Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization.

Eyes of the Heart: Seeking a Path for the Poor in the Age of Globalization by Jean-Bertrand Aristide (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2000); 96 pp.; $12.00 cloth,

Recent demonstrations in Washington, D.C., against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have achieved one remarkable gain: they have forced us to question the morality of international financial institutions that leave most of the world in growing debt and provide "relief" only on terms beneficial to the lenders. But most news accounts of international debt have a curiously abstract quality: the history and character of the people involved are seldom developed in any detail. A welcome exception is an eloquent new book by former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Eyes of the Heart provides a compelling portrait of Haiti's poor.

When the subject of international debt does not make eyes glaze over, it usually occasions snide moralism or, at best, a kind of benevolent paternalism. Banking leaders insist that nations that borrowed funds have an "obligation" to repay and that their failure undermines the "integrity" of international financial institutions. Liberal critics ask that the wealthy "forgive" some of these debts as an act of generosity toward those who have made mistakes.

Lost in even the benevolent moralism is the history of these nations and the real lives of the poor. The economic textbooks that give us our models of global capitalism are curiously sanitized. Nations that enter the international marketplace hardly do so from positions of equity or equality in resources or information.

Haiti is often described as an economic basket case: 85 percent of its people are illiterate and the average Haitian survives on less than $1 a day. Yet these dire statistics hardly reflect the political ineptitude or the immorality of the Haitian people; they are the legacies of colonial efforts to punish and repress a proud history of resistance.

Haiti was the site of the world's only successful slave revolution--a revolution in 1791 that the United States' newly liberated leaders condemned. French retribution included a total war lasting thirteen years and a "peace treaty" requiring Haiti to reimburse the French for their loss of "property." The results of that treaty remain today. In order to pay its debt to France, tropical rain forests were logged at a rapid rate. Haiti today has only 3 percent of its original cover and 1 percent of its topsoil washes into the ocean each year.

Yet if the term debt hardly captures the reality of Haiti's economic situation, poor is an equally inadequate description of its people. As Aristide argues eloquently, the poor "have survived for hundreds of years.... This may come as a surprise for those who believe the poor are poor because they are stupid.... We are alive because of our tremendous capacity for survival."

The key to that survival, and to longer term ways out of their poverty, lies not in charity as usually understood but in ceding to the poor genuine moral and economic equality by allowing Haitians the full use of their own economic and social resources. Aristide portrays Haiti's people as "wealth possessors" with "warmth of character ... dignity, and solidarity."

The country already enjoys a vast informal economy, all the way from a subsistence agriculture to those who clean the homes of Port Au Prince's wealthy. Haitians survive, according to Aristide, because "we work together to bring in a crop or build a neighbor's house in exchange for a meal shared at the end of the day."

Illiteracy is a burden, but even this burden is far from undermining their strength and resolve. The country survives on the strength of those who did not go to the university. As Aristide asks, "How intelligent must one be to construct a three-story building without the benefit of formal education? I know people who have."

Aristide's work is no celebration of poverty but, unlike too many of the liberal philanthropic community, he emphasizes the skills and agency of the poor. A superior quality of life for the poor of Haiti depends .not so much on the generosity of the wealthy North as on allowing the poor to keep and build upon their own resources.

These kinds of freedoms are just exactly what the international financial community has never granted Haiti. A CIA-sponsored coup drove Aristide, Haiti's democratically elected head of state, from power in 1991. In an act of "generosity," the United States restored Aristide--after coup leaders had systematically raided government coffers and the economy had shrunk 30 percent. Aristide's restoration--and subsequent U.S. aid--were then made dependent upon requirements that government expenditures for education be reduced and upon the forced, below-market-rate sale of state flour and cement mills to foreign investors.

Such policies are a natural outgrowth of the contempt the international community and domestic elites have for the poor of Haiti. In perhaps the most eloquent section of the book, Aristide describes the fierce opposition evoked by television images of poor children swimming with rich children in a center for street children he founded in 1986:

It is a system of social apartheid that we are questioning. We saw the same phenomena during the civil rights movement in the United States, where attempts to integrate beaches and swimming pools met with some of the worst violence of the period. The same was true in South Africa.

The ugly truth that stands out in Aristide's work is that colonialism is hardly a distant memory. Not only is the land marked by its residue but Haitian banks are controlled by an affluent few so that most of the money saved by impoverished peasants goes to urban projects or even out of the country rather than being invested back into such badly needed capital as irrigation pumps.

Aristide and his colleagues have forged banking and consumer cooperatives to make low-cost loans available. They have organized a community radio station run by and for children and have promoted literacy programs. Debt relief and an end to the intrusive IMF "conditionality" requirements for nations such as Haiti are thus hardly an act of charity; they are merely the restoration of resources stolen from a people. Aristide's portrait of this people marks the case with a depth and conviction that should compel our attention.

John Buell regularly writes the Humanist's "Humanistic Economics" column.