One of the lasting impressions of my visit to Haiti in 1998 was the ubiquity in Port au Prince of trucks carrying bottled water. In fact, the local people refer to bottled water as "Culligan," since the principal supplier of the product is the well-known U.S. Culligan Corporation.

Behind this phenomenon in Haiti is the increasing scarcity of potable water. With an average income of $1 a day, a typical consumer spends one tenth of his or her income for drinking water, and only some 40 percent of the population can afford to consume safe drinking water. Poor sewage, poor water supply systems and other basic urban infrastructure lie behind the drinking water crisis in Haiti. The consequences are endemic health problems for the population.

The drinking water and health crisis of Haiti’s eight million people, alas, is symptomatic of the entire social and economic situation. It is the poorest country in the hemisphere and among the poorest countries in the world. What is seldom said, however, in reference to Haiti is the causal connection between Haiti’s misery and U.S. foreign policy.

A U.S. Congressman, Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), recently made his ninth trip to Haiti. "I again witnessed devastation, destitution and desperation," he reported.

In his apparent empathy with the suffering of the people of Haiti, DeWine’s understanding is that the roots of Haiti’s intractable situation lie with the Haitian people themselves and particularly with their President, Jean Bertrand Aristide, and his Government. From reading the account of his visit (The Haitian Times, June 12-18, 2002) one would scarcely believe that the United States had any role in creating Haiti’s situation of today.

A total or semi-total amnesia in regard to the historical role of U.S. foreign policy in creating Haiti’s nightmare may be comforting to the national psyche, but it only makes the situation more intractable. Since Haiti’s founding as a nation by slaves who overthrew their masters in the early 1800s, U.S. foreign policy has been uniformly antagonistic to its economic and social advancement.

Haiti has been the recipient of the more interventions by the United States than any other country in the world, in some cases for extended periods, such as from 1915 to 1934.

The immediate past of Haiti saw the overthrow of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986 and then the election of a populist President, Jean Bertrand Aristide, in December 1990, after some intervening years of military coups and dictatorships. After being deposed in a military coup in September 1991 and restored again in 1994 with some help from the United States, Aristide is once again President of Haiti in his second term at this time.

The reality, however, is that from his first election in 1990 to the present, Aristide was never liked by Washington. He came from and stood for the wrong classes, namely the poor majority of urban and rural dwellers. He spoke a language of liberation from poverty and imperial control which had overtones of Castro, the Sandanistas and other Latin American progressives of the second half of the 20th century.

Aristide was also a harsh critic of the operations of transnational corporations in Haiti and elsewhere. Even though Aristide has back-pedaled and in some senses betrayed his original constituency, he is still detested in the halls of power in Washington. Consequently, Aristide is on the list of leaders who the United States says have to go before it will do business with their countries. It matters little whether or how many times Aristide was elected by an overwhelming majority of the people of Haiti. The important thing to be a "democratic leader" is that he or she be anointed by Washington, and clearly Aristide was not.

In the meantime — that is until Aristide is assassinated or decides to disappear from the political arena — the policy is to make the population suffer by denying aid, pressuring international agencies to deny loans and ensuring the collapse of infrastructure. It is a variant of policies followed in regard to Chile in the 1970s, Nicaragua in the 1980s and Iraq at the present moment. And in the words of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, these are worthy polices even if they kill one half a million children in the process.

In Haiti, the instrument of destabilization is the International Republican Institute (IRI), which works with a group called the Democratic Convergence, an alliance of small groups opposing the Famni Lavalas Party of Aristide. Many Convergence leaders are former friends and allies of Aristide such as Evans Paul, former Mayor of Port au Prince and Senator Danny Toussaint.

The IRI is known to funnel monies from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to the Democratic Convergence supposedly for the furtherance of democracy. The truth is, however, that the Convergence has very little legitimacy, its principal role being to maintain gridlock in Haiti as it is used by the IRI to destabilize the country.

The vehement opposition to democracy and economic advancement in Haiti on the part of the present Bush administration has a familiar cast of figures. At the State Department, the Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America is Otto Reich, whose hand has been in destabilizing efforts in Latin America for decades.

At the Organization of American States (OAS), the U.S. ambassador is Roger Noriega, a former Jesse Helms staffer and a vehement opponent of Aristide. In the Senate, of course, Jesse Helms has been able to block any constructive approach to helping Haiti.

Through the coordination of all these channels, some $500 million in loans and grants to Haiti from the International Development Bank has been blocked, as indeed have nearly all other sources of revenue for Haiti’s crumbling infrastructure. The result of these polices is the widespread suffering, hunger and lack of the bare necessities of life.

In Congress, the Black Caucus has been trying to counteract this negativity with a bill, HCR 382, entitled "New Partnership for Haiti." Given the strength of the forces hostile to Haitian democracy and advancement, this bill is in for a rough ride. However, we can contribute to Haiti’s cause by calling our Congresspersons and asking them to support HCR 382.