Guyanese Online

— By Jean H Charles

Today Haiti and Venezuela represent two nations in shambles where
their citizens are leaving in drove seeking refuge in any hospitable
setting they can find.

Venezuela with a population of around 29 million people and Haiti with
a population of 11 million people are enduring a purgatory weaves by
national and international circumstances. Both nations are linked by
historical connection that placed Haiti has the midwife that facilitates
Venezuela birthing. Indeed when Bolivar visited the entire universe
seeking help to liberate his country from the Spanish conquistadors’
only Haiti on December 15 1815, stepped up to the plate with arms and
munitions to help Simon Bolivar regain force and gain independence.   

In a strange international imbroglio, Haiti corrupt and inefficient
government is maintained, only by the grace of the United States
because its President, Jovenel Moise has subscribed in quid pro quo to
the Lima group opposing Nicholas Maduro as the President of
Venezuela.

By all accounts Nicolas Maduro, who succeeded Hugo Chavez, has
amplified the bankruptcy of oil rich Venezuela through corruption and
inefficient policy practice. Russia represents its lifeline with fake money
that does not bring food and medicine to the majority of the
population. Maduro rival Juan Guaido, chair of the senate and self
proclaimed president, has succeeded in gaining international support
including a quasi royal appearance at the last State of the State address
of President Donald Trump in the American Congress. Yet the state of
the ordinary citizen of Venezuela has gone from bad to
worst.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/feb/20/one-
million-children-left-behind-those-who-stay-venezuela-amid-exodus.

In Haiti after a nation locked for an entire year by an opposition bent on
forcing Jovenel Moise to render his demission with no apparent result,
the nation is enduring a double lock today by recalcitrant police forces
demanding better working conditions, menacing to disturb the
forthcoming Carnival fiesta and putting fuel to the mass demonstration
that request Haiti governs itself otherwise.

In my entire life of seven decades, I have enjoyed only the first decade
when Haiti was an idyllic place that evokes the lost paradise
comparable to Bali, Tahiti or Hawaii. Since the departure from power of
Paul E Magloire on December 6 1956, Haiti has endured the whole
gamut of civilian dictatorship, Duvalier father and son from 1957 to
1986) military dictatorship 1987 to 1991, civilian populism Jean
Bertrand Aristide and Rene Preval 1991 to 2011, civilian corrupt and
inefficient governance, Michel Martelly and, Jovenel Moise 2011 to
2020.

Those governments have all been facilitated and maintained by the
United States and the so called Core group friends of Haiti made of the
United Nations, France and Spain. Of course they have been helped by
renegade Haitian leaders with fake sentiment of patriotism that
maintains the Haitian population in a situation of misery that can
almost be compared to the pre-independence era during the French
slavery time.

When Francois Duvalier père dies on April 21, 1971, the black American
Ambassador Clinton E Knox was the eminence grise on duty to facilitate
the smooth passation of power to his son Jean Claude Duvalier. When
Jean Claude was booted out by the population in fury because it has
enough of their malevolence, the American ambassador was there to
help the military to gain power.

Jean Bertrand Aristide was not the favorite American candidate as such
a military coup was facilitated upon him. With his hibernation in
Washington DC and the promise of frank collaboration Aristide was
returned to power with the support of 20.000 American forces. His
nemesis Rene Preval has enjoyed two mandates, one of them scripted
by the United Nations. Michel Martelly became President by the grace
of Hillary Clinton and now Jovenel Moise only lifeline is President
Donald Trump who returned a favor because Haiti has renounced the
Bolivarism and has bet on Guaido.

Crossing the Atlantic and back to Venezuela, the desperate situation is
just the tip of the iceberg. Corruption and political mayhem is rampant
all over Latin America; in Honduras, you have a President whose
brother is a known drug don dealer; kidnapping, rape and violence
represent daily routine that force the population to organize convoys marching towards Tijuana in Mexico knocking on the doors of the United States for refuge.

The United States is implementing a policy of closing the floodgate of
the immigrants; it would have been a sound policy if it was coupled
with nation building policy in the affected countries rooting the citizens
peacefully in their national settings. There is not even a draft of
national resettlements proposals either from the pleureuse Democrats
or the hack Republicans. Yet the United States have crafted in the past
an excellent Marshall Plan that revived Europe after the destruction of
World War II. It did help Japan renewed itself after Hiroshima.

The United States. as the leader of the free world, must come back to its
genius to get out of its circle of debacle in Vietnam, in Afghanistan, in
Iraq, in Haiti and Venezuela and the whole Latin America. True nation
building can be taught and, implemented with the support of the young
population that aspire to remain home and flourish in their nation like
their counterparts, in Sweden, Denmark or Holland.

It is the least that the United States and the United Nations with its
panoply of experts can offer to bring peace and prosperity unto this
world. Haiti, Venezuela, the rest of Latin America as well as the entire
continent of Africa is crying for that help!

Let us close the culture of fake help, after all it has been sixty years
since fake assistance has been de rigueur with mass of refugees now
demanding asylum in Europe or the United States! Without a
comprehensive policy and practice of nation building in the refugees
prone countries it will be soon a human disaster of biblical proportion
on this side and the other side of the Atlantic!

Jean H Charles LLB, MSW, JD is a syndicated columnist. He can be
reached at jeanhcharles@aol.com