'll quote a real expert.
Thomas Carothers is
the best known scholar
on issues of the emerging
democracies in Latin America.
He's written a standard work.
And he writes from an
insider's perspective.
He was part of the
Reagan State Department
involved in what they called
democracy enhancement programs.
So when he writes
on the effect on,
you know, bringing
democracy to Latin America,
he writes from both as a
scholar and as an insider.
And he's pretty honest about it.
He says that the Reagan
policies were very sincere,
but they failed.
And they failed
in a curious way.
He said, in the areas where
US influence was least--
namely, in the southern
cone of Latin America--
there were real steps towards
democracy, which the Reagan
Administration tried to prevent,
but wasn't able to prevent.
They sort of happened anyway.
In the areas closer where
the United States has
much more influence and control,
in effect it has basically
run it for a century
or more, the policies
still were sincere.
But they just didn't work.
And the reason was that
the United States, he says,
wanted top down democracy, in
which the traditional ruling
elites who have been associated
with the United States
remain in power, but
under democratic forms.
And, in a sense,
that was achieved.
But, you know, as
an honest person,
methinks that's
not real democracy.
But he's correct.
That's exactly what the
United States wants.
And you'd expect
any powerful state
to want some kind
of formal democracy,
because it sort of looks good.
But top down forms in which
traditional elites, those
who have concentrated wealth
and power in their hands,
because of their alliances
with the boss in the West--
us, in this case--
they have to remain in power.
Incidentally, the
same picture is
held for the United
States itself
or always has been back to
the Constitutional Convention.
So that's the picture for us.
And it's got to be the
picture for everyone else.
There's even a
technical name for it
in the academic literature.
It's called polyarchy.
So theorists of
democracy argue that we
ought to have polyarchy,
not democracy.
Polyarchy means small
groups of elites.
What James Madison
called the wealth
of the nation, the
wise section, those
who have sympathy with
property and its rights,
they ought to rule.
The rest ought to
be factionalized.
They are allowed to participate,
because it's a democracy,
but periodically.
They participate by every
once in a while coming out
and lending their
weight to one another
of the responsible
men who represent
the wealth of the
nation, those who
have the interests
of property at heart.
That's the way this
country is supposed to run.
That's the way every
country is supposed to run.
And that means, if a
populist priest comes out
of the woodwork
with 2/3 of the vote
without any money
or any publicity
just basing himself on
grassroots organizations that
aren't supposed to
exist, that's not
the right kind of democracy.
So, of course, it
has to be stopped.
And that standard--
Haiti, still, they're
kind of backward and
uncivilized and haven't
figured this out yet,
though the United
States has been trying to teach
it to them for a long time.
Well, I'm-- say a few
words about history.
Those of you who've
taken a history of course
in junior high school will
remember that half a millennium
ago a group of savage
barbarians in the west of Europe
launched an assault on
the rest of the world
and have practically
devastated it ever since.
One of the first
places they came to
is, in fact, Haiti,
which they were
overawed by what they found.
They regarded it as--
the Spanish, this is Columbus.
Las Cases, the great
contemporary historian,
described it as the most densely
populated part of the world,
which could happen true.
And they were
overwhelmed by the wealth
and the peaceful population,
maybe 8 million people or so.
And they just
couldn't believe it.
Well, the current
Haitians can't remember
what happened to the original,
to those who Columbus found.
Because they were wiped out
within about 25 years or so.
They just were no good
as slaves and so on.
And they brought
in African slaves
to be able extract the wealth
of the country and send it back
where it belongs, namely to
the savages in Western Europe.
And it did.
Haiti was the richest
colony of the world.
Perhaps, it was the
only comparable one also
discovered so-called
pretty early.
It was Bengal, which,
when the English came,
they were also astonished at
its wealth and advanced industry
and so on.
And it's maybe an oddity that
the two symbols, very symbols
of disaster and
impoverishment today,
are Haiti and Bangladesh.
That is the two
richest areas, maybe
the two richest
areas of the world,
and the longest
under Western rule.
Actually, that
generalization kind of
extends to the Western
hemisphere itself.
In the 20th century, Haiti has
been the leading beneficiary
of US intervention, all kinds--
military, military
occupation, you know,
aid, experimental programs,
scientific approaches
to how to do things.
And, oddly, it's the
most impoverished country
in the hemisphere.
There are two countries
that vie for second place.
Every year, they shift a little.
They're Guatemala and Nicaragua,
which, by accident, happen
to be the second major
targets of US intervention
in the hemisphere.
That's another one of these
odd accidents, like, you know,
the fate of Bengal and
Haiti over centuries
that you would only
know about if you
took a real course in history.
Then it would be taught
in junior high school
and the implications of it.
And it goes on from there.
This is not the only example.
Haiti was incredibly rich.
It was producing about 3/4
of the sugar in the world
and all sorts of
things, but producing it
for the conquerors.
A large part of France's
wealth comes from Haiti
just as a substantial
part of England's wealth
comes from Bengal and other
areas it conquered and left
completely
devastated, of course.
200 years ago, the Haitians
did make a serious mistake.
They carried out the
first and only revolution
of the 18th century.
It's the only one that
met the conditions
of the Enlightenment.
That is it called for
universal freedom.
None of the others did that.
The French and the
American Revolution,
obviously, didn't qualify.
And that appalled
civilized people.
It appalled them so much
that there apparently
was no discussion in
France, or in England,
or the United States
of the very idea
that black slaves could
liberate themselves.
It was just too appalling.
When they finally succeeded
at a horrifying cost, well,
Tallyrand, the great
French statesman
wrote to James Madison
that all civilized people
must be horrified at the
sight of armed Negroes
carrying out massive atrocities
against the French, you know,
who just really belonged
there and driving
Europeans out of their country.
And that was, in fact, the view.
I mean, Haiti was
punished, as you said.
It was punished by
being forced to pay
severe indemnity to France for
the crime of having liberated
itself.
That's not the only
case, incidentally.
Again, as I'm sure you
learned in junior high school,
when George Washington in the
middle of the Revolutionary War
decided to wipe out the
Iroquois civilization, which
was in many ways more
advanced than the colonists
except in modes of
warfare, he succeeded.
But they had to pay
an indemnity, too.
DeWitt Clinton, the
governor of New York,
made a treaty with them
after a sufficient bashing.
And they demanded
and had to do it
that they compensate the
colonists for the crimes they
had committed by
resisting the assault
that Washington's
forces led against them.
This was right during
the Revolutionary War,
incidentally.
And it's not the only time.
In the 1980s, the US was
ordered by the world court
to pay substantial
reparations to Nicaragua
for the crime of
international terrorism
for which it was condemned.
But power relations turned
it the other way around.
Nicaragua pays
indemnities to us.
The Vietnamese have to
pay the United States
the costs of running the
client regime in South Vietnam.
Literally, that's
what's happening.
And that's the way
power relations work.
Haiti's a particularly grotesque
example of it, but it's true.
Finally, the US did
recognize Haiti,
was the last major
country to do so.
And it was 60 years.
It was 1862.
And there was a reason.
It was right in the
middle of the Civil War.
They were going to
liberate the slaves.
And there was a problem
about what to do with them.
We had to satisfy Thomas
Jefferson's dictum
that the country had to be,
as he put it, free of blot
or a mixture of red or black.
Well, the red part was pretty
easy, just exterminate them.
But the black part, they
were hoping that they
could be sent somewhere.
In fact, the United
States recognized Liberia
in the same year, 1862.
The idea is, well,
you sort of get
rid of these savages
who don't belong here.
And that was the context
in which Haiti and Liberia
were, indeed, recognized.
The latter part of the 19th
century, the European powers
and the United
States were jockeying
for control of the
Caribbean, which
was a very central
area in world affairs.
For one reason, because it was
the main source of soft drugs--
tobacco, rum, sugar, which
were very badly needed in order
to pacify the working
classes in England
and others who were benefiting
from early industrialization
by being devastated themselves.
And a lot of the
wars of the period
were, in fact, fought over the
Caribbean for those reasons.
Actually, the same
story goes on in India,
but I don't want
to get too far off.
The British actually were
running the biggest narco
trafficking
enterprise in history
it turned out in the late 19th
century, interesting story
for that reason.
[LAUGHTER]
The end result of
it was that the US
became the dominant power by the
early part of the last century.
And Haiti was still considered
a very important colony,
plenty of wealth worth having.
Woodrow Wilson
invaded it in 1915.
It's an example of what's called
until today Wilsonian idealism.
He invaded Haiti and
the Dominican Republic.
And, here, the memories split.
You know, the Haitians
remember it one way.
The United States
remember it another way.
When Clinton sent the Marines
in 1994 to restore democracy--
I'll get to that--
there was a lot of
discussion in the press
and scholarly
literature and so on.
And there were a lot of
warnings that Clinton
ought to be careful
before following
the course of Wilsonian
idealism, which
tried to impose order in
this savage place in 1915.
And, in fact, The
New York Times even
compared the problems he was
facing to those of Napoleon
in the early 18th century.
Napoleon and Wilson,
both idealists,
were trying to impose
order on savage places
where the people have
homicidal tendencies
and have no experience with
democracy, like Napoleon had--
[LAUGHTER]
--and have no savagery,
like the United States has.
You read this right
in the main columnists
in The New York Times
and Washington Post.
And we have to be really
careful about that,
because these savage gangs with
their homicidal tendencies--
on the one hand, the Tonton
Macoute who kill, I don't know,
tens of thousands of
people under the Duvalier
dictatorship.
And another one was
the military junta,
which the US was
actually supporting,
but was pretending to
be opposed to, which
it killed I don't know how
many, maybe 5,000 people.
And then the third
homicidal gang
was the peasants in the
hills and the people
in the slums, who had
conducted, you know,
who had really made this
hideous error of having voted
in as president somebody
was going to carry out
reformist policies.
So between these three gangs
with their homicidal tendencies
seeking revenge in the
traditional Haitian fashion--
you know, barbarians who
don't understanding anything
about civilization and
stuff, which is exactly
the way it's discussed--
the US should be cautious.
From the US point of view,
the Wilsonian occupation
was benevolent.
So in 1994, leading historians
like David Landes at Harvard
explained that this
was a period that
really brought many benefits
to Haiti for the first time.
But as he pointed out, even
the most benevolent occupation
does sometimes
arouse resentment.
So the Haitians kind of
didn't all totally applaud.
And others chimed in
with the same story,
other distinguished figures.
And the State Department
had explained at the time--
and this goes into
history-- that many
of the measures that
Wilson introduced
were, indeed, very benevolent.
So, for example, they
induced the Haitians,
as the State Department put it,
by rather high handed methods.
I'll come back to those.
But they induced the Haitians
to accept progressive changes
in the constitution.
See, these backward
people had laws
which prevented foreigners from
buying up the entire country.
And that is very unprogressive.
And it's obvious why.
Anybody who's taken
an economics course
would understand the State
Department reasoning.
Obviously, to develop, Haiti
needs foreign investment.
And you can't expect US
investors to put money
in there unless they own it.
So the best way to raise
Haiti out of its backwardness
is to change the constitution
to allow Western,
means US, corporations
to buy up Haiti's lands.
And what were the
high handed methods?
Well, the high
handed methods were
to send the Marines in to
kick out the parliament
and then to write
a constitution.
The author or the
person who took credit
for the constitution,
though probably falsely,
was Franklin Delano
Roosevelt who, incidentally,
hoped to make a
killing on it himself
by buying up some Haitian lands.
The new constitution was
presented to the Haitians
for a vote, because we're
a democratic society.
And it was voted in
by, I think, 99.9%
of the 5% of the
population who voted.
[LAUGHTER]
So the methods were kind of
high handed, but benevolent.
And it was also necessary
to impose order.
There are these savage gangs
with homicidal tendencies.
So the Marines had
to restore order.
And according to the internal
Marine investigation,
they killed 3,500 of them.
According to Haitian historians,
they killed and 15,000 of them.
But in any event,
they killed enough so
that they put down the
resistance that even the most
benevolent occupation elicits.
They essentially
reinstituted slavery.
They forced labor.
There was some road
building mainly
for the corporations that were
coming in to buy the place up.
And, indeed, a lot of it
was bought up by the West,
very progressive.
West means mostly US.
And they left the
country after 20 years
in the hands of a
murderous National
Guard trained armed by the
United States run by dictators.
