Did anyone else get the feeling that the speedy response of countless countries and organizations to the earthquake in Haiti showed the eagerness human beings exude when they think they see a chance to make up for something?
(This doesn't apply to individuals, goodhearted people who sent, or did, what they could. As in other cases—such as New Orleans after Katrina—ordinary people have sacrificed to help others in situations that should have been remedied by groups farther up the chains of power.)
Are we supposed to be impressed, for example, that Disney checked in with $100,000 and lots of "volunteer" time from employees who worked a Haiti relief telethon? What's $100,000 compared to the profits Disney made from women sewing themselves blind to make cartoon-bedecked items of clothing in Haitian garment factories for years?
And Disney isn't the only one. David Cromwell and David Edwards wrote in 2004 in "Bringing Hell to Haiti," "The United States is Haiti's main commercial 'partner,' accounting for about 60 percent of the flows of exports and imports. Along with the manufacture of baseballs, textiles, cheap electronics, and toys, Haiti's sugar, bauxite and sisal are all controlled by American corporations. Disney, for example, has used Haitian sweatshops to produce Pocahontas pajamas, among other items, at the rate of 11 cents per hour. Most Haitians are willing to work for almost nothing."
Now observers worry that Haiti's future will be a rerun of the exploited past that has made remediation of the earthquake damage more difficult.
"There are really core questions about what Haiti's postquake economy should look like," Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, told Newsweek.com. "So, for example, the garment sector wants the new economy to give them shiny new export zones, tax breaks, public money to rebuild their factories—but we also know that they don't pay taxes that build Haiti's public sector, which is part of what deepened this disaster."
Klein added that the U.S. and other countries are already talking about rebuilding Haiti with much input from large business interests and little from the Haitian people. Her conclusion: "I think there should be a freeze on contracts until there are mechanisms in place to allow Haitians to participate in a national reconstruction plan. We're talking about designing a country. It isn't about rebuilding it exactly as it was, because everyone would agree that's unacceptable."
