One of many international organizations in the Republic of NGOs
In February 2011 I was sitting in Pwoje Espwa, a house for vulnerable children in Les Cayes, Haiti, with my good friend Matt. We were talking with the director, an ex-military Catholic priest called Father Marc, about the post-earthquake influx of foreigners into Haiti. With a cigarette in one hand and a glass of rum in the other, he told us that in his opinion, foreigners here can be classified into three types: missionaries, mercenaries, and misfits. Father Marc falls under the first category, but doesn’t rate it any more highly than the others. In his words, ‘religion is the most divisive thing there is’, and many missionaries are FWIPs – ‘fucking well-intentioned people’. Whether you come to Haiti with good or bad intentions, the end result is often the same: trouble. [click to continue…]
On March 30, Digicel closed a deal to acquire Voilá, its closest competitor in Haiti’s mobile phone market adding 1 million customers to Digice’s 3.5 million subscribers. Voilá’s market share dropped sigificantly since Digicel arrived to Haiti in 2005. The merger will further secure Digicel’s position as market leader, fending off the newly-arrived Natcom, a Vietnamese-owned company whose signiature blue handsets are appearing around the country. Digicel and Voila will continue to operate as separate companies.
The winds of change are building in the Dominican Republic, as in eight weeks from now Dominicans go to the polls to choose “El próximo Presidente de la Republica Dominicana” – the next President of the Dominican Republic.
The incumbent Leonel Fernández has served his maximum number of consecutive terms in office so he must relinquish his hold on the country. However, in a rather Clinton-esque move, his wife, First Lady of the Dominican Republic Margarita Cedeño, is running for the office of Vice President alongside Presidential hopeful Danilo Medina.
The opposing force in this showdown is the 71-year-old former Dominican president, Hipólito Mejía, best known by locals as “Papá”.
It is probably fair to say that this run-off is being fought on somewhat ideological grounds and many Dominicans are rather polar in their views as to who should next hold the position of El Presidente. However, this is not necessarily the most interesting part of this whole affair: the campaign itself has a whole life of its own and it is rather uniquely Dominican. [click to continue…]
“Here is where Bogota ends and Soacha begins”. Hash points to where the asphalt drops off and becomes dirt track. “This is just one of the reasons why we see it as a forgotten place”. The border is so demarcated it’s comical. The asphalt ends, houses cease to have water meters, and overall infrastructure grows more precarious as one moves up the hill of informal housing.
But to Hash, Chepe and their friends, Soacha is also home. Some 70% of its population is under 25, meaning many are poised to embark on a path as to how the rest of their lives will turn out. Adequate education is inaccessible to most. For many, signing up to the army is one of the few livelihood opportunities available. Others will end up in gangs or as ‘microtraffickers’ for the larger distributors. [click to continue…]
“This is a chapter in my life that has closed”, said my friend Yoselyn, as we motored across the clear waters of the Caribbean Sea to Bahía de las Aguilas, a remote and stunning beach in the Dominican Republic’s south-west. “I will never come here again.”
Yoselyn was referring to the exponentially rising cost of accessing the most beautiful places in Hispaniola. This was Yoselyn’s third visit to this part of the country, and she considered herself to be extremely fortunate to have seen what most of her fellow citizens could only dream about. [click to continue…]
Throughout the world, waste is more than just a matter of moving garbage away from human populations: it permeates the social lives of people, who transform it into a resource that can be utilised for social, economic, and artistic benefits. The Encyclopedia of Consumption and Waste (2012), recently published by Sage, presents interdisciplinary accounts on our world of waste in a new, two-volume series. Here I present a summary of my own contribution on South America.
South America produces approximately 16% of the world’s solid waste, over 120 million tons per year. Much of this is concentrated in megalopolises such as São Paulo, Buenos Aires and Mexico City. These cities produce more than ten thousand tons of garbage every day. However, the use and ill-effects of waste are not evenly distributed across society. Waste tends to do the most damage to people who are socially and economically marginalized. Ironically, these are often the people who least produce waste, because they consume less and recycle more. [click to continue…]
It is late Monday afternoon when Marie heads to the beach to look for Jean Paul, the captain of a small, open fishing boat that ferries people, commodities and cash twice per week between Anse-a-Pitres and Marigot. Marie made a reasonable profit today from the sale of vegetables in the market on the Dominican side of the border, and she wants to send some money to her daughter, who is boarding with relatives in Jacmel while she attends school. She finds Jean Paul and gives him the cash along with her daughter’s mobile phone number. The next morning, after a seven-hour boat trip, Marie’s daughter will find Jean and retrieve her mother’s gift. In the absence of a sealed road between the towns, and given the expense involved in using banks or money transfer services, residents along this important trade route must place trust in their social relations and market networks to deliver cash safely. Read the rest of this article on Talitha Stam’s blog
The following is Part II of a four-part blog on inequality, economic crime and social fabric in Colombia. You can read Part I here.