Exactly the same thing
happened in the next door
Dominican Republic,
except, in Haiti, it
was a little more vicious.
Because there was plenty
of racism with regard
to the Dominican Republic, but
they were only spics and dagos
in the terminology that was
used, whereas, in Haiti,
they were niggers.
And, worse, they
were uppity niggers.
So Wilson's secretary
of state thought
it was really comical
to see, as he put it,
niggers talking
French, you know?
Like, this is really funny.
And they really
had to be put down.
So it was sort of similar in
the two countries, the two
halves of the island, but
much more vicious in Haiti.
After that comes a period of
US domination from a little bit
of a distance.
So the Marines finally
left after 20 years,
but the US kept control.
This is in the '30s now.
At that time, Haiti, according
to US agricultural producers,
Haiti was producing
cotton, for example,
more efficiently than
the United States was.
But that's no good.
They had to be taught scientific
methods of agriculture.
So during the Second World
War, when the United States
needed rubber and other
commodities for the war effort,
it just took over large parts
of Haitian agricultural lands
and turned them over
to scientific methods
of production of rubber and
other crops, total failure.
A couple of tons
of rubber came out,
but the country was devastated.
When peasants were
finally able to go back
to what used to be their lands,
there was a scraggly desert.
You know, trees
had been destroyed.
The irrigation head
been destroyed.
And there was nothing there--
only the first of a number
of scientific experiments.
There were others.
Meanwhile, it was under
US-backed dictatorships.
In the 1970s, the
World Bank and USAID
decided to lend their assistance
to this backward country.
And they initiated a course
of economic development
that was going to turn
Haiti into, as they put it,
the Taiwan of the Caribbean.
They really had a bright
future ahead of them.
[LAUGHTER]
The method was to destroy
wasteful activities,
like agricultural production
for your own use--
because, again, if you've
taken an economics course
you know it's much
more efficient to buy
highly subsidized
US agribusiness
exports instead of wasting your
time producing your own food
or producing anything else.
And the idea was to turn
Haiti into an assembly plant,
essentially, for US
corporations, who were very
happy to use Haitian workers.
They said they're very
docile and disciplined,
especially when they've
got a military dictatorship
and an army sitting
on their necks.
And they are much cheaper
than the ones in, say,
Panama and other
places where, you know,
we haven't had
that much progress.
And, in fact, this went
along with other experiments.
Like, for example, USAID--
Paul's written about this--
a lot of the Haitian
peasant economy
was based on a very
hardy breed of pigs.
They were used
not only for food,
but it's whole big
part of the culture.
But the scientific
agricultural experts
decided that these pigs might
be susceptible to swine flu.
Although, there wasn't any.
So they decided
the best idea would
be to wipe them
out, which they did,
and replace them with better
pings, ones from Iowa.
So they brought in
fancy pigs from Iowa,
which is that what they're
called, white pigs?
Yeah, white pigs.
[LAUGHTER]
And they're great as
long as you keep them
in air conditioned places--
[LAUGHTER]
--and, you know, feed
them the very fancy food
that you buy from US producers,
you know, at a high cost.
So you can actually
keep one of these pigs,
apparently, if you have an
income about, I don't know,
three times that of the annual
income of a peasant in Haiti.
That was another contribution.
Meanwhile, the economic
miracle proceeded.
Haiti was on its way to becoming
the Taiwan of the Caribbean.
During the 1980s, wages
dropped by about 50%.
Haiti was self-sufficient
in rice, virtually
in effect, a pretty
efficient rice producer
and could have been better even.
But that's inefficient.
So they were forced to adopt
the standard neoliberal package,
you know, structural
adjustment package.
Cut your tariffs, privatize,
that sort of thing.
The result was that
Haiti now produces,
I don't know what it is,
maybe 50% of its rice,
maybe less, something like that.
Because Haitian producers, no
matter how efficient they are,
cannot compete with
US agribusiness,
which is getting 40% of
its income from subsidies,
government subsidies under
the Reagan Administration.
Remember, this is
free market theory,
which has a traditional form.
It's markets for you, but
state protection for me.
You know, that's the way it's
run for hundreds of years.
And that's why the world is
divided into a first world
and a third world.
Actually, that's literally
very close to true.
So Haitian peasants,
of course, can't
compete with highly
subsidized US agribusiness.
And they were wiped out.
Now, in the neoliberal order,
this free world that we
live in, Haiti has a remedy.
They can impose
anti-dumping restrictions
on the United States.
That is they can threaten the
United States that they'll
close the Haitian
market to US exports
the same way that Clinton
does, for example, when
US consumers prefer
Mexican tomatoes
or Japanese supercomputers.
He can just close the
market to Mexico and Japan
unless they threatened to do
so, unless they stop exporting.
And then they stop
for odd reasons.
And Haiti can do the same
to the United States.
Because after all,
it is a free system.
You know, it's the World
Trade Organization rules.
But for some reason,
they didn't do it.
I didn't figure out why.
But so Haiti was, in fact,
devastated by this experiment
again.
Finally, the US was
supporting the dictators
all the way through until the
last minute when even the army
turned against
them, at which point
the United States
decided that there should
be a transition to democracy.
Then came out-- I won't
go through the details--
but the build up to the
election, which was certain.
You know, they were certain
that the US candidate would win.
There's no way he
could fail to win.
And it came out the wrong way.
And the US instantly
changed policies.
USAID was diverted away
from the government
towards anti-government
agencies.
Every effort was made to
undermine the government.
Aristide came into
office in February 1991.
The refugee policy was
changed in radical violation
of international law
and the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
The Carter
Administration had begun
barring people who were
fleeing from the paradise
that the US was creating,
essentially not unusual.
Take the Mexican border.
The Mexican border is
artificial, like every border.
It's the result of conquest.
And it's been very porous
throughout its history
until 1994.
After NAFTA, the border was
militarized under Clinton's
Operation Gatekeeper.
And the reason was because the
effects of the economic miracle
in Mexico were going to drive
hundreds of thousands or maybe
more impoverished
devastated people north,
and that had to be stopped.
Because it's our
conception of free trade.
It's for capital, not people.
And the same was true in Haiti.
As the economic miracle
was put into effect,
people started fleeing
in desperation.
So the US Coast Guard and
Navy blockaded the place
under Carter and
just sent them back.
They were fleet fleeing
real persecution as well as
impoverishment.
But US sent them back.
Under Reagan, that was
turned into a formal treaty
with the Duvalier dictatorship.
But in 1991, the US reversed it.
An independent democratic
government came in.
The flow of refugees
virtually halted.
In fact, it turned
the other direction
as people were going
back in a moment of hope.
But at that point, any
refugee who did come
was granted asylum, no more
sending them back to Haiti.
So for seven months,
until the military coup,
the policy on refugees reversed.
After the military coup--
went back to the old policy.
Bush, again, started
returning the refugees.
Clinton harshly condemned
this in the 1992 election.
And as soon as he
got into office,
he made it even harsher.
The government, actually,
in the seven months it had,
it was getting
considerable praise
from international
institutions, even
from secret State Department
reports that were leaked.
It was for progressive
measures, for eliminating
needless bureaucracy,
for getting rid
of oppression, and so on.
They were getting
substantial loans,
in fact, which
made it even worse.
Because the country might
fall out of US control.
A military coup came along.
The Organization of American
States declared an embargo.
The Bush Administration
almost immediately
undermined the embargo by
exempting US producers, which
happened to include plants
owned by the Haitian elite,
the rich Mevs family and others.
They were excluded
from the embargo
and imports were allowed in.
The explanation for this
was, again, our benevolence.
The New York Times
explained that this
was what they called
fine-tuning the embargo
to help the people of Haiti
by exempting US exports.
The people who they were helping
were bitterly protesting.
And the military junta
and its wealthy supporters
were overjoyed.
But it was all done
for the people of Haiti
just as we've always done.
It got worse under Clinton,
considerably worse.
Furthermore, both the Bush
and the Clinton Administration
authorized the
Texaco Oil Company
to violate
presidential directives
and provide oil to the junta.
Anybody who was there could
see the oil coming in,
but the US government and
CIA testified to Congress
that no oil was coming in.
You know, those oil
farms that you saw
didn't exist in the picture.
It turned out the day
before the invasion
to restore democracy it
was revealed that both Bush
and Clinton had authorized
that oil as the centerpiece
of the embargo.
Also, the US was arming and
training Haitian officers.
The head of the paramilitary
organization, FRAPH,
which is responsible
for thousands of deaths,
was on CIA payroll.
It's kind of conceded by now.
So, officially, the US
was opposing the junta.
In fact, it was supporting it.
Then it restored
democracy after they
thought the popular
organizations had taken
a sufficient beating and
thousands had been killed
and they had been
sufficiently terrorized.
And the terror was extreme.
I don't want to talk
about it, because you
know much more than I do.
But I was there for a few days
at the peak of the terror.
And, you know, I've
been in places that
are under severe repression.
I just came back from
Turkey a couple days ago
where, in the
Southeast where I was,
there's 15 million people
living in a dungeon in an area
where millions of people
have been driven out
of the surrounding region
which has just been devastated
in some of the worst ethnic
cleansing and atrocities
of the 1990s for which you
and I paid, incidentally.
This was done with US
support and military aid.
And that's why you
don't hear about it.
Yeah.
But, you know, the people that
are under severe repression--
police everywhere,
army everywhere.
But there or other places,
I've never seen anything
like what I saw in the
slums of Haiti back in 1993
when people were
literally afraid to talk.
The only thing they
would say is things
like there are eyes everywhere.
You know, I can't talk and
all that sort of thing.
But after this
terror had succeeded,
they thought, in
achieving its ends,
Aristide was permitted to
return, but on a condition,
namely the condition
that he accept
the program of the defeated US
candidate, which is precisely
the wording that was used.
They said, the
renovated government
has to focus its policies on
the needs of civil society.
Primarily, that means
the private sector
both national and international.
So US investors are
Haitian civil society,
but the people in the
slums and the hills aren't.
And a very harsh structural
adjustment program was imposed.
I won't go through the
details, because it's too late.
But it succeeded in
further devastating
what was left of the economy.
And the Haitians still resisted.
That's why they haven't
understood what democracy is.
And they'll have to come
to learn this, you know.
200 years we've been
trying to teach it to them.
They still haven't
gotten the idea.
So you could understand
why there's an embargo.
DORSINVILLE: Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you, Professor
Chomsky, for laying
the groundwork for Dr.
Farmer's current analysis
of the Haitian situation,
economic, political
in the backyard of democracy.
Thank you.
FARMER: Thank you.
It's a real privilege to
be here with all of you
and the two of you.
I want to thank Dinesh
and the many people who
organized this forum.
And you used the term the
uses of Haiti for tonight.
And I was very grateful.
But I would add that when
Noam wrote the introduction
to The Uses of Haiti,
he wrote, "this book is
slated for oblivion."
And I want to thank
you for that, Noam.
That was very helpful
as a marketing ploy.
[LAUGHTER]
And, of course, as
ever, he is correct.
I just came from the
hospital, and I was rounding.
And I was seeing a patient.
I was late.
And I said, I got to go.
I'm giving a talk
with Noam Chomsky.
One of the people on my team,
by the way, said, why can't he
come round with us, you know?
But the other person said, why
are you guys talking together,
I mean, you know, if you
guys agree on everything?
And I said, well, he's about
the only American intellectual
I know who's actually the
telling the truth about what's
going on in Haiti.
And I wish I could
make a long list.
And maybe I'm
missing some things.
I suspect that I am.
But, you know, I think that
in the 20 years that I've
been working there-- can we make
that obedient to my every whim
here, that thing?
[LAUGHTER]
In the 20 years that
I've been working there,
I think that a lack
of forthright analysis
has never been so wanting.
And I'm a physician and
mostly do medical work.
But I feel compelled to make up
something as he fixes the slide
machine, anyway.
[LAUGHTER]
Could you tell?
This is going to
sound great on radio
as slide presentations
always do.
[LAUGHTER]
You probably, you know,
made this not work.
On, off maybe?
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Yeah.
It's not real remote.
There we go.
Is it on?
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: It's on now.
FARMER: Nancy, don't
take away from my time.
That was their fault.
[LAUGHTER]
No matter how you
look at Haiti--
and I look at it as
a physician does--
the situation is grave.
