Eyes of the Heart

[bcholmes]

The guest house I stayed at in Haiti had some copies of Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization by Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Tonight, I decided to read the one I purchased while I was there; it's a short book, but a nicely-written one.

From where we sit, the most staggaring statistics of all are those that reflect the polarization of this wealth. In 1960 the richest 20% of the world's population had 70% of the world's wealth, today they have 86% of the wealth. In 1960 the poorest 20% of the world's population had just 2.3% of the wealth of the world. Today this has shrunk to just barely 1%.

Imagine that the five fingers of your hand represented the world's population. The hand has $100 to share. Today the thumb, representing the richest 20% of the world's population has $86 for itself. The little finger has just $1. The thumb is accumulating wealth with breath-taking speed and never looking back. The little finger is sinking deeper into economic misery. The distance between them grows larger every day.

Behind this crisis of dollars there is a human crisis: among the poor, immeasurable human suffering; among the others, the powerful, the policy makers, a poverty of spirit which has made a religion of the market and its invisible hand. A crisis of imagination so profound that the only measure of value is profit, the only measure of human progress is economic growth.

We have not reached the consensus that to eat is a basic human right. This is an ethical crisis. This is a crisis of faith.

Many in the first world imagine the amount of money spent on aid to developing countries massive. In fact, it amounts to only .03% of the GNP of the industrialized nations. In 1995, the director of the U.S. aid agency defended his agency by testifying to his congress that 84 cents of every dollar of aid goes back into the U.S. economy in goods and services purchased.

I particularly like this passage:

How do these people survive? Why is suicide practically unheard of in Haiti? To understand we must move beyond statistics. To see the richness of the Haitian people we must examine cultural factors: wealth of humor, warmth of character, ease of laughter, dignity, solidarity. We have traditions in Haiti that allow us to share food when we can. We raise the child of a friend or relative who cannot. We work toether in a Konbit to bring in a crop, or build a neighbor's house in exchange for a meal shared at the end of the day. We can make one more place on a tap-tap that is already impossibly full. The majority of Haitians survive in a vast informal economy that remains beyond the statisticians, yet provides sustenance for 70% of the urban workforce. And then we still smile, and we still laugh. In Haiti we are rich in these.

Do not confuse democracy with the holding of elections every four or five years. Elections are the exam, testing the health of our system. Voter participation is the grade. But school is in session every day. Only the day-to-day participation of the people at all levels of governance can breathe life into democracy and create the possibility for people to play a significant role in shaping the state and the society that they want.

This passage was interesting to read:

Since 1994, an American friend who has lived in Haiti for many years has been leading foreign visitors on a one-day pilgrimage called the "Stations of the Cross." The group visit fourteen sites, stations in the cross of Haiti's recent history. Beginning at St. Jean Bosco, the travel to Cite Soleil, to Lafanmi Selavi, to Fort Dimanche, the Duvalier prison where over 30,000 Haitians died, to the sites of the assassinations of our martyrs Antoine Izmery, Father Jean-Marie Vincent and Justice Minister Guy Malary.

Sio and I did a simplified form of this Stations of the Cross exercise, and we stayed in the house that was previously owned by Antoine Izmery. And although Aristide doesn't name his American friend, I believe we met him as well.

Comments

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

Obliquely related, but this resonated for me:
Behind this crisis of dollars there is a human crisis: among the poor, immeasurable human suffering; among the others, the powerful, the policy makers, a poverty of spirit which has made a religion of the market and its invisible hand. A crisis of imagination so profound that the only measure of value is profit, the only measure of human progress is economic growth.

What it resonated with was our recent general election, which was pretty much a landslide change of government. In the weeks leading up to the election, a lot of commentators and even many within the then government kept going on about how the opposition's policies were indistinguishable from the government's, so why did they maintain this lead in the polls?

Well, perhaps the economic policies don't look terribly different, and that's apparently all these people were capable of comparing. The losing side still doesn't seem to entirely get why it lost.

We're getting changes in climate change policy, indigenous rights, the Iraq war, industrial relations, probably health and education. You know, policies that are actually about people rather than money.

[sarah-dragon.livejournal.com]

When I was in college I studied a great deal of African politics and situations. One of the most telling pieces of information was the way that the World Bank would mandate that states re-orient their economy to match up with a set of guidelines set down by the UN and WB if they wanted any money. I can understand not wanting to hand money over to a tyrant who will use it for military expenditures but restructuring of economies in a way that did not benefit native businesses is a bit absurd.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

There's a good documentary -- Life and Debt -- that talks about some of the ways that the World Bank's policies are actually harmful to the countries they're lending to. The documentary primarily looks at Jamaica, but its point is more broadly applicable.