Relative deprivation: the experience of being deprived of something to which you think you are entitled. It relies on a perception that you feel worse off than another (Walker and Smith, 2002). When one looks beyond the purely economic context in which it is usually applied, this sense of entitlement reveals itself as complex, often diabolical. One of the most clear-eyed examples of how relative deprivation plays out comes from Colombian writer, Fernando Vallejo. In La Virgen de los Sicarios, the narrator tells us:
How can one kill or end up dead for the sake of a pair of tennis shoes? You will ask yourself that very question, foreigner. Mon cher ami, it is not about the shoes: it is about a principle of justice in which we all believe. He who is robbed thinks it unfair that the shoes are taken away from him, seeing as he paid for them, while he who steals them considers unfair the very fact that he didn’t own them to begin with. [click to continue…]
Feature article of a 2011 issue of Hello! Magazine, Colombia. The text reads: 'The most powerful women of the Valle de Cauca region in their tremendous Hollywood-style mansion'. At the rear of the photo are two AfroColombian women dressed in traditional maid outfits. The image generated scathing criticisms of racism and moral bankruptcy amongst the country's upper classes
The following is Part one of a four-part blog on inequality, economic crime and social fabric in Colombia.
‘I want my mother to move. This neighbourhood has grown insecure. Since they opened a shopping centre here, it has attracted thieves’. When I ask my friend why he attributes a surge in robberies to the opening of a shopping centre, he explains that this middle-class district of Cartagena is surrounded by rapidly expanding poorer zones. The residents who shop there are increasingly falling prey to hold-ups by poorer residents that move in and out of the area, eyes peeled for more well to do individuals exiting their homes or the mall with their purchases. ‘They’re like sharks circling, looking for something to feed on’, he adds.
The nightmarish imagery fires up my imagination and I’m now picturing ravenous predators who have swum for months through dark oceans to no avail, only to suddenly happen upon a reef, rich in plant life, colourful coral specimens, fish feeding regularly and happily. And this isn’t the first time I’ve heard the word ‘shark’ applied to thieves. A taxi driver used it when explaining to me that I live in a bad area of the city because it’s neither rich nor poor. ‘It’s where the stratas clash’. By ‘strata’ he is referring to the public policy of social stratification in Colombia (based on place of residence and its connection to income). That is, my neighbourhood, as a result of its proximity to the centre and surrounding poorer neighbourhoods, is problematic – one of those patchy, rapidly gentrifying parts where you have to watch your back. You leave your fairly idyllic street, walk four blocks east, and suddenly you’ve hit a zona fea (ugly, or dangerous part) and you’re a sitting duck. [click to continue…]
In a recent article, Anke Schwittay argues that relying on corporations to develop products for the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ (BoP) “cannot address the structural drivers of their circumstances and will lead to neither the eradication of poverty nor a corporate fortune at the BoP.” (2012:S71) Presenting evidence from Hewlett Packard’s e-Inclusion program, she shows how the company’s goal of creating products for the BoP quickly altered when the market proved unprofitable. Given that their main incentive is to make profits and serve shareholders, corporations’ stated commitments to development issues have little staying power. We should not, therefore, put all our eggs in the market basket as a cure-all for global development.
I agree wholeheartedly with Schwittay. But who, then, is best placed to serve the interests of the world’s poor? What Schwittay doesn’t mention is that neither governments nor NGOs have proved so brilliant at serving the poor either. NGOs often have great visions and highly committed staff, but they expend a great deal of time and effort competing for funds. These often come with long strings attached, meaning that development projects end up being tailored to the preferences of funding bodies. Also, many NGOs have short life spans and high staff turnovers, making them less than ideal to run the kinds of long-term projects that are necessary to instigate change and growth. [click to continue…]
On March 30, Digicel closed a deal to acquire Voilá, its closest competitor in Haiti’s mobile phone market adding 1 million customers to Digice’s 3.5 million subscribers. Voilá’s market share dropped sigificantly since Digicel arrived to Haiti in 2005. The merger will further secure Digicel’s position as market leader, fending off the newly-arrived Natcom, a Vietnamese-owned company whose signiature blue handsets are appearing around the country. Digicel and Voila will continue to operate as separate companies.
Missionaries, mercenaries and misfits: The curious case of foreigners in Haiti
by Erin Taylor on April 23, 2012 · 0 comments
in Commentary
One of many international organizations in the Republic of NGOs
In February 2011 I was sitting in Pwoje Espwa, a house for vulnerable children in Les Cayes, Haiti, with my good friend Matt. We were talking with the director, an ex-military Catholic priest called Father Marc, about the post-earthquake influx of foreigners into Haiti. With a cigarette in one hand and a glass of rum in the other, he told us that in his opinion, foreigners here can be classified into three types: missionaries, mercenaries, and misfits. Father Marc falls under the first category, but doesn’t rate it any more highly than the others. In his words, ‘religion is the most divisive thing there is’, and many missionaries are FWIPs – ‘fucking well-intentioned people’. Whether you come to Haiti with good or bad intentions, the end result is often the same: trouble. [click to continue…]
Tagged as: development, Haiti, NGO, Paul Farmer, Timothy T. Schwartz
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