And I'll spend a fair
amount of time talking
about what's going on now.
And I will not spend
a fair amount of time
going over the statistics.
I'll be glad to share them with
any of you from the sources
that we think are
fairly reliable.
But life expectancy
has dropped in Haiti
over the past few years.
People don't have
access to clean water.
Births are not attended.
It's very dangerous to
have a child in Haiti.
In one study, for every 100,000
children who were born alive,
1,400 women died in
childbirth, the highest
by far in the hemisphere, one
of the highest in the world.
And so as someone who works with
many others who are providing
health care services to
people living in rural Haiti,
in one of the poorer parts of
Haiti, which is saying a lot,
we need to be
concerned and engaged
in understanding what
is driving forward
this really wall of pathology.
And I'm, of course,
thinking about pathology
in terms of individual
patient's illness.
But the pathology, as Noam
has said, is social in origin
and is transnational in origin
and is historically rooted
in a series of processes
that, unfortunately,
for many of our commentators did
happen more than 5 minutes ago.
And so understanding
what's happening now
means that we have to understand
what has happened in the past.
The decline of the Haitian
economy in recent years
has been severe.
It's been, you know,
one of the most striking
trends in Latin America.
This is from the United
Nations Development Program,
a what I've called here
economic devolution,
shows the negative growth
rates of the economy.
And there are many ways
of looking at misery.
I do have to wonder who
puts together things
like the human suffering index.
It's not really what I would
like to do as a pastime.
But when something called
the human suffering index was
put together and first
published not too long ago,
Haiti was the only
country in the hemisphere
that figured in the top five.
It was number three.
And the only two other
countries ahead of it
were both in the
middle of a civil war.
And in reflecting on this
datum, of Haiti ranking
number three in terms
of human suffering,
you know, you came to
think about the conditions
there as a sort of war.
And it's a war of the rich
against the poor, basically.
And the rich, of
course, are sitting
in many different places, not
so much in Haiti right now.
But they're there, too,
and waging a sort of war.
And a patient who
I saw in the clinic
said, it's like a war here
every day the fight for food,
and wood, and water.
And that's what the
situation is reduced
to in Haiti, every day the fight
for food, and wood, and water--
wood, of course,
to cook the food.
So Haiti has become-- and
this is from The Economist,
"the nightmare next door."
And it's very important
to find out why.
And you should look
back at the characters
of the American occupation
during that time,
the characters not of
the American occupation,
but really in the American press
at the time of the occupation
of Haiti, which were
very similar to the one
I just showed you.
Now, back to this question
of more than 5 minutes ago,
this was a comment made by John
le Carré the English novelist,
who wrote in The Nation
about "A War We Cannot Win."
And Noam already said it.
"Suggesting that there
is a historical context
for the recent atrocities
is by implication
to make excuses for them.
Anyone who is with
us doesn't do that--"
doesn't do historical analysis.
"Anyone who does is against us."
And he's referring
very specifically to,
he was referring this
essay to, discussions
about what happened
here on September 11th.
Noam used another
expression, that those
with their boot
on the neck don't
want people who have their
neck constrained in that manner
to be asking questions about
history or making comments.
And I'm going to do just that
in talking about echoing many
of the things
they've already said,
but I want to add
a couple to that.
And I can speed
through this part,
because Noam went
through it already.
The first European settlement
in the New World was in Haiti.
And that's where, in fact,
one of those three ships--
I can't remember which one.
I'm sorry.
Noam will, of course, know--
foundered off the
coast of Haiti in 1492.
And part of the
wreckage was used
to make one of the first
European settlements
in the new world.
And the fact that as
many as 8 million people
could have lived on
that island then in 1492
is just an astounding
and horrific thought.
And that figure
of 8 million comes
from demographers at the
University of California
who are using mathematical
models to try and figure out
how densely populated
the country was
in 1492, an astounding and
terrible series of events.
But has already been mentioned,
if the Indians wouldn't
do as slaves, then we
needed more hardy slaves.
And this is actually the
subject of great interest
in Haitian scholarship
and history,
was the change from using
indigenous slaves to kidnapping
people in Western Africa.
Just as a couple of asides to
give an idea about the scale
of what it took to make Haiti
the most profitable colony
in the world, in European
history probably,
it took up to 29,000
slaves a year as imports.
So Haiti was, in fact,
the number one destination
in the New World for slaves.
It was ahead of
Cuba and far ahead
of the other islands around
there ahead of the American
South.
And, in fact, that fact,
29,000, was at the peak.
And that demographic fact
is one of the reasons
that led to the
Haitian revolution
is that there were just
so many slaves compared
to slave masters that the
numbers were eventually
on the side of the enslaved
who staged a series of revolts
throughout the New World.
But only one of them
was really successful,
the Haitian Rebellion,
in terms of leading to,
you know, victory to the slaves.
And from 1697 on,
it was the French
who were the slave masters.
And they replaced, over
the ensuing century,
the Spanish and made Haiti
into a really earnest producer
of tropical produce, coffee.
By the way, please don't
be knocking soft drugs--
coffee, sugar, cotton,
indigo, other things
that couldn't be
grown in Europe.
And Haiti was, as has been
mentioned, providing about 2/3
of all European tropical
produce by the time
of the French
Revolution-- excuse me,
the French "Revolution--"
got to get that right.
And I think the Haitians would
be in agreement, the Haitians
here tonight.
I know the Haitians in
Haiti are in agreement
that none of these revolutions
in Europe were really serious.
As the Haitians would
say, they weren't serious.
Because any serious
revolution would,
of course, liberate the slaves.
When the slave owning
mulattoes was went to France
to speak in front of the
national parliament in France,
the so-called
Revolutionary Parliament,
they went to argue for the right
of mulattoes to own slaves.
So, again, I have
to ask how resonant
is that performance
of the first Haitian
elite with their performance
in the ensuing 200 years.
I'll just say it right now.
I work in rural
Haiti with people
who call themselves peasants
and who have very much slanted,
if you will, towards truth in my
view, the way that I see this.
But that was one of the first
gambits of the emerging Haitian
elite who owned slaves was
to have the French recognize
their right to own slaves.
So the real Haitians,
the slaves who revolted,
were also leading a revolt
against the mulatto elite
who wanted to continue
owning slaves.
And, of course, not
all the mulattoes--
and this term by the way,
is from colonial times.
And, of course, it's
a social construct.
I'm just using the terms
that are used inside Haiti.
But there was about 28,000
French living in Haiti,
about maybe 40,000
so-called mulattoes
mixed of French and African
descent, and about half
a million adult slaves.
And so there were also children.
And the adults slaves
were men and women
working and counted as slaves.
And, in fact, the French kept
rather meticulous records
of the colony.
And so we have a
lot of, you know,
information about what life
was like during the slavery
and during the colony.
And I'll just go
through some of that.
I mentioned already
that the size and scope
of this little factory,
which is the size
of the state of Maryland,
was just churning out wealth.
Noam mentioned that many French
cities owed their wealth.
The cities of Bordeaux,
for example-- which,
if you've seen, is
a beautiful city--
was virtually built
out of this money.
And all of the big
coastal cities of France
came from this trade.
They were built up
during the slave trade.
And, in fact, the
same buildings that
are there now that everyone
admires as so beautiful
were really the fruits
of this Triangular Trade.
The impact, of course, in Haiti
on the lives of these slaves
was terrible-- one
in three slaves
dying within the first three
years of life in Haiti,
in the colony.
Haiti, by the way, was
the name of the colony
before the Europeans came.
It's a local word.
It means high country,
mountainous country.
It was the indigenous term.
And it was taken back by
the leaders of the Haitian
revolution after the
Europeans were defeated.
Now, this is from
a Haitian who was
a slave during before
the revolution, then
was one of the few
people writing, you know.
Of course, in the
United States, we really
don't have a lot of
testimonies from slaves,
narratives from slaves.
And it's a very interesting
area of historical scholarship.
But in Haiti,
there actually are.
Because after the
revolution, many people
wrote about their experience.
And I won't read
this to you here.
You can read it.
But I know that it
says, "have they not--"
and then lists the
crimes against the slaves
that the French perpetrated.
Now, the revolution
began in 1791--
as Noam said, the
only real revolution
in the 18th century--
and went on for a
decade and more.
And one of the amazing
things about the revolution
was that Haiti was
considered so important
to the French economy-- again,
like Bangladesh, now considered
the international basket
case of the hemisphere--
that the largest European armada
ever to set forth from Europe
since or before left France
under Napoleon's direction
to retake Haiti.
80,000 French troops and
also conscripts from Poland
and other places that the
democratically-minded Napoleon
was taking over in
Europe, 80,000 troops--
40,000 Navy and
40,000 ground troops--
went to Haiti, which,
again, even to this day
is just astounding to think
of that sort of movement
of troops across the Atlantic.
And he sent his brother-in-law,
General Leclerc,
who was married to
Pauline Bonaparte, who
died in Haiti, in northern
Haiti, never returned.
Pauline Bonaparte
also lived there.
And this was, again,
at a horrible cost
to the Haitian people.
They started calling themselves
Haitians during the revolution,
during the war.
And when I say horrible
cost, the General Leclerc
wrote a letter back
to his brother-in-law
at one point
saying, we can never
retake this colony unless
we kill every single man
or woman who has
carried epaulettes,
meaning the slaves who are now
in the army which is being led
by the leaders of
the slave revolt,
and every child above the age
of 13 who has done so as well.
This is in the correspondence
between General Leclerc
and Napoleon shortly
before he died.
So he already was
sending messages back
home that this was
not going to work,
that they were going to fail
unless they had a campaign
to wipe out all of the adults.
And by adults-- as he
said, 13 years and over.
Now, what happened after
the revolution has already
been commented on here.
The revolution
ended in the battle
I just showed you, the Battle of
Vertieres in November of 1803.
And on January 1st,
the Haitians declared
independence, the first
independent nation
in Latin America.
They took the French tricolor
and ripped out the white part
and, of course, saying we're
getting rid of the whites.
And the Haitian
flag was initially
the red and blue bicolor
that was recently restored.
And in that year, they
declared Haiti a safe haven
for any indigenous person and
any escaped slave in the New
World.
So that was another part of
these unprogressive features
of their constitution.
Noam mentioned, also, that it
said no European, no foreigner,
will ever set foot in this
country as a landowner.
And that was part of Dessalines'
constitution of 1804.
And Dessalines, as
you might imagine,
is regarded as the father
of Haitian independence
by the Haitians and regarded
as a butcher by the Americans
and their friends in Europe.
Now, how does this
work itself out?
Nancy used the
word trade embargo.
But, actually,
what we usually do
with Haiti is not
a trade embargo.
And you clarified that by
saying unfavorable conditions
for the Haitians and
very favorable conditions
for the Europeans and Americans.
But it's not a trade embargo.
It was worse.
It was a refusal to recognize
Haiti's independence
as a state.
And as has already been said,
this went on till in 1862
and this is just stuff
from, again, the US
official congressional record.
You know, Noam gave
me advice years ago.
He said, if you're going to
write books like that one,
try to use formal
US official sources.
And I followed that
over the years.
It's a great source, I mean, of
information about our policy.
And this is 1824, a senator
from South Carolina.
Since this is being
taped, I'll read it.
"Our policy with
regard to Haiti--
Hay-ti-- is plain.
We can never acknowledge
her independence.
The peace and safety of a
large portion of our union
forbids us even to discuss it."
And this was the standard
fare inside the great halls
of democratic United
States during those years,
those decades, in which we were
exploiting relations to Haiti,
but not recognizing.
Here's the kicker to me.
And this was mentioned, too.
The Haitians, of course, still
were growing tropical produce
after the abolition slavery.
However, they were doing it with
free people, peasants mostly.
And coffee is
something you don't
need to grow on plantations.
You can grow on small plots
of land, on hillsides.
And it replaced sugar and cotton
as the main exports of Haiti,
because peasants could grow it
without working on plantations.
And I can promise you that the
Haitian peasantry has never
wanted to work on plantations.
I mean, I can't imagine why not.
The conditions had been
so pleasant before.
So it's been a long struggle.
The land reform
struggle in Haiti
is very interesting
and very poignant.
But the bottom line is most
of the Haitian people refused
to work under anything
that looked like plantation
conditions, and so
were exporting coffee
more than any other crop.
