By: Valentina Palm / Asst. News Director
Protesters, barricades and burning tires have covered the streets in Haiti since August – now, the country is almost on a national strike.
Protesters paralyze the country demanding the resignation of President Jovenel Moïse because of governmental corruption, economic reforms, and currency devaluation.
“What Haitians are living now is something that is unbelievable,” said FIU Professor Nicolas André who teaches Haitian Creole and still has family living in the island.
“People are spending days, weeks without being able to provide for their family, no wonder people feel so frustrated,” said André, a Haiti native. “When you have people on the streets doing riots, you don’t risk your life going out.”
On the streets, the sound of gunshots, funeral demonstrations and violent clashes between the police and protesters who “pran breton”, a Haitian phrase for “take the streets” are heard.
Inside homes, the quiet but deafening sound of grumbling, empty stomachs frustrate families trapped behind locked doors. Schools, offices and looted stores are closed because of daily protests that turn into violent riots.
But protests have been going on for over a year.
A threat by the government to raise fuel prices triggered demonstrations September of last year and led to the resignation of Prime Minister Jack Guy Lafontant this July.
But neither his resignation nor the suspension of the price hike stopped the protests.
Economic reforms such as the fuel price increase, restructuration of Haiti’s electric system and “de-dollarizing” the country to make the gourde its only official currency, made protesters flood the streets of the capital – all reforms were reversed after public backlash.
The reforms were conditions set by the World Bank to grant Haiti over $90 million in donations.
The proposed gas price increases of over 40% also followed a governmental report that the government misappropriated over two million dollars from Petro-Caribe, an oil subsidy program Venezuela offered Haiti in 2006.
Petro-Caribe loaned Haiti barrels of oil, and over gave the island 25 years to pay it back for the country to invest the savings in education, transportation and social services.
Protestors in the streets of Port-Au-Prince chant “Kot lajan Pretwokaribe a?”, creole for “Where is the Petro-Caribe money?” blaming the government for corruption but their demands have gone unanswered.
“Members of the government take the money, and now they are not able to provide any acceptable report about what happened with the money they were supposed to invest,” said André. “Then, this escalated to the crisis we have now.”
As protestors demand governmental transparency, life on the island is still on pause.
The civil unrest has injured the country’s tourism sector. Flights have been canceled for days at a time, the United States placed a level-four travel ban on the country, hotels are closed, and Best Western Premier announced its permanent withdrawal from the country.
Professor André sends money to his brother who can’t keep up with how fast the price of food and services has risen.
“Adults can’t get to work because there’s no gas and if you can’t go to work that means you lack money to buy stuff,” said André.
André’s nieces, who are both in elementary school, haven’t attended school in months.
“Parents can’t send their kids to school and this is a very big problem because, in Haiti, not all kids have this possibility and some parents pay deeply for the first quarter,” said André. “Seeing their kids in this situation, it’s really hard and it’s frustrating.”
Ongoing protests without government action affect every age group and social class, according to André.
Through the yearlong civil unrest, anti-government protests expanded from being composed of small groups of low-income Haitians affected by the fuel price hike, to marches with participants from every social class.
“Now, more people want the president to resign,” said André who doesn’t believe the opposition should continue calling people to the streets.
“The population is the one that is suffering the most from the situation in the streets, a lot of people, especially those who go out to loot don’t have anything to lose, because they don’t even have a job,” said André.
After speaking to Haitians back home, André understands why some loot.
“A guy who told me he is in favor of taking things from supermarkets because, when you’re poor, you can’t go to a supermarket,” said André. “People loot thinking ‘I’ll do that now because I will never be able to buy anything in there’.”
For André, it’s sad and frustrating to watch loot and riots videos as he believes it destroys Haiti as much as a natural disaster.
“This is how you have a country where you can’t see any progress for the last two decades when everything is stable, you have to go back and consider rebuilding again and again,” said André. “It’s like the 2010 earthquake, instead of going forward, we’re going backward.”
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