In the fourth edition of Hammer&Hope magazine, we feature a revealing article titled “Armed Groups in Haiti Target All the Spaces Where Women Are Thriving“.
The article results from a series of interviews conducted by journalist Nathalie “Talie” Cerin last May, just before the Kenyan police intervention in Haiti. Below is an excerpt from an interview with Islanda Aduel, a member of Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen, a peasant organization affiliated with La Vía Campesina in Haiti. Islanda discusses the significant challenges faced by rural communities in Haiti, particularly women, due to violence and regional blockades, and reflects on the resistance and struggle for self-determination amid the chaos.
Q: The current climate of insecurity has presented so many threats for the Haitian people, and the masses are the main victims. With whole regions of the country cut off from the rest because of armed groups, it is understandably impossible to organize at a certain level. What are the limitations you are facing?
I live in Pòtoprens. I am a young feminist, activist woman. I am a member of Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen (Small-scale Food Producers of Haiti), a national peasant organization, and I am a coordinating member of La Via Campesina, an international peasant movement.
We have been facing significant challenges over the past three years, stemming from when armed groups cut off the Great Southern region from the rest of the country. Now, the Great North is also blocked. In our organization, we accompany and activate solidarity with the peasants. But lately, we have been unable to go to the field. Food production and transportation activities are paralyzed. When we try to move forward in the face of all the risks, when people in rural communities try to move ahead with their work activities, they cannot manage to reach the capital or the major cities. In large cities like Okap, Gonayiv, and Sen Mak, food does not arrive from the countryside because people are blocked en route, especially the Madan Sara [women who purchase produce from rural farms and sell it in larger regional marketplaces]. We know how the Madan Sara works. These women largely rely on credit from banks and microfinance organizations. Many of these women are unable to pay their debt because they are not able to sell in the big cities.
I want to talk about migration, which is another thing that breaks the momentum of mobilization. Dating back to 1915, we start to see people in the rural areas leave their hometowns to come to the city to work in factories in the industrial parks. There are those who left to work in the batèy [sugar mill], either in Cuba or in the Dominican Republic, during the first wave of occupation until today. This continues to break the spirit of mobilization.
It is not without reason that different countries in Latin America offered work programs to attract Haitians. Countries like Chile and Brazil opened their borders. In the case of Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff met with Martelly in 2012 while Brazil was preparing to host the World Cup and needed to build stadiums. They needed cheap labor to do it, so they called in Haitian workers. Since then, Haitians have similarly ended up in Chile, Nicaragua, and Mexico. It is these same powers who are deporting Haitians once we arrive in the United States, the same ones who created the conditions to make us leave the country in the first place. This is all a well-coordinated and clear process to make Haitians leave and seize the agricultural land we have. Look at how they use the land: they put concrete on it to make free economic zones and tourist zones. This is what they do.
We see clearly that the whole project of imperialism — I’m talking about the U.S. in particular — is to make us dependent. Meanwhile, we leave everything that would make us regain our self-determination as a people. Today, young Haitians have only one goal and project: to leave the country. There is an erosion of values that makes you see the question of struggle, the question of resistance. That is not what is on anyone’s mind; those are not the conversations being held. When we look at social media, the only message we see is, “Let’s get out of here, Haiti is unviable.” They create the chaos, they create the climate of terror, and then they are the ones coming up with a plan they have manufactured, a disguise to tell you that they are the ones who have the solution when the reins have been in their hands the whole time.
This occupation is already at our door. Women will be subjected to violence. Whenever there is occupation, women’s bodies become the territory of war. We need women’s organizations to conduct self-defense training because when women are subjected to collective rape, there must be groups that can give them the tools to respond to these types of violence. Even though this is the government’s responsibility, until we find a government that is for the people, that will respond to these needs, we must find a way for women to have a self-defense capacity.
I will finish by pointing out something crucial. Despite everything, there is still an extraordinary capacity for resistance. When you look at Haitian women, despite the situation of women workers and the shut-down industries, the women find a way to make ends meet. Despite being chased out of major market spaces, these women head uptown to Petyonvil; they go up to Dèlma. There are parts of the city where cars cannot pass right now because the vendors who were chased out of the Salomon marketplace have taken up business there. Because these women want to live, you will see them in the street with baskets on their heads. They tell you there is hope and they can build an alternative.
Find the full interview here: https://hammerandhope.org/article/haiti-women-activists