But the amazing and,
you know, horrible thing
is that when people talk
about reparations now--
and Nancy mentioned the
Durban Declaration--
the Haitians already
paid reparations
to the slave owners.
And the size of the payment was
astounding, 150 million francs.
And according to a fairly
sober late 19th century Haitian
historian, early 20th century,
who looked at this, you know,
in retrospect just
aghast, he said
that, from a relatively
balanced economy
prior to the payment of this
massive debt to the French,
this led to a major disruption
that really continued
to have its impact on
the Haitian economy
throughout the rest of the 19th
century, this payment of debt.
And the French at this time were
also dominating Haitian trade.
And that went on
along with struggles
from the British
and the Germans.
And some of you
might not know that
at one point in late 18th,
19th century, the Germans--
and I believe was under Kaiser.
Because Kaiser sent some
very lovely envoys to Haiti,
one of whom took the Haitian
flag and smeared excrement
on it in the Bay
of Port-au-Prince,
the military envoy of
the Kaiser of Germany.
That was the way that the
civilized societies of Europe
chose to mark their
respect for Haiti.
And this went on
for some decades.
Europe, France,
Britain-- I mean, sorry--
France, Germany, and Britain
vying with the United States
for influence.
But by the end of
the century, there
was really no competition.
Although, when the Americans
sent in the Marines in 1915,
they claimed one reason was
to limit German influence
in Haiti, which had already
been virtually erased
in the previous two decades.
So when the Marines
went in, then
began the intensified series
of events and processes
of development and
scientific development that
have made Haiti the
paradise that it is today.
I would just add that
the modern Haitian
army was created by an act
of Congress, US Congress,
and signed into
existence in Washington.
And I'm going to soon switch
to a sort of local analysis.
But when I talk about
the valley in which we've
been working for a
long time, you'll
see very similar kinds of events
that are really transnational.
I mean, the modern
Haitian army--
how often do we
acknowledge that, you know,
the army that we suddenly
declared a rogue army
after, you know,
really uncompromising
and ongoing support
for many decades,
was really created by the
American occupiers-- not just
trained, but created?
And then in came the
agribusiness and missionaries
of the early part of the
last century, 20th century.
And the kind of
appropriations of land
that Noam mentioned
in his talk, these
were usually with these sort of
partnerships with the Haitian
elites, so that there would
be Haitian elite ownership,
meaning wealthy people in Haiti,
and US ownership of, you know,
a plantation.
Noam mentioned rubber.
But during the World
War II, Haiti also
began growing sisal
hemp-- or sy-sal hemp--
in order to make big
ropes for the ships.
This is before nylon
replaced those.
Haiti was suddenly the world's
leading producer of hemp,
because they could
flip the switches
on these plantations--
rubber, hemp,
whatever was necessary locally.
I'm kidding.
Because, of course, I
don't know that hemp
has many utilities locally.
I guess you can make
baskets or things out of it.
Now, what can we read
in that great journal,
the national journal of
record The New York Times?
It's already been quoted today.
Instability was the
pretext reducing
European, German,
influence during the war.
The Convention
haitiano-améicaine--
spelled wrong, sorry--
basically, it gave
the United States
complete administrative
control of Haiti including
the ability, as was mentioned,
to rewrite the Constitution
to remove those very
unproductive features
of the Haitian Constitution.
And the troops stayed
in Haiti until 1934.
And you already heard
about the resistance.
The Haitian people gave spirited
resistance to the occupation.
And that resistance was
based among the peasantry.
In the very place where I work,
Central Haiti, Central Plateau,
that's where the
resistance was based.
It did not come from
the Haitian elite.
Although, there were
some intellectuals who
opposed the American operation
in their own somewhat
timorous way compared
to the peasantry,
who really opposed it.
The occupation of Haiti led to
the restoration of forced labor
crews, [FRENCH].
The major roads built
during that time
were built largely
with forced labor.
There's grotesque
documentation of
this available in the
historical record.
And it was very
interesting to see
how it gets sanitized and retold
in the non-Haitian accounting
of this.
But the Haitian accountings
had the added advantage
of being correct.
[LAUGHTER]
Now, this led rather
seamlessly, in fact,
to the Duvalier
family dictatorship.
That is no one could
come to power in Haiti
without the benediction
of the US government
from the time of the
occupation, of course,
when it was overt and formal.
But from 1934 till
1990, that was really
the prerequisite for coming to
power was to have US backing,
you know, from the US ambassador
and from the latest whatever
USAID might be called on that
particular day or the other US
institutions.
And so forth Francois
Duvalier, you
know, again, I think there's
a lot of confusion about this.
Francois Duvalier was supported
by the American embassy
in Haiti in 1957.
He received the
report of the embassy.
Because you read a lot
about the United States
spirited resistance to
the Duvalier dictatorship,
you know of course,
not in Haiti,
but in the United States.
But it was pretty
unremitting, our support
for the Duvalier dictatorship.
There were a couple
of years where
the activities of the
dictatorship were so terrible.
I mean, just to give an
example, which, again, seems
to have escaped
everybody's mind when
they're talking about the reign
of terror that exists now--
I mean, Francois Duvalier
would have someone killed
and then display the body across
from the airport for, you know,
days.
So that's not very
subtle symbolism
according to anthropologists
with whom I work.
And this was, again,
obviously meant
to draw attention to the fact
that the dictatorship would
tolerate any sort of
challenge to its power.
Every single independent
press, radio, newspaper,
the few independent-minded
intellectuals
that may have theoretically
existed at that time,
they left or were killed.
And it took about,
you know, 10 years
to really shut down any sort
of threat from the military,
from the army, which
had been previously
the primary determinant of who
would come to power, the United
States and the
Haitian military--
not that those two institutions
had any relation, of course.
And so Francois
Duvalier undermined
the army and the opposition,
silenced the opposition very
completely, and spent the
rest of his very long reign--
he used to say
[SPEAKING FRENCH]..
I'm going from the palace
to the cemetery, you know?
And he did.
He was there until he died.
And then his 19-year-old son,
who, from what I understand,
had never left Haiti, became
president of the oldest
Republica in Latin America--
19-year-old son who had,
you know, of course,
an advanced degree from
The Fletcher School.
Anyway-- I'm kidding.
That was a joke.
Well, anyway, I better be good.
I'm on tape.
Sorry.
[LAUGHTER]
Now, 1971 that happened.
And the years from
'71 to '86 were
years of decline for reasons
that are acknowledged.
And there were really
thousands of refugees.
You heard about the welcome they
got from us, a really amazingly
repugnant policy, actually.
The seizing and interception of
refugee ships on the high seas
and then the return
of refugees is, again,
in violation of many
treaties to which the United
States is a formal signatory.
Is that [INAUDIBLE], signatory?
But it didn't
bother us too much.
And then there was political
unrest that began in '85
and was very much associated
with a popular movement.
That is a movement based,
as has been mentioned,
among the rural poor and
the urban poor in slums.
And it was an amazing thing to
be living in Haiti at that time
and be working there.
Because I had
never seen anything
like that in my
experience as an American.
There was so much
popular support
for the popular movement
that virtually every member,
every person who
lived in the village
where I was living and
working, am living and working,
everyone was part of the popular
movement without any exception.
And in 1990 when,
at the last minute,
Aristide announced his
candidature, you know,
you could practically hear
the stampede of people
going to register to vote.
Because after what
happened in 1987,
which is unstinting support from
the United States government
for the Haitian military--
and here's just
a number for you.
Over $200 million in aid
passed through the hands
of the military junta.
I actually am going to
risk saying this on tape.
I spoke with someone
today in a prominent US
office with the fate
of Haiti in its hands.
I will just say that.
And he was saying,
well, you know,
I would really like to see
the frozen aid released.
What we need to do is get
the government to, you know,
promise to use the aid in
an open and clear manner
and be subject to various
forms of scrutiny, et cetera.
And I couldn't resist.
I couldn't stop myself.
I knew I just sort
of said nothing.
I was standing in the ICU unit
in the surgical ICU, you know,
with a phone and trying to
write a note about a patient,
listening to this guy,
knowing that, you know,
I didn't have to
listen the whole time.
But I said to him,
well, you know,
I've been working
in Haiti 20 years.
And, you know, during
the dictatorship,
there was never any sort
of real scrutiny of USAID
and during the military juntas.
Why now?
And then he just
said, you're right.
I really don't understand
US foreign policy.
I did not say I'm going to
give a talk with Noam Chomsky.
I just said, I've got to
get back to seeing patients.
And I'll call you tomorrow.
Now, you already heard
that we trained a lot
of those very delightful
military officers who held sway
during these times.
I'm going to skip ahead
to what happened in 1987
and skip through some of
the stuff where we were.
But in 1987, there
was a massacre
of voters at the polling place.
Now, again, that's more
than 5 minutes ago,
so everyone's forgotten.
But can you imagine?
I was there in Haiti that day.
And can you imagine
seeing groups of people
lined up to vote and then, you
know, seeing them taken out
at the polls?
I mean, this was
really incredible.
And, of course, in the middle of
the reign of a military junta--
I mean, granted it
is rather far-fetched
to suggest that the military
may have had something
to do with this.
But it was pretty
clear to the Haitians
that this was basically the
action of the Haitian army,
which has had no non-Haitian
enemies, you know,
in hundreds of years.
Only Haitians have been the
enemies of the Haitian army.
And so a lot of
Haitians were not
going to vote in 1990
until Aristide registered.
And then it was something like
a million people registered
in the last two days.
And so, you know, experience
that, to see that happen
and to experience that, was
really very eye opening for me.
In the village, you
know, where we work,
there was this one woman who's
a good friend of mine who's
what we used to call when I
was growing up a lunch lady.
She makes lunch in
the school cafeteria.
And she was and
remains, as do most
of them, a very devout
Aristide supporter.
And I told her that I had
been listening to the radio.
And I heard a poll
from Port-au-Prince.
And she said, what's a poll?
And I said, well, that's when
people go out on the street
and ask people how
they're going to vote.
And she said, what did it show?
And I said, that
Aristide would win over
50% of the vote in the first
elections without a runoff.
And she said, well,
that can't be true.
And I said, I thought you
were a big Aristide supporter.
And she said, oh yeah,
he'll win 99% of the vote
if it's a re-election.
And so she thought
that was unlikely,
that even though there
were 11 candidates,
that he would win with only a
plurality in the first round
with 50-something.
And, in fact, he did win
with a much higher plurality
in the first election.
There were never any runoffs.
I mean, now, granted, we
always have very clear outcomes
in our elections as well and
that runoffs are not necessary.
But, you know, it was still
a learning experience for me
even though, you know,
I'm American, so therefore
democratic by training.
Now, in the interest
of skipping ahead,
I'm going to just close
by talking about health
conditions in Haiti.
Because it's important.
And I think everybody here
should know about this.
The health situation in Haiti
is dire by any kind of criteria.
And this is an
image-- not an image--
a picture of a girl
with typhoid fever,
which along with
tuberculosis and other
what the Haitians call
stupid diseases, actually,
are the primary determinants
of life and death in Haiti.
So, of course, one of
the first things to do
is to have a public
health system that
takes on these problems.
By the way, I couldn't resist
putting this image here.
This is a child with anthrax.
And, you know, it
must be because Haiti
is a terrorist state that they,
you know, have anthrax there.
That was actually brought
up in the American press.
And, you know, Haiti
has real anthrax,
meaning the kind that's
zoonosis, contact with animals.
In the case of this girl,
she has anthrax of the face.
It was a goat.
And someone died of
anthrax in this outbreak.
She came in with
another, an adult.
And they got treated and
did fine, as one does.
But someone died
in their village.
Anyway, someone mentioned
in the American press
that Haiti could be a terrorist
state manufacturing anthrax.
And a Haitian veterinarian
said, that's just ridiculous.
And, well, you can't
respond to every one
of these nut-so suggestions.
And I had this image in
my mind of, you know,
a group of Haitian
goats getting together
and say, let's get a
lab going and get some
of this stuff off of our fur.
[LAUGHTER]
Anyway, now, I told you
about election day 1987.
And I mean, this is
inside a school, you know.
And it's just awful
what happened.
And so the willingness
to participate
in this election of 1990 was
really a strong statement
about commitment to democracy.
And so I mentioned
what happened already.
