Las marcas de destrucción dejadas por el terremoto que golpeó a Haití el 12 de enero de este año, parece que demorarán en ser sanadas. Si la reconstrucción del país ya no sería fácil con ayuda internacional, sin ella, está aún más difícil. En julio de este año, seis meses después del sismo, poco se había hecho por el país caribeño. Según informaciones divulgadas por Jubileo Sur/ Américas durante el Foro Social de las Américas, el plan para la construcción de un "Nuevo Haití" todavía es algo distante de la realidad del país. La mayor parte de la donación prometida todavía no llegó al país y la Comisión Interina para la Reconstrucción de Haití (CIRH), hasta julio de este año, todavía no había comenzado sus actividades.

Cada día, crece el descontento con el accionar y la presencia de los militares de la Misión de las Naciones Unidas para la estabilización de Haití - Minustah. El más reciente acontecimiento que provocó indignación en la población haitiana fue la muerte de Gérald Jean Gilles, de apenas 16 años. Las fuerzas de seguridad afirmaron que el caso fue de suicidio, sin embargo, los indicios más fuertes indican asfixia o ahogamiento. Según informaciones enviadas por algunos jóvenes al medio de comunicación haitiano Réseau Citadelle, Gérald fue torturado hasta la muerte porque los militares sospecharon que había robado 200 dólares.

"How to improve the lives of peasantry? We are always battling for decentralization, the principal problem to be resolved. Most of those who were killed in the earthquake were peasants who went to Port-au-Prince to search for bread and work and a better life. Because the government doesn’t give anything to the country, we have to go to Port-au-Prince for a better life. That’s the work of Tèt Kole. Our idea is to reinforce our strength and capacity to mobilize by bringing together all progressive forces, Haitian and foreign, to make Haiti into another nation, another state, where people can live in security, with food, with education."

While it should never be the case that a high percentage of the Haitian population remains living in refugee camps seven months after the earthquake, still camp residents have managed to create in a few of those camps a small-scale model of the type of future society that many would like to see. This includes democratic participation by community members; autonomy from foreign authority; a focus on meeting the needs of all; dignified living conditions; respect for rights; creativity; and a commitment to gender equity. The Petite Rivière Shelter Center camp, near the epicenter of the earthquake outside Léogâne, contains some of those elements. For one thing, it is run by a group of women...

Partners in Health is widely recognized as changing the potential for health for low-income people and countries throughout the world. Partners in Health’s extraordinary success comes from its philosophies regarding health and justice, which include a belief in the power and dignity of the patient; a commitment to health care as a human right; and an understanding that true health for the poor can only come through challenging the poverty which causes so much illness. The success of the group also comes from the zeal with which it pursues its philosophies through hands-on medical and social care in several countries. In a rare interview, Loune Viaud tells about Partners in Health’s Haiti program, Zanmi Lasante, or Friends of Health.

Estamos en un continente donde, en las últimas décadas, se ha dado el reencuentro entre los movimientos sociales y los movimientos indígenas, que desde sus conocimientos ancestrales y memoria histórica cuestionan radicalmente el sistema capitalista. En los últimos años, luchas sociales renovadas condujeron a la salida de gobiernos neoliberales y al surgimiento de gobiernos que han llevado a cabo reformas positivas como la nacionalización de sectores vitales de la economía y redefiniciones constitucionales transformadoras. Pero la derecha en el continente se está rearticulando aceleradamente para frenar cualquier proceso de cambios. Sigue actuando desde sus enclaves político, económico, mediático, judicial, a lo que se suma una nueva ofensiva del imperialismo - incluso militar - en su apoyo.

"You see all these people who lost their houses who don’t have the means to build other houses. In the camp, someone who has a tent is someone who’s found someone to give them a gift; the majority of people are living in tonèl, a little shelter made of a tarp over [four sticks of] wood. They’ve taken a little wood and some nails and they’ve built a little place to live. I can’t say that this is bad because people need a place to stay and no one is doing it for them, so they’re making do the only way they can. But the authorities should have foreseen this. Especially now that we’re in hurricane season until November… For people who don’t have a good tonèl or tent, when the rains come, they spend the entire night standing up on their two feet. After seven months, people are tired."

“We’re working to give speech to the most excluded, to democratize the means of communications in Haiti,” said Sony Esteus, director of the Society for Social Mobilization and Communication, or SAKS by its Creole acronym.

Grassroots groups in Haiti are developing strategies to respond to one of the greatest lingering crises of many after the January 12 earthquake: homelessness for 1.9 million people whose houses crumbled or were too damaged to occupy. FRAKKA represents one initiative, though still fledgling, to unite grassroots groups and residents of internally displaced people’s camps to win their human right to housing. Yet amidst current conditions of desperation, tents and other emergency supplies are being withheld and stockpiled for a future humanitarian crisis by some international NGOs.

Colette Lespinasse: "We hear that in the camps there are groups who have started organizing themselves to assert their demands around housing as a right. They’re thinking about alternatives and starting to put pressure on the government to respect those rights. The first thing to do is some education so more people understand that housing is a right. Second is to help people organize to demand these rights from the state. We need a popular movement to mobilize around the question of housing. I think the work that lies before us in the next year is to organize these different groups into a larger movement in Haiti. Because the government isn’t talking about it at all. But a great mobilization of people would make the government prioritize this."