The Idea of Haiti: Rethinking Crisis and Development

7. The Alliance for Progress

135 The earthquake of January 12, 2010, generated unprecedented international mobilization for Haiti. Three months after this disaster, 150 countries and international organizations participated at the International Donor’s Conference towards a New Future for Haiti, which took place at the U.N. headquarters in New York. They pledged to grant Haiti assistance of $5.3billionin18months.However,morethanayearlater,Port-au-Princewas still in ruins, and thousands of Haitians were living in tents. The chairmen of the Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti (IHRC), former U.S. president Bill Clinton and Haitian prime minister Jean-Max Bellerive, begged donors to redouble their efforts. According to Clinton and Bellerive, only 30 percent of the promised aid had been donated by March 31, 2011, and only Japan and Spain had fulfilled their pledge. It is certainly too early to assess the reasons why the international aid for rebuilding Haiti has not produced the intended effects despite their commitments. Nevertheless, we can find in history a tentative explanation of today’s challenge. The objective of this study is to consider the period 1961–63 as a case study regarding the ineffectiveness of aid pledged to Haiti. On March 13, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced the conception of an Alliance for Progress with Latin American countries. The purpose of this inter-American pact was to be a vast economic development program that would provide roads, schools, hospitals, and public housing in 7 The Alliance for Progress A Case Study of Failure of International Commitments to Haiti Wien Weibert Arthus 136 wien weibert arthus the region.1 The United States committed to grant Latin American nations $20 million in ten years (equivalent to $100 billion in 2004 dollars).2 This fund would serve to create jobs and modernize the hemisphere. The economy was to grow at a rate of 2.5 percent per capita per year. A total of ninetyfour goals were set forth in the charter adopted at Punta del Este, Uruguay, inAugust1961.3 Forsomepeople,thealliancewasequivalenttotheMarshall Plan, which was a successful plan established by the United States to help rebuild the European countries after World War II. However, despite good intentions and spectacular announcements, the alliance did not bring the promised progress. Scholars have analyzed this program carefully and present different arguments to explain its failure.4 They mainly use countries such as Brazil, Chile, Colombia,andtheDominicanRepublicascasestudies.Thesefourcountries received 60 percent of the total amount of U.S. aid that was for the Alliance for Progress. Even in these situations, the objective of the charter of Punta del Este was not fully attained. Historians who are friendly to Kennedy, including Arthur Schlesinger Jr., argue that the alliance failed because of the president ’s assassination two years after launching the program. They claim that Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, was more concerned with Vietnam thanLatinAmerica.Otherscholars,suchasStephenG.Rabe,highlightinherent problems in the Kennedy administration. Rabe shows that the difficulty to launch the aid was perceptible even under Kennedy. Tony Smith, on the other hand, emphasizes cognitive factors related to Latin American societies , particularly the lack of a democratic tradition; in fact, Kennedy linked economicprogress,whichmeansthedisbursingoftheaid,todemocraticprogress in the region.5 Finally, Jeffrey Taffet, in his analysis, places emphasis on the opposition between the humanitarian objectives of the alliance and its use by the U.S government as a cold war weapon. In Haiti, the program’s failure cannot even be considered. Unlike the cases of Brazil and the Dominican Republic, the promised aid never reached Haiti. The purpose of this chapter is to help identify the reasons Haiti did not benefit from the Alliance for Progress. It will reinforce the examples cited by Smith, Rabe, and Taffet to explain the failure of the program. It will particularly show, as Stephen Rabe states, that the program was ineffective before the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Finally, it will point out the resemblance The Alliance for Progress 137 betweentheAllianceforProgressin1963andtheInternationalDonor’sConference in 2011 in terms of the needs, commitments, and failure of international aid to Haiti. The ineffectiveness of the Alliance for Progress in Haiti can be explained by a set of singular but interconnected elements. First, there were the weaknesses of the Haitian administration. Partisanship, corruption, and lack of experts, all of which undermined the country, made it difficult to achieve the structural reform necessary for the funds to be disbursed. The second factor was the internal situation of Haiti, which was characterized by...