But after seven months, there
was a violent military coup.
And you know this.
And it's already been
discussed by Noam,
which led to the deaths of
really thousands of people
and massive internal
migration in addition
to external migration.
Internal migration, because we
were working in rural Haiti.
And people fled from the
slums out to where we work.
And so we saw, you
know, enormous changes.
And it was just a huge
and ongoing disruption
for a long time.
And as Noam said, it
was very frightening
and not theoretically.
I mean, I personally
know a number
of people who were
killed during that time,
including a Haitian businessman,
one of the only ones to say,
well, you know, the popular
movement is probably
a good thing, since
it includes about 90%
of the Haitian population.
And his brother was murdered
in downtown Port-au-Prince.
And during a memorial
mass for his brother,
he was shot in the head
and killed during mass
by paramilitary forces.
And this is the level.
And this is a prominent
businessman who, you know,
was very wealthy actually, who
made the mistake of not doing
what business people in Haiti
are supposed to do and saying,
you know, these savages from the
hills and slums really cannot
play a role in the
future of Haiti.
And then, again, the
embargo has already
been discussed,
the fake embargo.
Now, we have a real
embargo, mind you.
But the fake one--
I mean, I, again, am sitting
in Haiti reading The New York
Times and thinking, what on
Earth are they talking about?
My mother's a librarian.
And so she was, you
know, sending me things.
This was when we had an
office in Port-au-Prince,
before we had to close it
down during those years,
because of death threats
and intimidation.
We finally just closed
up our operation
in Port-au-Prince completely.
But she was sending
me these things.
And I'd say, this is just
not at all what's happening.
But the image that comes
to mind is, you know,
we were able to detect refugees
in boats from, you know,
miles away with radar.
But an oil tanker steaming
from Texas to Port-au-Prince
didn't show up on the radar.
So, I mean, granted
they're small
boats and all, those tankers.
So fine-tuning-- I
remember that was
Barbara Crossette,
wasn't it, who wrote
that fine-tuning the embargo?
That was The New York Times.
She probably won a million
awards, Pulitzer and things
like that.
And Noam has already
covered the fake embargo.
So I'm going to go ahead and
turn to the real embargo.
Now, here's where we end
up after, as Nancy said,
use the term impoverishment.
Because it implies a
historical process.
It takes a long time
to impoverish a place.
But here's where we end
up, you know, with, again,
the most impoverished
country in the hemisphere,
which, of course,
only coincidentally
is the country most
linked to the United
States for the longest time.
I mean, that's surely just
a erroneous association.
And the part that I see
and concerns me just
in terms of everyday
practice as a physician
is that the impact of this on
health is, of course, profound.
And so most of the patients
we see have the diseases
that poverty engenders
and sustains.
And they can be prevented and
treated at the end, you know,
distally as we say in medicine.
And that's what I do.
I'm sorry.
I mean, it's kind of
what I was trained
to do is to sort of get
people when it's too late.
But the real responses to
this will be, of course,
determined, in my view,
outside of rural Haiti.
This is the receiving end.
This is not the determining end.
I mean, the numbers
are terrible.
Well, here, let me just
give you this one example
to close my comments.
So what would a public health
infrastructure do in Haiti?
What would a government do if,
instead of being interested in,
you know, imprisoning
and arresting,
what if it really wanted
to promote health?
Well, it would have
to have capital.
They'd have to have funds.
You can't do public
health with no money.
You know, if you
knew the money that
gets spent in Massachusetts
on public health,
I was astounded when
I saw the numbers.
It's something like more
of all China and India
in just our little tiny
state of 6 million people.
And it's good.
Hey, we like this.
You want to, you know, have
huge investment in things,
why not choose
public health rather
than, you know, bombers
and things like that?
I'm all for it.
Sign me up.
However, you can't
do it with no money.
You have to have money.
So, not coincidentally,
Haiti, of course,
was completely broke
just like it was
at the end of the revolution.
Everything had been
burned down and destroyed.
In fact, it may be
worse now than then,
because some parts of
Haiti were not burned down.
And the soil was still fertile.
And deforestation had not
done what has done now.
But a government, should
it want to do this,
would have the
Ministry of Health
put together with
consultation, which they did--
I don't like this word
health reform, okay?
But reorganization was
an inoffensive one.
I had nothing to do with this.
I went and found this.
It's a matter of public record.
It was very easy to get from
the Haitian authorities,
by the way, and
a little bit more
difficult to get out of the
Inter-American Development Bank
authorities.
But on July 21, 1998,
the Haitian government
and the Inter-American
Development Bank,
which is a very important
institution in Latin America.
With a couple of
notable exceptions,
all of these
officialdom countries
go through these mechanisms.
And they signed a loan
for $22.5 million,
which is a huge amount for the
Haitian Ministry of Health.
By the way, in that
anthrax outbreak--
I think it was the
anthrax outbreak.
It may have been an outbreak
of meningococcal meningitis.
I sent an email
from central Haiti
to a friend of mine who was with
the Ministry of Health saying,
you know--
it was meningococcal meningitis.
I said, we're having an
outbreak of meningococcemia,
meningococcal disease.
And a baby had just died.
And we saw another case
with purpura fulminans
and then saw another
case the next day.
So we alerted them.
And I got no answer back,
because they were supposed
to come out and investigate.
And that's what they
had asked us to do.
And a couple of months
later, I saw the guy
who was, like I said,
a friend of mine who's
a very earnest, good person.
And I said, why didn't you
come out to investigate this?
And he said, we didn't
have any gas for the Jeep.
And I said, you know, that was
the end of that discussion.
Because I thought,
you know, I'm not
going to be rebuking
people for not having gas.
It's like, that's sort
of our foreign policy,
yell at people for being poor.
So, now, let's yell at
the Haitian government
for being poor.
We do that very
well, by the way,
with very little in the way
of critical response from, you
know, the mandarins of
American foreign policy,
including the intellectuals.
Again, I don't know.
You follow this more
closely than I do.
I haven't seen a
lot of commentary
on what it is exactly we're
doing, but it looks a lot to me
like yelling at
the poor as really
powerful, wealthy people--
nation, rather.
So this was the
goal of the loan.
And, you know, it's pretty
standard fare, really quite
dull to read, actually.
I can't believe I had to
have help from my co-workers
getting through it.
It was boring.
These are the project goals.
I'm just summarizing
them for you.
But, basically, they were very
standard public health goals,
reduce infant mortality.
And, you know, there was a plan.
And it was approved by
the Haitian government.
And it got stalled
in parliament,
because there was a famously
obstructionist parliament.
By the way, that's why the
Haitians voted in March.
These were the famous
disputed elections.
In March of 2000-- nothing to do
with the presidential elections
that would happen
later on that year--
the Haitians went out and
tried to do clean slate for one
party, so they could get rid of
the obstructionist parliament.
And they did.
You know, everyone
went out and voted
for the same party in order
to have the obstructionist
parliament not block--
it's sort of Haitian
gridlock of blocking every--
and I would say this is,
by any kind of standard,
a reasonable proposal
and, you know,
what you'd want a public
health project to look like.
So in any case,
then what happened?
Well, in October 1998, the
Haitian Minister of Health
presented the project
to the legislature.
And I just wrote
obstructionists.
Because that's what
they were doing.
They were basically trying
to block everything that came
from the central government.
This was not under
Aristide, by the way.
This is under Préval.
And then after the
March elections
had led to a non-obstructionist
parliament, that
is a parliament that would
vote to approve proposals
from the central government,
it was ratified there.
The Inter-American
Development Bank said, okay,
money's on the way.
This is announced in
the papers as official.
And then there were
new conditions put on.
And this is when I started
hearing about this.
You know, if you're sitting
there in rural Haiti
and your number of patients
is increased by two-fold in 18
months--
and you have seen various
clinics and hospitals
close down in the region.
And, you know, your
doctors and nurses
are saying, we can't
see all these patients
and it's just not
possible, if there's
a medical staff of
eight or nine people,
to see 400, 500
patients in a day.
And so I'm the medical
director, so they're
coming to me with complaints.
They say, we can't see
all these patients.
And I say, what can I do?
These are all
Haitian colleagues.
I say, you know,
the country is sick.
We have to see the patients.
But I'm just waiting
for this IDB thing
to go through, so that the other
institutions can be reopened,
as is the stated intention of
the Haitian Ministry of Health.
So I'm waiting.
So I started asking.
Where's that loan that would
allow the other public health--
because this is a
private charity hospital.
That is a private hospital doing
the work of the public health
infrastructure.
So we're just waiting.
And we started looking into it.
And we found out, we
started following it.
And the most amazing
thing I heard
was last summer when I found
that the Haitian government was
actually paying
credit commissions
and interest on a loan that
had not been dispersed.
And I said, you know, I'm
not an economist or a banker.
You know, I'm sorry.
I'm just a physician
anthropologist.
But isn't that illegal?
You know, can you do that?
And this is last year.
This is still going on today.
Yeah.
I don't care if my
30 minutes are up.
I'm just getting
warmed up, all right?
And they were having
their arms twisted.
And I'm telling you,
from what I understand--
and I know this to be true--
the Ministry of Health
has no money.
Let me just give you
another little ironic thing.
The size of the Brigham and
Women's Hospital budget, okay,
where I work and some
of you have been there,
is larger than the
Republic of Haiti.
And you read in the
newspaper a couple
of days that Brigham and Women's
Hospital has $163 million
a year in support
just from the INH.
The INH is isoniazid, sorry.
NIH.
DORSINVILLE: NIH.
FARMER: INH is a drug to treat
tuberculosis, forgive me.
[LAUGHTER]
Did I really do that?
DORSINVILLE: Yes.
FARMER: Anyway.
AUDIENCE: On tape.
FARMER: [SPEAKING FRENCH].
Anyway, so this is
what we're left with.
And this is what I'm
going to close with.
There they are.
You know, people
can say, okay, well,
what are you doing getting
involved in this stuff?
Or, as I heard
today during rounds,
why are you giving a
talk with Noam Chomsky?
That's true, isn't it?
And he didn't say it.
But, well, here's why.
Because we're sick of
seeing sick patients who
don't want to be sick
who've already, you know,
worked so hard.
And, again, I take the
view that Nancy does.
They worked hard
for about 210 years
by my count to have a
society in which everyone,
including poor people
and, back 200 years ago,
including slaves, had a say in
what happens to their destiny.
That seems to me
the clear message
of all the Haitian popular
movements from the 18th century
to now is that the
Haitian people are saying,
we don't want to be left out
of, you know, true democracy.
We want to have a say in this.
And to see these
same people, who
I regard as extremely valiant,
be reduced to sitting outside
of our clinic and going there
the night before and sleeping
on the ground to see the
physicians, you know,
it's more than disheartening
for those of us
who are working there.
And, of course,
we know very well
that the source
of these illnesses
are social conditions.
And we know, because we've
heard now twice I hope,
what causes the
social conditions
that we see now in Haiti.
And when I speak to friends
and family and co-workers and I
tell them this story about--
you know, the only two
countries, by the way--
this is after Durban, the
meeting-- not the Durban AIDS,
meeting which I did
go to, but the Durban
meeting that Nancy
went to on racism.
The declaration of Durban,
which many of you may have read,
has very pointed
language on reparations
owed to post-colonial societies.
And the two major
destinations for slaves
kidnapped from West
Africa in the New World
were Cuba and Haiti.
And those the only two
countries under formal aid
embargoes by the United States.
So that's, right now, how we're
paying reparations to Haiti.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]
DORSINVILLE: You
heard it, reparations.
I think from both Professor
Chomsky and Dr. Farmer,
we have a sense of
the sustainability
and the resilience
of Haitian people
in their determination
to have a democracy,
to be part of the
governance of the island,
and to be part of the process
of self-determination.
Over and over, we've
challenged, have
been challenged, interference
coming from a number of places.
But we've steadfastly kept
on our desire for democracy
and for autonomy.
I think after hearing these
two prominent scholars,
I'd like to give a chance to
you guys, the emerging scholars,
to air your thoughts and ask
questions and, perhaps, offer
some guidance to the scholarly
and powerful people who
have interfered with the
sovereignty of the Haitian
people.
Go ahead.
AUDIENCE: You never
mentioned the United Nations.
I was wondering what their role
is, what their position is.
DORSINVILLE: Do you want
to take a microphone?
