by Ron Bluntschli
Published by Beyond Borders in Issue #31, Spring 2001


Three hundred years of slavery in Haiti have left a bitter legacy. Since the revolution in 1804, the institutional form of slavery is gone, but like a deep and festering wound, the spirit of slavery lives on in exploitative and dehumanizing relationships at all levels of society and between Haiti and many of her neighboring nations.


A multitude of relief and development agencies aim to treat Haiti’s poverty and misery, but their efforts are often no more than Band-Aids obscuring this deeper infection, making the needed healing even more difficult to attain. For example, an agency may dig a well for a community that has no clean water, but if they ignore the problem of exploitation and domination in the community, it is likely that once they leave, the local boss will find a way to take control of the well and even charge people money for the water. Projects that look at poverty as simply a technical problem and ignore exploitation and domination in relationships, often only perpetuate poverty and suffering.


This is only part of the story, though. There is another spirit alive in the Haitian soul as well, the unquenchable desire for liberation. It was in this spirit that Haitians overthrew their colonial masters long ago; and the same spirit continues to express itself in resistance to all forms of domination, both from within Haiti and from abroad. It drives the Haitian people to find ways of working together to overcome the forces that divide them and improve their lives in spite of their limited resources. Without it, hope would die. At the Christian Center for Integrated Development’s Cooperative Training Program, our goal is to help Haitian farmers channel their desire for liberation into effective collective action. Where there is the will to work together and share resources with a common purpose, we provide training on how to establish cooperatives as a means of realizing this goal. Since we offer training and no direct funding, those people in a community whose real goal is to get easy money from foreign donors quickly drop out, leaving a core of people dedicated to finding long-term solutions for their local problems. Four Haitian trainers are currently working with 25 cooperatives around the country. While the cooperatives meet a variety of needs, the most common is the need for credit at reasonable interest rates for farming and commerce. Traditional banks do not serve the peasantry, so the only recourse most farmers have is to borrow from local loan sharks, who typically charge 25% per month. With a credit cooperative, members can borrow at 2% per month, making a huge difference in the profitability of their enterprises. Furthermore, the interest paid builds up the cooperative’s capital so all members benefit. At a cooperative meeting I recently attended a woman shared her testimony of how this had impacted her life: “Before we had our cooperative, I had to put away so much of the money I made from selling in the market to pay back my debt, there wasn't’t enough left to feed my family. Now, although I’m not getting rich, I can feed my children every day and even have enough to put away for their schooling.”


Such concrete results can have liberating effects far beyond just providing freedom from loan sharks. When cooperative members see their efforts actually producing change, they begin to find freedom from the crippling belief that they can do nothing for themselves without the help from outsiders. They start imagining other ways to improve their lives and become confident that they can achieve their dreams. The more confident and capable they become, the less likely they are to be taken advantage of by local scam artists. They also become better able to work with aid organizations in mutually respectful partnerships, rather than blindly accepting projects that end up only increasing unhealthy dependency.


As cooperatives multiply and create strong organizational networks, they will be able to put collective pressure on national leaders to deliver effective policies rather than empty promises. And maybe, one day, Haiti will be able to stand with pride before other countries as a nation in control of its own destiny. Only then will the struggle for liberation from slavery finally by achieved.

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Ron Bluntschli and his wife Carla are associate staff members of Beyond Borders and have served in Haiti for over 18 years. Beyond Borders supports the work of Ron and Carla by serving as their fiscal agent in the US.

For more information about Ron Bluntschli and his work, contact him at doabn [at] haiti [dot] maf [dot] net or click here to visit the NPR web site for an audio interview with Ron in the field.