Haïti Progrès
26 Janvier au 1^er Fevrier   2000

CAP HAÏTIEN
Why have the Cuban doctors left?

Two weekends ago, the 38 Cuban doctors who were working at the Justinien Hospital in the northern city of Cap Haïtien returned home. Their departure occurred three days after the deployment of over 150 U.S. soldiers just outside the city as part of the Pentagon's "Operation New Horizons."

The departure of the Cubans from Cap Haïtien has set off rumors throughout the city that they left because of the arrival of the U.S. troops. Not so, says Jean Mithaud Julien, the Haitian government's regional director of Public Health. "It all depends on which month the Cuban doctors entered the country," he said. "They take their vacation about one year after they come in. Our brigade [of Cuban doctors] arrived last February, so they took the month of January for vacation."

About 540 Cuban doctors are presently working at provincial hospitals and rural clinics throughout the Haitian countryside under a Nov. 1998 agreement signed between the two neighboring nations. That number will be increased to 800 doctors over the next two months, according to a second agreement signed two weeks ago.

Despite the assurances of government officials, many residents of Cap Haïtien view the apparent displacement of the highly popular Cuban doctors by U.S. troops with dismay and resentment. "Why did the U.S. soldiers come to the north when there are so many other places which don't have any doctors?" a Creole columnist in Haïti Progrès asked. "The way this happened it looks more like the U.S. soldiers came to harass the Cubans in Cap. They are taking care of their own business, they're not coming to help us."

On their arrival on Jan. 15, a spokesman for the U.S. troops said that they would be carrying out repairs on Justinien Hospital, among other projects. However Dr. Jacques Henry, a hospital administrator, said that the hospital has made no arrangements for repairs with the U.S. military.

In fact, no authorities in town know what the U.S. troops are up to. The assistant mayor of Cap Haïtien has asked the authorities in Port-au-Prince to give him some explanation of the troop presence. Meanwhile, the mayor of the nearby town of Milot, a Moïse Jean Charles declared that "if the soldiers come here, even though we don't have the physical forces to do battle with them, we will mobilize the population and national public opinion to block them." "Operation New Horizons" is a program which the Pentagon has used over the past 15 years to train U.S. troops in other countries, mainly around Central America (see Haïti Progrès, Vol. 17, No. 24, 9/1/99). Medics set up makeshift clinics and engineers fix roads and school buildings, all in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. military and create "goodwill." It is almost exactly the same mission which U.S. troops carried out from "Camp Fairwinds" in Port-au-Prince over the past four years. That base officially closed last week.

"Haiti doesn't need an invasion of soldiers, but an invasion of doctors," said Cuban President Fidel Castro in 1998. The subsequent deployment of Cuban doctors, who provide their services at no cost to the Haitian government, has been enthusiastically embraced by the Haitian people.

Under a new accord signed Jan. 12, Cuba also plans to seed Haiti's over-fished waters with 30 million young fish, 7 millon of them provided free by Cuba. Furthermore, Cuba will provide Haiti with four boats and 11 experts to help teach and train Haitian fishermen, provide scholarships to teach Haitian students in Spanish and medicine, help renovate the sugar processing plant in Darbonne, promote Haitian tourism, and help produce joint television programs.

Meanwhile, the accord which allows the presence of U.S. troops on Haitian soil, in violation of Haitian law, has never been made public by either the Haitian or the U.S. government.
 

RECENTLY PUBLISHED
A Haiti Anthology: Libète

This compilation of writings is not light reading. It is a dense and rich selection of texts from novels and newspapers, academics and activists, poets and historians, all chosen to explore "long-standing themes and their interpretation in the hope of providing the keys to an understanding of present-day Haiti for some time to come," according to the introduction by Charles Arthur, who edited the book along with Michael Dash.

The editors have culled an eclectic assortment of mostly extracts, none more than a page or two long, which will leave the browsing reader feeling as though they had eaten too much at a smorgasbord of Haitian hor d'oeuvres.

To counteract such indiscipline, Arthur and Dash have grouped the writings in ten chapters, around themes such as "The Status Quo: Elites, Soldiers, and Dictators", "Rural Haiti: Peasants, Land, and the Environment", "Refugees and the Diaspora", and "Foreign Interventions."

The result is very satisfying when one takes the time to read the carefully numbered selections in their thematic groupings. Clearly, the texts have been chosen with care, and each chapter begins with a well-written synopsis of the arguments and analysis to be presented.

The reader who knows nothing of Haiti will discover an incisive anthology which offers a challenging but well-paved introduction to the country. For Haiti "experts" and English-speaking Haitians, for whom the book will likely be more appealing, it provides a useful occasion to revisit history, debates, places and culture, through writings both familiar and new. Edited skillfully and conscientiously, "Libète" is a resource which merits being consulted regularly.

A Haiti Anthology: Libète, Latin America Bureau, Ltd. (UK), Markus Wiener Publishers Inc. (US)
and Ian Ranle Publishers (Jamaica), 1999.

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