Did everybody hear the question?
AUDIENCE: You could repeat it.
FARMER: The first question was
what about the United Nations.
I never mentioned them.
What is the United
Nations again?
Oh.
Oh, the thing in New York.
[LAUGHTER]
I'll let Noam take this.
But I just want to say one
thing before I pass it on to him
is, having lived in
Haiti for 20 years,
I have developed
a deep suspicion
of the international
bilateral groups like that.
I mean, the Organization
of American States
has been quite craven.
And it certainly will not
countenance any United States
dictum.
And so that the degree to
which anybody can really
challenge what are
profoundly unjust policies
any body like that, you know,
I don't know much about it.
But I can tell you that they
have been pretty cowardly
on many occasions.
Now, the governments
are not in a position
to say things like that.
That's not the
language that they use,
you know, regardless of
what stripe of government.
But that's the language.
I mean, I have the
latitude to use that.
And I've found them cowardly
and unwilling to speak clearly
about what they see going on.
You know, Pan American
Health Organization
is an apolitical
organization that's
100 years old, twice as old as
the World Health Organization.
And when the head of the Pan
American Health Organization,
Sir George Alleyne, went
to Haiti recently, he said,
this is nuts.
I mean, since we're
on radio, I suppose
I should say that's
a paraphrasing.
You know, Sir George probably
didn't say this is nuts.
But my friends in
international public health
say this is really
awful, an embargo
against the country that is
least able to really resist
that makes no sense.
And yet I think international
politicians and diplomats are
really now getting very divorced
from clear and straightforward
language that says, this
is right, this is wrong.
So what about the UN?
I guess my big question is when
the United Nations contradicts
US foreign policy, what happens?
And I think we have, you know,
a lot of information about that.
[LAUGHTER]
I'm sure this will
be very cheerful.
[LAUGHTER]
CHOMSKY: Well.
[LAUGHTER]
There's a history,
and it's very clear.
In fact, it's official.
I'll just quote an
official source, okay?
So I don't have to make it up.
[LAUGHTER]
I mentioned that in 1986
the World Court, highest
judicial body, condemned
the United States
for international terrorism
for the unlawful use of force,
ordered it to terminate
its atrocities,
and to pay substantial
reparations to the victim,
namely Nicaragua.
The US responded by
immediately escalating the war,
bipartisan incidentally.
The judgment was
dismissed with contempt.
It's disappeared from history.
Nicaragua went to
the Security Council,
which debated a resolution not
mentioning anyone, but calling
on all states to observe
international law.
It was vetoed by
the United States.
Britain, which is our attack
dog, not a country anymore,
agreed.
They helped out by abstaining.
They went to the General
Assembly, same result,
you know.
It's out of history,
doesn't exist.
I mean, just how
many reams of paper
have been devoted to
the war on terrorism
in the last several months?
Try to find one
reference to the fact
that the leader of
the war on terrorism
happens to be the only
state in the world, which
has been condemned
by the highest
international authorities
for international terrorism
and responded by
escalating the terror.
Well, you know,
the legal advisor
of the State Department,
Abraham Sofaer, explained--
you can read it in the
State Department Bulletin--
why the US was rejecting the
World Court jurisdiction.
They didn't even wait
for the judgment,
because they knew what
it was going to be.
They rejected the jurisdiction
when the case was brought.
And he explained,
and he's right.
He said, in the early days
of the United Nations,
everybody voted our way.
He didn't explain
why, but it's obvious.
You take a look at what the
world was like in the late '40s
and the early '50s.
And if you didn't vote the
way the United States said,
you were in very deep trouble.
So everybody voted our
way, and it was nice.
Then came
decolonization, you know.
And the membership
of the United Nations
became much more diversified.
It fell under what's called
the tyranny of the majority,
otherwise known as democracy.
You know, even the
industrial world
began to recover from the war.
And the world has
gotten more diverse.
And what he said is, by now, we
can no longer count on other--
he said, other nations of the
world just don't agree with us
and often vote against
us in the United Nations
or anywhere else,
the World Court.
Therefore, we must
reserve to ourselves
the right to
determine what falls
within the domestic jurisdiction
of the United States.
In this case, what fell within
the domestic jurisdiction
of the United States was a
terrorist attack on Nicaragua.
And that's correct.
Now, nobody would be so impolite
as to quote this in public.
It's been on the public record
for, you know, 17 years.
You can judge how often it's
been quoted, but he's correct.
In other words, if you
do what we say, fine.
Then we'd like the
international institutions.
If you happen to cross
us, you know, get lost.
We have the guns, and
we'll do what we feel like.
In fact, when you read
about the United Nations,
what you hear is, you know, the
tyranny of the Russian veto.
Nothing can ever happen.
You know, that was true
for a couple of years
in the late '40s
and the early '50s
when it was totally under the
lash of the United States,
as The Wall Street Journal
put it at the time.
Yeah, then it was
used as an instrument
against the Russians.
And they voted,
you know, against.
They vetoed resolutions.
In fact, I was a student in
those days, graduate student,
in your profession.
You mind if I dump
on your profession?
FARMER: No, please do.
CHOMSKY: Leading
anthropologists, you know,
famous anthropologists--
I mean, Margaret
Mead, those guys.
FARMER: Knock yourself out.
[LAUGHTER]
CHOMSKY: They worked
on this question
of why the Russians
were always so negative.
You know, they kept saying
no at the United Nations.
And they developed
a theory, which
was taken quite seriously.
I mean, there may be
three people in Cambridge
who thought it was a joke.
We used to call it diaperology.
The theory was that
the Russians were
raised with swaddling clothes.
And that makes them negative.
[LAUGHTER]
So then when Gromyko is
up at the United Nations,
he says, no.
And that was taken very
seriously if you read it.
Okay, well, and that's what
it was like in the late '40s
and the early '50s.
Then, as I say, came
decolonization, you know,
all these changes.
Since the 1960s, the
US is far in the lead
in vetoing Security Council
resolution on just about
everything, every topic.
Second is Britain.
A very distant third is France.
I haven't heard any
anthropological investigations
as to why Americans
are so negative,
you know, and the British
only slightly less negative.
Well, you know, that's how
the United Nations works.
Now, sometimes--
very often, in fact--
it does vote against
the United States.
It hasn't on Haiti.
But take the Cuban embargo.
I mean, that's been
condemned by everybody.
You know, it comes up
over and over again.
It doesn't come up in
the Security Council,
because the US will veto it.
But it comes up in the
General Assembly all the time.
The votes are unanimous.
There are two votes against.
Israel is compelled to vote
with the United States.
It has no choice.
So there's two votes
against, but Israel
violates the embargo.
I mean, you know,
they know they've
got to vote with the boss,
but they violate the embargo.
The OAS, which, as you
say, is totally supine,
they've condemned it.
Their legal commission
has condemned it.
It's been condemned as in
violation of international law.
The European Union brought
it up with the World Trade
Organization, because
the embargo, especially
the secondary boycott parts, are
in gross violation of the World
Trade Organization rules.
They brought it up.
The Clinton Administration
responded first
by saying that--
there's a thing
in the World Trade
Organization called the
national security exemption.
Like, if your
existence is at stake,
you know, you can
violate a trade law.
So the US first claimed the
national security exemption.
[LAUGHTER]
Like, if we don't
prevent food and medicine
from going to Cubans, we'll
disappear as a country.
But that was too ludicrous.
So they finally simply
told them, you know,
the usual answer, get lost.
I mean, I don't care what
it says in those rules
anymore than we do when it
says that you can't stop
the Japanese from sending
supercomputers, which
are better than ones made here.
You don't like it?
Do something about it.
As Stalin once has
reputed to have
said when the Vatican criticized
him, how many divisions
has the Pope, you know?
Well, I don't know
if he said that
or not, but that's what
the powerful say, you know?
You don't like what we're
doing, all right, do something
about it.
And there's nothing
anyone can do except us.
We can do it.
You know, if there are changes
internally in the United
States, anything can happen.
One of the reasons why this
stuff is never reported,
and it isn't and
never discussed,
is because people might
find out about it.
If we had a functioning
democracy here,
you know, you might find out
what's being done in your name.
And you might not like it.
And this goes all
over the world.
I said I was in Turkey
a couple days ago.
What we've done there under
the Clinton years is grotesque.
I mean, the charges against
Milosevic and the Hague,
you know-- bad
enough, but nothing
like what happened
in the same years
that Clinton was paying
for just in Turkey alone.
That's one place.
Therefore, it isn't discussed.
The UN votes on
the Cuban embargo,
they're scarcely mentioned.
The vetoes are almost
never mentioned.
I mean, the most recent one--
I'll finish-- was last
December, December 15th.
Bush was making speeches about
how terrible Palestinians are
enhancing terror.
Well, there's a way to reduce
terror, which overwhelmingly
is the powerful people, of
course, the US and Israel.
There's a way to do it.
You could implement
the US Mitchell Report
and send international
monitors who do,
in fact, reduce violence
when they're there.
It came up the United
Nations Security Council.
The Europeans
introduced a resolution
to that effect calling for
a reduction of violence,
implementing the
Mitchell Report,
sending international monitors.
US vetoed it.
It went to the General Assembly,
overwhelming vote in favor.
This time the United
States also picked up
not only Israel, which is
automatic, but also Nauru
and one of the other
Pacific Islands.
I think jointly they
have 20,000 people.
So it wasn't totally isolated
the way it usually is.
You think there was
any report about this?
Take a look, you know?
If you really search, you could
find a word about it somewhere.
DORSINVILLE: Professor Chomsky?
CHOMSKY: I mean, that's
the way it works.
Yeah.
Don't me get started.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
DORSINVILLE: Thank you.
FARMER: I told
you he would know.
DORSINVILLE: Okay,
we have a question
back there, the gentleman
in the orange T-shirt.
AUDIENCE: Yes, I have a
question for Dr. Farmer.
[AUDIO OUT] your experience
and your familiarity
with rural Haiti,
I was wondering
if you could comment on the
ecological crisis that's
going on there and
how it's affecting,
you know, human development
and public health?
FARMER: Yeah.
Did you hear the question?
AUDIENCE: No.
FARMER: How has the ecological
crisis in rural Haiti
affected human development?
And, you know, there's a short
answer and a long answer.
I'll go for the short one.
And the impact
has been profound.
I mentioned already the struggle
for food, wood, and water.
And the fact that, you know,
people don't have electricity,
you know, or, say, gas--
you know, because the
Cubans, for example,
are trying to help Haiti
develop a way of cooking
with small little propane type
things that are really small
and would match the way it's
been done in terms of scale.
I mean, these are not
places with stoves.
These are places
where food is cooked
outside as the Haitians
say, [SPEAKING FRENCH],,
on three stones.
So there's really no way to
do that without replacing,
you know, wood as a
fuel, charcoal as a fuel.
And, again, I just
don't think that's going
to happen without some
systematic approach
to developing an alternative.
Because in the absence
of an alternative that's
promoted by a policy,
no one has capital to go
and by such a thing or
to replace the propane.
Solar stuff hasn't
worked very well.
But the ecological crisis
from deforestation alone,
not talking about
pollution of groundwater,
has just been
profound and terrible.
And, again, USAID have
funded tens of millions
of dollars for
reforestation projects.
And they, obviously,
have not been successful.
I do remember, though,
that USAID once
funded a single drainage project
in Port-au-Prince about five
different times under the
Duvaliers, the same drainage
project that never got done.
Now, thank god they're going
to try to really clamped
down and make sure that
Aristide's government uses
funds wisely.
But I think those giant
reforestation projects-- maybe
someone here knows more
about it than I do.
None of them has been really a
success by internal government
accounting office reviews.
And, again, that's another tip
from the Noamster, as we say.
This is on the radio?
Sorry.
Another tip from
Professor Chomsky--
go to official sources.
And, you know, the
government accounting office
has published its
own internal report
on the performance
of our aid wing.
It's really devastating.
And, you know, I'd recommend
that you look at that as well.
Because there's been
projects in the past which
have been tried and failed.
My own view as to why
they failed-- well, they
were being routed
through a government
really did not have
the health and welfare
of the Haitian people at heart,
meaning the family dictatorship
followed by the military juntas.
Now, again, that may sound
fantastic as a theory
to some people, but I
believe it makes sense.
DORSINVILLE: Thank you.
