Haiti and Guyana - the two fault lines of the Caribbean

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Commentary: Haiti and Guyana - the two fault lines of the Caribbean


Published on Saturday, May 31, 2008

By Jean H Charles

The term “a perfect storm” might be the most overused cliché these days. While it indicates a configuration of circumstances that can produce a disaster according to the well known principle of Murphy's Law, the perfect storm can also be the characterization of perfection. It can indicate the lining up of the sun, the moon, the sand and the surf to produce a perfect paradise on earth.

Dubai with its billions of dollars in investment has built a chain of artificial islands which are now the talk of the world. Yet the people of the Caribbean, with its chain of natural islands might be the trustees from God of a parcel of land that most people of the world wish they were the citizens of. I remember when American Airlines used to advertise Haiti as the country that you wish you belonged to, so you could engage in its magic flair without the concern of living, after your vacation period has ended.


Jean H Charles MSW, JD is Executive Director of AINDOH Inc a non profit organization dedicated to build a kinder and gentle Caribbean zone for all. He can be reached at: jeanhcharles@aol.com
Yet the Caribbean, a natural paradise has two fault lines. Guyana and Haiti represent the weak links of the region. They are the poorest countries of the region. The Caribbean cannot emerge into a sustainable development mode, unless and until the social gangrene in Haiti and in Guyana are cured and healed so as to facilitate the free flowing of goods, resources and human potential from one end to the other of the area.

I am in pain to describe those two countries as nation-states. They are rather country-states that have not yet achieved the higher classification of nation-states. I have throughout my writing, advocated the Renan Doctrine as the standard to become a true nation. It called for the full control of your borders, the instillation of a sense of the past into the minds of the citizens and above all insuring that no one is left behind in economic, social and political participation into the making of the future of the country.

Haiti and Guyana lag behind in fulfilling the last criteria. Unlike Trinidad and Jamaica, Guyana has not succeeded in integrating its Indian and its black population into one national composite. Haiti, a champion of human rights in the 1800s (well before the United States) has been treating the majority of its population, the peasants, as second class citizens, creating in fact a de facto apartheid system within the country.

Starting with Guyana, if you ask the ordinary Indian Guyanese about her feeling concerning the black brethren, she will tell you that the blacks are lazy, unwilling to engage into the hard work necessary to achieve a good education and make a living. Yet, I have met enough black Guyanese in the Diaspora to be enchanted by their education, their middle class values and their dynamicity.

The dichotomy of the picture stamped by the Indian-Guyanese does not fit with the ethos of the black Guyanese. Let us dig deeper to find out the root cause of the social conflict between those two sectors of the population. Guyana, a country the size of Idaho, USA, with a population of only 738.000 (UN 2007) is composed of a majority Indian (51%) and a black minority (41%); the rest is made of original Indian and white.

A British possession since 1815 through the Congress of Vienna, it produced sugar for the British Crown through some 400 sugar mills with slave black labour imported from Africa. Britain abolished slavery in 1834; the mass of black slaves established themselves in the coastal cities.

Desperate for workers, the planters urged the British to import indenture servants from India to man the sugar plantation. They were guaranteed a piece of land as compensation. The original black population did not receive such privilege.

Coining a concept named Apanjaat: Indian for Indian and black for black, the British might have incubated the seedling of division into the society. They grew separate and divided until today.

Now a full independent country, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) the party of the Indian Guyanese keeps pitting against the People’s National Congress (PNC) the party of the black Guyanese, without a common concern for the general welfare of all the citizens of the country. The Indian Guyanese, who command a majority rule, set the bar to a level where the black population, educated or not, has no other alternative than to leave for New York, London or Toronto to seek a better life.

There are two recourses for the black population; either become a majority through a massive return to the homeland or forge together a nation that will be hospitable to all, black or Indian Guyanese. Some forty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr made that proposal to the United States; President Lyndon Johnson adopted the concept of civil rights for all. We are now on the eve of an era where a black man, Barack Obama is a serious contender for the presidency of the United States.

Guyana will have to choose to become a true integrated nation. The onus is on the Indian Guyanese population as well as on the president of the country. Guyana will soon stop being labeled as the poorest of the South American countries while boasting being a rich ecological wonder.

Up the chain of the islands of the Caribbean, Haiti represents a similar dilemma, the harbinger of black emancipation; it has regressed into a full de facto apartheid state where the majority of the population lives below the level of acceptable sustainable existence. Present and past governance have demonstrated very little political will in attacking the problem at is roots.

Haiti has 565 rural counties with a population of 8 million people in a country the size of Maryland (USA). A detailed analysis of Haiti’s national past and present budget will indicate that successive Haitian governments from 1804 to 2008 have not bothered to invest a minimum of $20.000 dollars per rural county for the whole 204 years of the existence of the country. Yet 85% of the population live in those rural counties with no support from and no demand to the Haitian governments.

Where do we go from here? Will the USAID, CARICOM and OAS step up to the plate and engage into some incubating funding for the Diaspora to bring about a new world order where the government and the civil societies of those two countries will understand, it is in their best interest to create an aura of hospitability for all. It is the quickest path to full and sustainable prosperity for all the citizens.