We have a question here.
AUDIENCE: Yes.
This question is for Dr. Farmer.
Let's talk about AIDS in
Haiti and the correlation
to the rest of Southern Africa.
FARMER: Where are you?
AUDIENCE: I'm here.
FARMER: Oh, sorry.
AUDIENCE: And also, 1981,
the NIH started with 4H
and Haiti was--
FARMER: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
FARMER: I mean, it's really
a very disturbing chapter
of US-Haitian relations.
I didn't mention it here.
But you're right, I think
it's worth mentioning.
And some people here are old
enough to remember that back
in the early '80s,
as you were saying,
the suggestion was widely
circulated in the US press that
HIV--
or at that point AIDS,
because we hadn't really
identified HIV--
had come to the United
States from Haiti.
And, of course,
just the opposite
was true, as is the case I'm
learning with most reporting--
[LAUGHTER]
--that HIV actually went to
Haiti from the United States
and to all the countries of
the circum-Caribbean basin
the same way, except Cuba.
Cuba is the only
country that didn't
have that tight relationship.
And the countries with
the closest relationships
to the United States
and the most dependent
on the kind of aid and expertise
that we've talked about already
were the countries
most affected,
with Haiti actually being
the country most dependent
on US exports.
So not to make a crude
ecological association,
but HIV actually came to
Haiti from the United States
and then spread, because of
poverty, gender inequality,
and political
violence, which made
any kind of, again, public
health approach very difficult.
I mean, I worked during
those years in Haiti.
And in 1992, for
example, or '93 perhaps,
a women's group
that I had worked
with for some time working on
a video about gender inequality
and HIV, the women's group was
showing the video in a village
not far from our clinic.
And they were planning to
lead a discussion afterwards.
And soldiers came and dislodged
them from the building
and threatened them
with their lives.
And, actually, the head
of the women's group
said to me, you know, I
don't think we should do this
anymore, AIDS prevention.
She said, it's
just too dangerous.
You know, that was 1993.
And someone, I'm sure, is going
to have a very different take
on this than I do.
But reading about this
horrible persecution
of the Haitian press
alleged to be going on now
is just amazing to
me when, in fact, we
have documentation of
a massive eradication
of the independent press in
Haiti under the Duvaliers
and under the military regime.
And there is a great deal--
and I'm mixing things together.
But the very most difficult
time for doing work
like that, HIV prevention,
was during the '80s and '90s
actually, particularly the
late '80s and early '90s.
So the epidemic in
Haiti is moving forward
untrammeled by really
significant prevention efforts.
And that's part of
what is being proposed
by the Ministry of Health,
a robust HIV program.
Let me just tell
you this one thing.
The World Bank and other
funders got together
and started putting
together this AIDS package
for the Caribbean,
an aid package.
And the one country
most affected
by HIV in the
Caribbean, you know,
was slated for zero dollars.
These are professionals.
These are doctors and public
health experts who are saying,
oh, well.
It's okay that we
don't have Haiti,
the most affected
country in the region,
involved in our funding program.
So I blame my own colleagues
for not questioning that.
I just went to a meeting
in Jamaica two days ago.
By the way, never go
to Jamaica for one day.
Stay longer.
[LAUGHTER]
I went to a meeting of the Pan
American Health Organization
for one day.
And the most affected
country was not represented.
There's 25 countries represented
there, but not Haiti.
So, I mean, this is how it plays
out in terms of specific health
problems.
I thank you for
asking the question.
DORSINVILLE: Okay.
AUDIENCE: Should I go next?
DORSINVILLE: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: What is the purported
rationale for the current US
embargo?
I mean, the presentations
began with an introduction.
But so far, I haven't heard
what the purported explanation
of the current US embargo is.
What are its publicly
stated goals?
What is its hidden
agenda if any?
And, in a larger sense,
what are the policies
that the United
States and the IMF
or any other relevant entities
want the government of Haiti
to be adopting?
And, conversely,
what are the policies
that the current
government is attempting
to adopt instead of
whatever the United
States and other entities
would prefer to impose?
FARMER: Well, we'll do
this in a two-part thing,
because I know Noam
will have things to add.
But I'll just say that
I believe, in fact,
that many people in
those institutions
are opposed to the
embargo, because I've
spoken with them directly.
I went to talk to
some of these people
and, again, more as
a concerned citizen.
Because our own group does not
depend upon this kind of aid.
And I say a concerned
American citizen, US citizen.
Our group doesn't rely
on any of these efforts
to run our hospital.
We rely on private
donations from, you know,
friends and funders and
some progressive foundations
and churches.
But this has nothing
to do with us.
But I did go there,
because there are not
that many US citizens
who are saying, wait,
this is unacceptable.
And I met person
after person who
said, oh, we are so
embarrassed by this, you know?
This is a ridiculous policy.
So then you keep asking.
Where is this coming from then
if you're embarrassed by it,
you know?
You are the vice president,
and then fill in the blank,
you know?
Choose your favorite-- I
went to several of them.
And I already told you what the
head of the Pan American Health
Organization said, you know,
regarding the fact that you
can't have an
embargo on a country
where there's so many
public health problems.
And so you ask where
is this coming from.
And Noam will have
gotten to this,
you know, from
the other way just
by knowing the information.
But I finally came to
believe, in any case,
that this is actually coming
from the State Department
under the suggestions of
just probably a fairly
small number of people.
Jesse Helms is one of
them I'm quite sure.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
FARMER: No, I'm serious.
And I thought, well, you
know, a huge government
like this, the
hugest government,
can't have its policy
determined really by one person.
Of course, that's been a point
of institutional analysis
is that's not how it works.
But Haiti is so
beaten down right now
that you wonder, again,
if someone with-- it's
almost like a grudge.
Of course, it makes better sense
to not think of it that way.
But, right now,
there's a lot of--
I told you about
talking to someone
today on the phone who said, you
know, I find this embarrassing.
And I'd like to see it reversed.
So that gets me to
just one little point,
and then I'll pass it over Noam.
I don't think there's anything
that the Haitian government can
do to please the people
who are behind this.
I don't think there's any way.
Because the things
that have been
asked for as concessions
have all been made already
by the Haitian government.
So there's no way.
They can't win.
They could never
do anything to meet
the demands of
the people who are
the architects, the intellectual
architects, of the embargo.
And I'm going to go ahead and
quote Jeffrey Sachs who said,
a couple of days
ago, "it seems to me
that there are only
two possibilities--
one, that the goal
of this policy
is to overthrow
the democratically
elected government of Haiti.
Or, B, that there is
such massive incompetence
inside the machinery
of state up here
that they're just bad at
executing another policy.
So it's either that's their
policy, or they're incompetent.
Those are the two options
that he could see.
Noam?
CHOMSKY: Well, just to
add, the leading individual
who's spearheading this
happens to be Colin Powell.
He is regarded as the
administration dove,
you know, the moderate,
which is probably true.
What that means?
He's slightly to the moderate
side of Attila the Hun,
I suppose.
[LAUGHTER]
For example, there was just a
meeting of CARICOM, you know,
the Caribbean--
I forget what it stands for,
the Caribbean countries.
Everyone was opposed to the
embargo, every single one.
Powell insisted that we're
going to continue it.
That's our policy.
And Helms is behind it, too.
You're right.
But, you know, they don't have
to yield to Helms on this.
They're doing it,
because they want to.
So then you ask why.
Well, they have a
technical reason.
Haiti didn't meet our
elevated standards
of how a democratic
election should be run.
And I don't doubt
that there were
all kinds of irregularities
in the election.
And maybe this was
wrong, and that
was wrong, and the other thing.
But to talk about our
standards for elections
if you consider the
countries to which we
don't put under embargo,
I mean this doesn't even--
you know, it's hard to
imagine that people can even
mouth these words without
such embarrassment.
It's almost indescribable.
So that can't be the reason.
What the real reason
is, I suppose,
what it's been all along.
I mean, the reason that
they hated Aristide
from the beginning,
very beginning,
you know-- he was a
renegade, and a radical,
and a firebrand, and
preaching class warfare,
and this, that, and the other
thing, a psychotic, you know.
I mean, the charges
against him weren't
credible-- was because
his government,
the official terminology was,
it wasn't sufficiently diverse.
It only included the 90%
of the population who live
in the slums and the hills.
And it didn't include what
the United States defines
as Haitian civil society, namely
the private sector, national
and international.
So it didn't give sufficient
representation, meaning
dominance, to US
investors who were Haitian
civil society and to,
you know, the Mevs family
and the Brandt family and
the other small families
who were the, you
know, current version
of the guys who were calling
for slavery 200 years ago,
didn't give them dominance.
So therefore, it's not
sufficiently broad.
On the other hand,
if some government,
you know, like just
about everyone,
excludes virtually
the entire population,
but gives privilege to those
who really count, you know,
the private sector,
national and international,
then they're fine.
Then there's no problem.
I mean, that's been
said officially so
many times that you can hardly
even call it a hidden agenda.
You know, it's an open agenda.
And it's an understandable one.
Nobody's going to say it.
They actually say in
almost these words.
DORSINVILLE: The
gentleman in the back.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] in rural
Haiti to work with people.
I wonder if you have an
assessment of this initiative
and if you think this
kind of corporation
can help when we can get the
$22 million from the bank.
FARMER: Did everyone
hear the question?
AUDIENCE: No.
FARMER: The discussion
of Cuban assistance
to Haiti in the form of
medical personnel, how
is this going to work if
aid to resuscitate Haitian
public health is blocked.
I think it's a great question.
First, let me tell you I admire
those physicians enormously.
And, in fact, some of them
have pitched in our work.
And they've done
really valiant--
they're really working hard.
And there's almost 800
there, I think, now.
So there are more Cuban
doctors in rural Haiti
than Haitian doctors.
There are more Haitians
psychiatrists in Montreal
than all of Haiti, okay?
And this is a trend.
By the way, somebody studied 264
graduates of the medical school
under a period of a couple--
I don't remember how many--
classes under Francois
Duvalier.
And there were only
four left in Haiti.
So, again, this is a
longstanding problem,
lack of medical personnel.
Cuba, as you might know,
has the largest number
of doctors per population
in the world of any country
as far as I know.
So their sending out
doctors has been great.
However, I think that the
weakness of the Cuban aid
strategy has nothing
to do with them.
It's like, again,
yelling at countries,
because they're poor.
You need a third
partner with capital.
Either the Haitian public
health infrastructure
needs an infusion
of capital right now
in order to make that work.
Because the problem,
frankly, is that if you
have Cuban doctors fitting
into the Haitian health system.
That's terrible.
The Haitian health system is
all fee for service exclusively.
So what you do--
you know, you
probably know this,
because you're from Haiti.
But if you're in
a clinic in Haiti
or a hospital, the
public hospitals, when
the doctor prescribes
something, he
passes he or she passes the
prescription to the patient
or the patient's family member.
And then you go out of the
hospital to the pharmacy
outside, buy the medicines,
bring them back, give them
to the nurse.
I'm talking about gloves
and intravenous fluid,
too, not just in medicines.
So having Cubans come in and fit
into a fee for service system
when they've been trained in a
system of socialized medicine
where that's not done, you
know, is a major problem.
And it's a very significant
weakness of the program.
You know, the obvious partner
for the Cuban aid program
is us.
We're the ones, the neighbors
with all the money, you know.
And in a sane world, of
course, if a group of countries
were trying to come
together to help improve
public health in
Haiti, it would be
a wealthy country and a
country with enormous technical
capacity and help, which
is Cuba, helping out
their neighboring country.
And, right now, there's
still no strategy.
France, Canada, the other
countries that could do this
have not come through yet
to be the third partner.
AUDIENCE: How has
public health initiative
included education and
prevention treatment in Haiti
to prevent the spread
of infectious disease
in particular?
And how would that [INAUDIBLE]
what you do [INAUDIBLE]??
FARMER: Did people
hear the question?
How does prevention, especially
prevention of infectious
[INAUDIBLE]--
infectious Jesus did I say?
[LAUGHTER]
Infectious diseases,
that's my field.
I'm supposed to
say that correctly.
How does the prevention
figure in the plans?
Well, one of the
big problems, again,
is that if you say
to people, you know,
kind of like in the United
States, don't do drugs,
you know, don't get on welfare,
whatever-- but, you know,
what happens too often in these
settings is you're exhorting
people to do things
they cannot do.
You know, for example,
don't drink dirty water.
Well, you know--
DORSINVILLE: There's
not other water.
FARMER: That's great
in Cambridge, you know,
where you try not to scoop water
out of a puddle to drink it
when you're thirsty on
Mass Ave or you buy,
for no good reason--
no offense Dinesh--
Poland Springs water.
Our water is clean.
It has nothing to do
with individual volition,
you know, or some kid at
Cambridge Rindge and Latin High
School.
As long as they drink
the public water,
they're not going to get sick.
So I actually have
limited enthusiasm
for preventive measures
that rely exclusively
on exhortation when, in
fact, the big problems are
structural problems.
So prevention of infectious
diseases like malaria,
you know, is very difficult
to do without money,
without cleaning
up stagnant water.
And that's not the job
of individual families.
You know, it's not the job.
It's the job of a
public health system.
You know, malaria, typhoid--
you have to have clean water.
I didn't have to develop
clean drinking water
when I was in fifth grade.
My parents didn't
make me do that.
I actually never thought about
it until much later in life.
And that's, again, same thing.
HIV-- sure, we need
to push education.
We need to push prevention.
We need to have culturally
appropriate tools.
We did all that in our work.
But their impact
on that epidemic,
if the major co-factors are
poverty and gender inequality,
will be limited.
So we need resources in order
to have a public infrastructure,
and then prevention
and education
will really have its impact.
But, you know, with no
clean water and no access
to vaccines, you know, exhorting
poor people to, you know,
wash their hands and drink their
clean water-- not that you're
saying that.
I'm just saying
that's what's left
over when you've really
destroyed a public health
infrastructure.
DORSINVILLE: Okay.
AUDIENCE: Clearly,
there's no money in Haiti.
But the fact remains
that Aristide
has been in power for a year,
and it's not very evident
what he's actually been doing.
And I was wondering if
you could comment on that
and, also, what some of
the legitimate criticisms
are of the so-called opposition.
FARMER: First of all,
I'm not so sure what
that means to be in power.
I mean, in other
places, that means
having say over something, just
the general concept of power.
And I've already told you
that the Brigham and Women's
Hospital is larger than the
hospital for the Republic
of Haiti for 8 million people.
So I'm very skeptical
of analyses,
not that yours is doing this.
But I'm saying I'm skeptical
analysis that exaggerate
the power and the agency
of people in these very
marginalized situations.
So I actually don't think that
the will of the Haitian people
has ever been respected.
They're trying to get a
government that represents
broad aspirations
of power, but I
don't think they've succeeded.
They succeeded for a
few months back in 1991.
And then you could
actually take a good look.
You could just look at
the record and say, well,
what happened during
those seven months?
How did it work?
But I'm not sure that's
ever happened since.
And so I actually
don't agree that we
can see a government in power.
A government in power
doesn't have to pay interest
on loans it's never received.
A government in
power does not have
to have its legal rights
approved by someone
like Jesse Helms, you know?
So I don't think
that that government
has been in power yet.
And the reasons that I
hope it comes into power
are really related
only to the fact
that the Haitian people
voted to have them in power.
And I kind of think that
that's a legitimate aspiration
for people, to want to
have a democratic regime.
So that's my take on it as
someone who's working there.
You know, when I inquire
over specific projects,
as I did with the health
project, which is my job,
I found that, again,
they're not in power.
When I heard they
were paying interest
on a loan they
haven't received, I
thought it was a
canard, just a rumor.
You were mentioning legitimate
criticism of the opposition?
AUDIENCE: If there is any.
FARMER: I think
they're all legitimate.
I think they're all correct.
That's my view.
I think the opposition has
no broad-based support,
does not represent the
aspirations of the majority,
does not wish to come to power
through democratic elections.
In fact, they said,
and many of them,
the leaders of the
opposition movement,
said we know we can't win
in democratic elections.
That's what they've
said publicly.
Again, this is in
The New York Times,
that great paper of record.
And so I find that
the criticisms
I hear from the people with
whom I live in rural Haiti
are to be very compelling.
In fact, I haven't heard a
lot of uncompelling criticisms
of the opposition.
DORSINVILLE: Okay, we're
going to take two more
questions-- this gentleman
here and then that lady there.
AUDIENCE: My question
is for both of you.
It sounds like both of
you have a great deal of--
FARMER: For me and
my junior colleague?
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: It sounds
like both of you
have a great deal of admiration
for the Haitian people,
for their struggles
over the past 200 years.
It also sounds like both of you
have learned a lot from them
and they've motivated you.
Given that, given their
struggles, and given sort
of the level of critical
thought in the United States,
do you really think that
true change in the long run
is going to come
from internal changes
within the United
States and [INAUDIBLE]??
FARMER: Great question.
CHOMSKY: Well, I think we
can pose it as a dilemma.
Either it will come internal
to the population, the United
States, or it won't come.
OK.
That's just the nature of power.
And that's the same
on every other issue.
You know, the United
States happens
to have overwhelming power.
These things are not
brought to the attention
of the American population.
How many people in
the United States
would know anything about one
word of what was said tonight?
It's all public record, but
nobody would know about it.
And there's a reason for that.
The reason is that political,
ideological, economic managers
are terrified of the population.
They don't want them to know.
And they make efforts
to prevent them
from knowing on all sorts of
issues, not just this one.
You can run through a long list.
And I think they're right.
You know, my suspicion
is that people in power
are probably correct
in their assessment,
that if the population
does know what's
being done in their
names, they're
not going to let it happen.
And we've seen
example after example
of this when it was possible to
get around the centers of power
through a popular organization.
So, yes, I think their
judgment is probably accurate.
It's extremely dangerous
to let the public know
what's going on.
And, therefore, you have
to marginalize people
and, you know, direct
them to something,
consumerism, or lie
to them, or whatever.
Because if they find out,
they're not going to like it.
Most people are
decent human beings.
They're not going
to want to know.
If they learn that they're
doing the things that Paul
was talking about, they're
not going to let it happen.
And that's our job, you know?
And it's been done before.
It can be done here.
FARMER: Yeah.
I don't have much to add
to that, because I agree.
And, you know,
that's why I'm here
tonight is because I admire
the Haitian people more
than any other I've ever met.
And I don't have long
experience in other settings,
but I do have this really deep,
almost awe, of what they have
done over the last
210 years and what
they've resisted and survived.
And, of course, many of
them have not survived.
So I've also have a
deep sense of shame
that so many people
have died along the way.
And at the same time--
this gets back--
she's gone already.
This gets back to your question.
Oh, she didn't like my answer.
She split.
This gets back to my
response to that question.
I would regard as
romantic notions
that this is going to be settled
quote unquote, "in Haiti,
by Haitians."
And I know you're
saying the same thing.
That's your point.
And if it were going to be
settled in Haiti, by Haitians,
it's already been clear
on so many occasions
that Haitians in Haiti are not
the primary architects of what
we've described today.
And so I go back
to places like--
I've actually been to
some of these places,
these powerful bureaucracies.
You know, I think
that displays, I hope,
a good deal of faith even
that something decent or less
punitive could come out
of those institutions.
But I actually
have a lot of faith
in the decency of most
people and the belief
that if you could get this
message out to more people,
if you could have
it less hidden away
and have it more the focus
of popular discussion
by non-experts who are
not running the world,
here in this country
I mean, it would
be a wonderful thing for
poor people in general
and including the poor people
living in poverty in Haiti who
are the majority.
And I know that's what
inspires him, too,
to do work outside of
linguistics which I always
found impenetrable anyway.
But, you know, I mean,
that's why we're here.
AUDIENCE: Hopefully,
you can hear me.
[AUDIO OUT] [INAUDIBLE]
what I'm about to say,
[INAUDIBLE] with my background.
I'm from Malawi, which
is Southern Africa.
And we just also--
I mean, if you sit down and
listen to all these lectures,
you can go to lecture on
Uganda, on Malawi, on Haiti,
the story is the same.
And to see that and,
you know, really
romanticize that each
individual nation is
going to solve their own
problems or the oppressor
in power, the
opressee, to that level
is really something I
find kind of far-fetched.
Because Mother
Earth is not going
to produce any more [INAUDIBLE].
So my welfare in
the United States
depends on you having less.
And that's how it is.
So, I mean, to what
extent are we really being
realistic in expecting
that when we graduate
from these institutions, we'll
go to work in the workplace,
it will literally mean that, you
know, if I buy Pfizer's stock,
I want it to do well.
I don't care what
happens out there.
So those are the
realistic aspects
of what shapes my life and the
life of other Haitian people.
So my call-- and I'm
asking this of both of you.
If you look at it from
a global perspective,
what is a role of oppressed
nations to get together
and really--
you know, because there's
a power in numbers--
to wave some sort of
progressive [INAUDIBLE] notions
that correct some
of these things?
CHOMSKY: I mean, you're
absolutely right.
There's what's called
South-South cooperation,
you know, cooperative
interaction
among the people who are the
most oppressed in the world
and, by far, the most numerous.
That can be very valuable.
But to try to develop
it is not easy.
For one thing, in every
one of these countries,
including the ones
you mentioned,
there are elite
groups who basically
dominate them whose
tie is to the West,
not to their local populations.
They don't want
South-South cooperation
in the interest of the
general population.
I forgot-- I didn't
hear where you're from.
FARMER: Malawi.
CHOMSKY: Malawi, okay.
So, you know, that's
the way it is there.
And that's the way
it is everywhere.
So South-South
cooperation is going
to be people to
people cooperation.
And at that point, it can also
become South-North cooperation.
Actually, one of the important
things, really important,
that's developed over
the past couple of years
for the first time ever
is significant interaction
among populations,
South and North,
pursuing the same
goals and interests.
So, for example, I
was in Brazil a couple
of weeks ago at the
Porto Alegre meetings.
There's around 70,000
people there, three times
or four times what there
were the year before
at the World Social Forum.
And they're a fairly
good representation
of substantial parts,
probably large majorities,
of the population in many
countries of the world.
Now, the countries don't have
the right kind of interaction.
You know, like Brazil, and
India, or South Africa,
three of the huge
South countries,
they don't have contact.
They don't even know
about each other.
But at meetings like Porto
Alegre, they do come together--
farmers, you know, workers,
environmental activists,
women's groups, all sorts of
people from South and North.
And they have the
same interests.
You know, some are
rich, some are poor.
But they basically have the
same interests as human beings
and are working together
on common programs.
That's extremely important.
In fact, if there's going to
be any hope for the future,
that's where it lies.
And they're going to have to
change their own countries,
South and North.
FARMER: Yeah.
I don't have much to
add to that, again,
except that what I was
thinking as you are talking
is that you mentioned
oppressed nations.
And, you know, it's really
more oppressed people.
Because the elites
of so many nations
have really sided
against the poor,
in many cases poor
majorities, and with the,
you know, colonial
powers at one point
or post-colonial,
neo-colonial powers.
So, you know, Haiti,
unfortunately,
is a very classic example
of a Latin American nation
that within a small
amount of time really,
its elite aligned itself so
wholly with the foreign powers
that they were the biggest
sources of, you know,
negative commentary
about the poor.
You know, if you read the
literature from 19th century
Haiti and early
20th century Haiti
from the elites who, you
know, are writing in French,
their views of the
Haitian people,
the people who I
serve as a physician,
are as bad and racist as some
of those from North America
where they were
echoed, by the way.
And so I don't have a lot of
experience working with elites.
In fact, I have none.
I would just confess right here.
In Haiti, I have none.
And the professionals
who I meet,
especially physicians,
minister of health,
are really pretty decent
people in my experience.
And they're not so
likely to speak that way
about the people who we
serve as the intellectuals
that I read when I was
in graduate school,
the Haitian intellectuals.
So that process has actually
given me, I hope not,
undue optimism that
there are people
in all different layers
of these societies
who want to see the
right thing done.
DORSINVILLE: Okay.
Well, I think our
time has come up.
And I went to thank
Professor Chomsky and Dr.
Farmer and particularly--
[APPLAUSE]
I also want to thank the Western
Hemisphere Project and all
the other cosponsoring
MIT organizations
and the person of
Dinesh to have worked
very hard to make
this evening possible
and bring a
historical perspective
and a compelling approach to
the analysis of the Haitian
situation.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
